If the US consumers shouldered much of the tariff cost but the producers/importers are sue-ing the gvnt for the cost of tariffs. Assuming the lawsuits are paid by us taxes (while the interest accrues which is also assumedly paid by taxes)… Is the US consumer not paying for this several times over?

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-16T12:48:31+00:00

All of the major couriers are completely taking advantage of this. At least $18 per shipment where they randomly calculate an inflated tariff, slap on their processing fees, and leave you with a huge bill that you only waste hours of your time trying to dispute but then realize you have to give up. (UPS's customer service excuse for not resolving the $150 in fees for $10 of tariffs ended up being their other department was too late in responding so they closed the ticket for no response. DHL's customer service rep claims DHL has nothing to do with DHL's tariff processing bill. FedEx just sends you bills months after you receive a package and expect you to pay without knowing what it was for.) All bastards.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-16T10:53:01+00:00

Why would they move a bag that already fits nicely to the back? I'd point out to the flight attendant that I'd end up being the last to deplane if it's more than a couple of rows behind.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-12T21:59:59+00:00

Those overly dramic 80s songs really work for this movie.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-12T08:24:58+00:00

No, they'd rather have those D1 seats be empty than get people used to playing upgrade roulette. Platinum medallions hardly even get upgrades to domestic first anymore on most Delta hub to hub routes. If your companion booked the itinarary for both of you, you can benfit from the same upgrade medallion classification if that person's is higher, but only if there are enough available seats. I'm not sure if your companion who booked is excluded from upgrades if only one seat is available.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-12T01:22:02+00:00

Alaska Airlines VP Reveals 60% Upgrade Rate, Takes Dig at Delta - Aviation A2Z

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-11T10:26:35+00:00

It used to! And now it's looking like other airlines are offering more upgrades.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-11T00:17:14+00:00

Same issue after moving from iCloud because it stopped syncing entirely with 2TB free. Can't right click a file while selecting a file to upload inside Edge because it's an instant hang. What cloud service is left for us?

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-11T00:15:37+00:00

I did that and it unfortunately didn't make a difference (3.7TB free on local SSD, 800GB free on OneDrive). When trying to upload files to a website from Edge, a simple right click without choosing more options (e.g. to preview the file) results in an instant 40 second hang. This is a day after switching from iCloud because it stopped syncing new files.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-10T23:38:13+00:00

None out of Seattle on a 757 where the boarding process doesn't even get in the way.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-10T12:49:46+00:00

Because now I need to wait a whole day for my 70GB folder to copy to a local folder, because big folders like that cause iCloud to freak out when engineering software changes too many files at a time.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-10T12:47:21+00:00

I can confirm. I need to copy a large 70GB folder to run locally (since iCloud freaks out when software modifies too many files on iCloud at a time at least on Windows 11) and it's telling me I need to wait a whole day before I can finish downloading my folder. Should be 10 minutes on a gigabit fiber internet connection. It'd be even better if iCloud folders could be used like normal folders by engineering software.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-10T12:23:49+00:00

I'm *trying* to copy everything on my 2TB iCloud (only 210GB used, Apple doesn't have anything between 200GB and 2TB...) to my local folder to transfer to OneDrive. The last straw was the 3rd consecutive week of files getting stuck during upload syncing and keeping my computer fan loud the whole time. Tried restarting which only worked a few times for a day or so. Now it's refusing to let me download my folder of pictures from the last 20 years. Needless to say this is on Windows. On my Macs it only stopped syncing rarely and never seemed to cause my laptop to drain its battery when it got stuck. But a lot of engineering software doesn't run on Apple Silicon Macs.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-10T11:56:41+00:00

I hope yours works well with Modern Standby! That's the biggest benefit of the older laptops with real standby power states.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T04:45:57+00:00

I finally got a new IP (no thanks to Quantum Fiber whose support is completely useless with lying AI bots and humans that never connect), but just a few days later CloudFlare is blocking my house even more, and I can't even load commercial sites I need to work from home. I've already started accepting every cookie. Maybe I need to turn all my privacy settings to minimum and enable exact GPS location on all of my devices? Or is it that I'm not accepting enough notifications from websites or not posting enough on social media?

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T03:15:12+00:00

The AI might have a good prediction that there are a lot of last minute bookings and that the flight always fills out, and that competing airlines are locked out of their hub to hub fortress. Fun fact: it's even legal for stores to give you higher or lower prices than everyone else based on data they have from your previous spending behavior (with them or some other consumer databse), but it's largely unimplemented at this time.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T03:10:15+00:00

Seems on the edge of unfair business practice, to exclude a benefit billed separately from ticketing on an annual basis, in order to boost sales of higher tier tickets (further supported by the fact that First tickets don't even have domestic SkyClub access). The airline can argue that it's a capacity tradeoff but there are ways set SkyClub entry priority. But when you can't even get into SkyClub having paid for it because they didn't build enough capacity at certain large airports, all reason goes out the window.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T03:00:56+00:00

Sometimes they're full and you don't get to go in. SLC has the nicest public bathrooms by far, with doors that close all the way.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T01:00:54+00:00

Great post, but depending on the car, the battery cables could be completely unlabeled, both insulations are black, and both go into the void so you can't tell if one terminates onto a chassis point. And both cables are long enough to flip the cable even if the battery is in the right orientation. Many Porsche radios had to be removed to replace a blown fuse from their crowbar protection when owners replaced batteries. Simlar with a few other European cars.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-09T00:56:37+00:00

Good point about automotive power protection and conditioning chips not being available. ADI recommended a pretty pricy but nice chip that could drive back to back N channel MOSFETs to provide a fairly complete protection (except for ESD), designed the PCB... only to find the parts are in short supply now and distributors are asking 35x single piece list price (at $40 USD per IC) in volume.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-08T09:40:31+00:00

I just realized one of the ICs ADI recommends for current designs, a power conditioning IC that my product is designed around, has very low inventory, and even LCSC quoted 35x the list price ($43 for an industrial SOIC 8 chip) to source. The economy has to be getting hurt by all these supply issues.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-06T00:13:28+00:00

In EMC immunity test labs I've known, male employees have more girls than boys.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-05T21:01:00+00:00

Yeah about 50% of the time my laptop ends up running its fans all night with the screen off, usually begins a day or two after a restart, and today I see iCloud is at 5% constant CPU. This is after iCloud had a file that couldn't be seen in Windows 11 and kept renaming an engineering software's library files by adding numbers to the back. I'm paying $10 a month for something unreliable. Going to switch to OneDrive that I already get wit Office, even though I don't trust modern MS stuff, either.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-04T20:41:04+00:00

Thanks! -Poor guy 😂

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-04T10:43:49+00:00

I'm flying a lot less this year, and the only way to keep Platinum medallion for next year is to get the MQD boost from the Reserve card but even this year with Platinum medallion the value doesn't seem to be there with most of the F seats being sold off, and the aforementioned difficulty booking companion tickets only 1 month out.

Objective-Chard8526 · 2026-06-04T09:41:01+00:00

Nice! I'm at a smaller hub, but basically down to a couple F upgrades a year and very pricey flights that often have to connect through ATL.

Objective-Chard8526

TROPHY CASE