Tipping is bad culture because we as customers should not need to directly subsidize the employees paychecks. There is too much variability in that. I’ve worked in restaurants where there is a slow day. I’ve seen servers on busy nights leave with $10 in tips because tables just refuse to tip anyone.

The restaurant should raise their prices and pay all employees a livable wage regardless of position. It’s not about being bad at math. It’s about some people not wanting to tip and the only one getting fucked over is the person on the very bottom with no control. It’s about that same person having to spend 8 hours on a slow Wednesday morning with maybe 2 customers all day just not getting the tips to feed their family. It shouldn’t matter how many customers a server gets. They should get paid for the hours worked, not the customers served

Would’ve been better if they said he had to get a rabies vaccine.

The chances of getting rabies is extremely small, but the second you say that will result in them immediately vaccinating you for the sake of safety as that window can close fairly quickly. And if you change your story they typically don’t care because people scared of vaccines change their story all the time.

A normal person cannot bite their own finger in half because the body has things in place to prevent you from overly injuring yourself like that. You would stop yourself short and just cause pain, maybe bleeding, but no long term damage.

Now someone else’s finger is a different story. Also people with certain medical disorders can ignore the feelings stopping them from biting their own finger off.

Except they literally couldn’t? Official documentation for 3.0 is 100 up and 1G down in a lab setting. As someone who’s actually tested that with an ISP it doesn’t work in the real world. 500/50 was what was achievable in most cases. Then 3.1 pushed the download with OFDM splits, but practical applications still couldn’t hit the 1G they got in lab environments. 3.0 was never advertised to hit 200 up and 3.1 hasn’t actually hit it in real world. 4.0 will get us closer to symmetrical max.

I will say that Comcast being the biggest ISP does likely mean they’ll reach true d4 first but to my knowledge they haven’t achieved it yet.

Apple has very explicitly stated in very clear terms that the health app does not share data with other apps or devices unless you give permission. And as someone who has given that permission (twice, once to give a meal tracker write permission and once to link to my doctors office’s application for read and write) it’s for every application. It’s not a “hey you need to let everyone have access or no one”. You can get fairly granular.

There’s always the possibility of lying but usually when a company goes that hard on saying the same thing is so many different ways it’s legit. They don’t commit like that unless they know they won’t get in trouble. Those kinds of statements could open them to false advertising claims if it got out they were taking your health data.

Here’s a link to their privacy document which reviewed a good bit of info: https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Health_Privacy_White_Paper_May_2023.pdf

I’m hoping that changes. People were expecting PA to swing heavy red in the mid terms and it didn’t. It was very close. I’m hoping that mean in the general we can get a strong blue turn out.

I had to give an account number for my purchases and they billed it like insurance. Then they would call me and harass me for miss using the card and demand a ton of business information that they could just ask the business for. I would need to get EIN numbers from my eye doctors and stuff to get them to believe it was a business. Then they would tell me they can’t authorize it and garnish my wages as “repayment”

Sorry for the late reply, I typically browse on Artemis and notifications are broke.

But ya, that was my point. You can have “good” insurance but whats covered is still up to them. They can deny whatever they want and get away with it because no one wants to fight back. Every one of those things are legitimate medical purchases but they don’t care because there is nothing to enforce payment. So they deny everything to keep your money and give you nothing in return.

That’s just because they’re not maxing the download. They could push a few a few more gigs download in the same package but that’s close to the cap for upload. That’s like a provider being capable of 1G down and 50 meg up offering a 50 down and up plan. Just marketing is all that is

The technology is there, but we need to free up that space. Cable companies don’t just do things to their own beat. Cable Labs is the one responsible for organizing how that bandwidth is used and removing the cable frequencies to open up more internet frequencies is literally the next step.

But you need to do entire markets at a time. We can’t just upgrade the people that move to IP tv because at a certain point they share lines with people who haven’t upgraded so that bandwidth is already used.

Everyone needs to upgrade in an area to allow the business to reallocate that bandwidth. What you described is literally what is in progress right now. It just takes time

The asymmetrical aspect of cable will be here to stay. Fiber can do it because it was build on a different foundation.

Copper cable transmits data using electric signals in various frequencies. There are a batch of frequencies reserved for phone and TV. ALL of the tv programming is constantly streamed to your lines whether you have TV or not and whether you pay for it or not. It’s encrypted and is only decrypted by your cable boxes when your provider says they can decrypt it. The phone frequencies are reserved so you can make phone calls and still max out your download.

So what about the rest of the bandwidth? Well, way back in the early days of cable it was pretty much everyone for themselves. Every company did things its own way. That’s where DOCSIS came in. It’s a platform that allows modem manufacturers to make modems that will work on any cable network that supports Docsis. And the key part is that DOCSIS is always backwards compatible. The network upgrade to 3.1 did not break the old d2 devices.

When it was developed the download was extremely more necessary than the upload. You’d be sending small single line commands on upload and receiving entire files in download. So more frequencies went to download than upload. In a lab setting 1.0 could reach 40mbps down and 10 up. That’s not what was sold because real life isn’t a lab and there’s loss over large distances. Realistically most people got 10 mb down and upload wasn’t even listed.

Whats changed? Well today those same download and upload frequencies are still used. We’ve added more around them to deliver higher speeds. But we’ve also kept the same principles that people need more download than upload. Docsis 3.1 was released in 2013. We really didn’t start stressing over upload until Covid and work from home had us on zoom calls all day.

Docsis 4.0 is technically released but requires quite a bit of overhaul to work with existing networks. We pretty much need to do away with cable tv. That’s why many ISP’s are pushing IPTv. It removes the need for all that bandwidth devoted to just TV. If everyone in a region drops traditional cable for IPTv they can easily switch to d4. D4 does increase upload but does not make it symmetrical.

Your cable company does not decide their highest tier realistically. It’s the most that medium will offer. It’s gonna be a while too for d4 to be available everywhere. Everyone would need to drop traditional cable (which is honestly a nice move regardless) and people don’t upgrade plans very often. When I worked in tech support I would frequently deal with customers complaining about slow speeds while on plans from 2002.

Seems it’s not quite dead yet which is great since Nissan also killed the leaf. But it’s also not in a great spot either it seems. That article references a lot of issues scaling the new battery tech…

The bolt is discontinued because it was taking sales away from more expensive vehicles. People don’t massive SUV’s but automakers can make more money on them so they limit options otherwise.

Your electric bill absolutely will not go up by as much as your saving on gas. It’s tough to figure out how much because it depends on your electric rate and how much you drive as well as your charging habits.

I charge my car to full every night and live in western PA, but not sure of what the rates are for electric. My bill is under $150/month though. Gas is almost $4/gallon. Before our first EV in 2018 we spent about $200 a week on gas and gas has only gotten more expensive. We spend less on Electric per month for the entire house (not just the car) than we did on a week in gas.

As for long trips, that’s an area seriously lacking. I use ABRP which is a mapping software that uses your specific model, battery charge, distance, elevation, traffic, and weather to figure out when to charge and for how long. You can also link up a OBDII sensor to get live data for more accurate route adjustments. I’d recommend giving that a look and mess with different cars to see what cars fit the routes you drive the best.

I drove to Kentucky from western PA and only had to stop three times for about 2 hours of charge total in a Kia Niro 2022 EV. But we then didn’t stop to eat at other times we would have because we stopped in places with restaurants so it wasn’t 2 hours lost.

We also did a trip to Washington DC to see the pandas before they left and made it the whole way with no charge. We only had to charge on the way home.

This is why I buy my grandmother her electronics. I can set it up so she has it ready when she gets it and doesn’t need to do anything.

Of course it’s also super easy to get her phone. Just tell her I need to do updates and then take it to another room to transfer everything.

My mom bought her an iPad 2 years ago. “I got a good deal. It was only $200” made me gag. Ya, my grandma uses apple cause it’s easiest but buying the cheapest apple product will not be a good time. She likes the iPad but it’s a 16g base iPad and the keyboard case she bought her is not a good fit. It requires a key combination to pair EVERY time since it doesn’t maintain a list of paired devices. And my grandma can only have 3 apps on her tablet before it’s full. So this year I’m getting her a new iPad with a decent chunk of storage which should last her a decade since she only emails and plays card games.

The conversation would be entirely different if they had attacked military targets and not civilians. A
Military base or political building and then suddenly they’re resistance fighters with a lot more backing.

But they attacked civilians at a festival and kidnaps multinational civilians who have no impact on the regions politics. That turned just about everyone against them.

I’ve yet to hear anyone defend hamas. I’ve heard people defending Palestine, which is where I am. But it’s more defending the innocents that aren’t involved than Hamas. I’ve heard people be anti Israel, but many of them don’t support Hamas either. And those who are ok with killing civilians because of their government are already pretty lost. I’ve also seen anti US since we’re involved and while I wish we just weren’t involved at all, or at least trying to negotiate a ceasefire, most of those people are just “USA bad, disagree without thinking” types. Overall though there has really been no defense of Hamas at all

Idk where your coming from but as someone who had $12k in an HSA and employer medical that’s bs.

I went to the eye doctor and needed glasses. Tried using my HSA. Nope. Not an approved medical expense. Tried paying a copay at the er. Nope not an approved medical expense. Wife got a kidney stone removed via surgery. Wanted to pay coinsurance. Nope not an approved medical expense. I needed a cpap for my sleep apnea. Nope not an approved medical expense. Year rolled over and all that money disappeared. I asked where it went and was told I either used it or lost it. So I got rid of it. Fucking garbage.

As for the employer coverage, we had a zero dollar deductible plan. My wife gave birth last year. Ambulance ride from her work? Nope, not necessary. All the gyno visits? Nope, not necessary. The ER visit when she slipped and fell at 6 months? Nope, not necessary. The 2 week hospital stay when she went preeclamptic? Nope, not necessary. The delivery? Nope, not necessary. The NICU stay for our premature daughter? Nope, not necessary.

I payed $1700 per PAY for my health insurance and they didn’t cover a cent from our entire family last year. We racked up over $70k in medical debt. Our MOOP was $5k/$10k and they said none of it applied.

Hospital sent it to collections because we couldn’t fit their minimum payment of $9k/mth (fuck duke lifepoint but this is an insurance rant). We complained to the pa board of health insurance and were advised to get a lawyer but no lawyer would take it. They said it would be years to get anything back, let alone the full amount.

We ended up proving that my employer doesn’t offer comprehensive insurance. The main component is covering pre and post natal care which they claim to, but they deny every time. So now we have insurance through penni for $60/mth with government help. Oh and we went through bankruptcy to get rid of the collections debt.

Fuck Cigna, fuck duke lifepoint, fuck insurance, fuck for profit healthcare, fuck the American healthcare system.

As an American I can say that the overwhelming majority of people don’t have an interest in this specific event. Yes, there are those that support one side or the other. Yes there are some protests. But most people simply don’t care.

What most people want is for the US to stay out of the Middle East. It feels like we just left. It was one of the first things to happen during the Biden administration. It’s been less than 4 years. Now we’re sending troops back over. Sure, it’s just medical support, for now. But it just feels like we’re getting back into the war we just left.

It’s not the same war. It’s an entirely different war on every aspect. But with our coverage and everything it feels like it’s a continuation of the same conflict. Americans don’t want involved. And with ties to Israel the easiest way to keep out of it is to broker peace between both countries.

Unfortunately Americans rarely get what they want

The whole picture is AI. Look at the arm for the girl on the right

It’s on the list. We just got carpet laid downstairs and still need 2 more rooms done, we got a new furnace/ac, and are now installing interior stairs. It’s a big project overall cause we’re converting a duplex to a single family home. But eventually new locks will be put on.