vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
This is quite possibly a tactic to attract new clients.. ICICI is one of the banks with a small presence in Canada. There are also banks like Tangerine and PC Financial that are aggressively trying to get new clients to switch over from the big 5 banks. At the time of writing, for a limited time, PC Financial is paying 2.5% interest on savings accounts versus 1.4% for a 1 year GIC.
"It's not expensive to me, but for the type of people who NEED to eat fast food often you can get a small burger, fries and a soda for $3 ($2.50 for a kids meal) vs. a Chipotle burrito and drink for ~$8. That really adds up for large families or people who have fast food every day. Heck, Taco Bell will sell you a burrito (and a case of indigestion) for 69 cents. I won't even go into how variety plays a part in all this.  McDonald's model is to be all things to all people and have them eat as many meals as possible there. Places like Chipotle are cool with sharing a percentage of the slightly more affluent ""now and then"" fast food crowd with other niche places like Noodles &amp; Company, Five Guys, and whatnot.  I'm not dissing Chipotle and their business model, but it's just a completely different market than the big mega fast food chains and it drives me nuts when they are directly compared."
I’ve spent roughly $70,000 at Amazon the past 3 years (calculated using their spreadsheet data of spending in the account section). What these businesses don’t understand is that the products are all the same and the pricing varies minimally; customer service is and always will be my number one determining factor in where I do business. It takes me 30 seconds to get an Amazon agent on the line and 20 minutes for a Best Buy agent, plus Amz’s return policies beat the shit out of B.B’s.
In that case, put it in a high yield savings account until you are ready to invest it. $15000 is really small, especially for starting a business. Additionally, your plan is just to throw the money at whatever you can, which means you have no real plan. Sit on it and think.
I'm not exactly sure who's confusing worker/workplace rights with union membership. Safety standards are written into law but there is little else about working conditions that is law in this country (a lot less than most people think, anyways).   &gt; I think my primary counterargument is why should a union be a requirement of a living wage and healthcare?  It certainly shouldn't be. If the employer is good, then there is no need for a union.  &gt; If I work for a small business where unionizing would be MUCH more difficult should I not also have those things?  I don't know if unionizing would be more difficult. In some ways it could be easier. If it's a small business problems can generally be resolved by talking to the owner.   I think you're missing something though: Being in a union doesn't guarantee you anything. The law says that employers must sit down at a table and negotiate a contract with the union's members, but they don't have to agree to anything.  Some unions like for freelance/contract/commission workers offer benefit packages to its members, but that's only because they don't have a consistent employer to bargain benefits with.
"AFAIK they use entirely different LTE frequencies in Japan and the US, hence the issues with the ""new iPad"" being LTE in the States but not here.    Additionally, there are still Japanese manufacturers who are big brands in the Japanese market, but more or less unheard of overseas.  So there's likely to be relatively limited scope for economies of scale regarding handsets.  Sure, with a limited number of handsets (e.g. the iPhone) you may be able to place a larger order, but when was the last time you heard of a network operator dictating terms to Apple?  That's why only Softbank had the iPhone at launch, because they were the only one willing to cede to Apple's high pricing demands.    And that's before you even get into language related issues.  As far as LTE equipment goes, it depends on suppliers and whether the practicalities of ordering equipment for two very different territories, thousands of miles apart, with very different geography will bear a lot of fruit.  As for people traveling between Japan and the States, its such a tiny proportion of customers, it would barely make a dent.  And most corporate customers historically favor DoCoMo anyway and given Japanese business culture are unlikely to change any time soon.  In a nutshell, the synergies may not be as strong as it first seems."
That stranglehold is because of the small margins in the business. When you put cabs on the road there are only a few models to work with; the lease model where the company puts as many cabs on the road as possible, the commission model where they balance fleet size and demand, and the medallion model where you have a lot of individual operators.   The lease model sounds nice for the customers because there's excess cabs compared to demand, but drivers aren't going to pay $160-300 a shift to not make any money, so even still the cab company has limit the number of cabs they put on the road.  In any case, once you add up all your costs for gas, maintenance, licensing, and insurance you're left with a very small margin. Sure a cab company could 3x the number of cabs it normally does at night during the bar rush, but the other 16 hours of the day they're sitting on the lot not doing anything because there isn't as high of demand during the day. That costs money, and if the cabs aren't working they're not paying for themselves.  Thus the market finds a balance between what supply there is depending on time of day and how much it costs to support a fleet of that size. The only outside effect on the market equilibrium is how many taxis a city will license. I really don't like the medallion model because of this. The medallion owners love it because they're sitting on upwards of $500k asset in some cities.
Be careful what you ask for, make sure you cover all of your costs (the pants, filing fees, time off of work, and collection efforts.) Itemize all your requested costs and make sure they are reasonable. You only want to be made whole, and that only means $160 or pants (plus fees) Just because you won in small claims doesn't mean you can collect easily. Figure in your cost for collecting when you sue. You might have to hire somebody to collect on your judgement. If you hire somebody they will want a cut, so you might want to figure that out for your small claims. I am guessing this is a local business, so it should be pretty easy to collect. (Unless they go out of business, in which case you will get nothing.)"
It can take a while for inflation to seep into all aspects an economy and be felt by a consumer. Often, things that consumers use the most (like gasoline, wheat products, corn products, soy products, and sugar), are commodities spread across global markets with their own pricing which may be impacted by inflation in any given country.  Also, inflation can be beneficial in some ways. A $500/month mortgage payment was a big deal 30 years ago, and now would be considered trivial. That's entirely because of inflation.  Run-away inflation, where people are burning the currency to stay warm, is a different beast altogether. Be wary of people who conflate inflation, consumer pricing, and destructive currency devaluation, because they're not the same things.
"&gt;DCF only works with stable cash flows  A DCF works with whatever cash flows you are willing to forecast.  If you have extreme skepticism about those forecasts then you can either adjust them, run sensitivity analyses, or use a significantly higher discount rate (or all three).   All of those approaches will help you establish upper and lower bounds for a valuation.  &gt;Facebook could argue, the core rationale for the acquisition was to stay current with their users keeping their core product attractive to their customers (advertisers).  So what you're saying is that Facebook can forecast that by acquiring Snapchat they're able to ""keep X users for Y period of time"" but they then can't make the next logical leap to figure out how to apply a profit/revenue factor to those user numbers in order to create a suitable DCF?"
"These government mandates of minimum wage will cause more problems than they will solve. I don't know how many of you own a small business but I can give you a real world example here in the City of Chicago. On July 1st, 2017 the minimum wage will increase to $11.00 while at the same time they're introducing a .01 per oz ""Sugar Tax.""  The amount of additional work needed to keep track of sugar consumption will be burdensome for small businesses who will have to raise prices to accommodate the new labor costs and tax. Customers are price sensitive so they will usually go for the cheaper option which can be provided only by corporate/big business who have the ability to automate certain positions in the labor supply chain which is currently happening. I wouldn't be surprised if the timeline for kiosks/self-service robot implementation is on par with the $15.00 minimum wage deadline in 2019. To sum up, big business wins and labor loses but I guess results don't matter when your intentions are ""good."""
You could calculate then-historical volatility for each time period, by figuring the average price swing (in either direction) for say the past year (year before the date in question, so you'd do this each day, walking forward). Read up on it, and try various volatility approaches, and see if your results are within a reasonable range. Re the Black-Scholes formula, There's a free spreadsheet downloadable from http://optiontradingtips.com. You might find it useful to grab the concept for coding it up yourself. It's VBA, but you can certainly use that info to translate in your language of choice. Or, if you prefer to read Perl, CPAN has a good module, with full source, of course. I find this approach easier than reading a calculus formula, but I'm a better developer than math-geek :)"
Not quite. The lottery takes almost no effort or investment to play. It's low risk, negative return, but a small chance for high return. MLM requires a lot of time, effort, and usually $5K-$10K of debt before people bail out. It's a high risk, negative return, with a small chance for a positive return and no chance for a high return.  They are similar in being bad investments, but lotteries do so at a much smaller scale for individuals.
Similar to the lawn care you mentioned: if you have space, you could have the kids create a mini-farmstand. They could grow flowers for cutting, some vegetables, etc. It would be a different twist on the classic lemonade stand. If the kids are into animals and space and zoning allows, you could keep chickens and add eggs to your mini-farmstand. Upfront costs for the garden would be small enough that they can learn about how investing in a business works at a very small scale. Along with learning about money, they also learn responsibility because it requires commitment and daily attention. It's also seasonal in a way that meshes well with school (though having animals is a constant year-round responsibility).
This is a basic set of security rules and practices which should make hacking unlikely. Compliance is achievable (not easy), and if you do it, you're off the hook. That is one way Amy can be entirely not at fault. Example deleted for length, but as a small business, you just can't be a PCI security expert. You rely on the commitments of others to do a good job, like your bank and merchant account salesman. There are so many ways this can go wrong that just aren't your fault. As to the notion of saying ""it affected Amy's customers but it was Doofus the contractor's fault"", that doesn't work, the Internet lynch mob won't hear the details and will kill Amy's business. Then she's suing Mastercard for false light, a type of defamtion there the facts are true but are framed falsely. And defamation has much more serious consequences in Europe. Anyway, even a business not at fault has to pay for a PCI-DSS audit. A business at fault has lots more problems, at the very least paying $50-90 per customer to replace their cards. The simple fact is 80% of businesses in this situation go bankrupt at this point. Usually fraudsters make automated attacks using scripts they got from others. Only a few dozen attacks (on sites) succeed, and then they use other scripts to intercept payment data, which is all they want. They are cookie cutter scripts, and aren't customized for each site, and can't go after whatever personal data is particular to that site. So in most cases all they get is payment data. It's also likely that primary data, like a cloud drive, photo collection or medical records, are kept in completely separate systems with separate security, unlikely to hack both at once even if the hacker is willing to put lots and lots of engineering effort into it. Most hackers are script kiddies, able to run scripts others provided but unable to hack on their own. So it's likely that ""none was leaked"" is the reason they didn't give notification of private information leakage. Lastly, they can't get what you didn't upload.
"For some situations, an MBA can be overrated in the sense that given the cost of time and money, it isn't going to be a great return in some cases. There can be tens of thousands of dollars and a couple of years to get an MBA that some people believes should automatically make them worth $x more in their salary and life should be simple. I'd likely inquire as to what expectations do you have for what an MBA will do for you. Are you expecting to make connections in getting the degree? Are you expecting to learn about how to run a business from the coursework? Are you expecting something else? Depending on what you are expecting, I could see MBA as being anything from a great choice to a lousy choice for people. As noted by Pete Belford's comment, an MBA from a ""degree mill"" would be all but worthless. Where you go can reflect the value of the education as some universities are known for their program about this such as Ivy League schools."
A competent Indian VA cost about 4-6 an hour. Realistically speaking, with that budget, nobody is going to be on the phone 8 hours a day 5 days a week. But small tasks and data entry could work. Western VAs are a much pricer but they you can find some for 200 a month. I have a biz that offers similar services, but the price you are looking for is a bit low, but I can work something out if your interested. Otherwise, it would be best to search for NYC based VA companies that have a team of indians working. But what you get is a luck of the draw.
What do you mean doesn't allow private entities to attach to the fixtures?  Do you mean fixtures like lamp posts etc?  This would only be suitable for small cells anyway.  Putting a small cell on a rooftop is silly.  A roof site would be a full build site with radios, sector antennas, an equipment cabinet or two, and a power/battery cabinet.  If you mean attach fixtures to buildings, I don't believe that.  Create a business to lease the space.  Bob's Rooftop, Inc., etc.  Make sure they carry sufficient insurance and that it includes protection for your building against any contractor error (roof damage, accidentally drill something, damage to cosmetic materials, etc), against fire, and basically anything else.  I've only seen cell equipment catch fire a couple of times, both of which were the result of lightning strikes.  On the other hand, the bank of batteries they use for backup power is pretty big and has more than enough power to do some accidental arc welding.  Are they limited to leasing to a single carrier?  You need this all spelled out in writing.  PM me the name of the vendor if you are allowed to.  I don't need the name of the carrier.  You don't need to give me too much identifying information, so there is no exposure for you.  Are they offering the $350 or are you asking it?  I feel like a minimum of $1000 is reasonable.  Try to find out what they will be paid by the carrier.  You might be able to negotiate something like 65% of the money the carrier pays.  Do remember that the vendor does basically nothing other than make the space available.  They don't build the site and they don't maintain it.
You would assume they've made mistakes, but you'd also not know every person's life and circumstance that has them in that situation. You don't know everyone's life, but there are situations that just aren't accounted for and people are left behind in these jobs that don't pay a living wage. Even if they've made no mistakes, there are people stuck.  They're stuck there and regardless of what choices they've made, do they deserve to live a life a squalor because an employer doesn't feel like paying them a wage that's enough for them to live off of? Should we let our system run business as usual when we know there are ways we can alter the system to make a real difference?   We can change things, just becsuse it's helped a lot of people over time doesn't mean that we can't continue to improve upon it.   This isn't a call to reward people for their decisioms, just a call to help those who've fallen not stay down their whole lives. As it is, we see generational poverty and a reduction in upward mobility for our people, why continue to allow it when we know helping them proves more beneficial for us all than what helping them costs us.
It looks like fair-market value when you receive your virtual currency is counted as income. And you're also subject to self-employment tax on that income. Here's an FAQ from the IRS: Q-8: Does a taxpayer who “mines” virtual currency (for example, uses computer resources to validate Bitcoin transactions and maintain the public Bitcoin transaction ledger) realize gross income upon receipt of the virtual currency resulting from those activities? A-8: Yes, when a taxpayer successfully “mines” virtual currency, the fair market value of the virtual currency as of the date of receipt is includible in gross income. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for more information on taxable income.Q-9: Is an individual who “mines” virtual currency as a trade or business subject to self-employment tax on the income derived from those activities? A-9: If a taxpayer’s “mining” of virtual currency constitutes a trade or business, and the “mining” activity is not undertaken by the taxpayer as an employee, the net earnings from self-employment (generally, gross income derived from carrying on a trade or business less allowable deductions) resulting from those activities constitute selfemployment income and are subject to the self-employment tax. See Chapter 10 of Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business, for more information on selfemployment tax and Publication 535, Business Expenses, for more information on determining whether expenses are from a business activity carried on to make a profit. You'd of course be able to offset that income with the expense of mining the virtual currency, depreciation of dedicated mining equipment, electricity, not sure what else. Edit: Here's a good resource on filing taxes with Bitcoin: Filling in the 1040 Income from Bitcoins and all crypto-currencies is declared as either capital gains income or ordinary income, for example from mining. Income Ordinary income will be declared on either your 1040 (line 21 - Other Income) for an individual, or within your Schedule C, if you are self-employed or have sole-proprietor business.
"Why?  I did comp sci and have an MBA. I also do EMT work as a volunteer in a rural community.  Do my toes are in both pools.  I would really question deeply the motives from moving to business from medicine.  Despite the articles you see, an MBA is hardly the road to riches. Most do okay. Top tier grads are making very good money. These are also a small % of people out there working.  Even those making good money sacrifice that for really shitty hours and shit work for a while until they break into the higher earning spots.  The ""models and bottles"" is exaggerated to beg in with, and less and less common every year.  When someone asks me about getting an MBA or finance I ask why. What us their real reason. If its money, don't do it. Do it because you actual ly love the business of business. I have traded stocks since I was 12. Its always been interesting. If I forced myself to do it for the money, I'd be poor and miserable.  I am not rich. But I am comfortable and I live the life and schedule I want. None of that is from that slip of paper. The knowledge I could have (and did) get on my own.   I trade the markets, do real estate, and have 1-3 entrepreneural projects at any given time. Its the life I created for myself. I found it was really the only  way for me to get what I wanted. My goals never fit we all with institution goals.  TL;DR-  what's your motivation? Its probably a shitty move."
"We don't have a free market.  Furthermore, without fail, every example in history that approaches a free market produces an environment entirely consumed by corruption and immorality.  Humans, at the most basic level, are fundamentally incapable of sustaining a free market system that results in a generally ""good"" outcome for people.  I heard a story in a documentary about the financial crisis (which was prior left void of any meaningful regulation), at it's worst, and in private, the banking CEO's told Henry Paulson that they needed to be regulated because they were incapable of keeping themselves in check. That only came out at the most critical moment of the worst financial shit in recent history. No banking CEO will ever come close to admit such a statement today now that ""things are OK again.""  That's how things work in real life, all people are just children. And you want our *health care* to be handled by those children?  In this analogy the government with their ""annoying"" regulations are like the adults... but Trump - so never mind, now even the adults are idiots, so we're basically just fucked.  Be careful what you ask for."
"First, filing status. If you and your wife are legally married, you should be filing your tax returns as married, either jointly or separately. In the US, ""head of household"" has a specific meaning and is for unmarried people who are supporting one or more relatives, per the IRS. If you are working full-time and your wife is not, then likely you will file a joint return, including all your income and all the expenses for your wife's business. So yes, the losses in her business will offset your income. Depending on how complex things are, you may want to hire a professional to help with your taxes. The rules for what can and cannot be deducted as a business expense can be opaque."
The fact that the government is picking and choosing who becomes a domestic shipping monopoly and defending them afterwards with lower shipping rates is in itself the problem, not who it chooses.  And you're right. Amazon is hardly alone in recieving this benefit.  http://fortune.com/2017/07/16/amazon-postal-service-subsidy/  &gt; Either way, Amazon is hardly alone in getting a boost from the USPS’s complex pricing. Thanks to international agreements through the United Nations, international shippers—especially those sending small packages from China—often get services at substantially below cost. That puts U.S. stores and domestic online sellers alike at a persistent disadvantage.  I used to work for a small time consumer goods manufacturer in the rural north. We did not recieve any such benefit for international shipping. Their international customers bore the burden of UPS' rate to get items to the border, a ~$20 Canadian customs rate to get it through the border with often a month long, sometimes longer customs inspection waiting period, and their domestic Canadian courier's rate on top of that. And now because companies like Amazon do get this benefit, among other benefits given to them by our government, more and more of their business is solely reliant on Amazon and they have no negotiating power.  This is how increasing the power and scope of government over the production and distribution of goods and services destroys small business and innovation.