WTF Bites

@dkf has explained it in terms of insurers already, and the situation is even clearer for doctors. You may have a bad doctors-per-capita ratio but alleging doctors had anything like a monopoly (and most importantly, that they had attained that monopoly by forcing competition out of business with unfair practices) is absurd. You could say that about pharmaceutical companies but the article doesn't even touch on those.

she obviously ("They know that 9 out of 10, or more, of the people employed in "health care" never provide a single second of care to a single person during their entire career. They are all overhead, [...]") thinks doctors should spend their time looking for files, making appointments and doing insurance paperwork

Nice straw man you got there.

Please explain your reading of "They are all overhead".

And what's the ratio of productive people to non-productive people in other industries that cater to individuals?

You tell me. I don't even know what you mean by "productive" vs. "non-productive" people. If you had read that link I provided you'd have seen a company that helps doctors maximize their profits advise clients that (and why) hiring administrative staff may be the key to earning more money. So which part of the administrative staff is productive anyway -- are they "all overhead"?

There is a grain of truth in the complaints about ineffectiveness, he just got the reasons backward: that doctors in the US actually need more administrative staff than say the Canadians is not due to lack of competition but too much of it. The Canadians just have much simpler insurance paperwork while in the US every insurance has its own plans and exceptions and extras and forms and whatnot.

And what percentage of GDP does the medical industry take from the U.S. economy, vs. what it was ten-twenty-thirty years ago?

I read it's about 20%. I'm not saying you don't have a problem there, I just wonder how on earth one would consider organizing healthcare as a business that, by definition, is there to make a profit, and then be surprised and outraged when said business is maximizing its profits where it can

Zecc

@dkf said in WTF Bites:

I still want to know where all that money going into the heath sector winds up

Definition of HEATH

a tract of wasteland… See the full definition

Zecc

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

It's an absolute perversion of all foods involved, but damn would it be delicious.

Username checks out.

Zecc

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

It's an absolute perversion of all foods involved, but damn would it be delicious.

I see "crab"sticks in there. Yuck.

dkf

@cvi said in WTF Bites:

(Not that academic courses at universities are much better. But that's a rant for a different day.)

Updating courses is hard, especially given that you've not much time to do it because of all the other stuff you have to deal with. You can't just hole up for a few months and just work on the course update (unless you're lucky enough to get a sabbatical, but those are usually reserved for doing research and actually advancing your career) because you've got to deal with students, other faculty, masses of bullshit meetings, trying to get some research done, …

Makes me glad I'm not an academic.

dkf

@zecc said in WTF Bites:

@dkf said in WTF Bites:

I still want to know where all that money going into the heath sector winds up

Definition of HEATH

a tract of wasteland… See the full definition

Sometims ither my kyboard or my fingrs drops a etter. I usually manage to spot these errrs before posting.

Zecc

@dkf Had you told me that was an intentional pun, I might have believed you.

pie_flavor

@dkf Sounds laugh as yep.

cvi

@dkf said in WTF Bites:

Updating courses is hard, especially given that you've not much time to do it because of all the other stuff you have to deal with.

I know, I've done that a few times now. The stuff that changes is very practical, so if you want to go there, that means updating labs. Updating labs takes tons of time. Moreso than updating the relevant parts of the lecture (they theory doesn't change, mostly).

But ... I feel a certain obligation to teach the students something that's at least reasonably up to date. Like, if you have labs that advertise practical OpenGL stuff, and you're not doing shaders in 2018, you're not teaching anything useful. Likewise, if you teach people in 2018 to submit geometry with glVertexNf() & co, you're also not doing anything useful.

It's not like these things are completely arbitrary either (only somewhat). For instance, using buffer objects is a direct consequence of the fact that GPUs these days have fast on-card VRAM.

(Then there are a lot of people using the excuse that the old ways are easier to understand. I mostly think that's a bullshit excuse -- the old ways are easier to understand if you know them already.)

Benjamin Hall

@cvi And teaching them things that are that out of date is worse than useless. It teaches them bad habits, which are then reinforced.

HardwareGeek

@cvi said in WTF Bites:

(Then there are a lot of people using the excuse that the old ways are easier to understand. I mostly think that's a bullshit excuse -- the old ways are easier to understand if you know them already.)

There is something to be said for teaching the old ways so the students have some understanding of what the new ways are doing behind the scenes, just like there is value to teaching how differentiation and integration are derived from limits of delta and epsilon in calculus. But of course don't just teach the old ways; most of the emphasis should be on the current best-practices.

One could probably argue either way whether the low-level operations should be an introduction to the high-level operations, or the low-level implementation of the high-level operations should be considered advanced material, but there is value in learning both. Of course, if the old ways are not low-level operations but obsolete high-level operations, then they don't really have value and should not be taught.

anonymous234

Scenario: the exit to a subway station, right after the ticket gates and one way exit doors. The only way, other than buying a new ticket and going back in, is up through some stairs. An old couple just exited those gates.

Woman: it's that way [points up stairs]
Man: [confused look]
Woman: up the stairs
Man: we should ask
[they head back to find an employee]

sockpuppet7

@hardwaregeek said in WTF Bites:

@cvi said in WTF Bites:

(Then there are a lot of people using the excuse that the old ways are easier to understand. I mostly think that's a bullshit excuse -- the old ways are easier to understand if you know them already.)

There is something to be said for teaching the old ways so the students have some understanding of what the new ways are doing behind the scenes, just like there is value to teaching how differentiation and integration are derived from limits of delta and epsilon in calculus. But of course don't just teach the old ways; most of the emphasis should be on the current best-practices.

One could probably argue either way whether the low-level operations should be an introduction to the high-level operations, or the low-level implementation of the high-level operations should be considered advanced material, but there is value in learning both. Of course, if the old ways are not low-level operations but obsolete high-level operations, then they don't really have value and should not be taught.

what if they are medium-level of obsolete low level operations?

kt_

@lolwhat said in WTF Bites:

@LaoC

Her numbers are made up

He isn't a "she."

she doesn't know what a "monopoly" as per her precious 15 USC Chapter 1 is

So what is it?

she obviously ("They know that 9 out of 10, or more, of the people employed in "health care" never provide a single second of care to a single person during their entire career. They are all overhead, [...]") thinks doctors should spend their time looking for files, making appointments and doing insurance paperwork

Nice straw man you got there. And what's the ratio of productive people to non-productive people in other industries that cater to individuals? And what percentage of GDP does the medical industry take from the U.S. economy, vs. what it was ten-twenty-thirty years ago?

Fuck off from WTF Bites to the garage with that shit.

lolwhat

@kt_ said in WTF Bites:

Fuck off from WTF Bites to the garage with that shit.

@boomzilla Could we get a ruling on whether "that shit" should be Jeffed?

TimeBandit

@lolwhat said in WTF Bites:

@boomzilla Could we get a ruling on whether "that shit" should be Jeffed?

cvi

@hardwaregeek said in WTF Bites:

Of course, if the old ways are not low-level operations but obsolete high-level operations, then they don't really have value and should not be taught.

In this case, I was referring specifically to obsolete stuff. It's not really a difference in high- vs. low-level here (IMO), but rather different interfaces/APIs. Like, submitting vertex attributes one-by-one is obsolete these days, because the overhead of submitting them is much much larger than the rendering they trigger (under typical conditions). As a consequence, the API to do so is deprecated. I'd argue that submitting each thing separately isn't more low-level than the buffer API, especially because there are a lot of quirks (like, attributes are automatically duplicated if you don't change them). Then you have stuff like provoking vertices and attribute zero / the position being magically very different from the other attributes.

topspin

Firefox 58.0.2 on Mac rendering news website.
See that little bit of smudge on the second line? I zoomed in for you.

Apparently, Firefox takes an "ff" ligature (resulting from either kerning or an actual ligature glyph), renders it, then splits up the result and does hyphenation afterwards. So parts of the first "f" will actually be rendered on the second line.

That's impressive as it must take real work to get this wrong.

kt_

@lolwhat said in WTF Bites:

@kt_ said in WTF Bites:

Fuck off from WTF Bites to the garage with that shit.

@boomzilla Could we get a ruling on whether "that shit" should be Jeffed?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bothered by a few posts, but this is some real garage material and well, it will probably end up in flames.

pie_flavor

I had my first experience with online banking today. The site looks like shit, but who cares as long as it works, right? Well, about that.
First is the one that I'm sure you guys are expecting. Password field: 8-32 characters, and the only acceptable characters are Latin letters/numerals (including accented letters! wow), and `"-',#@:?!()$/.. This is validated via regex. At least quotes aren't banned, so they must be doing something right. But spaces are totally banned. Raisins.
Second is the fact that it doesn't work. I've yet to figure out why, but looks like I'm calling them again.
Third is this miracle of technology.
https://i.imgur.com/LmS80HX.png
That's not a Google captcha embed. Or anyone else's. Or a home-grown one.
That is <input type="checkbox">.
I have to assume that it was manglement's decision, because if it was the developer's then that's even worse.
Sigh.

ben_lubar

Tonight's BREAKING NEWS STORIES:

Civil asset forfeiture is bad.
Raw water is dangerous.
If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.
There are clouds outside.

HARD HITTING, RELEVANT JOURNALISM

Tsaukpaetra

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Oh yeah, scammers have been spoofing my cell number. Really annoying...

cvi

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Future-you, who went through a lot of trouble to invent time-travel (or, at least, call-back-through-time) technology to save you a few bucks with a better interest rate, is going to be really annoyed at current-you for thinking that future-you is a scammer.

pie_flavor

@tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Oh yeah, scammers have been spoofing my cell number. Really annoying...

I've never understood why the fuck they even do that. Do they think it makes you more likely to pick up? Because if anything it just makes you think it's a glitch and you should hang it up.
Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

ben_lubar

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

@tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Oh yeah, scammers have been spoofing my cell number. Really annoying...

I've never understood why the fuck they even do that. Do they think it makes you more likely to pick up? Because if anything it just makes you think it's a glitch and you should hang it up.
Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

Why don't phone companies use the same protections as my cheap, terrible router that I'm leasing from a phone company?

Namely, if another network says "please send this message claiming to be from Ben Lubar to Ben Lubar" the response should just be "no".

sloosecannon

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

@tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Oh yeah, scammers have been spoofing my cell number. Really annoying...

I've never understood why the fuck they even do that. Do they think it makes you more likely to pick up? Because if anything it just makes you think it's a glitch and you should hang it up.
Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

Because people are stupid, and go "uuuh. Was that the phone number of that one friend? Maybe... It looks like mine... I should pick up just in case"

Because at one point in time, those numbers had some relation to where the phone number was from, kinda.

topspin

@ben_lubar Better question, why is call number spoofing even a thing. Every time someone tries to call with a number that's not theirs, the phone company should say "no".

JBert

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

Third is this miracle of technology.
https://i.imgur.com/LmS80HX.png
That's not a Google captcha embed. Or anyone else's. Or a home-grown one.
That is <input type="checkbox">.
I have to assume that it was manglement's decision, because if it was the developer's then that's even worse.
Sigh.

You kid, but I think that the specification sent to the contractor included a line "Must include the I'm not a robot check" without comment.

The developer then just said "yes, yes, I understand, yes" and did the needful.

Then the QA contractor checked the spec, and well, it's obviously there so no comment necessary.

Then the IT department only installed this last week because accounting didn't pay the contractors who in turn held the deployables as ransom, and then security made a fuss because it needed to be sent back for a round of code obfuscation.

Then the ~~test user panel~~ CEO's wife had a look, and by gosh, she doesn't look anywhere like a robot so no comment there, and it was in production anyway.

lolwhat

@sloosecannon said in WTF Bites:

Because people are stupid, and go "uuuh. Was that the phone number of that one friend? Maybe... It looks like mine... I should pick up just in case"

One better: When getting a plan with multiple lines at once - say, a family plan - those lines tend to be assigned numbers that are numerically close to each other.

anonymous234

@pie_flavor I've seen lots of non-captchas before. Usually slightly more elaborate than a single checkbox, but still trivially bypassable by a script.

The thing is while most are probably the result of cargo cultism, they could also be intentional. Anything that requires an extra line of code will already filter 99% of spambots, and then you can just hope nobody cares enough about your site to write a specific one. The traditional way is to hide a checkbox with CSS and assume any submissions that have that box checked are stupid bots.

Of course, bots check all boxes by default, so that bank is still doing it the wrong way.

anonymous234

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

Why don't phone companies use the same protections as my cheap, terrible router that I'm leasing from a phone company?
Namely, if another network says "please send this message claiming to be from Ben Lubar to Ben Lubar" the response should just be "no".

Because they're incompetent and don't give a shit. But I think you already knew the answer, or you wouldn't be in this site.

heterodox

@topspin said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar Better question, why is call number spoofing even a thing. Every time someone tries to call with a number that's not theirs, the phone company should say "no".

AIUI, because a. It's impossible to tell if it's "their" number. It's a switched network and authentication is incredibly hard on a system that is not even thousands of PBXes anymore, but millions of VoIP endpoints and users.

b. PBX operators are supposed to be able to change outgoing call details (e.g. display the switchboard number instead of an individual agent's number). I'll grant you that the switchboard number usually belongs to them too, but when you consider multiple physical sites may be involved at the enterprise level, it gets complicated.

POTS is much like the Internet, it wasn't designed with security in mind, so now it's hard to add it without breaking all the things.

heterodox

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

I've never understood why the fuck they even do that. Do they think it makes you more likely to pick up? Because if anything it just makes you think it's a glitch and you should hang it up.
Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

Same, I've never seen my own phone number (either because they're not spoofing it or because it gets filtered before it gets to me) but I have seen the same first six digits. In my block log, I should say, as I have my own area code blocked. :>

(I grew up in a shitty area, I and everyone else I know has moved away from there, all the calls from that area code for a year were either spam or intellectually challenged people with wrong numbers, so fuck it.)

dkf

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

Tonight's BREAKING NEWS STORIES:

Civil asset forfeiture is bad.

Raw water is dangerous.

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

There are clouds outside.

HARD HITTING, RELEVANT JOURNALISM

FYI, bears are Catholic in the woods too.

dkf

@anonymous234 said in WTF Bites:

The traditional way is to hide a checkbox with CSS and assume any submissions that have that box checked are stupid bots.

It's idiotic, but according to some people I know who run a wiki, it works really quite well. As does requiring the user to do a simple sum or other such trivial puzzle.

The aim isn't to stop all attacks. The aim is to reduce the rate to a level that human moderators () can keep up with while still having a life.

bb36e

@topspin said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar Better question, why is call number spoofing even a thing. Every time someone tries to call with a number that's not theirs, the phone company should say "no".

Many companies might allow it, but these people will always be able to find the right ones

anonymous234

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

HARD HITTING, RELEVANT JOURNALISM

Well, you can't expect news channels to only report news when there's news. That would be absurd.

Tsaukpaetra

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

@tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

@ben_lubar said in WTF Bites:

If you get a call from your own phone number that says you can get a better credit card interest rate, it's probably a scam.

Oh yeah, scammers have been spoofing my cell number. Really annoying...

I've never understood why the fuck they even do that. Do they think it makes you more likely to pick up? Because if anything it just makes you think it's a glitch and you should hang it up.
Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

Extrapolating, but I think the theory is that you don't know your own number and it might be someone in your area trying to get a hold of you?

After all, everyone knows not to trust those 888 numbers, but if it's your own area code Shirley that's different?

dcon

@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:

Mine have been using the same first six digits, but changing the last four. Fuck knows why.

Doesn't matter. No one answers in the first 10 seconds anyways. Or they hang up.
Morbid curiosity sometimes...
: "Hello?"
: <silence/>
: <silence/>
: <click/>
: How are they going to scam me if they keep hanging up?...

Ok, when I see that on caller id, I more often lift the phone off the hook and put it right back...

dcon

@anonymous234 said in WTF Bites:

Of course, bots check all boxes by default, so that bank is still doing it the wrong way.

Obviously that checkbox should be
 I am a robot.

pie_flavor

HardwareGeek

@pie_flavor My son glanced at my screen and said, "That's the MLK Library."

pie_flavor

@hardwaregeek said in WTF Bites:

@pie_flavor My son glanced at my screen and said, "That's the MLK Library."

Correct! Does he go to SJSU too?
And I was attempting to draw attention to the backslash quotes.

HardwareGeek

@pie_flavor No, he's currently going to one of the local Community Colleges. And he said it's been a few years since he was last at MLK, but he remembers some of the "artwork" there.