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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • It’s just how HR does stuff in the US. Most applications have to go through an automated system for filtering before reaching a person, unless it’s a pretty small company. That system usually requires very specific criteria to get through. Like I remember applying for a seasonal job at Target, around the end of 2010 when I was laid of, and having to fill out a really detailed application online and take a bunch of personality tests. Turns out I scored too high on leadership and had too much professional experience to be a stock person/cashier, so I was rejected before it was sent to the store manager.

    It’s not an accident or unintended consequence kind of thing either. It’s how they can have a job position “open” and have hundreds of applications, but still be understaffed and thus force workers to work what should be extra people’s jobs for no extra pay. It’s just how the mega-corp culture is in the US for the most part.

    As for the software and some other very technical industries, it’s a similar cultural thing, but on top of that, most recruiters are not technically literate and so don’t know how to judge a technical person, but are made to filter applications before passing then on. My last job had a position open the entire 10 years I worked there and there were no interviews at the hiring manager or team level in all that time. It was an analyst position and I would have hired basically anyone who had the one bit of specialized knowledge if it was up to me. But I did the job of two people the whole 10 years and was never able to move up I the company because of it.

    Only reason I didn’t leave sooner was that I didn’t have the funds to get a degree when I was younger and fell into a time when the crazy unsecured loans were not as much of a thing, and most companies filter out software related candidates without a degree up front, regardless of experience. Finally got a degree when I found a program that I could handle while also doing two peoples’ worth of work.


  • If it’s just one job post, then automating it is not going to be very useful. I don’t think OP meant that. Seemed like they want to give a general CV/resume and then feed it each job posting and get customized versions for each posting. Many HR departments have keyword filters necessary to clear before it gets to a person. Otherwise, it takes only a few minutes to customize one time and would be much better to do manually anyway.

    Problem is, these days it usually takes 50-100 job applications per interview depending on industry. In the software industry (in the US anyway), that’s about average. Last job took me about 500 applications and that led to 3 third-round interviews and 2 of them gave offers. Total I probably had around 8-10 first round interviews, not including the many 5-10 minute phone calls with headhunter recruiters that contacted me based just on my resume on LinkedIn and various other sites.


  • The idea that your vote doesn’t count in a strongly red or blue state is total propaganda to get people to not vote and make it so that they don’t have to spend money on campaigning in those places. There are way more people who don’t vote than there are people who voted for either candidate in most places. If everyone voted it could easily overcome any perceived majorities. Especially if city people voted. Problem is that there isnt enough capacity to vote. And cuts to funding that capacity in red states have been a big way to discourage voting in cities. Most people can’t afford to take an entire day off of work to wait in the lines and employers wouldn’t allow it. They’re only required to give 1 hour which is barely enough to get to a poling place and back with no lines. And that isn’t enforced so many don’t even give that hour. And mail in and early voting has been framed by Republicans as unreliable with fake movies and such as propaganda even though it works great in many Blue states.


  • Cloudflare DDNS updated by ddclient on my OpnSense router. Cloudflare happens to be my current domain registrar. Honestly, my IPv4 doesn’t change that often. And when I used to be on Comcast, they assigned a block of IPv6 addresses and the router dealt with that. Unfortunately, I now have Quantum Fiber who only assign a single IPv6 address, so I gave up on IPv6 for now.




  • They can be good negotiating points, though. Often, they will reduce the price of the vehicle more than the cost of the add on because they make more profit on the add-on than the difference in price of the car. And often the add-ons are preinstalled, so they have to give them to you anyway. Not true for all brands or dealers, but works for some.

    With my last car there was a windshield coating, leather seat coating and bumpers on the door edges. After getting them nearly at the price I wanted, I told them I’d buy the seat coating if they’d lower the price another thousand below my previous price. The windshield coating and bumpers were also on the car when I finally got it. But I didn’t get the warranty on them, of course.





  • A lot of times of it’s a very small, light item, there are contracts that allow for expedited shipping through government channels which might reduce cost which is why the faster option is less. Probably if it were a bigger item, the faster option would be either unavailable or way more expensive and the slower would be about the same price. Similar to how in the US the first class mail is very cheap.

    Also, it’s probably so expensive because expediting the customs process is mostly there just for rich people to skip the line kind of thing like in many other areas of society. There’s almost always a backlog in customs combined with “antiterrorism” things like radiation detection, xray, pathogen detection, poison detection, etc., that is often done at random in large batches, but with expedited they often have to test every piece rather than rooms full of stuff. And routing is similar. They also can’t wait to add your package to a larger batch of things when moving between various points along the way, so a lot of things are moved in smaller batches or direct courier. All of that makes it very expensive to move something very fast, no matter how small.


  • Yeah, “unnecessary” is the health insurance code word for “we can get away with not paying for it”. Because it’s executives and lawyers and not doctors that determine if something is “unnecessary”. Sure they have doctors as scape goats, but they have specific instructions not written by medical professionals that they are required to follow. Unnecessary doesn’t mean it won’t save a person’s suffering or life, it means it’s more expensive than relieving the persons pain is worth or the person’s life is worth (i.e. the likelihood that they would lose a lawsuit for significant damages if they die).


  • Mugshots are also designed to make people look bad because it used to be a way that criminals would use for self promotion. But if they look bad then it has the opposite effect making them seem more animalistic and thus more evil. Also often used in wanted posters if enough photos are available. This has been the case for long before photography was invented with drawings as well.

    Otherwise, they’d look more like photo IDs, which have the same requirements and are bad compared to something framed specifically to flatter someone, but not as bad as mugshots. Doesn’t help that most mugshots are taken after long, abusive “interrogation” sessions or other situations that exhaust them rather than immediately upon arrest, but that’s on purpose.

    But the tactic to use mugshots as self promotional got popular when photos first came around because if they could get in a good shot, it’s not like the police could afford to take multiple. Film was expensive. And they were put in newspapers and such, so they spread around for free. Just look at the famous criminals of the Wild West era. So police doubled down on making sure the photos looked as bad as possible and it became a popular tactic to use against “famous” criminals. Now it’s used against basically all criminals.



  • The monkey’s typing and generating Shakespeare is supposed to show the ridiculousness of the concept of infinity. It does not mean it would happen in years, or millions of years, or billions, or trillions, or… So unless the “AI” can move outside the flow of time and take an infinite amount of time and also then has a human or other actual intelligence to review every single result to verify when it comes up with the right one…yeah, not real…this is what happens when we give power to people with no understanding of the problem much less how to solve it. They come up with random ideas from random slivers of information. Maybe in an infinite amount of time a million CEOs could make a longterm profitable company.


  • Yeah, but then anesthesiologists could then just say they can only work a certain amount of time because it costs them too much money in billing and appeals. Thus rushing a surgeon that then has a set time limit. Any time an insurance company makes a decision about what care a patient needs over the advice of doctors, it will result in problems. Sure there are going to be abuses, but instead of a blanket policy, it should be the responsibility of the insurance company to investigate fraud and waste.

    I mean what other job do they have to spend money on but reducing fraud and waste? Oh wait, they spend money on software that is designed to deny claims, so they can blame the software for being overzealous and not the policies.


  • That was the whole point of the DMCA, though. Prevent bad publicity by claiming copyright infringement and companiea have to take down the content before they investigate any response. Any time a company doesn’t do that they are risking their own necks. So usually they only ignore it if they know for sure it’s bogus which requires that they spend the resources on a person reviewing every notice before the required time expires.


  • That might be the case if you got to talk to someone with the ability to do anything about it. Customer service is just able to tell you what happened, not really make any change. You can file an appeal, but you can’t really ask for much during that process. It’s mostly automated and the people who process those have very specific criteria for overriding an initial decision and have a very short period of time they’re allowed to spend on each appeal.

    So the only way you’d get to someone who might be able to access any of this information is through a lawsuit. Trying to intimidate a worker with no power, no access to information, and a very high quotas is unlikely to have much effect. And these companies all have more lawyers on staff and/or retainer than any of us could afford in a hundred lifetimes. And those people aren’t going to give that information anyway. Nor would they give it to any lawyer you might hire in most cases. Proprietary information has way more legal protections than consumer rights, even in healthcare. You’d need to get a judge to order that release of confidential information about an employee or proprietary algorithm in most states, unless you convince someone to sacrifice their job, their freedom, and possibly their life to become a whistleblower.

    So unless your claim is in the hundreds of thousands at least, it’s unlikely you’ll spend less on lawyers just to get your case in front of someone who can answer these questions much less compelled them to give it. Otherwise, they’d have an incentive to pay claims in good faith in the first place. So there’s no intimidation felt on their end by things like this. It just makes them get I to a defensive posture if anything, and likely reduces your likelihood of getting an appeal approved in a timely manner.

    Your best bet if your claim is denied and appeal fails and you actually have a case is to hope you live in a somewhat progressive state that funds their insurance commission and has more consumer-friendly laws, and go to them for help. Federal laws aren’t going to help much unless you have evidence of fraud or you understand all the details of the case and can point to specific contract language or laws they violated already. But in that case the appeal should be all that’s needed.