General > Random Chat
Maplins in Administration!
Juliand:
Didn't hear this on the news, but apparently it was announced the same day as Toys R Us. Went to my local store in Bournemouth and was surprised to see the notices in the window. Still trading at the moment, with some minor discounting, which probably brings their prices down to what you can find elsewhere. Spent £50 on LED bulbs as I've been meaning to upgrade from halogens for a while. Tried one out in the kitchen, and when I put the halogen light back in, it had blown - that's halogen for you (wanted to do all 8 when I had more time, and just the one looked odd on its own, doh!)
I always found Maplins quite expensive, but it was an interesting place to look around, while wifey went clothes shopping (It's in the main shopping area in Bournemouth, but some are on industrial estates etc). Another one bites the dust! My kids loved Toys R Us, back in the day as well. :sad1:
Dan_FR:
Yeah I saw this the other day. Not surprising really, always massively overpriced.
Be surprised if there are many high street stores left in a few years time, other than clothes stores and similar where you need to see/buy in person. It's much more convenient to have it delivered for less than you would pay on the high street
pudding:
Maplin currently do the genuine Apple USB C 29w chargers for £35 instead of the £50 you pay everywhere else, so that's a good bargain. If you have an iPhone 8 or newer, or new gen ipad etc, it will charge them up a heck of a lot faster than the freebie chargers.
As for the decline of high street shops, it's quite sad if it's what you grew up with. I remember when Radio Shack / Tandy stores disappeared almost over night! Stores like that were great for building speaker projects, buying single LEDs or resistors, capacitors etc instead of packs of 50 minimum, and you can't beat tactile shopping, imo, clothes especially. I also miss the days of going into Weigh and Save and paying for 5 cornflakes with a £50 note, just for sh1ts and giggs.
I'm all for progress, but not if it's unsustainable. The roads are already clogged up with zero hour delivery people ferrying goods to and from the online mega warehouses, and it's going to get a lot worse.
Still, everything goes round in circles. People are so immersed in their own digital bubbles these days, they're forgetting what it's like to be human. Can't maintain eye contact, can't string a cohesive sentence together etc etc. All the excitement of 'the cloud' and 'AI' making 1000s of people redundant, the data up there will be hacked and or stolen, and then IT will come back 'in house' again, and people will miss fingering the apples in Tescos, so shops will come back. FFS, humans never learn and it's all more predictable than taxes and death.
As a species, we're doomed to failure. A mega virus is just around the corner to wipe half of us out to restore the balance again. Nature always wins. We're f'cked :grin:
I am of course not entirely serious, t'was just a Ricky Gervais style rant...... but there is elements of truth in it :smiley:
Pesky jones:
I think as long as there is a human in charge we will just continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. Is it not obvious that automating business’s to make more money is not sustainable? Do the people just not care as they won’t be around for the repercussions? It shows the extent of greed really.
I agree with Pudding anyway, something will happen and either wipe us out or at least initiate the cull we are overdue and it will become irrelevant.
doylebros:
Not sure what way I see that AI, meaning good or bad for Joe Public but Stephen Hawkins didn't see it's as a positive for humanity, anyway the buzz phrase is where currently a stage 4.0
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166361517301902
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version