I had an out of network emergency room visit with a kidney stone once while covered by a $1,000/month UHC platinum plan. When the bills arrived I stupidly paid them thinking it’d be easier to just file the claim for reimbursement from UHC on my own. After two years of
submitting forms, exchanging letters, and hours of phone calls, I just gave up. It’s hard for me to consider their business as anything but an outright scam.
When I moved to the US somebody told me to hold onto money as long as possible when it comes to health care.. Once they have it, they won’t give it back.
I get mild carpal tunnel symptoms when working straight on my Macbook, so I bought a Kinesis Freestyle Pro. The split and tenting are great and do the trick for my wrists but it's got a different layout than the MacBook. And a lot more keys than I need. It's large and a hassle to pack up and take with me.
Why does no one build a split keyboard that has the exact same layout as a MacBook? I feel like that would be my holy grail. I don't even care about mechanical switches (I know, blasphemy!)
The UHK (ultimate hacking keyboard) comes pretty close. I can vouch for its high quality, and it's about as portable as you can get for that many keys without switching to a slim profile like in the OP
I have a good friend who is a hygienist for two dentists. One is completely inept and the other an outright scammer.
The inept guy generates business by doing such a poor job with fillings that crowns and root canals are always eventually needed. And he does such a poor job with those that bridges and implants are then needed. He's a master bullshitter and most patients trust him (a few catch on, and a few have sued). My friend keeps records for the lawsuits, covers her own butt, and discreetly encourages some patients to go elsewhere.
The fraudster puts everyone on "perio" schedules (cleanings every 3 months instead of 6) whether they need it or not. And also bills insurance for treatment he didn't do. His actual dental skills are decent, however.
We laypeople assume we can trust these "experts" with degrees and white coats when we really have no clue if what they're doing is legit.
Next time you get your teeth cleaned, ask the hygienist if they themselves (or their family -- kids, parents) use the dentist you're about to see. My friends says that this is the question with the most valuable answer. She wouldn't let either guy within 100 miles of her teeth or her kids' and will happily tell people where she goes if they ask.
This is assuming the hygienist isn't crooked too. In the US, hygienists are typically paid hourly but with "production" bonuses, meaning they get a cut of the dentists fees for treatment beyond cleaning. So beware that they're incentivized to do more treatment than necessary too. In my friend's case, the bonuses are a small %, so it's not a huge incentive.
She stays because they pay well, give her the hours she needs as a single mom, and likes her co-workers. But the patient care and outcomes do take moral toll on her.
Damn. I haven’t read much of The Athletic (don’t have that subscription level) but I’ve enjoyed NYT sports coverage for forever.
They always seemed to have interesting, subtle, and original takes on whatever they were covering. More “literary” than your typical ESPN or other major network coverage.
as someone who moved from dc to nyc in the 90s, i found the nyt sports page to be terrible relative to the wapo. one can compare how many national sports reporter/commentators (or even who have become bigger names in harder news) have come out of the wapo sports dept vs the nyt.
Love the service and it's been rock solid for over a decade for me.
I do understand the concern with the lack communication with this outage, however. It's a bit of an organizational/leadership red flag when a crucial service business like this doesn't communicate with its customers when things go south.
Yes. While it’s less common, I’ve seen orgs struggle because they didn’t have enough imagination.
Every feature is done quick’n’dirty and eventually you have people whose full time job is to respond to customer complaints and fix data straight in the production database.
No, it’s bad business because it doesn’t scale. Software is lucrative because you make it once and sell it to thousands of customers. If you’re making every customer their own bespoke thing, you’ll spend all your time for little return.
“Billed to the customer” means you’re charging the customer by the hour / project. You can get plenty of return selling bespoke things this way. Accenture is a $200 billion company.
That’s called Professional Services. Professional Services assemble a solution for a customer from a variety of components and maybe build some glue or the equivalent of a dashboard. This is not the same as having a ton of “if” statements in code to handle customer X vs customer Y.
The secret, as a software vendor, is to generalise these bespoke customer requests so you can sell the solution to all your customers (and get more customers!). If you are really cheeky, you can even get that customer to help fund the development that will make your business more money (hey, it’s win-win). You need to ruthlessly follow this approach though, as the rot of bespoke code will quickly become an insurmountable quality nightmare that can sink your business.
But pretty creative game. Thanks for sharing!