Intuit has squandered the Quicken brand for years with lousy updates and even worse customer support. In some respects it's good to see them sell it to someone who might do something with it.
Unfortunately, the Quicken name is now so tarnished that the private equity firm likely has one swing at a decent update. Anything less than a homerun and they might as well shut it down.
It's kind of weird once you start using it, that you'll notice the difference in the shoes you're wearing. If I come back from the gym in a pair of running shoes, there's just enough difference where I'll notice it and change the height by a couple of tenths.
No real advantage per se. I've used them in the shop, and was impressed with the quality. And, it seems like when I got it, it may have been on sale.
I kind of figured that for the amount of time I spend at the desk, ~$600 wasn't too much to spend. I had gotten by for years on an old Office Depot-esque desk propped up on cinder blocks and 2x4s.
So often furniture these days can only really be moved about twice due to the structural integrity of the fake wood they're constructed out of. I was able to mount solid anchors into the bottom of the desk, have mounted a drawer and a cable management tray. It's pretty solid.
The top easily weighs 200 pounds, and that's not including the 2 Thunderbolt displays that sit on my desk.
It's been a great platform. At my standing height of 45", it needs to be up against the wall or it would likely vibrate a bit. As it stands, it's great.
The pushbutton memory allows for fast adjustment between sitting and standing. I probably transition a couple of times a day. If I'm going to be on the phone a while, I might sit if I'm not pacing.
Even if you simply used it as a regular desk, one of the things that have become most apparent to me is the difference tenths of an inch make in getting your workspace dialed in. Maybe you're wearing different shoes - or no shoes - you can dial in your desk appropriately.
It's exciting to see some thought and movement at this level.
The existing system is broken when it comes to actual student knowledge. A lot of systems are to fault, but as the modern university has bowed to their corporate overlords in filling the pipeline of modern corporate key punchers, college has essentially become tech school for Power Point and Excel in a lot of cases.
So many of our current college students would be so much better served by tech school.
Heck, so much of this community often ends up eschewing college at large to go build something - often because the value proposition of the university model right now simply doesn't make sense.
We're always going to need people who can think - maybe a bifurcated path where a lot of our university experience returns more to a true liberal arts education.
This experience-based model wouldn't have been out of place historically. That it appears so revolutionary to us today shows how broken the current model is.
Something has to change. I'm excited to see some movement around the borders.
When it comes to Ferguson-type departmental corruption, it shows just how institutionalized the racism is - and how far it extends outside of the departments.
We should likely spend more time on this, as in this light, it doesn't matter what changes are made at a departmental level - there's no path to success on their own.
Change is going to have to be at the elected official level - but those systems are so gerrymandered, and so corrupt that it presents a really difficult problem.
This is a problem at the top and the bottom of the department, and it won't get fixed until both sides are held appropriately accountable.
The beat officers don't care because their management stack doesn't care. This should be pursued criminally, and would be were it anyone else messing with municipal equipment.
This is a departmental corruption issue first and foremost - and it's the senior management that should be held to account. Unfortunately, the problem won't be fixed until some of them go to jail and/or are made to make compensation for the damages and time spent repairing the system. Only then will the policies change to where the guys on the street quit damaging equipment.
I've been a member since '83 or '84. I've undoubtedly gotten the my original money's worth out of my membership dozens of times over.
The article raises an interesting point. While I am quite loyal to REI - often choosing to buy there even though I pay sales tax and might be able to find it cheaper online, I don't pay that much attention to elections and other co-op stuff.
The primary benefit I see as a co-op member is their unparalleled customer service. I've lost count of the number of times one of their associates has gone out of their way to ensure that whatever issue I was having was taken care of appropriately.
If Fitbit would make a 22mm band to fit my existing Maratac dive watch, I'd give them another $249 tomorrow.
I love the functionality of the Surge. I don't need a screen - the connectivity to my phone is enough. I don't need text alerts. Give me the data in a "retro" form factor and I'd be squared away.
Selfishly, I'm glad to see that Nashville isn't on this list! Though I'd be interested to see how it compares.
There seem to be a lot of cities that offer good talent with a great cost of living - sort of cities poised for a breakout. I wonder what kind of critical mass you have to have in other areas - i.e. concentration of tech talent, infrastructure, educational resources, etc... to really be a great tech community?
I realize that full curation probably isn't possible as this thing scales, but as a parent, this thing will live or die based on the content they allow into the stream.
I love watching videos of people building stuff with my kids. Moreover, I love watching the creativeness that some of the videos inspire in my kids. Unfortunately, to date, I have had to preview most of the content my children see on YouTube so that they don't either see a video review of something that's got the f-bomb every other word, or that the sidebar video recommendations don't bring up stuff that I really don't want my kid watching. And, to be clear, these are young kids.
In my mind, this is all about the content, the creators they allow into the system, and the curation of those two. I'd love to see an algorithmic way to accomplish some of this, but I expect on the front end, it'll require a lot of human filtering.
Big companies, yes. Small businesses, not so much.
There's certainly an unrealized support cost. But in my experience, it's pretty common to see several different manufacturers and OSs across a small business. When they need a new laptop, they're either picking up what's cheap at Best Buy or handing down machines when the boss gets a new one.
There are some interesting corollaries that make this interesting from an InfoSec perspective.
Heart of the matter is that most consumers - whether personal or business users will have little to no visibility into this. And, even a smaller fraction will have the technical chops to remove this garbage unless there's a tool that's openly presented to them.
Since there are a ton of small businesses that purchase and consume laptops just as the come out of the box, I'm really interested in the industrial espionage potential with this.
Couple in all the PRISMish like revelations over the last year and a half, and I simply have trouble putting much faith in their, "oh, it's just to show better ads, sorry..." statement.