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June 2019

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Car Rental Saving Tips

Planning on hitting the road with a car rental? Here are a few car rental saving tips that could really come in handy.

Join the Rewards Program

Most car rentals have loyalty reward programs for their customers. Joining is easy and in most cases free. Some of the perks that come with these programs are:

  • Free upgrades or rentals
  • Vehicle availability guarantee
  • Skipping lines

If you frequently use car rentals, it is worth signing up for these programs.

Ask If They Offer Discounts

The first thing you should ask at a car rental is: “Do you have any discounts?” Whether corporate, AAA, senior, Military or otherwise, a lot of these associations qualify for price breaks from the car rental businesses. All you need to do is ask.

Consider the Prepay Option

A lot of car rental businesses offer their customers different rates: one is for those who wish to pay as soon as they pick up the vehicle and the other one is for those who choose to pay in advance.

Prepaying is usually a better option. You can be able to save up to 20% as compared to upfront payments. Usually, the savings increase when you rent a better car.

Find Coupons

Coupons will most definitely help you save big. Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to get the right code, it is possible to save up to 50%. If you don’t feel like sleuthing for deals and codes, you can check out the rental car coupons.

Compare Prices

There are numerous deal aggregators online that will help you compare the prices of different car rentals at the same time. Before booking a vehicle, make sure you get the best available deal by making use of such tools.

Rent a Car Outside Airports

Renting inside airports is easy and convenient. However, you will pay 10-30% more for their convenient services. Part of what constitutes this fee is the concession fee charged for having a car rental space at the airport. It will, therefore, be worth using public transport or a taxi into town to get a car rental.

Understand the Fine Print for Fee and Tax Information

Most people overlook the asterisk that goes along with some information. For instance, a car rental may claim that you will pay $15 a day for car hire. Although this price tag might be quite alluring, you may end up realizing that there are hidden fees and taxes in your total.

Just because a car rental has advertised that you will pay the said amount doesn’t necessarily mean that’s all you will be spending. Find out from the rental site if that’s all you will be paying or if they are any hidden charges and taxes.

Reserve Your Car Rental for Extra Hours

You can even extend the return date by a day. Did you know that you can get prorated refunds for early returns? This is especially a great idea if you aren’t sure of the traffic situation on the day of returning the car.

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Reviews

How Are You Watching Game Of Thrones?

The seventh season of Game of Thrones didn’t exactly break the Internet, but its July 16 premiere was a near thing. Not because, between live audiences, DVR recordings, and online subscriptions, over 26 million viewers watched the episode—a record-breaking first for the TV network. This number would be a lot more impressive if it included all of the people who watched the episode illegally. With pirate viewership included in the mix, it’s safe to say over 100 million people tuned into the premiere.

Despite the term pirate, there’s no need to navigate your way through the uncharted waters of the dark web to get your fix. Millions of ordinary people can find streams and downloads of their favorite show with a few clicks and swipes, all from the safety of their home.

People are watching without paying HBO for that right. Some are hosting Game of Thrones viewing parties as they use TV boxes like Android Box to stream the channel straight to their 4K television. Others are downloading it to watch later on their iPads, tablets, and smartphones in preparation of long commutes, wait times in doctors’ offices, and even parks.

Modern day piracy has its risks—but not necessarily those that you might think. Thankfully, unlike the pirates of old—or even Euron Greyjoy of Thrones—online piracy doesn’t risk death. Unless, perhaps, you live in North Korea.

There is, however, a very real threat to your watching device of choice. Say you take your iPhone 6s or Surface Pro onto the bus or subway with the intent to watch the latest ep as you commute to work. The sweaty, rough, and overcrowded conditions of public transit aren’t ideal for a lot of reasons, but it can cause damage to your device. One wrong step or push as people pile on can catapult your tablet or smartphone out of your hands.

Unless, of course, you’ve wrapped your device in a skin from the people behind dbrand. Their engineers understand the conditions you’re up against when taking public transit, so they’ve made tablet and iPhone 6s skins that enhance the grip of your device. These skins can also help protect against scratches and scuffs that may occur on the subway car — or anywhere your day takes you. Luckily, you can find iPhone 6s skins online as you pirate the next Game of Thrones episode. But you aren’t safe just yet, as there comes another unique risk with your criminal behaviour.

HBO hopes to crack down on those streaming and downloading their creative content illegally, and they’re being vocal about their objectives. Compared to the very real and very scary ‘fire and fury’ promised by Trump, the threats laid out by HBO are tame. In fact, they’re nonexistent as the letter received by pirating fans is the equivalent of ‘um, could you maybe not?’

For the innocent few who haven’t heard, HBO’s anti-piracy partner alerts the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of any IP addresses under its charge involved in downloading or streaming the series without “authorization”. From there, the ISP relays a message to the customers in question, stating HBO owns the exclusive rights to the show and those who download it illegally are infringing on copyright laws. It also warns viewers that downloading Game of Thrones from unknown sources could result in a security breaches—as if the television network actually cares about your computer or tablet’s security.

HBO finishes its spiel by stating:

“We also encourage you to inform the subscriber that HBO programming can easily be watched and streamed on many devices legally.”

For the guilty streamers and downloaders, this will read similar to the letter they received last year as HBO hoped to squash piracy around the premiere of its sixth season. While individuals and small websites may throw caution to the wind, the might of HBO was impressive enough to pull thousands of links offline.

Despite its best efforts, HBO has no hope of eliminating piracy. MUSO, a piracy monitoring firm based out of the UK, studied the internet traffic of over 23,000 well-known piracy websites. Nearly 85% of these sites posted unauthorized streams of the episode. Meanwhile, the premierewas pirated 91.74 million times around the world.

According to MUSO, the stat is just an estimate. The latest technical innovations in TV boxes make it incredibly easy for even novice streamers to pirate movies and TV shows from around the world. These boxes also make the act incredibly hard for firms like MUSO to track. Unlike downloading, which can be tracked by ISPs, streaming is often encrypted. These security measures muddy the waters for those hoping to track piracy, so there could be hundreds, thousands, even millions more people watching Game of Thrones illegally.

Though HBO knows you’re doing it, there’s not uch else they can do about your streaming habits beyond their letters. With numbers comes safety, so even if you received your very own letter from HBO, you’ll be safe to stream or download your favorite series.

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How Your Family Can Benefit From Smart Speakers (like Amazon Echo)

Amazon Echo and Google Home are smart speakers that can understand your commands and perform tasks for you. It short, they are voice-powered personal assistants on hand at all times. They are used by individuals of all kinds, but what many don’t know is that they offer a wide variety of benefits for families with children too. Here are a few ways that Amazon Echo and similar devices can benefit your family.

Pure Search Engine Power

This is no doubt the most useful tool that Alexa and Google Home has to offer. At any point in time, you or your child can activate the device with one word such as “Alexa” and then ask any question. This is extremely useful for studying, cooking, or anything else. Imagine your child is doing homework, and they come to a point where they have a question to ask. Normally, they come to you and you are forced to search your brain for the twenty-sixth president of the United States. Now, all you have to do is say, “Alexa, who was the twenty-sixth president of the United States?” and she will spout out an answer like, “The twenty-sixth president of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt.” She may even add some extra quick facts, such as birth, death, and famous quotes. Cooking and need a conversion, just ask her, “How many tablespoons are in a cup?” or “What’s a good substitute for sugar?”

Conversation Pieces

When everyone gets home from school, work, and practice, it’s nice to sit around the table and talk about your day. But sometimes, it’s hard to find a topic after the overviews are finished. With these devices, you can say things like, “I’m feeling lucky,” or “give me a random fact.” This is a great way to get to know each other even better. Alexa loves to get the conversation going with fun info. You can even tell the device to give you trivia questions for a fun game or solve a debate with a dice roll. Want to learn a language together? Alexa is a great teacher. Ask her to say anything in nearly any language you can imagine.

Music on Hand

Whether you like listening to music while cleaning, having a family game night, or even dancing, these systems are there for you. They can use Pandora, Spotify, or downloaded music. You can customize lullaby lists to put your baby to sleep, instrumentals for our child’s singing lessons, or a compiled list of the family’s favorite songs. The best part is that they can be played with just a short command. Not only that, but you can turn it up, down, on, or off with your voice as well. Can’t agree on a song, take turns by naming which song each person wants to play next.

Shopping Made Easy

How many times a week do you hear, “Mom, we need toothpaste!” or “We’re out of cereal again.” With these personal assistants, they can skip telling you and add it to the list with their voice no matter how small they are. It won’t be purchased this way, but Google and Alexa will add them to your phone’s shopping list. You can sync the list to your phone or send it to the kids or your spouse. If you don’t know if a said retailer or grocery store has an item in stock, you can check that too. “Does Wal-Mart have Cap’n Crunch?” There may be more than one way to find out, but none of them are as easy as asking your personal assistant who can have an answer in five seconds or less. If she doesn’t know, she can set your reservations for your favorite restaurant or order a pizza instead.

Total Control

Need to set an alarm for school or work? No problem with Alexa. What about setting a bedtime? Just tell the device that your child needs to go to bed at a set time. What’s even crazier is that you can program her to shut the garage door, turn off the kitchen lights, or even turn the coffee pot on.v

Conclusion

Devices like Amazon Echo and Google home are a complete asset for anyone, but especially families. Not only is the ease of access nice. With less time spent on grocery lists, asking questions, setting alarms, and even turning off the lights, there is more time to spend together. That is always a good thing!

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Travel

5 Things Northerners Should Know About Heading South

As the Starks of Winterfell say “Winter is Coming”, and with winter comes the mass of people who want to avoid the cold by moving south. Every year thousands of people living in the northern states of the United States flock to the south for various reasons. Unfortunately, some of these northerners heading south are completely unaware what they’re getting themselves into. There are many differences between life in the northern portion of the U.S and life in the South. You might not realize it, but moving down south could result in a complete change in your lifestyle. These people who don’t know how exactly their life will change from the move tend to struggle with adapting to change. So, here are five things you should know about the South so you’re absolutely prepared for the big move.

The Climate

The South is a wide area, but the general rule is the further south you go towards the equator, the warmer the climate is going to be. You can say goodbye to cold snowy winters and say hello to mild winters. For most people this is the primary reason for moving to the South. Sometimes people simply can’t handle the cold anymore, so they pack up their bags and head for a warmer climate. It’s no secret that one of the biggest differences between the two regions is the difference in climate.

The Culture

One of the most interesting parts of the southern United States is its deep rooted culture. Culture varies from region to region in the South, but regardless of where you go you are sure to find some amazing pieces of culture. For example, in New Orleans you can enjoy the sweet sounds of smooth jazz and swing music. In the heart of the South you can catch football fever along with your new fellow Alabama and Georgia fans. Along the Miami coast you can enjoy the strong Latin culture that generations of Cuban immigrants have brought with them. Regardless of where you are in the South, you are sure to find some amazing pieces of culture that you probably have not been exposed to before.

The Entertainment

Entertainment in the South is very similar to the entertainment in the northern portion of the U.S. however there still are some slight differences. For example, if you’re planning on on looking for homes in Houston, Tx, then you’ll probably become accustomed to entertainment options such as rodeos. In contrast, other portions of the South such as Florida and South Carolina offer amazing beaches for relaxation and entertainment. Regardless of where you choose to go in the South, you can be sure that amazing entertainment options will be available to you.

The Natural Disasters

Although the climate of the south is perfect for most people, other aspects of the region’s weather can be dangerous and even potentially life threatening. By the coast, the threat of a hurricane during hurricane season looms large. As you move inland toward flatter land, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires are major threats. Regardless of what region of the south you choose to live in, make sure you are well prepared with emergency disaster plans.

The History

Although recently embroiled in messy controversy, the history of the South is strong and proud. Southerners revel in their history, and look to famous Southerners as local heroes and role models. While sometimes others may not always understand why they do it, Southerners take great pride in their heros and thus have built countless statues and memorials to them. Learning about the history of the southern portion of the U.S can be very interesting, as the region’s history is strongly embedded into the local culture.

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Travel

Thinking of Moving Out of Sydney?

There’s no question that prices in Sydney just seem to keep on going up, and your dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to back in the day. And on top of it, you wind up paying more and more for an environment that just gets more and more crowded, it seems without even adding infrastructure. It’s easy to understand why people may think of getting out of Sydney.

One great option is to go a little bit south of the city, still within striking distance but far enough away where you can avoid the crush. For example, something like buying a Lendlease property near Wollongong is something that can appeal to many people. You still have your coast access, but it comes together with much better quality of living at a much lower cost.

A lot of people may get a tad bit worried about leaving Sydney and losing job opportunities, but the facts are that more and more people are starting to do their jobs online. Especially if you are in the IT field or work as a writer artist coder etc. of any nature, these days you can work from anywhere on Planet Earth with ease, as long as you have a good enough internet connection. So you could wind up definitely having the best of both worlds.

The bottom line is, with changing technology and an ever increasing world population, even Sydney is starting to feel a little more crowded these days. And, lamentably, the city seems to be filling up more and more with people who just don’t respect the city the way people used to, and frankly unfortunately just don’t know how to act.

And other Australian cities have many of the same problems, so just changing cities is not necessarily your best option. In fact, as far as costs go, Perth in some areas can even be said to beat out Sydney on the expensive scale. And then you have areas like Gold Coast, which gets trashed every year by disrespectful tourists, and thus is not the best place to live either. And moving to the outback isn’t going to work out for most people honestly, plus the climate is a big issue for many, understandably.

The Wollongong area is a prime destination for people in the Sydney area because it avoids all the above problems, while allowing you to retain ties to Sydney, and shortening your move time/distance. And values will be sure to go up in the future as more and more people discover the area and how great it really is!

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Home

A Look at Solar Energy Versus Coal Power

One of the hot topics of discussion in the United States, and elsewhere around the world, in recent years has been about the pros and cons of solar energy versus coal power. Making decisions regarding solar energy versus coal power does necessitate an understanding of some of the key facts associated with both types of energy.

Trends Relating to Coal Use

Less than two decades ago. coal was responsible for 56 percent of all electricity generated in the United States. Since that time, the utilization of coal as a means of generating electricity has been in retreat. An examination of what types of underlying energy resources are being utilized in new power generation facilities illustrates the point.

Coal Versus Solar in New Power Generation Facilities

The most remarkable change in regard to the utilization of coal versus solar power is found in the type of energy resource being utilized to run new generation facilities. In 2014, solar and wind were utilized with 52 percent of all new power generating facilities that went online in the United States. In that same year, coal accounted for 1 percent of new power generation facilities.

The trend shifted more dramatically still a year later. In 2015, solar and wind power were utilized with 69 percent of new power generation facilities and coal was used at none.

Construction Costs of Solar Versus Coal Power Generating Facilities

One of the main reasons why solar is winning the new power generation facilities race in recent years is the fact that the construction of a solar facility is cheaper than building a coal plant that has so-called clean coal technology. In recent years, with regulations and other considerations, the movement has been moved to the construction of coal plants with clean coal technology, at least when those plants were being built.

The estimated cost for building a coal power plant that utilizes clean coal technology is $2.6 billion. On the other hand, a typical solar power plant costs $1.8 billion.

As noted, traditional coal plants are not even particularly considered when it comes to the construction of new power generation facilities. But, in the interests of full disclosure, if there was a shift back to building old style coal power plants, the cost of such a facility would be $1.5 billion.

The cheapest type of power plant to build is one that runs on natural gas. The cost for constructing this type of plant is $482 million.

Materials Used in Power Plant Construction

There is some commonality in the types of materials that are utilized in constructing coal, solar, and natural gas power plants. The same holds true if you add wind power into the mix.

One type of material that is found in the construction of all types of power generating resources is steel. For example, steel pipe is utilized in different ways in coal, solar, and natural gas power plants. Steel pipe is also an important component in the generation of wind power as well.

The Future of Coal Power Plants

Another trend associated with coal power plants is going to become clearer in the not too distant future. As mentioned a moment ago, traditional coal power plants were not really being build at all for some time. In addition, the rate of construction of new coal plants with clean coal technology bottomed out all together.

The typical coal plant has a useful lifespan of about 30 years. After that, the plant typically is shuttered and decommissioned. Historically, a new plant would be constructed to take its place.

As plants in operation today begin to approach the their 30 year anniversary of operation, there has been little movement to construct replacements. Therefore, in the approaching future, there is likely to be a good many coal plants permanently decommissioned and not replaced with even some type of next generation coal plant alternative.

Of course, what policies take root in Washington, D.C., will play some role in the future of coal and solar energy. This can, and does, change from one Administration to the next. The Obama Administration was decidedly more favorable to alternative energy resources and contributed to the lessening of use of coal for the generation of electricity. The Trump Administration appears to be intent on returning to the use of coal on a broader scale, but that evident determination has not yet played any appreciable role when it comes to building new or replacing old coal power plants. Determining what will happen in that regard will take a few years.

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Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who writes for Federal Steel Supply, Inc., a leading steel tubing suppliers of carbon, alloy and stainless steel pipe, tubes, fittings and flanges.

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