Citadel Securities LLC (market maker) has a relationship with Robinhood, Citadel LLC (hedge fund) the one with the short doesn't. Read into this what you want.
It did used to last a lifetime though, my parents bought some items in the 1970s which they still use today (stools, shelves and the odd table), it still looks good as well.
Some of it is solely designed to hit a price point (“a $10 chair”) and is made of cheap plywood, cheaply connected.
Some of it is more the “can we pick some low hanging design fruit, apply massive scale, and create a decent chair for 20% of the price it would normally cost” variety. That furniture normally lasts a long time.
Bingo. Maybe people don't realize that Ikea makes both low-end and mid-range products. They will gladly sell you a $25 entertainment center (Lack-based) and a $500 entertainment center. The expensive items last and many classic designs remain at steeply discounted prices from original manufacture date. (For example, the Pöang originally costing ~$300 adjusted is now $79.)
Plywood is often stronger than solid wood, but most importantly it doesn’t bend when drying or in moist environments if it’s properly cross-laminated. However, cheap IKEA furniture is often laminated fibre, which is basically compressed sawdust. It’s an entirely different material.
Not just while the wood is drying, wood 'movement' is something woodworkers have to take into consideration in almost every project. Everyone lives in an environment with humidity (some more than others) and when seasons change solid wood will expand and contract. Plywood is very stable with respect to humidity.
That's a great idea, I'll definitely be doing that in the future!
I've added L-brackets to key spots on Ikea furniture before, and it often increases how sturdy it feels by an order of magnitude.
Just the other day I fixed a 5 year old Billy bookshelf (that I broke while moving it, while partly loaded with books) by securing the cardboard back with screws instead of finishing nails and adding a couple metal brackets to the bottom. Cosmetically, despite being (ab)used by my kid, it still looks fine, and now feels even more sturdy than before. Wish I had thought of adding some glue (or maybe No More Nails) to secure the back even more.
I only started doing it because I have a bunch of the Regissor line. It actually has a screwless assembly process, only being held by friction joints. Over time and after being moved a lot, the coffee table started to loosen. So I took it apart and reassembled it with wood glue in the joints, and now it’s as solid as a rock. I mainly buy the “higher-end” IKEA stuff with real wood or at least stronger particle or plywood or whatever it is except for the Kallax line, so that helps as well.
I just like IKEA so much because they have well designed stuff for good prices, even their more expensive things relative to their cheaper stuff. And with mild care and tweaks during assembly, it can be quite solid. I wish I had thought of the wood glue sooner as well because I’m too lazy to redo my bookshelves.
No, it depends on the application. There's a reason it's still called "solid wood".
If you look, most plywoods are "whitewood" or whatever is cheapest (most softwoods are incredibly strong as the term is just a synonym for coniferous). If you compare apples-to-apples -- Baltic Birch (or similar products with only birch layers) to solid birch...
The plywood doesn't have any noticeable wood movement;
The plywood can have fasteners and glue in any face (unlike solid where endgrain must be joined);
The solid wood usually has much better stiffness;
The solid wood is limited to shape and size by nature of trees; plywood can be found in larger sizes.
Good wooden chairs are impossible to find commercially now. The wood from the seat needs to be very wet and a wood that doesn't split easily, and the wood for the legs needs to be riven and dryer than what its final environment will be (so as close to 0% moisture as possible, at least <10%).
This is so that the legs expand a bit into the seat, which will continue to shrink, and make an incredibly tight fit. But it's not conducive at all to mass-production, which is why you often see them nailed, bracketed, bolted, etc, all sorts of dirty tricks.
Woodworking is a rabbit-hole you might find compelling or infuriating. You can't unlearn the knowledge when you do.
I loved Tresorit but it's camera upload feature didn't transfer files correctly from my wife's iPhone - it left them corrupted and unopenable with no warnings or errors whatsoever.
Unfortunately because of that alone I dropped them completely. I'm using Dropbox now because I haven't found a better alternative for syncing between iPhone/Android/Windows/Linux.
I have business accounts with Chase, SVB and Mercury and Mercury is definitely the best experience for what I need. I'm sure you could outgrow its services pretty easily but for now it's perfect.
Plus I like all these challengers snapping at the incumbents, have you seen the SVB app and website, even Chase put them to shame.
I've been very happy with Mercury, possibly the most basic of offerings here compared to all the others but I haven't had any issues and they're constantly improving.
The reason I originally signed-up to WhatsApp was because of spending more and more time in Brazil and realising how ingrained in society it is. Even though a lot of my friends and family there have iPhones, none use iMessage.
Reason is that it is also an interface for SMS, and SMS in Brazil is obscenely crazy expensive, some operators might charge 1 BRL per message or stuff like that (for context: 1 BRL is the price of a cup of coffee or of a bottle of water), using iMessage and having it to switch to SMS without you noticing can rack bills that are easily bigger than your wages.
It's not only expensive, SMS is dangerous too! There is huge amount of fraud around SMS and the “SIM swap” technique to clone credit cards and cause all kinds of havoc, some of them with the participation of corrupted employees from telecom companies.
You're right, I must have activated that toggle years ago and forgotten about it. Yes the SMS fallback could be painful if you're not paying attention.
