vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"You're calculating it exactly right. I wrote about this one on my blog a while ago. Lesson learned is that nothing comes for free, and you can take the saying ""there are no free meals"" quite literally in this case. edit To address the comments about tips... I don't believe tips should be compulsory. Its my reward to the server for outstanding service. Not part of the cost of the meal. If its part of the server's salary - then I prefer not to dine in such a place (and at least in some places its illegal to consider tips as part of the salary). The coupon in question explicitly requests tipping the server. Thus, the tips with or without the coupon are still expected, and that's why I'm not taking them into the consideration. According to the laws of the State of California (where I live), mandatory charges, such as the 18% gratuity charge required by the coupon, are not tips, and don't have to be passed on to the employees. Thus, employees will still expect my tips on the bill, so I'm basically required to tip twice, when using the coupon."
How is wanting what he reserved and paid for kicking the ladder out from under him? He reserved and paid a premium for a convertible. If the rental company doesn't want to stock a convertible, don't offer it as a reservable option, and don't charge someone a premium and then give them a non premium car.
"How were these customers ""cheating""?  It doesn't sound like they were hiding *anything* from Target. It sounds like they made these purchases through the regular channels and Target employees said that what they were doing was OK, so they kept doing it.   That's not cheating, that's taking advantage of a generous offer."
Doesn't appear to keep other companies from doing it successfully. Besides Sabian (Zildjian's spin off company), Paiste, Meinl &amp; Dream are a couple relatively recent cymbal manufacturers who, while not commanding the same market share, are nonetheless profitable and popular among drummers.
"It is like you are your own boss on the side...  Could seem reasonable, but...  Let me guess, this will NOT count as part of a regular 8 hour day, be applicable toward a 40 hour work week, qualify anyone for over time, and/or qualify workers on the borderline of qualifying for full time benefits as full time.  Also, if packages come up missing it will count directly against the employee and/or be deducted from their normal wages BEFORE the employee receives them.  Walmart will also find a way not be responsible for the administrative overhead required to use one's car in a work capacity.  With employees feeling the social pressure to provide the service ""for the team"" while Walmart doesn't put the procedures in place to make sure that employees ALWAYS have the proper car insurance.  What could go wrong?"
You have asked about getting a loan, the issue is that you don't have collateral to offer up in exchange for the loan, you also don't have a regular source of income. Getting a low level job, even one not related to your major will provide income. Getting a not-so-perfect job related to your major will allow your to sustain yourself, and provide experience that can help you find the perfect job. The time from application to interview to offer letter to start date can be measured in months. This is even with positions you are perfect for. Since it can take months to get started in a new job you should focus on something that you can get started right away.  This type of job will have a shorter time frame for the interview cycle. You may feel overqualified for the jobs based on the fact you just graduated from college but this was the type of job you should have had to bridge you from school to the job you want.  Regarding the end goal of getting the perfect job, you might have to refocus your efforts. When you had time and money you could afford to be picky about company, location and salary. Now that money is in short supply you will need to change your standards. Keep in mind it is not just an issue about being able to travel to job interviews, it is also about needing a way to afford food, and health insurance. Go back to your college campus and talk to the career counselors they can help your with your resume, and give job search advice. They may also have contacts that can help you find a position with a good local company or even a national company. They may even know of companies that need employees for just a few months to fill a need.
Yea i agree with this but I do think that Amazon benefits a lot more from  economies of scale than uber. Both are platform models where you get more profits by having more users. However, its a lot more difficult to compete with amazon (because of their warehouses, inventory, delivery speed etc etc) than it is to compete with uber( essentially has no inventory of its own). There is a cap to how much uber can charge on either side before it is profitable to enter the market and compete with uber. Furthermore, Uber has completely lost countries such as china so there is a limit to their top line. Also uber still has to fight its never-ending stream of litigation and that not just adds risk to the buisness but is a huge cost on uber. When it comes down to it, besides from the convenience of booking a ride from your phone, uber saves money by going around the fact that the drivers in uber do not need taxi licences and that directly cuts into government revenue. So far there hasnt been too much resistance but it is hard to say if it will remain the case in the future
Nor can health care insurance premiums be paid from an FSA account (IRS Pub 969, page 17, column 1, near the top). If you have a business on the side and file a Schedule C as a self-employed person, you can buy medical insurance for that business's employees (and their families too, if you like) as an employment benefit, and pay for it out of the income of the Schedule C business, (thus saving on taxes). But be aware that if you have employees other than yourself in the side business, they would need to be covered by the same policy too. You can even decide to pay all medical expenses of your employees and their families too (no 7.5% limitation there!) as an employment benefit but again, you cannot discriminate against other employees (if any) of the Schedule C business in this matter. Of course, all this money that reduced your Schedule C income does not go on Schedule A at all. If your employer permits your family to be covered under its health insurance plan (for a cost, of course), check whether you are allowed to pay for the insurance with pre-tax dollars. The private (non-Schedule C) insurance would, of course, be paid for with post-tax dollars. I would doubt that you would be able to save enough money on taxes to make up the difference between $1330/month and $600/month, but it might also be that the private insurance policy covers a lot less than your employer's policy does. As a rule of thumb, group insurance through an employer can be expected to offer better coverage than privately purchased insurance. Whether the added coverage is worth the additional cost is a different matter. But while considering this matter, keep in mind that privately purchased insurance is not always guaranteed to be renewable, and a company might decline to renew a policy if there were a large number of claims. A replacement policy might not cover pre-existing conditions for some time (six months? a year?) or maybe even permanently. So, do consider these aspects as well.
&gt; It's often the minimum wage employees that I see abused the worst, they are easily replaceable by their employer and punishment for violating workers rights is a slap on the wrist.    Yeah, this is a good point.  I think the experience skews significantly as you go down the skill-level / prestige of the job.  An interesting observation (maybe) would be that this mostly applies to people who are *only just* above minimum wage, such as Walmart employees.  They get paid enough that it would be hard to find another retail job at the same pay level.  But certainly not enough to be considered well-off.  True minimum wage earners who I've known typically don't give even the smallest shit about their employer.  They switch employers in the blink of an eye, and at the slightest provocation.  Minimum wage jobs are as much a commodity for the employees, as minimum-wage employees are to the company.   &gt; A lot of this was to get over a peak of work... However now I have been granted some flexibility   Well said.  My situation is very similar.  The company communicates their needs to me, and so I'm well aware of when peaks are likely to occur, and of the consequences of missing deadlines, etc.  It rarely comes as a surprise.
"Even worse: many more times, companies will go through an $8 million project to fix an ""issue"" that costs $20.  Just 2 examples from my company:   1. A big project to automate the entry of 2 invoices per month from a supplier. Is would take an employee less than 10 minutes a month to enter those 2 invoices manually into the system.  2. A big project to provide a website for employees to buy the company's products (""employee sales""). I showed that on average, less than 1 order is placed per day, except December when the company has extra discounts, and then there are 3 sales a day. My solution: offer a coupon for employees to buy the same products on the existing B2C site.  P/S: Yes, I did the 1st project. Why would I complain and point out the obvious? Those silly projects are more than a job security for me. I would probably even get a prize for ""job well done!""."
What's really going on here?  Why is a foreign company that has the  majority of it's factories and workforce in China, now suddenly wishing to build a factory in the US.  FoxConn is not exactly known for high paying jobs in China. [1]  Now the claim is that they're going to spend billions on a US factory where the claim is that they'll create 3,000+ jobs with an *average* salary of $54K+ not including benefits?  Why not build another factory in China where you could arguably hire cheaper labor, and you wouldn't have to build up a new supplier chain?  What's suddenly making building an American factory, a smarter business decision as opposed to say FoxConn's stated 2016 aggressive push to eliminating jobs via automation.  [2]     [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-would-take-25-years-of-foxconn-wages-to-afford-10000-apple-watch-2015-03-10  [2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing
Ok so apple doesn't store money over seas because we now have a no loophole 25% tax. You're so smart, this benefits anyone how? Now they're magically going to build factories because they pay the exact same in taxes it's just not over seas? They're going to pay more to their employees? How much did intel pull in 15b? What are they going to do now that they save a few billion or pay the same?  Sorry but if you don't do anything now you won't later on.
But in terms of a corporation, what does death penalty really mean. The buildings, employees, data, customer lists, all these things still have value. It's really just a question of whether they're broken up and sold to lots of companies, or if they reorganize into the same basic company.
If you know what you are doing, bear markets offer fantastic trading opportunities. I'm a futures and futures options trader, and am equally comfortable trading long or short, although I have a slight preference for the short side, in that moves are typically much quicker to the down side.
&gt;Sounds like he should sell or close the company.  You bring up a very good point. If he cares so much about his employees, but it's just too inconvenient for him to run the company if his taxes go up 5%, why not sell it instead of putting 7000 people out of a job? Why threaten people when there's an obvious alternative? Hell, if he just wants to close it anyways, he could just give the company away.  &gt;See I can already shoot down your explanation, because it's not just higher taxes, its increased business tax liability, increased business insurance liability.  Nope. He explicitly states that he will downsize or close the company if there are *any new taxes* whatsoever on either him *or* the business. It's also worth noting that his company is currently more profitable than its ever been.  &gt;Obama said he didnt build it  What?  &gt;Rhetoric is cute until thousands of employees are out of jobs because the owner didn't feel it was worth it to continue the business.  Yeah so maybe he should cut his bullshit rhetoric when those jobs are on the line and the only one responsible for their fates is him. And if it's really too much of a bother for him to run the company if he's making slightly less money when he's already said he has more money than he'll ever need, he can promote someone else to run the company or just sell it. Saying he cares about his employees makes him a liar, criticizing people who spent beyond their means makes him a hypocrite, and his empty threats and brow beating make him a bully.
"I should think the primary reason is due why those countries have a higher standard of salary - its not what you get, but what it buys you. In a high-salary, low-exchange-rate country like Sweden, you get a lot of services that your taxes buy you. Healthcare and quality of life in a stable country is something you want when you get old (note that your viewpoint might be very different when you're a kid). Moving to a country that has less impact on your finances is often because that country has significantly fewer services to offer. So a Swedish citizen might think about moving to a 3rd world country and find that their retirement income isn't sufficient to pay for the kind of lifestyle they actually want, such countries tend to be pleasant to live in only if you are exceptionally wealthy.  Now this kind of thing does happen, but only ""within reason"", there are a number of old people who retire to the coast (in the UK at least) and many people who used to work in London who retire to the south west. For them, the idea of moving doesn't seem so bad as they are moving to areas where many other people in their situation have also moved. See Florida for an example for US citizens too."
"I really wish someone would release a similar product to quickbooks, its so SLOW and clunky.  Its my number 1 question from my small business IT clients... ""is there anything out there besides quickbooks?""  I hear freshbooks is good, but everyone is so ingrained in the quickbooks way of doing things it would be a strugle to switch people to a different product."
Yeah, that's the problem fuck-0.  Walmart makes tons of money in profit and their employees are using state benefits.    This isn't a problem for you?  The government is subsidizing walmarts employee benefits.  In other words we are socializing walmarts losses and walmart is privatizing their gains.
According to this article: With an all-stock merger, the number of shares covered by a call option is changed to adjust for the value of the buyout. The options on the bought-out company will change to options on the buyer stock at the same strike price, but for a different number of shares. Normally, one option is for 100 shares of the underlying stock. For example, company A buys company B, exchanging 1/2 share of A for each share of B. Options purchased on company B stock would change to options on company A, with 50 shares of stock delivered if the option is exercised.  This outcome strongly suggests that, in general, holders of options should cash out once the takeover is announced, before the transactions takes place.  Since the acquiring company will typically offer a significant premium, this will offer an opportunity for instant profits for call option holders while at the same time being a big negative for put option holders.  However, it is possible in some cases where the nominal price of the two companies favours the SML company (ie. the share prices of SML is lower than that of BIG), the holder of a call option may wish to hold onto their options. (And, possibly, conversely for put option holders.)
"Holy fuck, what the fuck are you talking about? &gt; Walmart operates on a ""just in time"" basis that they operate themselves, with as many walmarts that exist around the country, you can go witness this by yourself, every day of the week 364 days a year. What does this sentence mean? Is this even English? If you're saying Wal-Mart is the only company that uses just-in-time logistics, you're cluelessly wrong. It's been pretty standard across many companies for decades. Amazon, however, has taken logistics to another level of innovation. For example, Amazon's Vendor Flex program takes advantage of its suppliers' warehouses instead of its own. A supplier like Proctor &amp; Gamble fences off a section of its warehouse for Amazon orders, and Amazon employees fulfill orders straight from that location. This saves time and money for both. P&amp;G doesn't need to ship to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon doesn't need to store inventory for even a second. Amazon is the leader in innovations like this, and its willingness to share data and create partnerships with its suppliers has helped its partners find and create efficiencies to pass on to Amazon's customers. For example, suppliers receive real-time data to predict demand, rather than guessing how much product to make for the next bulk order. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is doing stuff the old-fashioned way: ordering products from suppliers, moving them to distribution centres and then to stores. And while Wal-Mart is good at getting stuff into stores, it's hopelessly lost trying figure out [last mile](https://www.datexcorp.com/last-mile-delivery-part-1-omni-channel-retail-affecting-transportation-logistics/) delivery — the final delivery to people's homes. Wal-Mart's method is to get customers to drive to them, or even to get their [employees to drop off orders on their commutes home](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/02/walmart-asking-staff-to-deliver-online-orders-on-their-way-home). Amazon has that stuff mastered and is getting better all the time.
Take the the lock-out of ConEd workers in NYC for example: ConEd's profits were over 2 billion when their previous contract was signed, and a few years later when their contract expired the profits were still that high. What did ConEd do? They came to the table with an offer that slashed their benefits tremendously, and locked-out all the workers when the union rejected it. How can the case be made that ConEd couldn't afford to give workers what they already had? Has their value all of a sudden dropped? I don't think so. This is just greed, and doesn't contribute to a healthy society.
During a stock split the only thing that changes is the number of shares outstanding.  Typically a stock splits to lower its price per share.  Sometimes if a company's value is falling it will do a reverse split where X shares will be exchanged for Y shares.  This is typically done to avoid being de-listed from an exchange if the price per share falls below a certain threshold, usually $1.  Again the only thing changing is the number of shares outstanding.  A 20 for 1 reverse split means for every 20 shares outstanding the shareholder will be granted one new share. Example X Co. has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $100 per share.  It does a 1 for 10 split.  Now there are 10,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10 per share. Example Y Co has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $1 per share.  It does a 10 for 1 reverse split.  Now there are 100,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10. Quickly looking at the news for ASTI it looks like it underwent a 20 for 1 reverse split.  You should probably look at your statements and ask your broker how the arithmetic worked in your case. Investopedia links for Reverse Stock Split and Stock Split
"Costco does indeed pay its employees well, and is modest in terms of executive compensation, but make no mistake: they aren't selling chickens for $5 out of the goodness of their hearts.  The Costco setup doesn't lend itself for consumers to ""pop in and out"" (i.e. their locations, both physical and the actual store layout/mass aren't conducive to quick trips).  Costco sells dirt-cheap rotisserie chicken (and even pizza, hot dogs, etc.) to spur members to make a quick trip, and turn that into a larger purchase.  They do a lot of things the ""right"" way as a company, but these are deliberate business strategies."
I agree with you 100%!  &gt;they've all just taken advantage so that wages haven't kept up and they've essentially pocketed the difference, or passed it on to their customers. Now people have less money to buy health insurance, and those near the bottom will now have to rely on the government to assist with providing health insurance.  I think this is exactly what is happening today.   &gt; That last part is important, though, I would need to get all the breaks my employer gets for providing myself with health insurance.  I believe up until Obamacare, people couldn't. Also, as a general rule a business can claim a tax deduction for the salary, wages, commissions, bonuses, and other compensation it pays to its employees.
USPS has a much more complicated business then delivering packages. It also provides many more benefits to employees than something like FedEx. FedEx and UPS would figure out how to deliver a letter, but if you think they are going to your house everyday for the cost of a stamp you are mistaken.
"&gt;Darden, based in Orlando, Fla., has made cost cutting a priority in recent years as sales growth and traffic have stalled at its flagship chains...  &gt; Given the challenging job market, Darden has been able to offer lower pay rates to new hires. Bonuses for general managers have been reduced as sales have stagnated. Servers at Red Lobster are handling four tables at a time, instead of three.  &gt;And last year, the company also put workers on a ""tip sharing"" program, meaning waiters and waitresses share their tips with other employees such as busboys and bartenders. That allows Darden to pay more workers a far lower ""tip credit wage"" of $2.13, rather than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.    So their food sucks and they're cheap."
"Your employer could consider procuring benefits via a third party administrator, which provides benefits to and bargains collectively on behalf of multiple small companies.  I used to work for a small start-up that did exactly that to improve their benefits across the board, including the 401k.  The fees were still higher than buying a Vanguard index or ETF directly, but much better than the 1% you're talking about.   In the meantime, here's my non-professional advice from personal experience and hindsight: If you're in a low/medium tax bracket and your 401k sucks, you might be better off to pay the tax up front and invest in a taxable account for the flexibility (assuming you're disciplined enough that you don't need the 401k to protect you from yourself).  If you max out a crappy 401k today, you might miss a better opportunity to contribute to a 401k in the future.  Big expenses could pop up at exactly the same time you get better investment options.   Side note: if not enough employees participate in the 401k, the principals won't be able to take full advantage of it themselves.  I think it's called a ""nondiscrimination test"" to ensure that the plan benefits all employees, not just the owners and management.  So voting with your feet might be the best way to spark improvement with your employer.  Good luck!"