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_jal commented on Majority of debtors to US hospitals now people with health insurance   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/_dp9d
wing-_-nuts · 2 years ago
One thing my mom has been dealing with recently is where the insurance EOB and the bill differs substantially. My mom called the hospital to ask for an explanation and poof the bill is magically lowered by a several hundred dollars.

How the heck is this not criminal fraud? Why are people allowed to simply bill whatever they feel like it, and why is my mother getting 'balance billed' for random amounts? They're still doing all this dirty underhanded stuff and when they get called out on it, it's 'Oopsie! Our mistake' when they know most people they do this to will naively pay it

_jal · 2 years ago
Yeah, they play this game enough that I simply question fucking everything. They will explain every single line item in a way that I can map back to a timeline, or they will take it off.

This has to be done in person, where they can't be, uh, accidentally disconnected, but I've found the rate-of-return on that time hard to beat. They discover all sorts of "mistakes" when you're taking up their billing specialists' time.

It is a bit like haggling over your car price after you already bought it; the main thing to get over is the social discomfort of being a pain in the ass, so they can't use that against you.

_jal commented on Timeline to remove DSA support in OpenSSH   lists.mindrot.org/piperma... · Posted by u/throw0101d
rwmj · 2 years ago
Don't remove it, add a "--yes-I-really-want-to-use-DSA" option. We sometimes have to connect to older systems that use insecure keys, and no those systems cannot be fixed (old network hardware, doing V2V conversions from old RHEL, etc)
_jal · 2 years ago
Worse that old network gear is technically incompetent business partners.

Speaking in very general terms, let's just say that we've had to maintain an extremely locked down machine running a version of sshd from about a decade ago hosted in its own DMZ, all for one particular partner. It is monitored for everything we can think of, and I still find myself stressing about possible ways someone could escape from that machine - I'm mostly surprised we haven't been attacked through them yet.

Their problem is they bought proprietary software that's no longer supported, and look at it as a one-time purchase rather than a forward commitment. Our problem is the nontechnical relationship is important and we can't cut them off.

_jal commented on Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/MurizS
philwelch · 2 years ago
The loss of ad revenue isn’t a consequence of downtime or losing staff, and I wouldn’t agree they’ve had “a lot” of downtime. Most of the drop in ad revenue is a consequence of content management decisions that seem to be a matter of principle for the company’s new owner.

It’s strange to see hiring as an indication that a company is doing poorly; regardless, obviously Twitter is in a position where they’ve needed to eliminate much of their headcount and replace much of the rest.

_jal · 2 years ago
> The loss of ad revenue isn’t a consequence of downtime or losing staff

Firing the Trust and Safety team had a huge impact on advertising - that's why big brands find Xitter so toxic.

It is certainly also true that Musk's... emanations haven't helped relations with advertisers, but it is the lack of moderation that freaks them out, and also by-the-by chased off a noticeable fraction of the user base.

And now there's the bots:

https://www.threads.net/search?q=Twitter&serp_type=tags&tag_...

_jal commented on Ibogaine banishes PTSD, small study finds   nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/gmays
sandworm101 · 2 years ago
Fyi, while PTSD is commonly associated with soldiers and the experiances of war, it is far more common in many civilian trades. Top of the list: train drivers. Also, certain types of doctors such as pediatric oncologists. But we never hear about PTSD treatment studies involving anyone other than vets.
_jal · 2 years ago
There's a reason for that. If civilian PTSD were more widely acknowledged, insurance would be paying out more and people would want employers to do something about high-stress jobs.

> Top of the list: train drivers.

I rather suspect front-line in Trust and Safety at any major social media outfit is up there, too.

_jal commented on Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/MurizS
thot_experiment · 2 years ago
Sell your soul. You have to be capable of looking at people and erasing their humanity/removing your empathy.
_jal · 2 years ago
Necessary but not sufficient.

Also, don't confuse empathy and sympathy - you need to extinguish the latter, but the former is incredibly important to your ability to play suckers.

_jal commented on Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/MurizS
cableshaft · 2 years ago
Some execs have already jumped ship. From the article:

"In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit."

_jal · 2 years ago
_jal commented on X Bans and Then Unbans Journalists and Podcasters in Latest Free Speech Massacre   gizmodo.com/elon-musk-x-t... · Posted by u/ceejayoz
consumer451 · 2 years ago
I have a related question. What are some plausible explanations as to why community notes still exist?

The most charitable explanation is that Musk believes in the concept, even though it is often used against him and his online friends.

A less charitable explanation would be that some regulation requires it. Maybe the consent decree?

Would anyone who is better informed on the matter care to share an opinion?

_jal · 2 years ago
That was his excuse for eviscerating (not paying for) T&S. Since that decision cannot have been wrong, community notes must be working as intended.
_jal commented on Is my plane a 737 MAX?   ismyplanea737max.com/... · Posted by u/jacksoncheek
JumpCrisscross · 2 years ago
> people want to vote with their feet, and inflict damage to Boeing for abhorrent behavior

People want to express outrage. That’s understandable.

Most flight revenue is from frequent travellers, and they understand the business enough to know histrionics won’t change Boeing’s incumbency. A couple people who fly twice a year swapping airlines isn’t going to move the needle. And I doubt a material fraction of them are likely voters who would bother their electeds about this.

_jal · 2 years ago
> their histrionics won’t change Boeing’s incumbency

You seem to entirely miss the possibility that this has nothing to do with "punishing" anyone, and that people simply don't want to stress out about dying during their flight.

You can call it irrational if you like, that feeling of superiority and a few bucks will get you a snack. The brain worm is there, I know I'll be thinking about it next time I book tickets.

u/_jal

KarmaCake day13880May 28, 2015
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