Actually, the above rephrasing is wrong and completely changes the meaning. The original author wasn't saying poor people have less clutter he was saying they have more, but for a reason. Maybe this wording is clearer:
The reason poor people have clutter isn't because they're too dumb to see the virtue of living simply, they have it to reduce risk.
It's too late for me to edit my original post now, but for posterity - airbnb contacted me and resolved the issue. The final customer service rep I spoke to was friendly and helpful, and they refunded the 3% listing/service fee as amends for the slow support.
And if I weren't upset with it, someone else on the internet would be calling me stupid and telling me I deserved it when my identity was stolen or some account was compromised because I was sending things over unencrypted email. Some days I guess you just can't win.
Again though, issue number 1 is unresponsive, unhelpful technical support.
Your comments always make me smile Thomas, you seem like the real life embodiment of the "Lawful Neutral" alignment, always following the letter of each rule. My lease allows subletting, but there may be a provision which I'm not following, I can double check.
If this post gets killed, that's fine. I was hesitant to write it, but I thought it might be valuable to share. There's a fine line between useful critique or sharing an experience and ranting/complaining, perhaps my post leaned too far to the latter.
I always kind of thought of myself as Neutral Good. I'm not a believer in rules for their own sake, but the good that comes from ignoring a rule should outweigh the harm incurred by surreptitiously changing the rules on everyone else. The most pernicious harms caused by breaking rules are the ones that aren't obvious, but rather confer an advantage to the parties that broke the rule that the rest of society can't easily detect, until those unscrupulous first movers have managed to roll the advantage up into a competitive moat.
I'm only commenting because I think it's interesting to think about why we think the things we do. I think it's a weird that anyone would want to fit an AD&D alignment onto me. :)
I can tell you why: You're clearly a (very) net positive contributor, however "strident" is a predictable default for any post of yours that's overly anything, combined with writing in a classical style.
Why people are trying to label you is you're hard to characterize yet are notably present.
It's not about anonymity - they have a verified phone number and email address, they have my address and name. My payment is in the form of a check sent to the address being rented, paid to the name on the account. When I created the account, if they had said "We need a credit card number to confirm your identity" or "Use this secure form to submit a copy of utility bill" I would have gladly complied.
Asking me to send them over email after a reservation is much more frustrating. Not responding for two weeks when I do email them a photo of utility bill is more frustrating still.
It's more the principle of requiring additional information after a reservation has been booked instead of being up-front about it, and sending it over unencrypted email.
The biggest issue is that I responded to their original email within 24 hours, but have now waited 10 days without resolution or any feedback.
Great post. One thing that wasn't clear to me - how did your pricing changes affect existing customers?
Did former "basic" accounts get automatically changed to "Freelancer" and start getting billed the extra $10 the next month? If so, how did you handle notifying users and was there much complaint about the change?
This is not only the right thing to do, but you may notice higher retention rates in the grandfathered group. Now they're getting a great deal and may be reluctant to cancel.
I have a forum membership grandfathered at $8/mo from when I subscribed 7 years ago, which over the years has gone up to $50/mo for new members. Even if a few months go by where I don't visit the forum, I'm not going to let that thing lapse. :)
I know the title here is the same as the article, but why the heck did sophos choose "Texas college" for the something done by the University of Texas? I assumed from the title it was done by some small school somewhere in Texas, not UT.
By saying "Texas college", it makes it sound like some random second or third tier school did it. That's much more sensationalistic as it can easily give the casual reader the impression that pretty much anyone can easily hack these drones. If they said a team from a top engineering school did it, it would not frighten people because that's the kind of thing you EXPECT people from top engineering schools to be able to do.
Add me to your other reality too. I have never heard of anyone being judged negatively for being laid off. Just about everyone understands that there may be great people laid off when an entire division/product/org gets cut or a company shrinks substantially.
If you're referencing the same article(s) I've read recently, it wasn't "if you don't currently have a job, don't bother applying" it was "if someone has been unemployed for over a year, there is probably a reason". It wasn't a negative judgment on being laid off, it was making the assumption that a long period of unemployment was a signal that the person may not be very hard working or talented or whatever, and with many candidates to choose from that signal could be a deciding factor.
In 1999 dot coms were making everyone rich and would continue to do so forever. Everyone was getting funded, going public, growing. It didn't appear working at a tech startup was a risky endeavor likely to leave you unemployed in a month.
Today, startups are viewed as very risky. They might go bankrupt, your stock options might be worthless, you might end up with several years of your life gone with little to show for it.
What group of people is going to have the risk profile best suited for that environment - young, single men sounds like a reasonable answer.
The reason poor people have clutter isn't because they're too dumb to see the virtue of living simply, they have it to reduce risk.