pitaa

Art Bell was one of a kind. Out there, but a mostly harmless lovable breed of crazy.

> The customers will tell Amazon they never received the items. Amazon will replace them free.

Why does this remind me of that old Firefly episode where they steal the medicine from the Alliance hospital. They justify that "the Alliance will have it replaced by the end of the day".

I still see getting your viewers over to patreon being the most difficult part. No matter how many times you plug a patreon in your YouTube videos, only a small percent of viewers are going to follow the link.

I can't wait for more cheap movies while they burn through more venture capital!

> Perhaps for people who don't have a "hack the world!" mindset, it does appear as genius I suppose.

I think this is it. I've realized that as an engineer, I look at the local environment around me as a construct. If I don't like something or think it can be improved, I can redesign it better. Hell, I once got the traffic markings on an entire street changed by sending a single email to the right person pointing out something that annoyed me whenever I drove through that area.

I've realized that not everyone has this mindset though. So many people write things off as "just the way it is" without considering that they can be changed. Sure, YMMV. As an average Joe, I really don't have much power to change the tax code. But I do have a lot of control over my local environment.

I'm reminded of When I was teaching, I would occasionally hear students grumbling about the way their homework was being graded. But with enough time, you'll hear students grumbling about nearly everything, so I never paid it too much attention. I'd just check that the grader had followed the rubric, and then either make a grade correction if needed, or just tell the student that it had been graded accurately. After several years, I got a long-winded email from a student expressing their dissatisfaction with the way their assignments were being graded. But instead of solely complaining, this student explained _why_ they were upset and politely requested that I consider changing my rubric. After some discussion, I did just that. I didn't concede all their "demands", but I did make changes that made the students happy.

This was a student that understood that the class policies were a construct, and that a sincere discussion can be sufficient to incite change.

> the belt is industrial nylon (not plastic)

Last I checked, nylon was still a thermoplastic.

> It would imply that lifting the wheel after you've stopped releases that amount of energy (it seems to do so).

Notice, however, that the springs are actually missing when they show this in the video! Couple that with the fact that he rotates the wheel by hand to a certain position before setting it down, and its evident that the rotation we see is just due to a very imbalanced wheel.

I concur, and this smells of bullshit. Unfortunately they don't show inside their magic box, so I can't see whats happening on the inside. I did notice that the springs were completely missing on one of their demos in the video though!

So I've had some limited involvement university fee structures and their health clinics. I actually had a conversation with the director of one about these plans. He explained:

* The university already has the clinic that is funded by student fees and a bit from the university general fund

* Uninsured students are seen for free and just pay for supplies used ($10 for a lab test, $5 for an xray, etc)

* They wave all copays for students with outside insurance

* For students on the student insurance plan, they are expected to use the clinic for general/minor needs. In these cases, the university agrees to eat the cost and not bill the insurer.

So all the insurance company is paying is major medical expenses for services not rendered by the school. Its just like large companies that have an on site clinic to save on their premiums.

So technically, it does end up costing the school a bit more if students buy the insurance through them because the school pays for all the supplies that they would normally be reimbursed for. If more student use the clinic, the university will end up having to expend their budget. But in comparison to how much money the university already bleeds, the clinic is a pretty minor cost. I think the whole clinic costs less to run than they pay their athletic director.

One interesting side note was regarding students that have outside insurance. Many times, they don't even bother billing the insurance if its just an office visit. Because medical billing is such a mess, they realized that it was actually costing them money to pay someone to deal with it when the insurance will only pay them ~$40 anyway. So they'll only bother if there are additional procedures and they expect a reimbursement >$100.

Plus, by having a bug bounty program, it indicates that they're going to be reasonable and accepting of outside bug reports. In the absence of such a program, one can't be sure that a bug report isn't going to result in angry phone calls from tech-illiterate people accusing you of hacking them.

I recently found a compromised server on a university's network. I wasn't going to cold call them to report it because I had no idea how Betty answering the phones would react. Instead, I sent it to an IT contact that I knew personally. I knew that he didn't have anything at all to do with this, but that he would know who to get it to.

I don't remember where I first heard it, but I've always remembered the adage that if someone personally announces their resignation, it was likely their idea. If the company announces their resignation, they were likely forced out.

Yes, NCEES (the body that administers the Engineering licensing exams nationwide in the US) is discontinuing their Software Engineering exam next year because only ~80 people have taken it since it was created in 2013.

I think the biggest problem they had was that despite having the exam, not many states actually issue Professional Engineer licenses in the Software Engineering discipline. Because of this, I don't see why anyone (in those states) would bother taking the exam if they can't actually get a license and use the title "Professional Engineer".

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I've had the same thing happen multiple times, also at a certain "major nationwide pharmacy." Interestingly, the smaller/more local pharmacies have never done this.