afisher

Today's head scratcher comes from Delta Dental, the well-known dental insurance provider, encouraging us to use 'teledentistry'. Now I'm a big supporter of telemedicine and I understand well how that works - you call the doctor, describe your …

Quite so. The problem with the Internet is folks generally don't know when you've made a joke. As The New Yorker magazine prophesied way back in 1993, on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog... 😉

Today, Cortana decided to help me manage my time better. Admittedly I'm not the best time manager in the world, but scheduling my day for me seems a bit much. Pretty soon it will be assigning my sleep period, my eating period, my working period and …

Are you saying a manly biker dude like you is scared of COVID-19? As it happens, we're flying to Missouri on Friday for our annual visit to the family farm in central Illinois.

According to the New York Times, we’re becoming a cashless society: > The pandemic is propelling a shift toward a cashless society in ways that no other single event has. Experts say that’s not necessarily a good …

It looks like the home delivery service consolidation continues with Uber announcing they are buying Postmates for $2.6B. https://www.pymnts.com/news/partnerships-acquisitions/2020/uber-closes-on-2-6b-deal-to-buy-postmates/ Uber previously tried …

Funeral home consolidation I grew up in the funeral business, literally in family funeral homes. My dad was a funeral director, the first and last in our family in that occupation. As you say, it's a father to son business and neither my brother …

The waste disposal company is RTS and they focus on commercial customers such as technology companies that want certification their waste is recycled appropriately. https://www.rts.com/ They contract out the actual waste pickup to existing …

A thought crossed my mind the other day as I was contemplating investing in a software-leveraged trash hauling company.  Pardon me, waste disposal company. Okay, you can stop laughing now! I’m an active broad-spectrum angel investor and invest in …

Personally I'm looking for additional insight into topics that interest me, usually investing and business topics. > “A man's life in these parts often depends on a mere scrap of information.” – Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars > “You must …

This from Skytech, maker of gas fireplace systems... Always good advice to not install something if you can't read or understand the instructions!

Startups, Humor, Weird News, Science News, Elon Musk

What, me worry?

The FDIC is now permitting banks to invest in illiquid venture capital funds. Apparently banks don't need that extra liquidity since the Federal Reserve will ensure those pesky bank runs are a thing of the past. That's so 2008! > The FDIC’s …

As I speculated, Pi stops accumulating / mining when your 24 hour period expires. Tapping the button restarts the accumulation, so presumably if you're offline, sick or in jail for a few days, tapping will restart the process.

As far as I can remember, I’ve never enabled Microsoft Cortana nor engaged with it in any way.  But out of the blue this morning it sends me the email below that, among other things, says I have a task I need to take care of. This particular …

Code Project for software news. Their daily email newsletter is great and adds a bit of snarky commentary . https://www.codeproject.com/

Personally, I enjoy exploring new things like this, just to see how they work - I'm an experiential learner. For example, I bought some Bitcoin and Ether a half-dozen years ago just to see what it was all about, which helped me develop some very …

An article in ArsTechnica revealed that 54 iOS apps read your clipboard data for no apparent reason. Not the sort of creepy invasion-of-privacy behavior I would expect from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal! Here's the list: > App …

One the first question... I couldn't find any additional information about the required daily check in on their website. So I'll check in for the first few days and then try delaying my check ins to see what happens. That won't be too hard since my …

On the first question, I don't know. I'll find out the next time I'm in jail. On the second question, you have to tap a button on the app, so I'm not sure how you'd do that without opening the app and tapping it. Perhaps the button changes from …

I received this email today from someone I know introducing me to Pi Network, a cryptocurrency experiment started by three Stanford graduates. As the email points out, you download their app, sign up for free and the referrer gets a bonus if you …

I’ve pondered for some time why the Federal Reserve has very publicly committed to a 2% annual inflation rate.  Why not 3% or 5%, or more importantly, 0%?  Wouldn’t the ideal inflation rate be zero with prices overall neither increasing nor …

Here’s an alternate explanation from a good friend of mine, a hedge fund manager and astute Fed watcher… > I would add a few thoughts.   I think another overall problem is that capital is trapped in the debt system.   The Fed can go buy corporate …

This from Fisher Investments (no relation): > Both recent and longer-running trends may also factor in the surge of new accounts. Major online brokers started offering commission-free trades late last year, perhaps enticing some new participants. …