Can someone explain where the Y comes from? Is this something like, there exists a mother relation between this X and some Y?
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I work at a large telecom company building customer support infrastructure, and you are by and large correct. It is a direct policy not to list our phone number on our website, which is supposed to "nudge the customer journey towards alternative solutions first." That means AI chat, or user guided search on the website, or whatever.
The funny thing is, being the most customer friendly company is supposed to be one of our organisation's goals. By and large actually, individuals working here (at least at the lower levels) all want to genuinely help customers. However the way incentives are set up and the organisation is structured, inevitably cost savings is what drives most of the work that gets done.
Here's the thing, though. There's no interest charged to the customer. I think Klarna makes its money just because companies pay them money for integrations and for the ability to advertise that customers can buy now pay later and such. And at least in the case of my company's integration with Klarna, Klarna takes all the risk. They're lending customers money and hoping the customers pay it back. My employer gets the money up front and isn't out any money if the customer doesn't pay.
Your company pays a transaction fee just like with a credit card. Except it's usually roughly twice as expensive as a credit card. This is what allows Klarna to take on all that risk, generally. For your company this is essentially a marketing expense. Offer a convenient way to pay in return for a few percent of the transaction (3-6% + a fixed fee, $0.30 perhaps).
Klarna generally partners with some financial firm to finance these short term loans, and they use the merchant fee to pay interest. These can be as high as 25% APR. It's a high risk loan.
This is how they make money. It's the only way they make money.
That is not correct. Klarna is functionally a payment processor, like an advanced type of credit card, and charges the merchant fees per transaction. For example, see here. They are highly cagey about specific fees until you actually sign up, and it depends on region and business size. But interchange fees are where the majority of their revenue comes from. To my knowledge, the fees are typically 3 percentage points above what the merchant would pay for a credit card transaction.
The reason merchants still accept Klarna despite the high fees is of course, improved conversion rates and decreased risk. Klarna assumes all the risk of the customer not paying, the shop gets all of the money instantly and doesn't have to worry about it for the most part. That mainly makes it attractive for high margin shops that don't mind spending lots on marketing to get a few extra sales (fashion, perfume, high end electronics).
I'm not too knowledgeable on how Klarna deals with late fees, but I'm pretty sure it differs per country they operate in. Many places have regulations limiting the abuse of late fees. I wouldn't be surprised if the US is not that kind of place, and people who are late get fucked with fees.
In general, I agree with the second part of your comment and I do not recommend using any buy-now-pay-later kind of scheme, because you're taking on additional risk for no real reason. Lots of stuff can happen even through no fault of your own (check engine light? Job downsizing?) that will affect your expected future income.
A decent rental home in Texas costs about $2650 per month. A similar house costs about $460k to buy, and run about $1000/mo in taxes. So you'll only save about $1650 per month.
This would amount to an annual tax rate of 2.6% which is possibly some of the highest property tax rate in all of the United States. The median property taxes paid by homeowners in the US is only $2000 per year.
Even putting that 460k into a bank account at 4.5% interest will give you $1725/mo, let alone stocks, index funds, and all the other investments you could be doing that will out-perform real estate.
I agree that real estate as an investment is generally not the best option, but I don't think that says anything about real estate as a wealth building tool for the middle class. If you compare renting to buying using a mortgage (the typical options) over, say, a 50 year period, buying will almost certainly come ahead in terms of wealth built.
For a primary residence that you plan to occupy long term, i would recommend buying almost every time. If you're looking to build more wealth after that, I think there's usually better options than e.g. buying a second house and renting it out.
The planet's gravity is not what is causing the time dilation, but rather the gravity of the supermassive black hole that it was orbiting. The black hole is somehow spinning extremely rapidly, causing frame dragging, which creates a particular stable orbit very close to the event horizon.
Apparently the energy requirements of the orbit would preclude ever reaching the planet except by slingshot manoeuvres around intermediate size black holes or neutron stars.
There's a lot of stuff that isn't really efficient to own individually. I need a power drill one day a year or less, it's just gathering dust in my closet the rest of the time. I bet most of my neighborhood does the same.
I often dream of a local community center of sorts that lends out tools, and other such things, maybe for a small yearly fee. They could spend to get something robust, good quality that lasts for a long while. And the whole neighborhood could benefit. Sort of an expanded version of a library? I guess none of that is very profitable.
It's really about quality imo. Not all 4k video is equal, and streamed video tends to be especially bad. It's possible to download decent quality video files, but they are all from blue ray rips. If blue ray goes away, streaming sites might be the only remaining source for digital video files, and high quality digital video will essentially die.
The answer is forever. Even if chat control dies for good there will be some other initiative, just as there were many before this one. Maintaining your rights and freedoms unfortunately requires constant vigilance.
The question what this area represents is left as an exercise to the reader.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/ is relevant.
I see the "Republican are always giving up moral superiority to gain an advantage so Democrats should do it too" argument. But at least get something worthwhile for selling your soul. Like, if you're packing the supreme court you can at least protect abortion rights properly. If you nuke the senate filibuster you can pass some decent healthcare laws, or tax the rich maybe. Pardoning Hunter does nothing for anyone except the Biden family.
Joe is acknowledging that the justice system sucks and powers that be can decide to fuck you over with it any time, but instead of abusing his power to try and fix it, he's just bailing out his loved ones and then riding off into the sunset, leaving the rest of us to get fucked over. That's stupid.
I disagree. There is pushing back for political gain, and pushing back for personal gain. Pardoning hunter is certainly an example of Biden abandoning the moral high ground. However it does not advance the cause of the democratic party in any way and only serves Joe Biden and his family personally. This is not a step in the right direction, it gives up moral correctness only to make the political position of the Democrats worse.
The system you are describing is what most countries use. This is basically just an extension of that intended for people who make so little they need extra assistance.
Actually, the US Earned Income Tax Credit is basically a version of negative income tax.
Carrots - make it go bad a bit faster when not on fire.
Don't really know why carrots would make it go bad faster, but the point of a perpetual stew is to never stop cooking it. The fire is always on.
According to wikipedia, 15-24 age group is about 13% of the population. 18-29 is a slightly older and wider range, so could be 14%. Then obviously only half of those are men, so we end up at 7%. That's totally plausible
It's just saying that 7% of the total people they surveyed fall into the group "men 18-29". Without knowing how many people were actually polled and how they were selected we cannot say anything about the statistical validity of the sample.
I think people exaggerate how bad QWERTY is. Studies have not consistently found an advantage for one keyboard layout over another, and some studies even show that typists can reach equivalent speeds even with randomised layouts. This suggests that experience and practice with a particular layout is far more important to typing speed than the particular placement of letters. Which is a good argument for keeping qwerty around.
(reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time),
This story is quite common but there is little evidence that it's actually true. The designer of qwerty actually made a late adjustment to move R next to E (swapping it with period), even though ER is the second most common letter combination in English.
It sorta depends on the ingredients you're working with, some tomatoes are sweeter or more acidic than others. Where I live tomatoes tend to be somewhat watery and lack a bit of intensity of flavour. If I'm making sauce at home I'll taste a bit and add some sugar and/or red wine vinegar to balance out the flavour.
The very first sentence of the article answers these exact two questions.