Disqus - Latest Comments for peterberg

Re: The Best Bookshelf Speakers for Most Stereos

Peter B. — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 19:22:18 -0000

I’m surprised to see no mention of NHT SuperZero 2.1 speakers. They’re a phenomenal product, with a solid sealed case design and a neutral, “true” response. At $224 for a pair, they’re an audiophile speaker at a very approachable price; I love having them on my desk hooked up to an ifi Zen DAC streaming MQA audio from Tidal — the sound is gorgeous. And no, I have no commercial relationship to any of the brands; I just appreciate great audio at reasonable prices.

Re: How Credit Cards Tax America

Peter B. — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 13:54:42 -0000

I find it amusing how people just throw out "Bitcoin" as a universal answer to improving the payments landscape. I think it's a great invention, and it no doubt has a number of uses, but it's not quite the silver bullet people imagine. As an introductory thought experiment, try inserting bitcoin as a payment method while remaining compliant with current anti-money laundering and know-your-customer laws. All of a sudden things don't look so simple anymore.

Re: How Credit Cards Tax America

Peter B. — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 11:13:50 -0000

I'm not sure you fully understand how Bitcoin works. There are transaction fees, and it does require a "terminal" in the form of a computer or smartphone (for both parties), plus an Internet connection (none of which are free). Also, good luck trying to return something or dispute a charge via Bitcoin when that online merchant ships you a brick instead of whatever you ordered.

I like Bitcoin, to be clear, but it's not the panacea some people imagine.

Re: How Credit Cards Tax America

Peter B. — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 11:09:10 -0000

The short answer: really hard.

And PIN doesn't solve everything. Fraudsters get more sophisticated. Also, who deployed 3D Secure? Visa. The same network the author alleges is taxing the US.

Re: How Credit Cards Tax America

Peter B. — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 10:46:12 -0000

You write well, and this all sounds quite dramatic and nefarious (while being a nice advertisement for Kash & Dwolla), but this post omits crucial context and facts that unfortunately weaken your points.

Merchants certainly are not required to accept cards, and many do not, but the trade-off is usually lost sales, lower ticket sizes and slower lines. It's a simple (proven) fact that people spend more at merchants if they are not limited to the cash in their pocket (or even bank account) at any given time. What value should one place on that?

And what of the hidden cost of cash - notoriously difficult to calculate, but definitely greater than zero - because handling & processing it is not free, and some of it just goes missing (due to theft, loss, accidents, time inefficiencies, etc.)? One study estimates the cost of cash in the United States at $200 Billion a year, or $1,739 per household (3.3% of median income)!
(Source: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/C... )

As for the claim that credit cards exacerbate debt - well, debt and delinquent debtors existed long before credit cards, as your own example of a small town merchant with his 3 book keepers highlights. Money lending is one of the oldest businesses, and it's not likely to die with an absence of cards.

Distributing and running a nearly ubiquitous payment method that works quickly, efficiently and consistently around the globe, and which simultaneously protects the consumer from fraud, is a non-trivial undertaking. Anyone who has tried to roll their own learns this quickly, and usually the hard way as fraudsters and scaling effects take their toll.

There are real, material costs associated with all these things. Everyone loves and has come to expect free checking, but who pays for that? Banks' compliance and regulatory costs are through the roof (thanks to that "inactive" government of ours you reference). Card fees help in part to offset that, while also providing a valuable (and popular) service to consumers.

Even those in the payments industry wish we could snap our fingers and instantly modernize global infrastructure. But you'd be surprised how hard that can be; try getting your corner store merchant to upgrade his payment terminal to a tablet or even drop in a broadband connection, to be able to use these newfangled payment methods you advertise. See how willing they are to pay for that. Would you consider that a "tax"? Or just a cost of doing business? Now multiply that by all the merchants in the country. Or the world.

By the way, virtually every service you reference at the end (PayPal, Stripe, iTunes and Apple Pay, Square Cash, Snapcash) is enabled either entirely or in large part by card networks' infrastructure.

If we could start from scratch today, I doubt anyone would begin with a system requiring a 16-digit number on a plastic card, and an evolution is certainly underway. A lot of work is being done to move towards faster, more efficient and richer payment experiences. But unfortunately this doesn't happen over night, and it's anything but free.

Re: Load Images Button : Airmail Support

Peter B. — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 15:30:15 -0000

Thanks. Turns out in my version it's not under "Appearance", but rather under Preferences > General (on the left nested under "Check for Messages")

Re: Load Images Button : Airmail Support

Peter B. — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 15:23:13 -0000

How do you turn off image loading by default? I just installed the client and it's downloading all images from every email. I do NOT want it to do this to limit spammers, etc., but I can't find the setting to turn off auto-loading of images.

What am I missing?

Re: Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail

Peter B. — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:06:04 -0000

I just logged in again and it looks ever so slightly improved. At least now there are actual links to explicitly disable Autoload and to add more value. It's still a horror show from a UI perspective, though.

Re: How Fab.com Just Stupidly Blew a Sale

Peter B. — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:42:42 -0000

False. Fab doesn't bill per month. They bill per purchase.

Re: Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail

Peter B. — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:04:59 -0000

I'm sorry you couldn't find a workaround. I noticed they've made some updates to their site since I posted this. I wish that they would make it easier for users, but it seems they're making things harder instead. Sad.

Re: The Devil’s in the Details – Frictionless Checkout

Peter B. — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:38:19 -0000

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Andrew. You guys have a great site overall, as evidenced by my recent addiction to Lot18. :-) But as smooth an experience as Lot18 provides, the shopping cart/checkout is the one place there shouldn't be any roadblocks.

Good luck with the new gig. I look forward to seeing how the product evolves!

Re: http://zeburger.tumblr.com/post/10982088744

Peter B. — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:21:52 -0000

You've got an excellent list already. Super Duper and Joe's Cable Car are outstanding. I look forward to seeing your take on them.

The only additions I'd suggest are the burger at Seasons, the restaurant in the Four Season's hotel, and possibly Custom Burger (though I've never been to Custom myself).

Finally, you sound like a great candidate for joining a burger club that a friend of mine has been coordinating for years (started in LA and now exists in SF). It's grown to quite a fun group of people. I'll send you an email and we can get you connected to the Facebook group.

Re: Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail

Peter B. — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:32:04 -0000

Thanks for sharing your tip. Seems they've changed the website slightly, so it's not entirely impossible to find the Autoload settings like before, but it's still a horrible user experience. I just wish they'd consulted a competent designer.

Re: Uber Bummed

Peter B. — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:46:26 -0000

Thanks, Ryan. You guys are doing awesome work over there, and we all have our hiccups and growing pains.

I have no doubt you guys will figure this one out and end up stronger than before. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and respond.

Re: Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail

Peter B. — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:04:22 -0000

Excellent. Thanks for the update. I'm glad they're at least making some updates, even if it's super slow. There's still a lot of room for improvement, IMHO, so let's hope they keep moving in the right direction.

Re: Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail

Peter B. — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:00:40 -0000

That sounds like a nightmare. I haven't had that experience, thankfully, but it just goes to show how poorly this thing was designed.

Re: http://annehubert.tumblr.com/post/7327943040

Peter B. — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:31:49 -0000

Your parents are hip!

Re: http://annehubert.tumblr.com/post/7327943040

Peter B. — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:31:35 -0000

Your parents are hip.

Re: The Holy Grail of Mobile Payments

Peter B. — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 02:21:15 -0000

Great suggestions. I've played with Blippy, and I really liked them when
they first came out, but they seem to be struggling a bit lately. Or maybe
I'm out of the loop?

Swipely seems very cool. I like that it's geared more towards discovery.
Social commerce is going to be huge, and it sounds like they're focused on
helping users discover places that their social graph has vetted. I'll have
to play with it some more.

I still love Foursquare, though, because it has so many additional reasons
for users to engage with its app. I don't have to hook up payment info to it
to still get a lot of utility. But if I could pay for things with Foursquare
down the road, that could provide significantly enhanced functionality to an
already awesome app.

Come to think of it, Swipely or Blippy could probably add an auto-checkin
feature with relative ease. All they need to do is connect a given
transaction with the Foursquare API.

Re: The Holy Grail of Mobile Payments

Peter B. — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:09:56 -0000

Agreed that would be awesome, but I'd qualify that with *if* it takes off.
For NFC to really get going there is a lot of physical infrastructure that
needs to be put in place. At a minimum we need NFC chips placed everywhere,
and that's assuming none of them are networked or dynamically modifiable. If
we want network capabilities for the sensor to phone home, that's a whole
other level of sophistication. Think about how much it took to get point of
sale terminals everywhere to take credit cards. Getting a similar
distribution of NFC chips will be no small feat. If/when that happens,
though, there are all kinds of cool opportunities.

Re: Test Post

Peter B. — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:58:11 -0000

Test comment as well.

Re: HTC Thunderbolt is Live on Verizon’s Site!

Peter B. — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:07:03 -0000

This thing really is incredible. I got mine in San Francisco this morning, and it's even better than I anticipated. Super fast, smooth and the hardware itself is very sleek.

I had a credit on my account, and I opted for the 1-year contract (I still had 6 months to go on my OG Droid, which was slow as hell, so not making the 2-year mistake again). Out the door mine was about $206.

Right now I'm just debating whether to root it or not. Thoughts?

Re: http://annehubert.tumblr.com/post/2923921171

Peter B. — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:56:57 -0000

First, I had no idea you were an old school closet gamer. Hooray Internet for teaching me new things about friends.

Secondly (paradoxically, this is actually the primary reason for my comment), I have often wondered this same thing not so much for Contra cheat codes, but for everything else that seemed to be common knowledge on the playground. How is it that kids from all corners of the country knew to play the same games, or sing the same songs and rhymes ("Miss Suzy Had a Steamboat", the punchbuggy game, etc)? How on earth could so many things become so universal in the age before the Internets. It boggles the mind.

Re: Introducing+The+Do-It-Yourself+CrunchPad%26nbsp%3BKit%C2%A0%5BVideo%5D

Peter B. — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:44:43 -0000

Subtle.

Re: Exclusive: Google To Go Nuclear

Peter B. — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:33:24 -0000

Nice one, Mike.

I know you're all about breaking embargoes these days, but you won't even wait for April Fool's Day?

:-)