Jonathan Johnson

There are people in your office who think your keyboard is your inbox. Make them stop. Laptop computers use radiant cooling, even if they have a fan. Papers on the keyboard make it overheat. This leads to thermal throttling, shutdowns, crashes, and shorter service life.

@TB1Kinobe Spins the sewer gas to really launch it into space

There has to be a purpose for this amazing work

@davepl1968 And — hey — those high-level concepts also apply to cars old and new.

@davepl1968 Same kind of stuff you would have learned in auto shop, but with better relevance to the modern world.

I think auto shop would be a waste. Basic auto maintenance is a good thing to learn, but any real self-service today starts with an OBD2 reader. There's no float to set, no jets to swap, no air bleeds to tune, no choke to adjust, not points to set, no rotor to replace, no cap to check. All the stuff that the people who fondly remember the autoshop did is pretty much irrelevant and unnecessary now. It would be like learning to replace tubes in old TVs.

@chasedownleads I charge $40 per can but I buy $20 cans and swap them out and just say I cleaned it, easier and cheaper than washing

My friend started a trash can cleaning business Charges $20 per clean 10,000 people in our town If each of them gets their bin washed everyday, that’s $6 million in monthly revenue Boring businesses are a wealth hack

@byrnesmom @MindyLynn511 @KookieNyo

@MindyLynn511 @KookieNyo I turn the Wi-Fi off then I tell him the lawnmower is waiting for him. Our yard is huge. Lol

Please pray for my 17-year-old son. He was forced to unload and load the dishwasher. He used some disrespectful words so mama turned off the internet that ended up crashing the game he was in the middle of playing. He might not recover. 😬

@davepl1968 Checked should be free, carry-on should be charged. It will make air travel more civil. But the airlines will lose on air cargo, which is more lucrative than schlepping your dirty underwear around the world.

Spoiler: It's because the plebes in the middle section also wanted to bring on their emotional support bags. This was back in the days when everyone checked their stuff, so they didn't need the overhead bins, I guess.

@alt_w_v_g I listened to a free trial once. Out of all the channels, there was nothing I wanted to listen to.

Ran some diligence on SiriusXM this weekend Not because anyone asked Because my 14-year-old nephew connected his phone to my car via Bluetooth, played a Spotify playlist, and asked me what the "SXM" button was for I didn't have an answer So I pulled the 10-K SiriusXM is an $8.56B revenue company with nearly $10B in debt and a $7.4B market cap Read that again The debt is larger than the company Their business model, simplified: 1. Pay automakers to install radios nobody asked for 2. Give every new car buyer a free trial they didn't request 3. Hope they forget to cancel 4. Charge them $25.99/month for something their phone does for $10.99 That's it. That's the model. They have 33M subscribers. Sounds impressive until they lost 301,000 self-pay subscribers last year. And hundreds of thousands the year before that. Revenue has declined three consecutive years The average subscriber is 35-64, male, household income over $150K. Over half have been paying for 10+ years. These aren't loyal customers These are people whose spouses haven't noticed the $25.99 charge on the Amex yet The crown jewel of the portfolio is Howard Stern. They pay him roughly $100M a year. He works three days a week. His show averages 125K daily listeners. That's $800 per listener per year My analyst did the math three times because he thought he was wrong He wasn't For that price, you could buy each listener a Spotify family plan, an Audible subscription, and still have enough left for AirPods Speaking of Spotify. Nearly 290M premium subscribers. Growing double digits. $10.99/month. Available on every device ever made. SiriusXM. 33M subscribers. Shrinking. $25.99/month. Requires a satellite. Spotify's full-year revenue grew 19%. SiriusXM's declined 2%. Spotify trades at 74x earnings. SiriusXM trades at 5x. The market is not confused about which direction these businesses are headed Their growth strategy is called the "trial funnel." There are 7.3M people driving cars with free SiriusXM trials. The conversion rate is not publicly disclosed. Probably because it's embarrassing They have 180M "enabled vehicles" in the U.S. They have 33M subscribers. That's an 18% attach rate on hardware they already paid to install. 82% of the cars with their radios in them are generating zero revenue In any other industry an 18% hit rate gets you fired In satellite radio, it gets you a seat on the NYSE Adjusted EBITDA margin is 31%. Looks healthy. Until you realize "adjusted" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in a company that posted a $2.08B net loss the year prior. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.73B that same year The distance between those two numbers is called addbacks And they're working overtime 2026 guidance: flat revenue, flat EBITDA, slightly fewer subscribers. The CEO called this stability and meaningful progress. On Wall Street, we call this managed decline Warren Buffett owns 35.4% of this company. This is the most confusing part. The man who said "be fearful when others are greedy" bought a satellite radio company in the age of Bluetooth. His entry was a Liberty Media arb play that accidentally became a long-term hold. The stock is down over 50% from its highs. I don't know why he's still in. You don't know why. His shareholders definitely don't know why. The bull thesis: SiriusXM has 33M people who have been paying $15/month for a decade and have no plans to stop. That's $6B in recurring revenue from people who may not even remember they're subscribed. Churn is 1.5%. Lower than most SaaS companies. The bear thesis: Every teenager alive today has never used a car radio Both are probably right SiriusXM's competitive moat is not content. It's not technology. It's not brand. It's the 47 minutes it takes to cancel over the phone SiriusXM isn't a bad company. It's a case study in what happens when your moat is consumer apathy and your growth strategy requires General Motors. Plz fix. Thx. Sent from my iPhone

@pmtiegs Get a Lifetime cooler, as good as the pretentious ones without the pretentious price. Then freeze water in a gallon mayonnaise jug to act as our ice block. With its wide lid, it's easy to refill from an ice machine bag.

I hate dealing with ice and wet food in the cooler, but do I hate it $879?

@coldstreams @larryvc People who complain about Comcast customer service have never had to deal with TDS Telecom.

We have TDS Telecom internet service. To add services, you can go to your account online, click options and you are done. To remove a feature, you must call their 800#. I did this 2 months ago - took almost 2 hours on the phone, handed off to multiple people. They did everything possible to prevent customers from dropping features.

I needed to update a hotel reservation today, so I called them. A prompt asked me to press 1 if I was making a new reservation or 2 if I had an existing reservation. I pressed 2. It asked me to leave a message, and they would get back to me. Instead of leaving a message, out of curiosity, I called back and pressed 1. They picked up immediately and handled my request. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - it shouldn't be easier to get to a sales rep than a customer service rep. When this is the reality, it says a lot about a company culturally and what it prioritizes.

@PaulTassi An ink nozzle that doesn't dry out would upset the industry. More ink is wasted during cleaning cycles than actually printing.

Setting up a new printer and it is amazing there have been exactly zero advances in printer technology in like 20 years

@SimonViklund The thing is, they could dynamically evaluate the password using JavaScript. Longer allows for less complexity. There are algorithms to do this. Spaces and all punctuation should be allowed. Even emojis. Encode passwords client-side. Symbols shouldn't break input processing.

Can we PLEASE for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY just STOP IT with the password complexity criteria already? We all know the highest risk is that the service itself leaks the password in a security breach, and then what use is the complexity?

@BillyM2k You need a new, firm mattress.

is it just a rule that after you’re 40 you just have lower back pain forever

@allie__voss @BenjaminDEKR Partly because it would just make the security lines even longer

@BenjaminDEKR Honestly I don't get why we don't allow that these days

As someone who never experienced airports before 9/11...was there truly NO security? Like you could just walk wherever like a train station?

@ayeejuju Read Pat McManus

i have always wondered what’s going on here

@BattleByrd We didn't have eat bologna because Dad raised our own beef, but most of our clothes were from "rag bags" from other families We're doing well enough now, but my wife still washes Ziploc bags for reuse

On a scale of rinsing out ziplocs to reuse them and fried bologna sandwiches how poor were you?

@scaling_shields Not going to use the opaque site, because I don't want to be stuck with the company that makes me stand in line for 3 hours at the rental center

my mate works at a car rental company and showed me the internal pricing screen after a few pints context: this is the same car on the same day in the same location showed 6 different prices depending on which website you book through the price you see first is ALWAYS the highest one heres how the scam works: you go to their website and book directly thats the most expensive way to rent a car because you came to THEM you already decided you want the car you already picked the dates you already chose the location they know youre not shopping around so they charge full price £67/day for a basic hatchback meanwhile the same car on the same day: on a comparison site: £44/day on a corporate portal: £38/day on an opaque site like hotwire: £28/day £28 vs £67 140% markup for not knowing which button to press he showed me why each price exists: direct website = "this person didnt shop around. charge full price" comparison site = "theyre comparing us to 5 others. show the mid price" opaque site = "they cant see our name until they pay. give them the lowest price because wed rather fill the car for £28 than let it sit empty at £67" then he showed me the charges they add AFTER you book collision damage waiver: £18/day "covers your £2,000 excess in case of damage" your credit card already covers this for free. most people dont know that. 70% of customers buy it at the counter because theyre scared thats £126 on a 7 day rental for something you already have airport premium fee: £12/day "premium location surcharge" a fee for parking the car where you need it its pure profit. costs them nothing extra young driver surcharge: £25/day i asked what the actual insurance cost is for under 25s "about £2 a day. we charge £25 because they dont know any better and theyre usually in a rush" £175 extra on a week rental for £14 of actual cost fuel policy: "we fill it you return it full" sounds fair until you read the fine print if you return it with anything less than full they charge £2.30 per litre petrol is £1.40 64% markup on fuel he said the best one is the counter upsell "you sure you dont want the premium cover? what if something happens on the motorway?" 60% of people say yes at the counter because theyre tired from travelling they just want the keys same decision fatigue the car dealer uses in the finance office tired people sign things the car rental price destruction method: 1. never book from their website directly. use kayak or google flights car rental tab to see the real market rate 2. check hotwire or priceline opaque deals. same car 40-60% less because they hide the company name 3. decline everything at the counter. cdw, premium cover, fuel packages, gps, child seats you didnt ask for. all of it 4. check your credit card benefits. most visa and mastercards include rental car insurance that makes their cdw completely redundant 5. refuel yourself. never prepay fuel. drive to the nearest station before returning. saves 60%+ on fuel charges 6. book the smallest car available. rental companies oversell small cars. show up and theyll upgrade you for free because they ran out of the one you booked he knew i was going to post this "go ahead. wont change anything. people will still panic at the counter and buy everything" the same car on the same day costs £28 or £67 depending on how much homework you did before you showed up stop paying the panic price start paying the informed one

@davepl1968 Some drum brake setups you can snap the old shoes off and snap new ones on (like a bear trap) without using tools to hook the springs.

My toddler can swap pads on a disc brake. Real men have that weird tool with the hook for removing those little springs on drum brakes. And they know how to punch out the oval to access the star wheel. A little-known fact is that you can only do one side of a drum brake setup at a time, because no one is left who remembers how they go together from scratch.

@Protestia Where in the Book of Pilates is this?

This is some of the finest pew walking and pulpit stomping we've ever seen. 🤌🤌🤌