It's been about 10 years since I left Caterpillar --- but I don't think you can weld (reliably) on PM / sintered parts. This was one of the concerns the crotchety old manufacturing engineers brought up when I proposed replacing some expensive machined bosses with a much cheaper PM part.
Then again, those guys really loved to say stuff like "no, that's not how it's done." - so maybe they're wrong / tech has improved significantly.
Hey yall - I know there are several HN Alexa skills out there -- but this is one of the first which fits seamlessly into your Flash Briefing + includes a separate PH feed. Hosted on a free heroku gear for now & code is here: https://github.com/nealrs/hn_ph_alexa
This skill has individual feeds for NYC's Subway system, Busses, Long Island & Metro North Railroads, Bridges and Tunnels. Turn on the feeds you need and ask Alexa for your briefing. The skill reports a concise list of transit options which are running smoothly, those being worked on, and those which are delayed.
Right now, this is running on a free Heroku gear, but I'd love to get your feedback on it before I refactor it (and add some much needed caching) . Thanks!
Hey HN, I made this to scratch an itch & experiment with Alexa as a distribution platform. Basically, it's a Flask app that creates audio Flash Briefings for Alexa by doing 2 things:
1. Allowing you to call in and record audio clips, saving them to s3 using date-based filename. (you can email them in too.)
2. Generating a dynamic Alexa Flash Briefing JSON feed based on the current date.
Pretty pretty neat. I built [something pretty similar](https://devpost.com/software/cryptopostal) to give my address to family & friends during the holidays. Includes a node generator to make your own. Enjoy :)
In NYC, most property ownership is through coops or condos. and in both, you'll pay a monthly maintenance fee - which includes things like common charges, landscaping for the complex/building, building mortgage, coop mgmt, real estate taxes, etc.
I pay ~$900/month in fees for my 1 bedroom (charged based on the 113 shares i own) - and then I pay another 20-30 for electricity, which is billed on the same ticket. Then, come tax time, I get to deduct around ~35% of those maintenance fees as real estate tax.
it varies from building to building and borough to borough.
Brownstone neighborhoods stress these numbers even further (e.g. much of "hot" Brooklyn).
These consist largely of 19th century buildings. And even the "modern" apartment buildings are 1920s, 1930s, etc. These are also precisely the neighborhoods that zone-limit modern construction to avoid compromising their character.
So you have a bunch of old buildings that need serious maintenance, sometimes by firms with specialized and otherwise outdated skill sets (e.g. stoop rebuilding and iron fence work).
Many of these neighborhoods are also in historic districts, meaning they're landmark-protected to preserve traditional architectural character.
Brooklyn Heights is a prime example. Essentially the whole neighborhood is one big historic district. The housing stock is ancient. And it's a highly desirable neighborhood. Maintenance fees can easily waver between $1,000 and $2,000. There are very few modern condos (which basically avoid these problems). So their very scarcity inflates their purchase prices. All in all you get a very difficult place to live in and own property.
I did a little video about this last week: http://wakey.io/47 and tl:dr; All this does it punish the poor for using cash.
It's not so much that demonetization is bad - it's that it's hard to do with no notice. in a country this big. all at once. with so little time to phase out old bills. All the proposed benefits: more ecommerce, reduced black market transactions, better tax accountability could have been accomplished without going to such extremes. I mean, India isn't even using polymer bills yet -- so there will be at least one more big demonetization in the next 10 years.
Big ups to my pops for driving me to the farm after I asked too many questions about how we got it. Also, Snapchat - for keeping all my snaps in Memories so I could use them a month later as b roll. Really makes me wish I had Spectacles right now.
A little more about the Zamindari system: it wasn't like feudalism where you were expected to raise armies. It was more practical & revenue based. As long as you paid / collected taxes, The Mughals didn't care what religion you were. And the British didn't really care what you did either. And it wasn't sharecropping either.
Oddly, I didn't come across much related to the caste system when I asked & searched around. That's weird right? Can someone with more knowledge help me out?
Yeah, spouse plans are great, _if_ they are significantly better/cheaper. I'm a single dude who doesn't have a ton of health problems, but I see middle age on the horizon and I know I'm going to start going to the doctor more.
FSA is a good option for for reducing total costs -- if you're ok preallocating / can predict your health care costs for a year. Which I don't think most people can.
Perhaps there's an opportunity for someone to improve transparency here w/r/t job hunting. I'm not sure I would have changed my decision about where I was going to work -- but it would have been nice to know what my options were.
Then again, those guys really loved to say stuff like "no, that's not how it's done." - so maybe they're wrong / tech has improved significantly.