It’s also not so much about RealPage, but the consolidation that has occurred in rental property ownership and management over the years.
Now take what RealPage is doing with apartments and imagine if every major airline used the same revenue management solution (most use their own which are proprietary) to set airline fares. I hope RealPage (and these investor-owned apartment owners) pay dearly for this. Imagine what the size of a class action suit would look like.
Just about every new housing development in the greater Houston area starts like this: Acquire some cheap farmland not too far from a highway, come in and sub-divide the lots, build some kind of neighborhood amenity (pool, rec center, etc.), and creat a Municipal Utility District with on-site well and sewer.
None of this was connected to a more robust regional water system with surface water. Each one of these neighborhoods was planned on its own without any thought into how it fit into the bigger picture of its surroundings.
I’d take a file system that can be indexed by my local operating system (MacOS).
The last MacOS update broke Spotlight indexing for my Google Drive folders. Really annoying not being able to use Spotlight (and by extension Alfred), so the only logical thing to do was move to iCloud.
In the process of moving off of Google Drive, I also decided to move my email to Fastmail and just ditch GSuite (or whatever they are calling it today) forever. I’ll sleep better at night knowing that Fastmail knows their place and (hopefully) won’t try and force a chat function into my web email client as a means to build engagement for a product I don’t care about.
Spotlight no longer working with google drive — for months now — has been such a pain in my ass that it’s finally convinced me to shift my entire company off Google Workspace. At least with Microsoft I can get someone on the phone.
Their apparel brand is a joke. It’s run by Foley’s wife. Unless I messed something, what experience or qualification does she have in apparel?
Never mind the fact that I’ve maybe seen only 3 people in the real world wearing anything that is Peloton branded (no, the free Century t-shirt doesn’t count).
Personally, I find their apparel to be a little loud and obnoxious, but that’s just me. As a consumer, I don’t see what value they bring to the apparel market. Nothing new, just branding.
The HN crowd is always quick to point out that Peloton has no moat - its just a screen on a bike. Creating a lifestyle brand (ala in person fitness brands like Soulcycle or Barrys) is a way to address that moat, and apparel is a core part of that.
Whether or not they were successful is an execution issue.
Branding is a bit of a moat that puts you ahead of other competitors. Literal true story but perhaps a counter example: my wife is considering buying an exercise bike and is trying to choose between Peloton and Beachbody. Everyone online seems to be suggesting she buy the Peloton. She is a little torn, because she already has done non-bike exercises on Beachbody for several years. Peloton has the leg up for the bike, because it has the best branding in that area; however, my wife was at least willing to consider Beachbody, because of her previous experience with their brand.
I use moat here in the sense that it creates some level of defense against competitors. Nike's shoes obviously contain a lot of advanced technology in it, but the strength of their brand what shields them against a newcomers and generics selling similar items.
Just for a counterpoint, as commented in a previous thread, my partner and her friends are obsessed with the culture of peloton and they all wear a considerable amount of peloton clothing. It’s been a predictable gift given among her friends over the last 2-3 years.
I just took a look at Peloton apparel and I don't see how you could class it as "loud and obnoxious". Most of it looks like pretty generic branded fitness gear. If anything it's especially understated compared to the competition.
Considering how strong the brand is I think apparel is a genius idea for growth. It has just been mismanaged due to nepotism.
It’s very high margin and the company is in a great position to market to fitness conscious people. But I don’t see it ever being more than a side business.
I personally feel like Kubernetes tries to be all the things, which creates feature and complexity bloat to be able to accommodate any possible workload you can throw at it. “Cloud Native” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more like trying to run your own cloud versus relying on a service provider.
Sure you can run a stateful, highly available database on k8s. But you’re going to have to manage the complexity of making it work on k8s. Or you could just use a managed database service of your cloud provider (which has existed even before k8s).
By that same logic, I wonder how many times Facebook and Instagram have been reported for making teens so conscious about their self-image that they commit suicide?
You know what else is tilt-up? Most big box stores. Not sure why Amazon is being singled out here as I’m sure this building complied with all local building codes.
PTO is a form of compensation. Every place I’ve worked at has paid me for unused, accrued PTO when I left. But I’ve also never been terminated, so don’t know if that matters.
Unused PTO must be paid out in many states and in states where it is not legally required it is generally still required if the business has historically done it. Beyond that, Southwest pilots are unionized. No sizable union would allow separation without PTO payout.
Unions are for people in the Union, aka the people still working there, not for those getting fired with cause (failure to get vaccinated). This sounds exactly like something a union wouldn't care about.
What are your credentials for telling us things that unions do and don’t care about? What unions are you in? What direct experience do you have with how unions decide what’s important to them?
Fresh food isn’t just more expensive, but it’s also harder to handle and stock. Processed food comes in neat packaging that can be unit priced, and kept frozen or shelf-stable for long period of time.
Fuck Home Depot. First they killed off all the mom-and-pop hardware local stores. Now we shop there because that’s usually the only choice. Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? It’s bad enough that they’ve turned me into their employee with their self-checkout system.
Someone at HD made the calculation that by not employing as many cashiers, the personnel savings will be profitable even in the face of shoplifting. But now, they are just putting another burden on their customers and vendors.
Now take what RealPage is doing with apartments and imagine if every major airline used the same revenue management solution (most use their own which are proprietary) to set airline fares. I hope RealPage (and these investor-owned apartment owners) pay dearly for this. Imagine what the size of a class action suit would look like.