I don't really know what alternative there is to eBay as an 'everything shop'. I can get specific screws there, or diff fluid, or a customised motorhome name sticker, or an old baseball cap for an airshow I attended in 2008.
And if I bought the wrong diff fluid I can sell it.
The main value over Amazon, though, is that the search works.
> The main value over Amazon, though, is that the search works.
Super true. You can actually search for the exact brand you want and not get a search result page full of brands XIAOLE, LLKAPOO, JEMROK, QPPNSS, VRINHH.
Also, I don't really know why, but I have much greater confidence on eBay that I'm not going to get something counterfeit or unsafe.
Facebook marketplace is an everything shop, though a bit more local in nature. Also, it's much easier for small businesses that ship to have an online store thanks to Shopify, etc.
The last few times I've used EBay is to get parts for old garden tractors, and even for that I've found cheaper options with small retailers that specialize in that stuff. Most ebay shipping pushes the cost up too much, and with the small retailers usually I can get a bunch of things I need at the same shipping price.
FB Marketplace is full of scammers too. Every time we've tried to sell something, we've had people try to steal our phone number and register it with their Google Voice account.
Interesting you think that because my main experience is the search is horribly broken and they do nothing globally to fix it. Most of it saved searches are full of exclusions because a positive search includes so many irrelevant items. And they don’t enforce categorization so listers constantly put in better categories for their items, when they aren’t just lying with things like “calculator not HP”.
At this point, online fraud control is getting absurd, and AI is just making it untenable. I simply won't use ebay for anything above $50 anymore.
Having physical locations that you have to come to pick up your Thneed protects both buyer and seller. Buyer can verify that what was described is delivered and seller can verify actual pickup with ID.
If they apply a bit of logistics for shipping between stores, Gamestop could crush it.
Fraud is forcing the pendulum to swing from everything-online back to everything-in-person.
Name an important archive that isn’t in the process of being digitized or an unimportant one that’s likely to crumble before we get around to snapping a picture of its contents.
But if we look under the hood you can see where you’re taking an obvious exaggeration literally. See it? Right? That’s what’s making the thunking noise.
Over there on the left. No, your other left. There. The point is over there.
On the contrary, using AI is like outsourcing your DIY to a professional joiner.
Sure, he'll get it done twice as fast and you might notice some tricks as you look over his shoulder. But when you need a second door hung, you'll either have to start learning from scratch or call him again.
Yes, but he only looked at Venus from the aspect of research which is missing half, or more, of the point of a Mars mission.
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
The point of the blog post is that while flying humans across the solar system to Venus so they can float in clouds of opaque sulfuric acid above a hellscape of certain death sounds and objectively is ridiculous, it's still easier and arguably more sensible than trying to send humans to Mars and back.
But, if our airship in the Venusian atmosphere finds nothing interesting (no life signs), then there’s not much more to do at Venus, because atmosphere is all mixed and all the same. Going to the surface, even for a day or two, is hard and very expensive.
OTOH Mars - that can be explored for many years, on the surface and below the surface. We might still find nothing, but it’ll take hundreds of years to be sure.
Mr Musk's move to the USA was funded by his father, and his first company was started with a loan from his father. The advantages of the family running an undocumented emerald mine in Zambia.
Not 'inherited wealth' I concede, but still not something available to Average Joe.
"Warning stickers banning military workers from discussing sensitive information have been placed inside the Ministry of Defence's electric cars, as fears grow that China could be listening."
How does it manage that, when it it only knows as much as is written in text books?
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