#and if a big company is profiting off of code that you spent a lot of time working on it feels to me to be a bit exploitative

[horsescary]

I've been a big fan of free software for a while but I really don't know how to reconcile the fact that a good number of big names in the space are like really shitty people

[blogofmastermind]

"Why Small Healthcare Practices Should Outsource Medical Billing (And How It Can Help You Compete with the Big Guys)"

As a small healthcare practice, you’re probably already wearing a lot of hats—doctor, office manager, customer service rep, and sometimes, even janitor (we’ve all been there, right?). With so many responsibilities to juggle, you can easily find yourself overwhelmed by the administrative side of running a practice, especially when it comes to medical billing.

Medical billing is a critical part of your practice’s revenue cycle, but it’s often the least glamorous and most time-consuming task on your to-do list. And let’s face it, between managing patient care, handling appointments, and answering endless phone calls, who has the time to deal with insurance claims, codes, and payment discrepancies?

That’s where outsourcing medical billing comes in. By partnering with a professional billing service, small healthcare practices can level the playing field with larger competitors and enjoy a range of benefits that make a real difference in daily operations. Let’s explore why outsourcing your medical billing might just be the best decision you make for your practice.

1. Save Time and Boost Efficiency

Time is money, especially when you’re running a small practice. You don’t have the luxury of a large administrative team, so every minute counts. The more time you spend on billing issues, the less time you can devote to patient care—and that’s what you do best!

When you outsource medical billing, you're handing off time-consuming tasks like claim submission, insurance verification, and follow-up on unpaid claims to the experts. This frees up your time (and your team’s) to focus on what matters most—providing exceptional care to your patients.

With the right outsourcing partner, you’ll have access to cutting-edge billing software, automated claim submissions, and quick payment processing, allowing you to streamline your entire revenue cycle. This means fewer hours spent on administrative tasks and more time spent with your patients, improving both care and satisfaction.

2. Reduce Overhead Costs

As a small practice, keeping overhead costs low is essential to staying competitive and profitable. Managing in-house billing comes with expenses you may not have budgeted for—salaries for billing staff, software and system updates, and training to stay compliant with insurance regulations.

Outsourcing medical billing helps you reduce these overhead costs significantly. Instead of hiring a dedicated billing department, you can rely on a team of experts at a fraction of the cost. Most billing companies offer flexible pricing models, such as flat rates or a percentage of collected revenue, which means you pay for what you use—no wasted resources.

By reducing the costs associated with in-house billing, you’ll have more financial flexibility to invest in patient care, new technology, or growing your practice in other ways.

3. Minimize Billing Errors and Claim Denials

Billing errors are one of the leading causes of delayed payments and denied claims. As a small practice, these errors can have a bigger impact than you might think—especially when you’re already working with a lean team.

The problem with in-house billing is that the person handling claims may not always have the time, expertise, or knowledge of the latest coding and billing regulations. This can lead to mistakes like incorrect codes, missing information, or incomplete documentation—all of which can result in claim rejections or delayed payments.

Outsourcing medical billing ensures that your claims are handled by experts who specialize in coding and billing. They stay up-to-date with the latest regulations, payer requirements, and coding changes, reducing the risk of errors and denials. Plus, they’ll follow up on any denied claims promptly, improving your chances of getting paid for the services you provide.

4. Improve Cash Flow and Speed Up Payments

Slow payments are a significant challenge for many small practices. The longer you have to wait for insurance reimbursements or patient payments, the harder it is to cover operational expenses. And when you’re relying on in-house billing, delays can pile up due to a lack of resources or poor follow-up.

Outsourcing medical billing speeds up the entire process. Your billing partner will submit claims more efficiently, track payment statuses, and follow up with payers when necessary. This faster turnaround means you get paid more quickly, which leads to better cash flow and reduced stress over overdue accounts.

A streamlined revenue cycle and faster payments allow you to reinvest those funds into your practice—whether that’s adding new equipment, hiring more staff, or expanding your services.

5. Stay Focused on Patient Care and Practice Growth

At the end of the day, your primary goal is to provide top-notch care to your patients. But managing a healthcare practice involves much more than just clinical skills. You need to balance finances, regulations, staff management, and of course, billing—tasks that, though necessary, take away from the heart of your practice: caring for your patients.

By outsourcing medical billing, you can finally take a step back from the endless cycle of claim disputes, coding mistakes, and billing follow-ups. Your time, energy, and resources can be fully devoted to your patients, allowing your practice to grow and thrive. This means a better patient experience, more referrals, and ultimately, increased revenue.

Plus, when you focus on patient care instead of billing, you’re improving your practice’s reputation and building long-term patient loyalty—something larger competitors may struggle to achieve.

6. Ensure Compliance and Stay HIPAA Compliant

Staying compliant with healthcare regulations is crucial, and as a small practice, you may not always have the resources or staff to monitor every change in healthcare law. That’s where outsourcing medical billing can be a major advantage.

Professional billing companies are well-versed in compliance and HIPAA regulations, and they ensure that all billing and coding is done according to current legal standards. By outsourcing, you reduce the risk of compliance issues or costly fines, allowing you to focus on patient care without worrying about the administrative complexities.

7. Scale Your Practice with Ease

As your practice grows, your billing needs will grow too. You’ll see more patients, handle more insurance companies, and deal with a higher volume of claims. Trying to manage all this growth in-house can be overwhelming, and hiring additional billing staff isn’t always feasible for smaller practices.

Outsourcing medical billing gives you the flexibility to scale your operations without worrying about hiring more staff or managing a larger billing department. Your billing service can adjust to the increasing volume, ensuring that your practice’s billing process remains efficient and effective as you expand.

Conclusion: The Smart Move for Small Healthcare Practices

In today’s competitive healthcare landscape, small practices need every advantage they can get. Outsourcing medical billing is a smart move that not only saves time and reduces costs but also improves accuracy, cash flow, and compliance. By outsourcing these administrative tasks to experts, you can stay focused on what truly matters—providing exceptional care and growing your practice.

So, if you’re ready to take your small practice to the next level and compete with the big guys, outsourcing medical billing might just be the game-changer you need.

[cuprohastes]

Ok, big reveal… I’ve spent a lot of time looking after printers on a professional basis, since ‘98 in fact, and I’ve spent the entire time describing them as malicious little boxes of evil.

Part of the issue is that even when you get up to the huge industrial ones that are expecting to run continuously for the entire working day, they usually are tremendously bad at it. Partly because nobody in the office is trained to maintain the printers and they basically just wear out and get full of crud, but partly because they’re designed to be weird as heck to evade getting dragged through court by some failing company who’s last ditch profitability model is suing everyone for design infringement… and of course, to make it really hard to get generic parts.

And the. There’s the custom software which is most likely some ancient controller thats being kludged together on a budget and then talked at by a driver that still thinks it’s running on Windows NT 3, or for some fucking reason CUPS.

BTW I currently work supporting thermal printers for receipts and Dymo label printers, and… honestly, Dymo are actively evil.

Having to argue with a caller to get them to open a Terminal window to turn on CUPS WebUI so they can change paper size via a simple 72 step process that includes having to use a 5 digit code and also manually typing your username and password to save that… What?

Windows is as bad: Sometimes the receipts just go CVS on you and you have to set the paper size from “the length of the print” to “whatever the shortest length that’s provided” which is 20cm.

And that used to be easy, until Star re-worked their drivers and that setting must be set twice, in completely different dialogues then a third time in Chrome’s own weird intercessionary print preview, that has it’s own driver independent paper size settings.

Also that thing about Linotype? Hate to be the “um Actually” person like object, but I ran a mechanical print business in 2005 and I was still buying slugs of lead/antimony linotype print from a guy who sat at a machine that had an honest to got open air pot of liquid lead/antimony/tin and who I had the pleasure of doing the very Printer thing of discussing who’s lost a finger this week.

Lead type has tin in to make it harder, and antimony which expands as it cools. The alloy for lead type is therefore the same volume when hot as it is when cold so the type face won’t warp or shrink. The Line-o-type machine has an electric melting pot and a bar of allow on a chain. The bar is lowered into the pot and melted as the machine is used. I was buying type for a 40 year old Heidelberg platen press, which was very mechanical, very predictable and despite being capable of turning a human hand into a smear without any particular strain, was about the safest machine that I had. The others? Nightmare fuel.

I got out of that job. Too many solvents, open air bathes of isopropyl alcohol, inhaleable potato starch clouds and machines that were basically toxic trash and built like a sadistic trap from Saw.

Not to mention the photolithography table for etching print plates that has zero protection from the high powered UV light.

That entire industry basically got killed off in the late 2000’s by large cartels banding together to buy huge Heidelberg printers that were hammering out print in volumes so massive they were offering colour prints at what small outfits were paying for the paper alone.

And then most people went digital anyway. At the time I was making my money printing for church groups who were having serious trouble keeping up with the modern world and who’d type up their work in Word, print it, cut it up and glue it to sheets of paper to do the layout.

That and weird paper cutting jobs that needed a platen press to do… and of course receipt books for trade customers who were determined to run on NCR receipt pads until they keeled over of old age into the hopper of their sausage making machine.

Like Crowley and the 14th century, my favourite thing about time is that I get further and further away from having to work in a print shop.

Now if I can just persuade everyone to stop using Dymos and Receipt printers, I’ll be happy.

why are printers so hated? it's simple:

computers are good at computering. they are not good at the real world.

the biggest problems in computers, the ones that have had to change the most over the time they've existed, are the parts that deal with the real world. The keyboard, the mouse, the screen. every computer needs these, but they involve interacting with the real world. that's a problem. that's why they get replaced so much.

now, printers: printers have some of the most complex real-world interaction. they need to deposit ink on paper in 2 dimensions, and that results in at least three ways it can go on right from the start. (this is why 3D printers are just 2D printers that can go wrong in another whole dimension)

scanners fall into many of the same problems printers have, but fewer people have scanners, and they're not as cost-optimized. But they are nearly as annoying.

This is also why you can make a printer better by cutting down on the number of moving elements: laser printers are better than inkjets, because they only need to move in one dimension, and their ink is a powder, not a liquid. and the best-behaved printers of all are thermal printers: no ink and the head doesn't move. That's why every receipt printer is a thermal printer, because they need that shit to work all the time so they can sell shit. And thermal is the most reliable way to do that.

But yeah, cost-optimization is also a big part of why printers are such finicky unreliable bastards: you don't want to pay much for them. Who is excited for all the printing they're gonna be doing? basically nobody. But people get forced to have a printer because they gotta print something, for school or work or the government or whatever. So they want the cheapest thing that'll work. They're not shopping on features and functionality and design, they want something that costs barely anything, and can fucking PRINT. anything else is an optional bonus.

And here's the thing: there's a fundamental limit of how much you can optimize an inkjet printer, and we got near to it in like the late 90s. Every printer since then has just been a tad smaller, a tad faster, and added some gimmicks like printing from WIFI or bluetooth instead of needing to plug in a cable.

And that's the worst place to be in, for a computer component. The "I don't care how fancy it is, just give me one that works" zone. This is why you can buy a keyboard for 20$ and a mouse for 10$ and they both work plenty fine for 90% of users. They're objectively shit compared to the ones in the 60-150$ range, but do they work? yep. So that's what people get.

Printers fell into that zone long, long ago, when people stopped getting excited about "desktop publishing". So with printers shoved into the "make them as cheap as possible" zone, they have gotten exponentially shittier. Can you cut costs by 5$ a printer by making them jam more often? good. make them only last a couple years to save a buck or two per unit? absolutely. Can you make the printer cost 10$ less and make that back on the proprietary ink cartridges? oh, they've been doing that since Billy Clinton was in office.

It's the same place floppy disks were in in about 2000. CD-burners were not yet cheap enough, USB flash drives didn't exist yet (but were coming), modems weren't fast enough yet to copy stuff over the internet, superfloppies hadn't taken over like some hoped, and memory cards were too expensive and not everyone had a drive for them. So we still needed floppy disks, but at the same time this was a technology that hadn't changed in nearly 20 years. So people were tired of paying out the nose for them... the only solution? cut corners. I have floppy disks from 1984 that read perfectly, but a shrinkwrapped box of disks from 1999 will have over half the disks failed. They cut corners on the material quality, the QA process, the cleaning cloth inside the disk, everything they could. And the disks were shit as a result.

So, printers are in that particular note of the death-spiral where they've reached the point of "no one likes or cares about this technology, but it's still required so it's gone to shit". That's why they are so annoying, so unreliable, so fucking crap.

So, here's the good news:

You can still buy a better printer, and it will work far better. Laser printers still exist, and LED printers work the same way but even cheaper. They're still more expensive than inkjets (especially if you need color), but if you have to print stuff, they're a godsend. Way more reliable.

This is not a stable equilibrium. Printers cannot limp along in this terrible state forever. You know why I brought up floppy disk there? (besides the fact I'm a giant floppy disk nerd) because floppy disks GOT REPLACED. Have you used one this decade? CD-Rs and USB drives and internet sharing came along and ate the lunch of floppy disks, so much so that it's been over a decade since any more have been made. The same will happen to (inkjet) printers, eventually. This kind of clearly-broken situation cannot hold. It'll push people to go paperless, for companies to build cheaper alternatives to take over from the inkjets, or someone will come up with a new, more reliable printer based on some new technology that's now cheap enough to use in printers. Yeah, it sucks right now, but it can't last.

So, in conclusion: Printers suck, but this is both an innate problem caused by them having to deal with so much fucking Real World, and a local minimum of reliability that we're currently stuck in. Eventually we'll get out of this valley on the graph and printers will bother people a lot less.

Random fun facts about printing of the past and their local minimums:

in the hot metal type era, not only would the whole printing process expose you to lead, the most common method of printing text was the linotype, which could go wrong in a very fun way: if the next for a line wasn't properly justified (filling out the whole row), it could "squirt", and lead would escape through gaps in the type matrix. This would result in molten lead squirting out of the machine, possibly onto the operator. Anecdotally, linotype operators would sometimes recognize each other on the street because of the telltale spots on their forearms where they had white splotches where no hair grew, because they got bad lead burns. This type of printing remained in use until the 80s.

Another fun type of now-retired printers are drum printers, a type of line printer. These work something like a typewriter or dot-matrix printer, except the elements extend across the entire width of the paper. So instead of printing a character at time by smacking it into the paper, the whole line got smacked nearly at once. The problem is that if the paper jammed and the printer continued to try to print, that line of the paper would be repeatedly struck at high speed, creating a lot of heat. This worry created the now-infamous Linux error: "lp0 on fire". This was displayed when the error signals from a parallel printer didn't make sense... and it was a real worry. A high speed printer could definitely set the paper on fire, though this was rare.

So... one thing to be grateful about current shitty inkjet printers: they are very unlikely to burn anything, especially you.

(because before they could do that they'd have to work, at least a little, first, and that's very unlikely)

[sopxhiea]

Lush

Alfie Solomons X Reader

Summary: Alfie shows the wild girl around and he’s surprised to find out just how quickly she picks up on things but before he can do anything about it, she pulls at the ropes she’s set him up on.

Part 1 | Part 2

“This is an excellent time for me to go missing.”

“Are you going to get me into bed or what?”

Keep them on their toes.

That’s what the lady had said, that a woman needed to keep a man on his toes if she wanted him to stick around. It made it more thrilling according to the old lady, it made it far more exciting than if she were to just give the man what he wanted, the sweet kiss of release.

The kiss could be obtained in many ways, a woman’s body was a world of wonders and it could entice any man if she were to use it correctly, to her advantage.

And maybe that’s when it all started.

The windows on the lines of the street were mostly closed due to the chilly morning weather, the thin layer of snow made no difference to those who chose to reach their destination by feet but it added a whole lot more to the spirit that was coming around with the new year. There were no more kids playing around the streets anymore, just the sound of laughter from the inside of the stone cold houses.

Alfie’s broad form walked in front, with a curly haired and fidgety man following behind. They seemed to fit well together in a sense when you compared their auras, Alfie was composed and the curly haired man was certainly not. Your footsteps trailed behind them, they were much taller than you in comparison so it took you a while to catch up to their speed.

There was no cane in his hand today, no sign of physical weakness as his eyes looked around for the cheery sound of kids playing around but there was none, just the dead silence birthed by the cold of winter, or something that felt too cold to bear.

He heard your lighter footsteps trailing behind, no feeling of uneasiness as he led you to his infamous bakery. You had offered to come and he had no opposition to that, although Ollie had many but he’d chosen to not listen to the lad, which mostly proved to be a mistake but he was hoping it would pay off this time.

Ollie had taken one look at you, and even though he hadn’t seen you before, he knew who you were. Word traveled fast around Camden, especially if it was about a young woman who just wouldn’t behave. The gossip’s description of you checked most of the boxes, the lad thought. Your eyes were as bright as they’d said and he was sure there was no one else around Camden with your delicate features.

He was sure it was you, the infamous wild lady.

You were much younger, though. You didn’t behave in a way that he’d seen girls your age do, you carried yourself with more maturity but he’d almost overlooked all that when you’d flashed him a smile. 

He’d felt his throat dry up and he almost forgot how old you were. Poor lad, Alfie thought when he saw the state Ollie was in when you’d started speaking to the man with a wicked smile. Alfie was glad the lad hadn’t seen you dance or he wouldn’t be able to control him from god knew what. Any man would have nothing but trouble keeping their hands to themselves when it came to you.

“We’re going to the distillery?” you spoke once your feet were in line with Alfie’s as he walked down the street to where the ‘bakery’ was.

You weren’t stupid. Alfie knew that but his eyes still widened when you said it.

Only people who worked in the same line of business knew what Alfie did, most of them at least. He’d killed people for less and he stopped dead in his tracks when he heard you refer to his bakery as a distillery, Ollie’s eyes widened too but the lad was too busy trying to figure if Alfie was going to pound your head onto the cement or just warn you off and he decided on the last option, Alfie didn’t hit women.

“What the fuck did ya’ just say, lass?” he spoke, leaning down to face you which made you smile faintly. The man was at least twice your size.

You upped your volume and made motions with your hands in the air like you were talking to a grandpa and not a thirty year old man, Ollie almost snickered while Alfie watched you with bewildered eyes. “I said, Are we goin-”

He cut you off quick enough, your hands stopping mid-air when he started speaking in a lower tone than usual which only made you wanna bite your lip.

“Where the fuck did ya’ hear that?” he asked, genuinely curious for a second before you bit your lip and all his energy went south. He gulped and you chuckled, he was just a man after all.

“Word travels fast, Mr. Solomons.” you said, emphasising on the last word and you watched his eyes go deeper than usual, some animalistic urge taking over him before he realised that he was standing right in front of the factory.

“Don’t I fuckin’ know it. he said under his breath before putting his large hand on the small of your back and pushed you towards the wooden doors of the entrance.

And you were in.

The inside was bigger than what it seemed on the exterior, the two factories were connected from the inside, most of the inside space absent from any doors. There was a wooden stair that led up to somewhere but you couldn’t see it from where you were standing. You saw barrels, dozens of them as men carried them around. 

“Nice place.” you whispered but Alfie heard it, it only brought a smirk to his lips. You weren’t so stupid to think to believe that a man like Alfie could only make profit off of protection or ‘bread’, there had to be more and this was it.

Alfie walked in front as he led you through the corridors of the distillery and it was obvious that having women around was not so common, especially none like you. No one said anything and you soon came to realise that it was because you had come in with the boss and not on your own. Some did give you strange looks, seeing as you were half Alfie’s age and almost half his size and yet Alfie seemed to not mind it at all.

Everyone had different moral codes, so did a gangster.

His office was the space the unknown stair led to, all smelling of musk and power like he did. You were sure he had a vanilla scent somewhere in there but it was hard to tell, he didn’t give you openings to lower your guard, not really.

The inside of the office had no decorations, just piles and piles of papers and a shelf just for drinks but you noticed that none of them were rum, just whiskey and other strong drinks. You were sure there was at least a couple guns hidden somewhere but you had pushed him far enough already for the day even though Alfie didn’t seem to mind all that much.

You sat on one of the chairs in front of his table, all wooden but worn out unlike the ones in his home. The space had the same atmosphere as his living room which made you think that he spent entirely too much time around his office, Ollie would vouch for that. Taking your gloves off with your teeth, you didn’t realise he had been staring with a smirk on his lips.

You truly were something else, he thought.

He had seen your classmates, girls around your age who spoke in a posh accent and curtsied each time they greeted someone. They didn’t speak unless they weren’t asked something and they sat in a proper way like Annabelle had taught all of you to do. But you didn’t do any of the things they did, quite the opposite.

It only enticed him further.

“You know..” you spoke, a charming smile on your lips as Alfie watched your lips move. “This is an excellent time for me to go missing.”

Alfie’s roaring laugh was the only thin that could be heard in the air after that.

He was a lethal man, you knew that and so did everyone who lived around London. You’d hard of the things they did, although it wasn’t quite clear which ones were true but you were sure he had killed many before and that didn’t bother you all that much but it would if that were you.

And it could very well be you in that given moment.

With no one to come with you, no one to follow or keep you company, you were in his office with his assistant. It was his place, not a place of comfort like his home but a place he’d killed before and you knew that for a fact as you eyed the blood stains on the wooden furniture, it was faint and small but you knew what blood looked like on wood.

You were in the lion’s den and he was staring right at you.

But you weren’t a sheep, and he seemed to forget that for a second.

“I ain’t gonna do anythin’, luv, believe me, yeah.” he spoke with a low smile as he searched through some papers, seated on his big chair with you in front of him.

“I don’t have a reason to...” you spoke with raised eyebrows as he watched you, hand on his beard and you kept on speaking. “..but why wouldn’t I believe in a gangster.” you spoke, eyes landing on him at last and you saw a hint of a smirk on his plump lips.

Alfie understood the weight of your words but he knew you didn’t mean them. You wouldn’t be in his office, sitting the way you were if you had. And he had heard of the lads you hung out with, some of them known criminals just for the thrill of it, he knew you weren’t afraid of him in the slightest bit so he just raised his eyebrows.

“Ya’ ain’t fuckin’ afraid of me, I know that, yeah, I do.” he spoke in a monotone voice, as emotionless as he could muster up and you just clicked your tongue once he was done and looked around while speaking. He wanted to kiss you, he concluded.

“I refuse to be afraid of you.” your voice was soft, like how he’d heard woman talk to babies as if you were cooing him. He didn’t like to be treated that way but he’d let it go, it was you after all.

And it was the full truth, he was sure of that.

Alfie knew you had lied to him a couple of times already but your sweet words covered the rest and he saw no reason to poke at it, you did it exceptionally well. But you were telling the truth now, the full and bare truth for him to know and he knew it for a fact because you’d stopped smiling and just stared at him with stern eyes.

“Alright.” he spoke, feeling his throat dry at the way you looked at him but a man like Alfie was hard to fluster, although you’d done it couple of times already. “Fuckin’ brave of you, that ‘s.” he spoke under his breath but you’d heard it, it was loud and clear.

You didn’t look for praise or approval anywhere, your record would speak for that. If anything, you looked for discontent in people’s faces, it made you think that you were doing something worth the risk but seeing Alfie approve of your recklessness awakened something in you, something you weren’t ready to name yet.

“How much of your income comes from this place?” you asked, genuinely curious as you tried to put two and two together. He had a big house, multiple maids and a distillery, he also had people pay for him for protection and so you figured, he was loaded.

He didn’t answer, just stared at you with hard eyes. Alfie had killed for less and he was not planning on shooting your pretty brains out but you were pushing it, you both knew it. You crossed your legs and uncrossed them again, pulling his attention elsewhere but he was quick to compose himself, it was quite impressive of him.

“I just figured, since you have other....side businesses, this is just a small part that provides your entire income. Is it not?” you spoke in a sweeter voice than before. You knew he would pull a gun on you soon if you kept going this way which gave you all the reason to.

The sparkles in his eyes were something else.

You shot him a smile as he remained silent. You had hit the nail on the head but he wouldn’t tell you that. He tried to figure out just how you got to where you were but soon realised he had taken you home the first night which would give you sufficient information about his wealth but you seemed far too quick to pick up on the distillery side of the business. 

He chose to pay no attention to it for the time being. 

He pulled a glass bottle from one of the shelves, the one that was hidden behind all the whiskey and foreign drinks. You eyed the crystal glass he filled with the brown liquid. You didn’t really drink rum but a gangster was offering you the glass so you’d take it.

You took the glass from his hand, your fingers feeling the cold material of his gold rings for a split second before you chugged it down, instead of taking a sip like most people did. Alfie then could tell that you really did drink, just maybe not rum. You grimaced afterwards, the liquid tasted different than what you were used to.

“It’s too sweet.” you spoke while licking lips and he watched at first. A scoff followed afterwards. 

Alfie sold these out like crazy and there you were, a thing half his size telling him that the drink wasn’t good enough for your taste. He then thought that maybe you were as posh as the rest of the girls in your school but the way you swallowed the drink in one go told him afterwards. His eyes dropped to your cheeks, now a bit more flushed compared to usual and he made a mental note of always offering you a drink so that you’d look as pretty as you did after you’d chugged the drink.

He then remembered how old you were, despite the way you looked at him, and scratched the idea.

“Ya’ don’t fuckin’ like it then, hm?” he asked, leaning on the desk by his elbows and you watched the way his rings caught the light in his office before you met his eyes.

“I don’t usually go for rum..” you spoke, eyebrows scrunched and a look of distaste on your pretty face as you looked at the glass in your hand before putting it on his table. “But yours is okay.” you spoke, seeing no reason to lie.

You didn’t like rum, whiskey was better and did the job a bit faster but Alfie’s was alright. You could even grow to like it, you thought, if he kept you around long enough.

He smiled then, a sweet grin on his face as you looked at him through your eyelashes. He was a hard one to crack, you gathered, but that wouldn’t stop you. You’d make him wait anyway but not before confusing the man. Men liked to be told what to do, you knew that. Especially if it was by a little young thing like you.

Well, at least most men.

“Mr. Solomons..” you spoke, a little pout on your painted lips and he swore you would kill him, you would run a man like him in a heartbeat and he was more than willing to give you the opportunity. “Are you going to get me into bed or what?”

Alfie considered.

He wanted to, oh god he so badly wanted to. But you were young, old enough to know what you wanted but still young, he knew of the danger you possessed. You’d ruin a man of Alfie’s wrath and you didn’t even need to fuck him for that, all you’d do is to kiss him once and he’d do anything, he thought. 

He knew that you’d had your fair share of lads around London, he’d heard. He wasn’t sure how much experience you had in bed but he was sure you could take it, whatever he had in stock for you. He was sure that you weren’t all talk and no play, that you could very well paint a picture from his fantasied only if he were to ask nicely.

“That why you’re ‘ere, pet?” he spoke, hand tugging at his beard as he looked at you through lustful eyes. That wasn’t the reason and you wouldn’t fuck him right at that given moment but you wanted to, and that was rare.

You’d toy with him and push all the buttons he had but there was no denying that you were attracted to the man. Maybe that was why you’d make him wait longer, torture every nick of his soul before he surrendered. It sounded fun but you also had your limits and seeing him riled up like this didn’t help.

You smiled at the nickname first and then at his face, he was a sight to see.

“Depends.” you spoke, loud and clear as his hands brushed through his beard. You were never too tired to play the games and as dangerous as Alfie was, he was still a man.

“On what?” he spoke in a heartbeat. He was thankful Ollie wasn’t here to hear the conversation, Alfie didn’t have the upper hand for once and he had no intention of telling anyone that.

“On how long you’ll last.” you said, telling him the full truth. You didn’t usually tell men that but Alfie clearly stood out. You smiled then, liking the way his eyes widened for a second before he nodded thoughtfully.

Alfie knew the game you were playing. Most women, hell, most people were too dumb or scared to play it and he soon came to realise that you already had him on the ropes. He’d been the one to take you to his home, the one place of comfort the very first night and he was the one seeking you out today when he came over to your school. You were just waiting and he’d done everything you’d expected him to do, with a little delay but he was still a man.

And he’d been the one to take you to his office, the one to give you the rum and the one asking when you’d sleep with him. 

He cursed at himself for being so blind. 

This was how you got man, and all that property and business. He was sure no man had ever lasted longer before and he was right but that didn’t mean that you didn’t have any more cards to play. You were just getting started for all he knew.

“You, yeah, are far too fuckin’ dangerous, pet.” he spoke, eyes glossing over yours and you delivered him your sweetest smile with a small wink.

Checkmate.

He lost.

Only this round, he told himself. He’d only lose this one time.

“So?” you spoke in a breathy voice and he found it hard to stop looking at your lips.

God, he was fucked.

But it didn’t matter, he realised. Alfie always had the upper hand, he was the one to end a conversation and not the other way around but he found out that he didn’t mind changing the dynamic if it was for you. 

And it didn’t matter from which angle he was looking at this situation, he was the one who lost and you’d won, in all of the realities of the scenario. He sighed once more, hand glossing over his beard but not quite brushing through it like it had been. One look at you, the rum on the table and your pretty hands that were decorated with paint and he had made his decision.

He’d wait on his toes.

You’d make him anyway but he liked it better if it was his choice. He took one good look at you, from head to toe as you sat in front of him with a smirk he had grown accustomed to and came to the conclusion that you were worth the risk of danger that came with it, as a flip side of the coin.

You shot him another smile as you spoke, your delicate features turning into one of satisfaction and content.

“Say, Mr. Solomons, what would you like me to do while I wait. I assume you have loads to do.” your voice was sweet as your hand signalled at the papers before him.

He shook his head, cleared his throat and began speaking. “Nah. This is nothin’, pet. I’d much rather talk about you, yeah.” he said, not using a curse word like he usually did because you were the one controlling the ropes and he didn’t like having his buttons pushed, he was sure you’d do just that if he didn’t give you your way.

“Well, I’m gald we finally agree on something.” you spoke as you giggled and he joined with a snicker of his own.

You’d be the death of him, and he knew.

And so the game of question for question started again, but this time there were no unanswered questions and a lot more risks taken from both sides.

----

Tagging: @clairecrive  @parkbearum @sourirez  @vetseras​ @mollybegger-blog @babylooneytoonz @peakascum @fuseburner​ @r-rose08​ @innerpaperexpertcloud  a/n: If I forgot to tag anyone, do let me know please!

I did read all your lovely comments on the last part and forgive me for not replaying to all of them but I wanted to say thank you for leaving the sweet comments and I’m so so glad you guys like this one! I will keep them coming <3

And happy Holiday season! <3

[ideahat-universe]

La pasta raccapricciante fa schifo

People are driving me crazy with Creepy Pasta. It’s one thing when it’s a spooky campfire story about something completely paranormal or harrowing but when video game creepy pastas show up I just get annoyed because even as a kid I understood very clearly that video games could not do what they are not programmed to do. 

And any video game that isn’t normal is just a rom hack. 

Ben Drowned might have been scary if that was a random rom hack that someone accidentally bought and played as an 8 year old assuming it was normal but that’s a very theoretical scenario. 

So the only “real” scenario that creepy pasta video games occupy is in the Paranormal but anyone that’s spent a moment trying to develop a program knows the second the application encounters something illegal (technical illegal, not law illegal) it just crashes.

I know ghosts are magic but ghosts would just destroy an electronic if they changed its actual coding in any way. Creating an illusion that a ghost or ghosts are contained only within a single copy of a game is also entering Ring territory which is also dumb. 

But I’m not here to talk about rom hack creepy pasta’s just on it’s own. 

No, I’m here to complain about Romhacks pretending to be authentic anti piracy methods. 

Anti piracy and piracy is a serious and often very interesting subject matter. 

On one hand you have the developers and publishers who put a lot of money and time on the line in the hopes that the game is successful and the profit margin is pretty steep and that profit is shared among multiple groups so it’s a lot of money spent to make just a little bit over the production costs. 

If pirates are stealing the games at launch and spreading it around it could ruin the game sales. 

On the other hand if a game is never pirated it dies forever. The original version of the game or the game itself can cease to exist if it becomes no longer profitable to sell the game. After all, once the game has made it’s sales you no longer need it in circulation. 

NIntendo just release a three pack of games that were in the Nintendo vault for a very long time. Sunshine in particular was never revisited, ported, or remade for any devices other than the gamecube. That means for more than a decade if you didn’t pirate the game, Mario Sunshine was nothing more than vaporware. 

Developers and publishers treat IP like a asset and most assets are never put to use unless the sell off has extremely good gains. Because there’s always theoretical potential in an old product selling well later on, the publisher will hold onto it but because there’s no apparent market for it now they won’t sell it either. 

So you end up with games that didn’t sell well because they came out at the wrong time or wasn’t perfectly developed and the company in question will hold onto the IP as nothing more than collateral. 

Effectively this puts games in hell where they will never see the light of day.

UNLESS a pirate cracks the game’s DRM and releases it online for an emulator to use. 

I consider most games to be a form of artistic expression that at least tells the story of the times the game was developed in if it doesn’t lend us a window into the mind of the developer themselves. 

All that on it’s own makes the conversation around piracy a big deal. Companies don’t want to give pirates a single inch. it doesn’t matter if the game has never had a digital or physical copy made since it’s initial release of more than a decade ago. If you use that modded version of that copyrighted game you’re getting the boot! Doesn’t even matter if it’s fair or legal. You’d have to win a court case to validate that claim and courts are won by the highest bidder in 99% of scenarios so unless you get seriously lucky you are losing that case in one way or another even though the law should see you as so objectively in the right that it should be thrown out of court on principle alone. 

So as far as I’m concerned pirates should exist and nothing notes better what a pirate does than having to deal with all the various ways anti piracy crops up. 

Most anti piracy methods are very straight forward but a few of them can be interesting with the idea that the player can’t really play the game without fully cracking it. 

The best example is Spyro: Year of the Dragon which had layers of anti piracy methods that kept the crackers at bay for over a month when it would typically take a week if not far less. 

When you compare what actually happens and why it becomes clear that this is a very valuable aspect of gaming lore. 

But the people who are creating anti piracy creepy pastas are watering the conversation down for cheap thrills. 

It goes from “ anti Piracy methods exist as a way to ensure profit and pirates exist because people want to keep a game long after it’s being sold and these two subjects are permanent adversaries constantly one upping each other in interesting and exhaustive ways.” 

to

“What if pirated games are haunted???”

It’s a meaningless question not just because ghosts are more than likely not real and definitely don’t haunt electronics but because now people have to discern what is real anti piracy and what is just a rom hack. 

An impressive piracy spoof is just a rom hack, and it’s a very underwhelming and repetitive one as the Creepy Pasta meme itself is a black hole of creativity. Once you know how to do that sort of thing making fake content to pass off as real when it’s blatantly fake is just bait for children and now we have fake anti piracy stories to debunk when we didn’t need that. 

Go back to reading R.L. Stine books you muppets. 

[itsthrowawayyyyyblog]

I never thought I would be back here a few years after I deleted my old blog/s, but here I am.

Why am I back, you ask?

2020 has been a rough year for a lot of people, including myself. It started off well for me! I spent a week in Toronto for training at my old job and got to meet some wonderful people. I travelled for myself for the first time and I found it freeing. Imagine taking a trip to a place you’ve wanted to visit for a while, without having to answer to anyone. It was great! I stayed at a condo and it was right next to the Rogers Centre and CN Tower and the balcony view was FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. Imagine “going home” there after a long day at work, opening the door, looking to your right and seeing the CN Tower lit up. I saw that for 5 straight nights and I got to say, it was an experience. I also saw the Raptors play! It was on my bucket list, and I never thought I was going to be able to see them play, until 2020. I had the time of my life in Toronto, went back home and I was generally happier with my life and my expectations for the rest of the year were high. I mean, surely, the year is just getting started and good things are happening - it can only be better, right?

Right?

Then COVID happened. California and Australia were on fire, a black man was killed through police brutality, sparking riots all over the world. Governments failed to respond adequately to the COVID crisis, leading to lots of deaths and lockdowns to mitigate the spread of the virus. Injustice and incompetence was seen left, right, and centre.

It took a toll on me.

I was lucky to be able to keep my job during the beginning of the pandemic. I stayed at home, because I really had nowhere to go. The gyms were closed, so were the malls, karaoke bars and restaurants. I wasn’t able to socialize as I expected but that was okay (for the time being); Warzone came out and I played a ton of it with my friends. That’s how my friends and I socialized during the pandemic. We would send messages on the group chat saying, “Hopping on for Warzone at 9, see you there” and it was a routine we got into until summertime.

Lockdowns were eased, cases were going down, the snow was melting and it seemed to be the beginning of brighter and better days. I saw my friends again and I felt happy. I had my job, had an excellent tax return, and I was making money. I felt blessed, lucky, and the days were brighter and longer and I felt hopeful. However, there was something that started to nag me.

Work took a turn for the worse. I started getting lots of projects and was also asked to take over a few of them. Cool, I thought initially. My bosses were starting to think I was getting more responsible. I didn’t find out they laid off a few employees until weeks later. Them giving me more projects was just because they needed to offload the projects.

I started paying more attention to what’s going on around the world, When you can’t go out or see your friends, you turn to the internet and, as I mentioned before, injustice and incompetence were everywhere, you start to ask yourself: “What’s going on? Why does the world seem this bad?” It makes you think. Then you start to get curious. You start researching. You learn and realize that black people go through this everyday. You learn that a lot of the elected leaders in the government were merely puppets for the big corporations, as they were able to get a bailout relatively quickly. We’re in 2021 now and the people in the US government are still arguing whether they should send a $2000 stimulus to its citizens who have been struggling mentally and financially during the pandemic. You start to realize that profits and money mattered more to the people in charge rather than doing the right thing.

Then you start to realize that this was also the only thing that mattered to some of the people closest to you as well. You shake your head in disbelief, ask them how they can justify that. How can you think the system works when your neighbour is struggling to pay their bills, not because they are living beyond their means, but because everything is so profit-driven? Your neighbour has to work two jobs just to provide for their kids, just so they have a roof over their heads...

Maybe I should have gone out for walks more, but I could not ignore the injustices in the world any longer, as it was all over social media, group chats, the news, at work, everywhere. Maybe I should have disconnected more. It was taking a toll on me, but I could not look away. I started to question myself. I started to question my friends. I started to question my employers, who were getting more antsy as they were having to struggle between with keeping the company profitable and keeping clients happy. Additionally a lot of them were not able to take their usual vacations, so this made them sad and frustrated, and they kind of took it out on their employees. Including myself.

My employer at the time asked a coworker to basically ignore some codes and standards to get a project out the door. That can’t be right, I thought. On top of that, my employer has not been kind to my coworker as well. These circumstances caused my coworker to quit. She got a job immediately so I was happy for her. She was able to leave a toxic place and found something better. I understood why she would quit, looking back now, as I was asked to do this once as well just so the company can satisfy their clients. I did not heed that advice and spent a lot of hours in the office trying to make sure the project met codes and standards to the best of my abilities. 

We had a project in the pipeline that required her expertise. Unfortunately, since she left the company, we had no one in the office or in the company that knew how to do this project. I’m not sure what my previous employer’s line of thinking was, but he thought we could do it. By we I mean he thought I, someone whose career just started, could do it. I told him, sure, I mean, with the right guidance and knowledge being passed along, I could do it, but I had no idea where to start. Who was I going to ask questions about this? 

My employer said, ‘I asked someone who knows more about this and they haven’t gotten back to me. Anyway, no one’s going to notice if we’re off by a few inches here and there. I think you’re capable enough to do this in one week.’

‘A week?’

‘Yeah. By the way, I’m going on vacation next week, so I expect this to be done by the time I get back.’

‘I’m not exactly sure how I can get it done in a week when the no one in the office knows how to do this, But..’

Here’s where I should have said no.

‘..but I’ll see what I can do.’

I spent an entire week researching about how to do this project and I did have something penciled in. But the more I researched, the less confident I felt about it going right. I did not have the experience for this, I thought. This is a bit more complex than my boss thinks it is.. maybe I should sit him down when he gets back. I don’t want to finalize this only for us having to redo it because we missed something.

My boss gets back after his vacation. He then asks me on Teams where I was with the project, and whether we could have something to hand in to the client in an hour or so.

I said, ‘no, we’re not done. I did some more research to make sure we did not miss anything, and I think we need to look into this or that. I did not want to finalize this then have it come back for us to redo. I thought it was a waste of time and negligent if I tried to finalize something that the company does not know how to do.’

The next words were the words that caused me to quit my job.

‘That’s not acceptable. What am I supposed to tell my clients?”

I got frustrated once I heard that. So frustrated that I ignored him and took the afternoon and the rest of the week off.

I spent an entire week researching and asking questions on the internet how to do a project, learning that I did not know enough to proceed.. while my boss takes a vacation at his cabin. I started thinking about our previous interactions, his interactions with my coworkers, and at that point, it added up. He really was one of those people who prioritized profits over doing the right thing. The things that my coworkers have been saying about him were true. 

I handed in my notice the week I came back. Two weeks after, I started grieving. I grieved because I felt like a failure. I felt like I handled the situation well, but it felt like a failure on my part. I grieved because people were losing their lives to incompetence by our leaders and through injustice. I grieved because I felt inadequate. I cut contact from my guy friends at the time, who didn’t seem to care and were indifferent about these things, so I turned to my girl friends for support. Am I ever thankful for them.

I grieved for a month. Then, I started taking out my frustrations at video games. I got frustrated at our government for not doing the right thing. COVID cases were on the rise and yet everything was still open like there was no pandemic. People were ignoring COVID, like everything was still fine. I felt so fucking hopeless, I felt like nothing I did mattered. I started getting angry at people for being so fucking selfish, and for not being able to look beyond their noses. I felt angry, hopeless. A big contrast to how I felt at the beginning of the year. I talked about this to my girl friends. They understood how I felt, and were very supportive about it.

Without their support I don’t think I would have mentally recovered. They didn’t judge me or make me feel hopeless. They were amazing through it all. I guess, in a way, to make it up for them, I educated myself about feminism. If most women in your life are so fucking supportive, I feel that you should return the favour and learn about their struggles. I watched a Netflix documentary about it and it really opened my eyes. To summarize how I felt: “I already thought it was bad but holy crap I did not think it was going to be as bad as it is..” at that point, I knew I was going to be an ally for everyone, and told myself that I need to educate myself more about it.

Christmas came and I was just thankful to reach it alive and without COVID. My family and friends are healthy, as well as myself, and I was grateful. At that point we all just wanted to make it through the year for one more week, and start fresh in 2021.

So, that’s my 2020. I didn’t really answer why I’m back.. I didn’t realize I needed to UNLEASH my 2020 experience until I talked to another girl friend. She encouraged me to write as a way to help me improve myself. As a way to track my thoughts and feelings throughout the year. 

To summarize; 2020 started off good, ended bad, realized I deeply disliked the injustices around the world, realized that I needed to forgive myself for my mistakes and that I needed a better support group. Thank you to my girl friends, really, from the bottom of my fucking heart. I also realized that I didn’t like who I was becoming... I’m working on myself to change that.

For 2021, I would like to start writing more. Just start writing about how I felt throughout the day, and my thought processes. I’m also dropping all forms of expectations for 2021 and beyond. Another reason I felt depressed the last 3 months of 2020 is because I expected 2020 to be good to me. It has, in a way, from the lessons it taught me, but man it was NOT the way I expected it to be. 

No expectations, and write more. And also, go outside more. You really need it buddy. And apply to more jobs too. You watched a video about bionics and it moved you. You want the world to be a better place and you want things to be more accessible to everyone. You already learned about the injustices in this world, and you have an excellent educational background to make it better, why not use it?

I think that’s enough writing for today. It’s a fucking mess and I really should have kept writing back then.. oh well. Live and learn.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mint: late-stage adversarial interoperability demonstrates what we had (and what we lost)

In 2006, Aaron Patzer founded Mint. Patzer had grown up in the city of Evansville, Indiana—a place he described as "small, without much economic opportunity"��but had created a successful business building websites. He kept up the business through college and grad school and invested his profits in stocks and other assets, leading to a minor obsession with personal finance that saw him devoting hours every Saturday morning to manually tracking every penny he'd spent that week, transcribing his receipts into Microsoft Money and Quicken.

Patzer was frustrated with the amount of manual work it took to track his finances with these tools, which at the time weren't smart enough to automatically categorize "Chevron" under fuel or "Safeway" under groceries. So he conceived on an ingenious hack: he wrote a program that would automatically look up every business name he entered into the online version of the Yellow Pages—constraining the search using the area code in the business's phone number so it would only consider local merchants—and use the Yellow Pages' own categories to populate the "category" field in his financial tracking tools.

It occurred to Patzer that he could do even better, which is where Mint came in. Patzer's idea was to create a service that would take all your logins and passwords for all your bank, credit union, credit card, and brokerage accounts, and use these logins and passwords to automatically scrape your financial records, and categorize them to help you manage your personal finances. Mint would also analyze your spending in order to recommend credit cards whose benefits were best tailored to your usage, saving you money and earning the company commissions.

By international standards, the USA has a lot of banks: around 12,000 when Mint was getting started (in the US, each state gets to charter its own banks, leading to an incredible, diverse proliferation of financial institutions). That meant that for Mint to work, it would have to configure its scrapers to work with thousands of different websites, each of which was subject to change without notice.

If the banks had been willing to offer an API, Mint's job would have been simpler. But despite a standard format for financial data interchange called OFX (Open Financial Exchange), few financial institutions were offering any way for their customers to extract their own financial data. The banks believed that locking in their users' data could work to their benefit, as the value of having all your financial info in one place meant that once a bank locked in a customer for savings and checking, it could sell them credit cards and brokerage services. This was exactly the theory that powered Mint, with the difference that Mint wanted to bring your data together from any financial institution, so you could shop around for the best deals on cards, banking, and brokerage, and still merge and manage all your data.

At first, Mint contracted with Yodlee, a company that specialized in scraping websites of all kinds, combining multiple webmail accounts with data scraped from news sites and other services in a single unified inbox. When Mint outgrew Yodlee's services, it founded a rival called Untangly, locking a separate team in a separate facility that never communicated with Mint directly, in order to head off any claims that Untangly had misappropriated Yodlee's proprietary information and techniques—just as Phoenix computing had created a separate team to re-implement the IBM PC ROMs, creating an industry of "PC clones."

Untangly created a browser plugin that Mint's most dedicated users would use when they logged into their banks. The plugin would prompt them to identify elements of each page in the bank's websites so that the scraper for that site could figure out how to parse the bank's site and extract other users' data on their behalf.

To head off the banks' countermeasures, Untangly maintained a bank of cable-modems and servers running "headless" versions of Internet Explorer (a headless browser is one that runs only in computer memory, without drawing the actual browser window onscreen) and they throttled the rate at which the scripted interactions on these browsers ran, in order to make it harder for the banks to determine which of its users were Mint scrapers acting on behalf of its customers and which ones were the flesh-and-blood customers running their own browsers on their own behalf.

As the above implies, not every bank was happy that Mint was allowing its customers to liberate their data, not least because the banks' winner-take-all plan was for their walled gardens to serve as reasons for customers to use their banks for everything, in order to get the convenience of having all their financial data in one place.

Some banks sent Mint legal threats, demanding that they cease-and-desist from scraping customer data. When this happened, Mint would roll out its "nuclear option"—an error message displayed to every bank customer affected by these demands informing them that their bank was the reason they could no longer access their own financial data. These error messages would also include contact details for the relevant decision-makers and customer-service reps at the banks. Even the most belligerent bank's resolve weakened in the face of calls from furious customers who wanted to use Mint to manage their own data.

In 2009, Mint became a division of Intuit, which already had a competing product with a much larger team. With the merged teams, they were able to tackle the difficult task of writing custom scrapers for the thousands of small banks they'd been forced to sideline for want of resources.

Adversarial interoperability is the technical term for a tool or service that works with ("interoperates" with) an existing tool or service—without permission from the existing tool's maker (that's the "adversarial" part).

Mint's story is a powerful example of adversarial interoperability: rather than waiting for the banks to adopt standards for data-interchange—a potentially long wait, given the banks' commitment to forcing their customers into treating them as one-stop-shops for credit cards, savings, checking, and brokerage accounts—Mint simply created the tools to take its users' data out of the bank's vaults and put it vaults of the users' choosing.

Adversarial interoperability was once commonplace. It's a powerful way for new upstarts to unseat the dominant companies in a market—rather than trying to convince customers to give up an existing service they rely on, an adversarial interoperator can make a tool that lets users continue to lean on the existing services, even as they chart a path to independence from those services.

But stories like Mint are rare today, thanks to a sustained, successful campaign by the companies that owe their own existence to adversarial interoperability to shut it down, lest someone do unto them as they had done unto the others.

Thanks to decades of lobbying and lawsuits, we've seen a steady expansion of copyright rules, software patents (though these are thankfully in retreat today), enforceable terms-of-service and theories about "interference with contract" and "tortious interference."

These have grown to such an imposing degree that big companies don't necessarily need to send out legal threats or launch lawsuits anymore—the graveyard of new companies killed by these threats and suits is scary enough that neither investors nor founders have much appetite for risking it.

For Mint to have launched when it did, and done as well as it did, tells us that adversarial interoperability may be down, but it's not out. With the right legal assurances, there are plenty of entrepreneurs and investors who'd happily provide users with the high-tech ladders they need to scale the walled gardens that Big Tech has imprisoned them within.

The Mint story also addresses an important open question about adversarial interoperability: if we give technologists the right to make these tools, will they work? After all, today's tech giants have entire office-parks full of talented programmers. Can a new market entrant hope to best them in the battle of wits that plays out when they try to plug some new systems into Big Tech's existing ones?

The Mint experience points out that attackers always have an advantage over defenders. For the banks to keep Mint out, they'd have to have perfect scraper-detection systems. For Mint to scrape the banks' sites, they only need to find one flaw in the banks' countermeasures.

Mint also shows how an incumbent company's own size works against it when it comes to shutting out competitors. Recall that when a bank decided to send its lawyers after Mint, Mint was able to retaliate by recruiting the bank's own customers to blast it for that decision. The more users Mint had, the more complaints it would generate—and the bigger a bank was, the more customers it had to become Mint users, and defenders of Mint's right to scrape the bank's site.

It's a neat lesson about the difference between keeping out malicious hackers versus keeping out competitors. If a "bad guy" was attacking the bank's site, it could pull out all the stops to shut the activity down: lawsuits, new procedures for users to follow, even name-and-shame campaigns against the bad actor.

But when a business attacks a rival that is doing its own customers' bidding, its ability to do so has to be weighed against the ill will it will engender with those customers, and the negative publicity this kind of activity will generate. Consider that Big Tech platforms claim billions of users—that's a huge pool of potential customers for adversarial interoperators who promise to protect those users from Big Tech's poor choices and exploitative conduct!

This is also an example of how "adversarial interoperability" can peacefully co-exist with privacy protection: it's not hard to see how a court could distinguish between a company that gets your data from a company's walled garden at your request so that you can use it, and a company that gets your data without your consent and uses it to attack you.

Mint's pro-competitive pressure made banks better, and gave users more control. But of course, today Mint is a division of Intuit, a company mired in scandal over its anticompetitive conduct and regulatory capture, which have allowed it to subvert the Free File program that should give millions of Americans access to free tax-preparation services.

Imagine if an adversarial interoperator were to enter the market today with a tool that auto-piloted its users through the big tax-prep companies' sites to get them to Free File tools that would actually work for them (as opposed to tricking them into expensive upgrades, often by letting them get all the way to the end of the process before revealing that something about the user's tax situation makes them ineligible for that specific Free File product).

Such a tool would be instantly smothered with legal threats, from "tortious interference" to hacking charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. And yet, these companies owe their size and their profits to exactly this kind of conduct.

Creating legal protections for adversarial interoperators won't solve all our problems of market concentration, regulatory capture, and privacy violations—but giving users the right to control how they interact with the big services would certainly open a space where technologists, co-ops, entrepreneurs and investors could help erode the big companies' dominance, while giving the public a better experience and a better deal.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

[howtomakemoneyonline1-blog]

A Quick Guide How To Make Money Online

There's money Whatever others might think. There are enterprise models work from and also to use to get along with the task that you install will just limits your earnings. Techniques will be presented by this guide about allow you to determine what's the ideal solution for you personally and the best way best to earn money on the internet.

Let us start.

Inch. Freelance occupations

There are 1000s of companies today which are happy to employ talented and skilled individuals. People who understand just how to create, write, teach, code and application are what they search for. Work can be very quickly found by A proficient and talented person in these areas on online. The majority of times companies provide you parttime project-based, and job.

PROS:

It's not difficult to find employment and now there are dozens and dozens of job opportunities. You might also need the freedom to work whenever and wherever you'd like so long once you finish the task.

Your earnings will be dependent on the caliber of time and work you devote. Unlike salaries and which wages have been mended.

CONS:

You're currently doing work for an boss. You've got to respond to some person. That could not be for you personally, if you aren't fond of employed by somebody.

Another disadvantage is that your isolation. You are off ice supervisor may be however, it could be born by you . Expel the friends and depart from the supervisor in. Sounds somewhat gloomy, right?

2. Establishing an Authority Site or Niche Site

First of All, let us distinguish both:

Authority internet web sites are sites which have shown their expertise within the web. Which usually means that lots of respectable people online have deemed this to function as"go-to" internet site due to their product or service.

Niche internet web sites alternatively are internet sites which feature and chat about just one specific niche, one special issue through the duration of your blog.

Where's Earning Money on the web easily fit in all this? By deploying it, The way to earn money making a site is.

A. Monetizing it with Google AdSense

Lots of others have made tens of thousands of dollars with Google AdSense. It's quite tough to become approved by Google. Your web site should demand 16-25 quality articles approximately for approved. Though becoming approved is not a warranty of earning profits. The adverts should click by Google. When adverts set and are employed you can make a substantial quantity of cash.

b. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is currently encouraging services and other people's products in your own website. You're essentially boosting their goods when a website visitor buys your products, and also you also will receive a commission.

C. Membership site

You produce a site that's full of quality and articles services and products which are exclusive to associates. Someone could just have the ability to find the complete usage of your internet site is to cover a membership fee (that you may set). This really is a great business model since it's recurring (members cover their commission monthly) plus it is going to earn cash after you complete the site.

PROS:

You may make passive income for your self and you're able to live. The sky is your limit when speaking about the profits in creating Authority websites and Niche websites. It's since the earnings will likely probably just be limited by the full time, attempt, relations, and investments which that you put from the internet site (s) you have. The blood, tears and sweat that you placed the more powerful the site will probably soon be. Undoubtedly success money.

CONS:

A whole good deal of research, promotion, time and money ought to be spent in creating a Authority site or Niche website. You will hit on a learning curve as you want to learn lots of important items, such as copyright, techniques and methods, language jargons legal things along with more. know more here work from home jobs

3. Selling Your Own Product\Service

"The people that really make the BIG MONEY are the Creators and the Sellers of the product(s). Everyone in between is working for them."

-Anonymous

Nothing surpasses being the"source" of an excellent product. It May be an Ebook, Podcast, Magic Toolbox, Furniture, T-Shirt and etc.. Provided that you're confident that everything you're attempting to sell could be your BEST, subsequently sell the hell from it on line!

Create a means for visitors to seek out your product create a web site or put it . Start away out there and build your enterprise.

PROS:

Whenever your product will be taking off, you should get everything every individual wants -- Passive Income.

You're going to be accessible on the web 24/7 and you're available 24/7. By useful and valuable the item is the earnings will likely probably be set. A money should soon come if you believe it that the product.

CONS:

Promoting the item is going to soon be a struggle in the event that you never own relations or a site on the web.

[johnheintz]

Winners and Losers in the Coronavirus Stimulus

I have a group chat I share with three friends. We are old friends with wildly different life paths. I’m a teacher, lawyer, writer in Chicago, and Jim in an entrepreneur in Chicago.  Steve is a hospital administrator in New York. Pete is a scientist in Vermont. 

Early in January, Pete heard the news of this new virus from a Wuhan, China, wet market. Pete researches disease and drugs for a living, and since he’s talking with friends, he occasionally lets himself be wrong for dramatic effect. 

Coronavirus was big. His posts were dramatic, and when the rest of us teased him, he pushed back, explaining how “we’re screwed.” Over the next month, Pete would be proven entirely correct. By mid-March no one on earth hadn’t heard of Covid-19 and its cause, the novel coronavirus. Even Congress was listening. 

Two disasters loomed. The millions likely to die would only be outweighed by the total failure of the global economy that could impoverish the world in a way never seen in modern times. No reasonable person disagreed with either disaster. 

For the first time in a decade, Democrats and Republicans in Congress started talking. The health crisis required instantaneous action mostly already within the statutory authority of the Executive branch. The economic crisis needed legislative action. People needed to stop moving around and spreading the virus, and it had to happen immediately. This meant no one who couldn’t work from home could work at all. No work meant no money. No money meant no food and no home. People with no money in the bank, which meant most Americans, needed money immediately or they would go to work and spread the virus because they would have no other choice. 

I need to defend Congress here. The President dithered, but the Majority and Minority leaders in the House and Senate moved quickly to act. 

Quick action reveals instincts. When you’re in a crisis, you respond using the reasoning capacities you’ve built up prior to the crisis. When in the crisis itself, you react. Congress reacted, and the subsequent bill tells us a lot about the default positions of the Democratic and Republican parties. 

What is the Act?

It’s called the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. You’ve already heard it’s $2 trillion. The government is spending money, so that’s why it’s being called a “stimulus.” There are good reasons not to call it a stimulus, since governments take stimulus actions to encourage economic growth. This bill is doing the opposite. It’s encouraging people to stop economic activity, or at least to stop economic activity that is not essential. The goal of the bill? ”Freezing the economy in amber“ or ”putting the economy into an induced coma” are two metaphors explaining the goal of the stimulus, but for those of us who live in a partisan world, a world where government is either spending or not spending money, this is massive government spending that can comfortably be called a stimulus.   

Who are the winners?

There are three big winners in the bill. Individuals get 30% of the stimulus. Big corporations get 25%. And small business, state and local governments and public services share the remaining 45%. Democrats insisted on the direct payments and the unemployment increases, and Republicans insisted on saving big businesses, especially the airlines. 

The remaining 45% breaks down with 19% for small businesses, 17% for state and local governments and 9% for public services, mostly hospitals.  

It’s already clear the next bill will help states and local governments. Lobbying is happening at a furious, socially distant pace, but state and local governments cannot run deficits like the federal government. That is, states and localities cannot simply print money, like the The feds will have to provide them support or the downstream effects will create an economic tsunami as great as the coming federal one.   

It may seem like Congress acted quickly, but plenty of horse trading went into the preparation of this bill. Only the cruelest free marketeers can stand up and say government should stay out of this crisis. Those people exist, and they seem to want a certain number of dead bodies before they act. Luckily, enough Americans understand the gravity of the crisis and drown out partisan drum beating in the name of saving our loved ones’ lives. 

Who are the losers?

The worst losers are people on fixed incomes and future debt payers, like today’s college and younger kids. No matter what the feds call it, the US is taking on debt. Since Donald Trump arrived in office, the debt went up $3 trillion bringing the pre-coronavirus stimulus to $23.5 trillion or $70,000 for every person living in the US. Now that debt will be $25.5 trillion. Future generations have to pay. 

A quick side note, this stimulus is a necessary and good kind of debt. As Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has said, "The whole point of not relying on debt excessively in normal times is precisely to be able to use debt massively and without hesitation in situations like this." Borrowing costs money, but saving lives at this scale is worth it. 

The primary losers, then, are future generations. But that’s a generic reality for government debt. The primary losers that could have been named in this bill but weren’t are more interesting. 

Small businesses are definitely losers. Unlike the checks written to individuals, small businesses has strings attached to most of the money in the stimulus. Small businesses are asking right now whether they are able to keep everyone on their payroll, which is the stated purpose of the stimulus loans. The primary question is whether, if they are already heavily leveraged, they will be able to take on this additional debt. The stimulus provides that any small business that keeps paying its workers will receive forgivable loans, but small businesses aren’t sure how or if that will really work. Small businesses face this uncertainty despite the desire of Congress to pass a decisive bill that would remove uncertainty in the economy. Why? 

At least a sectional of the Democratic Party does not like business. They are still reeling from the Great Recession when, according to the left, bailouts should have gone to individual homeowners and not big banks. Democrats make little distinction between big business and small business. Terms like “profiteers” and “capitalists” don’t allow for subtle distinctions like separating Boeing from your corner mom and pop coffeeshop. Blue Chip Republicans don’t care about small companies much either. They want to ensure companies already running and already providing big products and big services to big quantities of people keep running. That’s why the second biggest winner of the stimulus are large corporations. 

Small business is a blend of Democrat and Republican, so when the crisis arrived and wish lists were created, small business took a back seat to the Democrats’ individual payments and the Republicans’ corporate payments. 

Losers in the stimulus are the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers. 

Carbon offsets and clean energy incentives like solar, wind and nuclear never made it into the bill. The impact of climate change like mass migrations, regional armed conflicts, ecosystems failed and lives lost will make this pandemic’s worst death toll estimates of 2-5% of those infected truly seem like the seasonal flu. 

Education got money in the stimulus, but it’s not what you think. States run education, not the feds, and federal involvement in education is, compared to the big money spent by states and local governments, miniscule. Schools that are keeping staff won’t be doing it for long. Tax revenues will be small as the effects of shelter-in-place kick in. Schools will be the hardest hit since in most states schools are the largest recipient of state and local revenue that will disappear. Schools will likely hold onto all their workers, even if they know they’ll have to borrow to pay them. States and local governments assume federal help is coming, and Speaker Pelosi has already said the next legislation will help state and local governments, which is code for schools and other less expensive essential services like police and fire. But it’s notable that education didn’t make it into the first stimulus bill. It signals, however slightly, that neither the Dems nor the Republicans care to prop up the existing school system exactly the way it exists today. 

Youth are a big loser in the stimulus. College kids dependent on their parents will not get a check, which should draw the attention of college kids who are going to join the workforce in what’s shaping out to be another Great Recession. Bigger is the future bill youth will have to pay for the excesses of this generation. 

Are you under 30? If so, consider that you will live in a world your parents and grandparents created that benefitted them enormously but that you will never enjoy. China will be the world’s biggest economy soon, and just as the US set the rules when it was the biggest economy, you can be sure China will set the rules when it’s number one. You will be working in a smaller economy and paying bills your parents ran up today based on poor planning. 

Another loser in the stimulus is the poor. Cataloging the ways the stimulus fails the poor require too much space, so let’s focus on the big, obvious ways. First, poverty means people are less likely to file taxes, which means they won’t get a check. Second, poverty means jobs are more precarious, low wage workers were the first to be let go, and they will be the first to run through the additional unemployment benefits in the stimulus, if they can get through to their state’s unemployment agency before they are evicted, have the internet turned off at home or don’t have time to file because they are homeschooling their children since the schools are closed. If the poor have jobs, they will likely need to go and have fewer protections to avoid catching the virus. Mobile phone location data is already coming out showing poor neighborhoods are staying-at-home far less than wealthier areas. But most of all, the stimulus targets the economy as a whole. The American economy as a whole never did much for the poor. They still don’t have quality health care or any health care. They still have worse schools. They still have worse food. This stimulus improves nothing for the poor. 

Buzz in Washington is that another $2 trillion bill for infrastructure is being negotiated. If the feds want to inject a big stimulus in the economy, it should have passed that infrastructure bill in the first bill. We have all heard the list of infrastructure needs, but each is essential. First, the US needs national broadband. Second, the US needs a web of connected transportation options, from transit and air to railways, roads, and waterways, as a means to reduce congestion, protect the environment, and stimulate economic development. Third, the US needs a massive workforce development program to transform workers for the digital economy. Fourth, the US needs to up its funding of Pre-K-12 and higher education to ensure every child is ready for the new economy. Fifth, the US needs a far better public safety program including offering federal leadership for technical assistance that helps all levels of government develop evidence-based community policing programs that build trust, improve community relations and reduce racial tensions and crime rates. 

Essential workers were losers in this stimulus bill, too. The stimulus provides big money for Covid-19 responses that should include making sure essential workers are well protected and well paid. Other countries like the UK and Germany have provided additional benefits to essential workers, identifying them by name and marshaling national resources to ensure they have protective gear and abundant equipment. The stimulus echoes the current US response. It’s vague and indirect. Chicago where I live keeps sending emergency  notifications to all cell phones even while almost every health care worker I know on the front line is telling me they want to quit. Spain is the worst example of endangered essential workers. Garbage bags, old shirts and duct tape do not provide the kind of protection they need, and the US isn’t doing much better. 

Why should we care?

Crises come suddenly, and they reveal core priorities and levels of preparedness. How prepared the US was for this crisis will be readily apparent in the next 6-12 months. What core priorities the US holds is already apparent. We should care about the apparent core priorities of our elected leaders because, if they don’t match our priorities, they need to be held accountable at election time. 

That Republicans support big business and the Democrats support individual workers is no surprise. This is the first crisis felt by all Americans with such far reaching effects. Being optimistic, let’s say a vaccine is developed quickly and life returns quickly to close to its pre-pandemic rhythm. No one will ever forget that when a crisis hit, government was called on to solve it. No matter whether you have a righty Republican’s healthy mistrust of government or a lefty Democrat’s exuberant trust of government, responding to catastrophes is what governments need to be prepared to do. To the extent we are not prepared, it’s time to make a mental note for the future.  

We need to care about the winners and losers of the first stimulus for two major reasons. First, the first time a big bill is passed, it sets the cap on what will be passed in future legislation. The stimulus was the bigest gun Congress could fire in defense of the US. Future legislation could go bigger, but if the infection rate doesn’t decline, and if a vaccine isn’t discovered quickly, the gun wasn’t big enough. Once the infection rate declines a bit, we can expect more politics, more friction, slower decision-making and less powerful effects from the next rounds of legislation.  

Second, when in crisis and you have to negotiate, you resort to your biggest wants. We need to work to ensure the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers are front of mind, as we continue responding to this crisis and for the next one.  

 The macroeconomic effects of this global shock will almost certainly be felt for decades. China’s claim of a V-shaped recovery seems overblown for China, so the odds of that happening in the US are slim. A big drop is rarely followed by an equally big increase. Make a gun with your left hand. A gun-shaped recovery seems more optimistically realistic. The thumb is the drop, and the pointer finger is the recovery. In other words,  return to normalcy will likely come slowly as winners build their strength and losers lose even more. 

Pete my friend’s worst fear seems right now to be untrue. It’s still early days understanding this virus, but if it mutates, come back annually in winter or never leaves and keeps mutating, the harm to lives and economies will return annually as well. The Spanish Flu came back a second time and killed more people in the second wave than the first. Right now, rumblings from scientists are that this virus isn’t mutating. If it’s not, that means that once there is a vaccine, it will stop the virus completely and allow us to rebuild our economies before they impoverish too many people. 

The question we should be asking ourselves in the moments we can see beyond the immediate crisis is this. Are we happy with the winners and losers Congress chose to create with the largest economic stimulus bill in the history of the world? 

John Heintz is based in Chicago.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (115/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[10 March, 233 Before Age.   Ristet IV.]

As the Federation-Jindan War continued, Luffa found it useful to keep herself and her star-yacht in separate places.   This kept the enemy guessing as to her exact location, and it discouraged attacks on the ship itself, since no one was entirely certain of how valuable a target it really was.    

Following the liberation of Gorrfeg, the Federation and Seltiss' Saiyan Free Company agreed that Luffa and Xibuyas should split up and tackle Jindan cultists on different planets.   It was important to prevent the cultists from establishing a power base on another Federation world.    Thus far, the Jindan strategy had been to swoop in and attack any Federation planet within easy reach.    Evidently, the only objective was to confound the defenders and spread their forces even thinner.    Luffa could foil this effort, but only by being in the right place at the right time.  

Her secret weapon to ensure this was Dotz, a fortuneteller she had met before the war began.    Dotz was no warrior, but her predictions of enemy activity had been instrumental.   For this reason, Luffa had kept Dotz's role a secret, and took care to make sure she was far removed from the heaviest fighting.  

And so, when the star-yacht needed repairs, it made sense to send it--and Dotz-- to Ristet IV, as Dotz's forecasts had shown no combat in the next several days.  The planet was well-defended by surface-to-orbit weapons, bolstered with a Federation fleet which used the system as a command center.     Given this high level of security, and surrounded by qualified starship mechanics at the spaceport, Dr. Topsas suggested that they use the time to relax and unwind.    

No one, not even himself, took his advice.   Topsas left the ship, but instead of taking in a show in the city near the spaceport, he went to a medical research facility and began looking up ways to improve Luffa's recovery time after each battle.    Dotz remained on board, preferring to stay close to the materials she used for fortunetelling: crystals, a pack of arcane cards, and various other trinkets most people would deem useless and insignificant.     As was her custom, she would sit on the observation deck and arrange these things around herself.   Nearby, Zatte was perched on a lounge chair.    The Dorlun had at least tried to follow Topsas' suggestion.    Clad in a black one-piece swimsuit, she had spent about thirty minutes sunbathing under the dimmer of Ristet's binary stars, but shortly after this she gave up and began running diagnostics on her weapons.    

"If you don't mind my asking," Dotz said, calling over to her.   "Why do you even have all those blasters?    I thought you could shoot ki like Luffa can."

"I can," Zatte said.    "But not nearly as well as a Saiyan, or most other martial artists.   Besides, I like to keep my options open.    Sometimes you can do things with a plasma rifle that you just can't do with a ki blast."    

"Well, there's no need for you to check them now," Dotz said.   "I still don't see any sign of major combat on this planet.    No Saiyans destroying cities or anything like that.   At least not anytime soon."

"Oh, I believe you, Dotz," Zatte said as she reassembled a sight on one of her pistols.    "You haven't steered us wrong yet, but I'm not used to knowing things like that in advance.    I guess I'm a creature of habit.    Can't take anything for granted.    Anyway, if you're so sure this planet won't get attacked, why are you so busy with all that stuff over there?"

"Well, um, I'm trying to refine my ability," Dotz said.    "I'm confident about he Ristet System, probably because... well, because I'm here.   The forecasts are usually clearer when I'm on-location.  But there's a lot of things I can't make out.    I still can't get a decent reading on Luffa, and the outcomes of her missions are fuzzy at best.    I thought I had a handle on her son's destiny, but it was all so muddled.   Your wife keeps telling me how important I am to the war effort, and how grateful she is that I'm here, but I can't even predict how the war will end, or who wins."

"Shoot, I can tell you that one.   We're going to win this war, Dotz," Zatte said confidently.  "You'll see."

"To be honest, I don't," Dotz replied.  "I can see glimpses of the future, enough to make a decent living as a fortuneteller, but I can't always see big picture stuff.  I know the next Saiyan attack won't come for several more hours, but I have no idea how it'll turn out, or what's happening on other Federation planets.  I'm sorry I can't be more useful than that."

"Don't be ridiculous, Dotz," Zatte said, "You've been a big help already.  The challenge with a space war like this is that it's tough to know where to deploy our forces.  Luffa's strong enough to beat the Jindan Saiyans, but if she doesn't know where they'll strike, it could take days to get her to the right place.  You've taken a lot of guesswork out of things.  Tactically speaking, that's huge."

"Oh.   So is that why you've been sticking so close to me lately?" Dotz asked.  "To keep me safe?"

Zatte nodded.  "My people believe in watching each other's backs.  I used to be a soldier, so it was my job to guard the others so they could support everyone else.  But besides that, I was hoping to be close by in case you had any visions about Luffa.  Until the communications are restored with the Fedender System, you're the only way I can keep tabs on her."

Dotz closed her eyes and gently raised her hands to chest height.  She took a few deep breaths, then mumbled quietly.

"I see her," she said warily, as if even commenting on the vision might chase it from her mind.  "She's alive.  I can tell that much."

"But you still can't see her future," Zatte said.  

"No, I can't.  I'm sorry about that.  Um... I know that made you upset before."

"No, I'm sorry.    I overreacted," Zatte said.  "My people has a saying: No news is good news.  I had to remind myself of that.  Just because you can't see what happens to Luffa doesn't mean it'll be bad."

"Is that why you don't want me to read your fortune?" Dotz asked.  "Are you worried I'll see something tragic?"

"No.  I mean...!   Well, yes."  Zatte shook her head and chuckled.  "It's... complicated.  I'm just not comfortable with the idea of peeking ahead at the end of the movie."

"But you're convinced about the outcome of the war," Dotz said.   "What makes you so sure?"

"Luffa," Zatte said.  "She's destined to accomplish great things, Dotz."

"Destined?  It sounds like you had a vision of your own once."

Zatte had been applying lithium grease to a rifle part when Dotz said this.   It startled her enough that she accidentally missed and sprayed it on her work gloves instead.   "I... I guess you could put it that way." she said, looking up at Dotz somewhat anxiously.   "I saw something.  I've been trying to interpret it ever since."

"Now I get it," Dotz said.  "Asking me to tell your fortune would be... well, it would be like questioning your own epiphany.    Even if I confirmed what you had seen, you would feel as though you didn't trust your own instincts."

"Uh...yeah," Zatte said, more than a little amazed.  "I didn't know how to put it into words before, but that's it exactly.    Wow, Luffa wasn't kidding.  You are good."

"In my line of work, you have learn to read people," Dotz said.  "It helps fill in the gaps when the omens don't make sense.  I think I envy you, Zatte.  I'm so used to having glimpses of the future that I've never had to put much faith in anything."

Zatte was about to respond to this, when she suddenly noticed something outside of the transparent dome that covered the deck.    At first, she thought it was the contrail of an aircraft, only brighter, like the ionization trail of a meteorite.    

"What is it?" Dotz asked, when she finally saw what had caught Zatte's attention.

"Could be a starship," Zatte said, "but if it's coming in for a landing, it should be coming here, towards the spaceport.   Unless it's out of control, or a hostile..."

"But... but that's impossible," Dotz said.   "If the Saiyans were going to invade this planet, I'm sure I would have foreseen it.   I might have gotten the hour or the number wrong, but I'm sure I would have seen something, unless..."

"Let's check it out," Zatte said.   She grabbed the beach robe off the chair and a holster belt containing the weapons she had already finished cleaning.    "You should probably come with me to the bridge.    It'll be safer there."

*******

The people of Ristet IV had orange, scaly skin and long muzzles.  As the planet's Supergovernor was currently on trial for conflicts of interest related to his vast toothpaste business holdings, the vice-Supergovernor had been the head-of-state for the past sixteen months.    He conducted his business in the Red Manor, located at Number 1, Supergovernor Street, Supergovernor City, postal code 00001.   In front of the Red Manor was a reflection pool, which was something of a tourist attraction to visitors to Supergovernor City.   It was now gone, replaced by a crater thirty feet wide, with a small pod resting at the bottom.   Moments after arriving, its lone occupant stepped out, marched into the Red Manor, and introduced himself to the vice-Supergovernor.    

"It's pretty simple stuff," he said to the vice-Supergovernor and his staff.   His skin was pale pink, and his unkempt hair hung from his scalp like the fronds on a tropical tree.  But what caught everyone's attention was the invader's long furry tail, which waved lazily from a hole in his black trunks as he spoke.    

"You all know what I am, and what I can do, and what I must have done to the fleet up there to get this far, right?    Well that's it, then.   I don't see why we should waste time fighting then.   I mean, I like fighting, sure, but your best defenses were topside, and I already took care of those.    Calling for help won't work either, thanks to the jamming device I left in orbit."

"What are your terms?" the vice-Supergovernor asked.   Diplomacy was not his strong suit, though in this situation, flowery speeches weren't going to change the situation.

"I like that," the invader said.   "Straight and to the point.    I have friends coming over, and they need a place to stay.   You will disable your defenses, you will allow them land here without a fight, and no one gets hurt.   Before you know it, we'll be on our way, but you'll get to keep all your fancy buildings and weapons when it's over."

One of the chiefs-of-staff spoke up.    "This planet is a Federation world,"  she protested.   "You're asking us to betray--"

The invader pointed his finger at her and fired a ki blast through her chest, killing her instantly.    "As of twenty minutes ago," he replied, "you people got cut off from the Federation, whether you wanted to or not.   All I'm asking you to do is look out for yourselves.    Once my guys are gone, you'll be free to patch things up with your buddies, assuming any of 'em are still around.   So what'll it be?   If you want to make a go of it, that's fine with me, but this little barnhouse of yours will be the first to go, along with everyone in it.   Now, do we have an understanding?"

The vice-Supergovernor looked down at his chief-of-staff's body and nodded mournfully.  

"Good," said the invader.    "First thing you can do for me is have someone put my ship in storage.   Some place with some high security.    I don't want any busybodies fooling around with it while I wait for my buddies."

"We'll put it in the highest-security facility we have," the vice-Supergovernor said.    "I can assure you, no one will even find it, much less tamper with it."

"Good boy," the invader said with a smile.  

*******

[11 March, 233 Before Age.   Ristet IV.]

"He's not a Saiyan," Zatte said.    

"How did you figure that out?"  Dotz asked.    

"Because I'm sitting inside his ship," Zatte explained. "He wiped most of the logs, he didn't bother to clear the internal sensors, which identify the most recent passenger as a felinoid species.    Felinoids have tails like Saiyans, so they sort of look like Saiyans, but they're not."

Zatte was somewhat obsessive over these kinds of matters.   Over the past 23 hours, she had tracked down the incoming ship to the Red Manor's front lawn, learned the ship had been removed by government agents, and traced it to a secret storage facility.   There were passcodes and sensor grids to overcome, but her ability to manipulate energy  made this a fairly simple task.   She was still wearing the swimsuit and beach robe from when she had first spotted the ship.   Changing clothes had seemed like a luxury she couldn't afford, and so she hadn't bothered.  

Someone, probably the felinoid, had done something to jam planetwide communications, but this apparently only applied to off-world communications.    With the star-yacht on the planet's surface, she could read Dotz just fine on her earpiece.  

"Well, could he have had a felinoid on board with him?" Dotz suggested.

Zatte smiled at the thought.    "You wouldn't say that if you were here," she replied.    This is definitely a one-seater.   It looks more like an escape pod with a stardrive built onto it.   When this is over, I might want to take this baby with us.    Luffa could get some use out of a little ship like this."

"Um, I don't really understand then," Dotz said.   "Why would someone try to impersonate a Saiyan like this?    Especially in a war with Saiyans on both sides?"

"He's probably an opportunist," Zatte said.   "Luffa's dealt with these types before.   They show up on a planet, and shake down the population for whatever they can get, and the planet's leaders cooperate just to get rid of them.    A lot of actual Saiyans pull this trick, but plenty of other aliens do it too, anyone strong enough to blow up buildings and cities with their ki energy.    He may only be using the war as a cover.    He can play at being a Saiyan and trick his victims into thinking he's got backup when he really doesn't.   That's probably why the Federation hasn't stepped in yet.   They may think he's with the cult, and they don't know what the situation on the ground is."

"But you can shut off his jammer and tell them what's really going on, right?" Dotz asked.  

"Afraid not," Zatte said.   "I was hoping he had some kind of controller for it on his ship, but I can't find anything like that.    I could try using his navigational computer to backtrack his flight path, maybe find out where he left it, but if he was smart, his gadget has thrusters and a cloaking device."

"Oh!   But you could take his ship into orbit, outside the range of the jamming device!" Dotz suggested.   "Then you could summon the fleet that way!"

"No.   If he finds out, I'll be a sitting duck, or he might get desperate enough to hurt people on the surface.   Besides, Luffa's forces are stretched thin enough already.   I'd rather tackle this guy by myself, save them the trouble."

"By yourself?   But... but how?" Dotz asked.  

"I haven't worked that out yet," Zatte said.   She opened the hatch on the pod and lifted herself out of it, only to spot a guard making his rounds.    Normally, her powers made this a simple matter, as she could simply warp light around herself to become effectively invisible.   This time, however, she had to deal with the ship, and make certain the hatch was closed before the guard could happen to notice.   While she struggled to close it as quickly and quietly as possible, Dotz continued to speak into her ear.  

"It's just... I didn't even see any of this coming," she said.   "If there's going to be major combat on this planet, and soon, then I have no idea how it will turn out.   And I haven't read your fortune either, so if you go to face him, then... well,  anything could happen.   You might die!"

There was an audible clack as Zatte finished closing the hatch, one that she couldn't avoid, and one that the guard couldn't help but overhear.    Luckily, the acoustics of the storehouse seemed to be in her favor, and the guard wandered off in a different direction.    If he ever came back to check the pod, Zatte would be long gone.    

"Anything's possible," Zatte whispered as she crawled through the metal racks.    Upon reaching the skylight she had used to gain entry, she slipped inside and closed it behind her, then leaped down from the roof and made her way on foot to an airbike she had stowed in the bushes.    "Personally, I like my chances.   It's a risk, but an acceptable one."

"But if something goes wrong--"

"It won't," Zatte said.   "I'm sure of it, just like I'm sure we'll win the war."

"Oh."  

Zatte powered up the bike and sped along a dirt road.   Once she was certain that she was on a public highway, she dropped the invisibility effect she had used and took a roundabout path back to the spaceport.  

Why can't you believe?" Zatte asked.  "You told me before that your power can't foresee everything."

"Because even the things I do see are uncertain," Dotz said.  "I know Luffa's alive--for the moment--but not much else.  She could be fighting for her life right now, or maybe the battle's already over.   I find it's best to react to situations as they happen.   Let things play out and gather more information."

"Why did you join us?"  Zatte asked.  "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have you on board, but you've got no obligations here."

"I had a vision that someone like Luffa would help me, not long before she showed up to bring me out of the coma I was in.  I also knew that my powers would begin to change around the same time that happened.  I'm... evolving.  I don't know how else to put it.  I can't see into Luffa's future, for whatever reason.  I think that might he a sign.  Either way, she helped me once, and she might help me again.  And since I can't predict whether or not she can help me, I'll...um... have to stay nearby and find out the old fashioned way."

"Okay, but is that worth riding out a war?" Zatte asked.

"Uh... maybe not, but I have to find out.  For you, it's a matter of faith.  A foregone conclusion.  For me, it's a mystery."

"Huh.    Well, I'll be back at the ship in about half an hour.    Maybe I can take some of the mystery out of how to take this felinoid down."

*******

At the spaceport's medical facility, Dr. Topsas was poring over data on comparative Saiyan biology.   There was very little useful information on Saiyan-specific medicine, as so few Saiyans bothered to seek treatment.     Much of what Topsas knew was self-taught, or accomplished through his own requests, such as the scans conducted on Bigreen shortly after Luffa first transformed into a Super Saiyan.

He had begun his research on Ristet IV by asking a fairly simple question about feet.    Luffa's left foot had been run through with a beam of ki energy, and this had caused some substantial tendon damage.   Topsas had stitched her back together, but his preference would have been for Luffa to rest and let the wound heal.    As it was, she simply had no time for this.   The battle in the Fedender System was simply too critical.    

"They'll die if I don't get over there, Doc," she had said to him before leaving.    "What kind of a Super Saiyan would I be if I just sat around here taking it easy?"

"The healthy kind," was probably what he had said to her in reply, but her words had left a greater impression on him than he had let on, for they reminded him of an expression from his own culture.    His species was of an arachnoid biology, possessing eight limbs, each terminating with a hand, and eight eyes, positioned about the head in such a way as to see in virtually any direction.   In his youth, he had asked his pastor why they had so many more eyes and limbs than other beings.    At that age, Topsas had already become interested in vertebrate biology, and the bipedal anatomy that often accompanied it.    What strange creatures they were, to manage with only two eyes and two legs and two hands.    

His pastor had explained that their people had been blessed with extra limbs and eyes, so that they would always be able to see those in need, and lend a hand to those who needed it.    This, more than anything, was what had inspired him to become a physician.  But it had always been a matter of helping the less fortunate.   His patients were sick, injured beings in need of his care, and once he had healed them, his work was done.     He had always thought that he was drawn to Luffa because she needed more care than most; more than she was willing to admit.  

But over time, he had begun to realize that it was more than that.    In her own way, Luffa had taken on his brand of charity, and he began to see that there was more at stake than simply keeping her healthy.    Kept in sickbay, and allowed to recover in full, Luffa could save no one but herself.   In the field, she could save thousands, or even millions.    Everything hinged on how quickly Dr. Topsas could get her back in action.    

He had always loathed this aspect of sports medicine, which prioritized schedules and purses over the health of the athlete.    It encouraged risk taking and corner-cutting in the name of getting a warm body into the game.    But now the schedule was a war, and the purse was innocent lives.    He knew how to heal her, but that wasn't enough anymore.    He had to find a way to do even better.  

And so, his original query had transformed into a wider search for other treatments.     He began to stray into the unorthodox, the experimental, the techniques and prescriptions that he never would have considered before, because he lacked the confidence in his own ability to administer them.     And his response to the challenge was always that he would have to rise to the occasion.    If a better doctor was what the galaxy needed now, then he would do all that he could to become one.    He had, after all, too many eyes and too many hands not to try.

*******

While Topsas worked, his absence went mostly unnoticed by his shipmates, who assumed he was enjoying a much-needed day off.   Zatte saw no way the doctor could help, and she preferred not to burden him with this latest crisis.    Whoever this invader was, she was at least grateful to the felinoid for keeping a low profile.  

She now stood in the conference room of the ship, eating a bowl of cereal as she tweaked a holographic model of a city block.    On one particular building, a pair of fourth-story windows were ringed with glowing red rectangles.   Thin beams of green light extended out from these windows and pointed to various other buildings in the vicinity.

She was still dressed in the black swimsuit, beach robe, gloves and boots she had been wearing before.    Her face was somewhat drawn from lack of sleep, and her hair was messier, but otherwise she looked essentially the same as when this had all begun.

"Up here would be the best spot," Zatte said, pointing her spoon at a tall building on the edge of the hologram.   "The altitude, the distance from the target, it's perfect.    I could get off three or four shots and still get out of there before he'd ever find me.   The only problem is the angle."

She put the spoon back in the bowl and tapped a few keys on the table's computer console, which displayed an image over the holographic city.   It was the view from a telescopic sight, which showed the very edge of a window.

"His hotel room has two windows and I can only line up with one of them from up there.   And I had to do some pretty daring stuff with some climbing gear to make that work.   On top of that, I'd need him to be standing right next to the window to hit a vital area."

"What if something happened outside?" Dotz suggested.   "You could stage a diversion, something big enough to make him look outside to see what it was."  

"Maybe, but it'd all be for nothing if he looks out of the other window that I can't hit," Zatte said with a sigh.    "And it's not like we could just try again until it works.   Sooner or later, he'd get suspicious, or he might just stop taking the bait.    I thought about sabotaging his place, maybe screw up the plumbing enough that he'd get fed up and move to another room, but I don't want to drag things out this long.   I really just want to climb up there and take the shot."

She set down her bowl with more force than she intended, then dropped into one of the executive chairs with a frustrated groan.     "You know," Dotz said, "I'm just impressed that you can hit anything from that far away."   She got up from her seat, carefully holding the folds of her purple garments so as not to disturb the cards and crystals she had laid on the table, and pointed at the thread of green light that represented Zatte's proposed line of fire.   "I mean, this is over two miles, isn't it?"

"Nearly three," Zatte said.   "I've made longer shots than that without a problem.    It's just a matter of taking the wind into account, keeping a steady hand.    I had to get used to using the scope with my left eye, but that didn't take long."

"Your eye," Dotz said.  "You lost it in a battle, didn't you?"

"That's right," Zatte said.  "Was that a psychic reading, or simple deduction?"

"Well, deduction," Dotz said.  "You said you were a soldier, and you seem pretty stubborn in your own way.  Did you want me to divine something more than that?"

"Sure, why not?" Zatte said.   "I just need to get my mind off of this for a while."

"I'll need to see your eyepatch," Dotz said.  "If that's all right."

Zatte hesitated, then turned away and removed it from her face.  She handed it to Dotz, but only after making sure to conceal her injured eye with her free hand.

"I only take it off when I'm alone, or with Luffa," Zatte said.  It's a personal thing."

"I understand," Dotz said.   She cradled the patch in her hands for a moment, and made an intrigued noise as she closed her eyes.  "You didn't think she was coming back that day," Dotz said.  "When the shrapnel hit you in the face, you thought you were going to die, and that you'd never see her again."

Zatte didn't know how to respond to this.  She tensed the hand she was holding over her sightless prosthetic eye.

"But you didn't die, and then she came back to fight alongside you.  When you pray, you thank Providence for allowing you to keep one eye so you could see her return that day."

"That's... H-how?  I never told anyone that.  Luffa doesn't even know, unless she picked it up from me telepathically, but we don't..."

"You still feel it in your skull sometimes," Dotz went on.  "Um, your eye, that is.   Sometimes, it's like you never lost it, and it's still there, aching a little."

"Okay, I think I want that back,"  Zatte said.  "This is getting a little too personal."

"Sorry," Dotz said.   As she slid the patch across the table, she paused to look at the hologram.   "Um...What are these other green lines?" she asked.  

"Oh, those," Zatte said.   "I tried finding better angles to shoot from, but they're all too close to the target."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Dotz asked.  "I don't know a lot about guns, but..."

Zatte straightened her eyepatch and checked her hair to make sure it was free of the strap.   "It would be, but the shot from those points isn't a whole lot better than the one I want," she explained.    So the difficulty would be lower, but there's still a good chance that I miss, and then he comes barrelling out of the window to find the shooter."   She pointed at the far edge of the map.   "If I'm shooting from there, and I miss, it's not as big a deal, because I'd have time to get away and hide.   But from over here--"   Now she pointed at a closer position, on the roof of a department store.    "--he'd be on me in seconds."

"But you can make yourself invisible," Dotz said.   "And you can mask your ki."  

"Sure, but he could set off an explosion big enough to catch me before that would do me any good," Zatte explained.    "I don't know exactly how strong he is, but I got a decent idea when I tracked him down to his place.   He's definitely strong enough that I can't afford any mistakes.   One shot is all I get.    If it weren't for these damn windows!"

"Well, why not turn part of the wall invisible?" Dotz suggested.  "You can do that too, can't you?"

"It's not quite that simple," Zatte said.   She lifted her spoon and it slowly began to vanish from sight.    "What I'm doing here is bending light waves around an object.    The spoon is unchanged, but you can't see it because I'm not allowing light to bounce off of it and into your eyes."   She then held up her free hand and placed it behind the spoon.    "You can see my hand because light is bouncing off of that, and then I warp that light around the spoon and into your eyes.    But I can't make a section of the bulkhead invisible, because I'd have to bend light from the other side and bring it into this cabin, and there's no pathway for me to do that, unless you open the door or something."

"Oh, I see," Dotz said.    

"I could use the windows on the apartment as an opening," Zatte went on, but even so, I'd have to be pretty close to make it work.   Less than a hundred feet, I think.    I might as well knock on the door and shoot him when he answers it."

"Well, why not try that?" Dotz asked.   She stood up and pointed at the building across from the apartment.  "Not... not knocking on his door, I mean.   But you could set up here, and make part of his wall invisible, and then you couldn't miss."

"Dotz," Zatte said, "he'll notice me right away.   As soon as he looks up and sees a hole in his wall, he'll know something's up before I even get a chance to aim."

"He might not look up," Dotz said.    "You could make a small hole, just big enough to see through."

Zatte took a deep breath and put her hands behind her head  as she leaned back in the chair.   "It's too risky.   I mean, if he's facing away from me, there's no problem at all.   At that range the shot becomes child's play, sure.   But if he's facing the wall, and he's already on edge..."

"Oh, but I don't think he is," Dotz said.   "He snuck into a war zone, past a fleet, and then he bluffed his way into conquering this planet.    Right now, he's probably thinking he doesn't need to worry about anything.    He's already won."

"Is that a prophecy?" Zatte asked.    

"Call it a hunch," Dotz said.   "It's just that... if he were worried, he wouldn't be hiding in plain sight like this, would he?   He thinks he's holding all the cards.    The last thing he expects is someone like you to shoot him.    Besides, I have... well, I suppose I have faith in you.   You know your skills, and you believe this is worth doing.   Just like you believe Luffa will win this war."

Zatte leaned forward in her chair and looked at Dotz for at least a minute.      

"You're right," she finally said.   "I have to do this, and I need to do it soon.    It's risky, but it'll only be riskier if I wait.   If Providence has decided that I should fail, then there's nothing I can do about it."  

She stood up from her chair, and then Dotz did the same.    "I'll go with you," she offered, but Zatte gestured for her to sit.  

"No, I can't risk losing both of us," she said.   "And if something does go wrong, I need you to fill in the others on what happened.   But I appreciate the offer."  

"At least let me read your fortune," Dotz said.   "I might be able to tell you if this will work or not."

"Thanks, but no," Zatte said.   "But I'll tell you what.   If I make it back, I'll tell you all about the vision I had.    If I'm going to take a chance, we may as well make this interesting, right?   A little side-bet won't hurt."

Dotz smiled, but not as cheerfully as she might have liked.    She was confident that this plan would work, and it seemed that Zatte believed in it too, but she still felt responsible for whatever came next, as if she had signed the young woman's death warrant.    

But there had been no fear in Zatte's eye when she turned and left for her mission.   Dotz had gathered this much just from handling the eyepatch.   With past clients, such objects often carried signs of regret, or bitterness, or repressed trauma.     Zatte's eyepatch had traces of these, to be sure, but they were overshadowed by a sense of duty and honor, and the notion that her physical loss served a higher purpose.   Dotz didn't know if there was any truth to this, but it didn't seem to matter.    Zatte believed it, and for now, that was enough.  

And so, when Zatte returned a few hours later, alive and unhurt, holding a bottle of spirits to celebrate her successful hit, Dotz was deeply relieved, but not altogether surprised.  

NEXT: ...To She Who Waits.

[drferox]

Actual ‘Big Pharma‘ Douchebaggery in Vet Medicine

There is a lot that could be said about ‘Big Pharma’, and most of it comes from the human medicine side, probably because it is a larger market and, well, USA. But even in the veterinary sphere I am seeing more generalized ‘douchebag moves’ made by large pharmaceutical companies.

A lot of the Anti-Pharma movement is just memes for the cult of health, that seems to think that vegetables and fresh air will cure all your ills. This is simply not the case, there are serious, legitimate needs for pharmaceutical products, but putting all those disingenuous memes aside, large pharmaceutical companies are definitely not playing nice.

The difficulty is that we need these companies to be conducting the research and development that advances veterinary medicine, but every time there is an advance there is significant push to capitalize on that advance which goes far beyond recouping investment if the share prices are anything to judge by.

And as a veterinarian, I often get blamed for the high price of treating animals. There are lots of factors that come into this, but the wholesale price of prescription (and non-prescription) medication is something that I can’t control.

Every business that sells a product has a mark up on everything they sell. You buy an item wholesale, you add your mark up and tax, then you sell it at a retail price. That’s how business works, and a veterinary clinic is still a business. There might be a fixed percentage mark up, or a fixed fee mark up, or a combination of both, but everything sold is marked up somehow.

But the wholesale prices are mostly set by the manufacturer, that is to say the ‘Big Pharma’ itself, though wholesalers or distributors might add a small margin, they make their profits with bulk buying and selling and the charging of delivery fees, not the products itself.

And the unfortunate reality is that the wholesale price of a drug is basically set by what the manufacturer thinks people are willing to pay, not what it costs to produce or even develop.

(NB: If you want to know what a wholesale price for a veterinary drug is, google a pet pharmacy, and their listed prices will be pretty close, or even below the wholesale price a vet clinic is paying. This is why we can’t compete with them. How are they getting it cheaper than our wholesalers? Hmm, I wonder.)

A couple of examples from the last ten years or so:

Cerenia (Maropitant) hit the market with basically a monopoly for an anti-emetic (stops vomiting) drug that doesn’t cause sedation, which in addition to it’s other medical uses has a significant potential for treating car sickness in dogs. Everyone used the injection, but far fewer people than expected were buying the tablets for that purpose, because they were expensive. After a couple of years of poor sales, those prices dropped to about 30% of their original.

Reconcile (Fluoxetine) was produced as a flavored chew for dogs, but it was 4 to 8 times more expensive than buying the human one and giving unflavored tablets, which most owners chose to do. As vets we’re legally obliged to used the veterinary registered product before the human one... unless the owner ‘requests’ it and we have the conversation about off label use. Which most people ended up doing because it was an awful lot cheaper. Reconcile was removed from the Australian market after a few years.

Vetmedin is a heart medication that greatly improves the quality and duration of life for most dogs it’s prescribed for. It’s really useful, but unfortunately expensive, especially for larger dogs. But its expense was just a fact of life for those that needed it, and many vet clinics were marking it up less than other products to make it more affordable. Until recently when the drug came off patent, and now a generic is available at 60% of the cost. So now the manufacturer of vetmedin is throwing about all these free product deals to try to keep their market share. If they can afford to give out that much free product, I’m pretty sure they could have lowered the price, or at least not raised it every 6 months, in these last 10 years while they had a monopoly.

Frontline Plus was offering insanely generous deals with free product for clients that bought a box in the twelve months before we stopped stocking it. Of course, by then we couldn’t even give it away.

I personally take a little bit of satisfaction seeing pharmaceutical companies go into a panic when their monopoly ends.

Some pharmaceutical companies take a different route, and copyright not the active ingredient, but the delivery method, which may be a separate chemical, or a structural component. Medicine isn’t just an active component mixed with powder or water. Some have very clever things going on, like slow release micro-spheres or encapsulated actives to produce a long duration of action or to bypass clearance mechanisms. And because they’re not drugs, as such, they’re not subject to quite the same copyright rules, which expire after ten years.

This is particularly frustrating because it means an excellent delivery method can’t be used for other drugs I would find useful in that formula, at least until someone’s copyright expires.

Speaking of copyrights expiring, there are some pharmaceutical companies out there that seem to exist only to wait for expensive meds to come off copyright, to then register a generic at significantly cheaper cost. Not gonna lie, I use these companies a lot, but their number one perk is giving the clinic more free stock, so they could have put their prices lower, if they wanted to. The other perk they gave us was sticky tape that was green.

All of this is old news though. The new douchebaggy moves have me very suspicious.

One company, one simply too big to fail, has announced it’s going to stop offering its products through wholesalers, instead forcing vet clinics to buy all its products from them directly.

This is suspicious, but also leads to worse service when it comes to ordering meds in a hurry. We also haven’t seen a price drop now the wholesalers are being taken out of the equation, and where we could previously bundle orders together from multiple different manufacturers to get free shipping from the wholesaler.

It may not look like much of a big difference, but if all the ‘big pharma’ groups do it, it makes it more difficult for smaller producers to gain a market share. Currently a clinic can do one big order to a wholesaler, and get products from all the different manufacturers. If they all split, the temptation is certainly there to just order from the few big ones to save on shipping and time.

Another, even worse offering by the pharmaceutical companies right now essentially amounts to a pyramid scheme.

This is what this particular pharmaceutical company is doing, which shall remain unnamed here, but Aussie vets probably know who it is:

Market a ‘new’ arthritis supplement. Claim it’s different for products with the same active ingredient because the extraction process is different.

Offer an online store where clients can buy this product directly, as well as all your other products, but an inflated price.

Give clinics a discount code they can give their clients, or anyone else. Purchases made with these codes are discounted generously, and the clinic earns a small commission for the referral.

The clinic is charged around about $1000 a year for this code, unless they buy and sell a lot of the product in question.

The vet clinic is charged a lump sum for the privilege of ‘maybe’ earning a commission for referring their own clients to the pharmaceutical company’s website.

That is not how commissions are supposed to work. It should be you make a referral, you earn money. Not you pay for the chance to earn your commission.

That is like Amazon saying “First you pay me money. Then you send me other people who pay me money, and I’ve give you a tiny cut.”

That absolutely reeks of a scam. And I can only really, desperately hope that business model doesn’t catch on.

Big Pharma absolutely chase the money. They make products they think there is demand and a market for (like flea products, ridiculous money is spent promoting flea products to vet clinics). Big Pharma is accused of a lot of rubbish that simply isn’t fair (all humans not needing the medication that makes their life livable/possible for example) but there are real shenanigans they’re up to as well.

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 33

DISCLAIMER: This is a modern AU crossover story with Outlander and La Femme Nikita. LFN and its characters do not belong to me nor do those from Outlander.

SYNOPSIS: Oliver Chan makes Claire Beauchamp a proposition she is unable to refuse and contacts Madame Cheung with good news not knowing that Section One is monitoring his every move. 

THANK YOU for reading my fictional story about Section One’s covert operatives Claire Beauchamp and James Fraser.  I really appreciate you all for taking the time to read, reblog or comment.  Previous chapters can be found ... https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

  CHAPTER 33

  The music in the nightclub eventually died down somewhat while the girls on stage took a small break. As he only had a few minutes, Oliver Chan flipped open his cell phone and quickly dialed an unlisted number then waited for the ringing of the phone to be answered.  Claire, the barmaid, would soon be here to meet with him and he wanted to inform Madame Cheung of his potential conquest.  

After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time the phone was eventually answered and a cultured female voice was heard on the other end. “Yes?”

“Madame?  It’s Oliver Chan.”

“Yes.”

“I have goods here that may be of interest to you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I have the very person who could replace Annalise de Marillac.”

“Does she fit the criteria and profile?”

“Absolutely … and more!”

“Hmmm, interesting you have piqued my imagination … I would like to meet with this person.”

“It can be arranged.”

“Good … tomorrow … usual place.”

“We’ll be there Madame.”

“I look forward to it … good work as usual Oliver.”

“Thank you.”

With a self satisfied smile on his face Oliver Chan disconnected the call and replaced his cell phone into his pocket.  Sitting back in his chair he was very pleased at the turn of events for Madame Cheung was curious about the new woman he had found.  That was a good thing as he knew she only took the best of the women for her business.  Oliver also knew of Madame Cheung’s connections to the Rising Dragons, so he recognized the need to be careful.  He could ill afford for anything to go wrong for he was on his own now that Alain de Marillac was dead.  He would have to use his British canny coupled with his Chinese chi to make sure that all went smoothly with Madame Cheung at the meeting tomorrow.  

But first he had to make Claire a deal that would be too good to refuse.

Casting his eyes toward the bar, Oliver noticed that the barmaid was tidying up in readiness of her break. This woman … Claire … was going to be his ticket to riches and the lifestyle that he’d always wanted.  He could see it all … the villa … the fast cars and faster women.  Now that Alain de Marillac was no longer in the picture having died from a heart attack at the Embassy ball, he was currently in a position to negotiate for a higher price for this woman and keep all the profits for himself.

Yes, he thought, when Madame Cheung saw Claire in the flesh, she would pay dearly for the services of this new woman, and he would be on easy street at long last.  Hell, he may even prove useful to the Rising Dragons. He had potential that was yet untapped. If he played his cards right this could be a win-win situation for all parties.

Oliver could hardly contain the grin that crossed his mouth. All he had to do was convince Claire of her potential.   He would outline a proposal to her with the view of meeting someone who could guarantee that she would make a lot of money but in a much classier environment. The fact that the classy environment was what amounted to an upmarket, exclusive brothel was beside the point.  This was business and Oliver had invested a lot of time and energy into finding this woman ever since he’d seen her at the airport.  There was no way that he would let her refuse his proposition, for Fate had dealt him a good hand with the death of Alain de Marillac … now was the time for him to capitalize on his good fortune.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Noticing the target lost in thought, Claire quietly sneaked up on Oliver Chan, interrupting him, “Hey … Here I am, but I only have a short while,” she said pulling out a chair to sit down at his table.

Slightly startled, he gathered his composure and looked intently at her. “Let’s talk business then!”

“I’m all ears!”  She said as she sat at the table, elbows on the tabletop, hands interlaced waiting for Oliver Chan to state his business proposition.

Gazing at the gorgeous woman with the auburn locks and body to die for, Oliver declared enthusiastically, “Mark my words Claire … I am going to change your life …”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Giving the impression that she hung on Chan’s every word Claire finally delivered the words he was waiting to hear.  “Well Oliver, I’m very interested.  Perhaps I could meet with the woman who will be responsible for changing my life?”

Internally he was ecstatic at her reply and leaning forward in his chair answered, “Yes that can be arranged.  In fact I took the liberty of contacting her in anticipation of your reply.  I hope you don’t mind Claire?”

“Were you so sure I would say yes?”

“I was hoping you would find my proposition too difficult to refuse … and I was right,” he replied confidently.

“So when can we arrange a meeting?”

He didn’t want to appear too overly self-assured but knew he needed to strike quickly unless Claire changed her mind. “What about tomorrow?  Is that okay?”

“Yes … it’s my day off… That will be fine.”

“Good.  I’ll pick you up here at ten o’clock then,” Oliver replied most pleased with how proceedings were falling into place.

“I’ll be waiting.”  Then looking at the clock Claire smiled and stated, “Hey I gotta go. I need to get back on the job before the boss says something.”

Oliver Chan stood up as Claire rose from her seat and took her hand. Seizing the opportunity, she placed her hand on his jacket and slipped a tracker device beneath the jacket lapel.

“Until tomorrow then.”

“Yes … tomorrow.”  Subsequently just as she was leaving Oliver called her back, “Claire?”

“Yes?”

“You won’t need this job after tomorrow, I can assure you.  The world is your oyster from now on.”

“Hmm, I like the sound of that,” was her jaunty reply.

Oliver Chan watched as Claire sauntered back over to the bar. He watched the swish of her hips and the sway of her hair as she walked away from him.  She certainly was a beautiful woman and Madame Cheung would be extremely pleased that he had found such a beauty.  Her clientele would pay big money for a night spent in this beautiful woman’s company and she was a prize he was going to capitalize on.  Oliver could see the dollars filling his coffers as he daydreamed about the riches he would receive from Madame Cheung for her services.  

Tomorrow could not come quick enough for him as he too made an exit from the club.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Back at Section One,Fergus Claudel had monitored the whole conversation between Claire and Oliver Chan and as soon as she had placed the tracker on his lapel, it beeped showing them his location. He alerted Jamie of this development.

“Jamie what do you want to do?  He’s moving.”

“The tracker has been activated?” 

“Yes.  He has just left the club.”

“Good. Have Abernathy follow him.”

“Do you want him picked up?”

“Not yet.”

“Got it.  All teams, switch to "B" channel.”

The IT specialist knew that at any time now Operations and or Madeline would demand an update on the mission, and he had no sooner collated all the Intel from Jamie than his leader summoned him.

“Fergus?”

“Yes sir?”

“What’s the state of the in play in Hong Kong?”

Relaying the Intel, he replied. “The target has put a proposal to Claire for a meeting tomorrow.  It has been arranged for her to meet with Madame Cheung.”

“Do we have confirmation of the rendezvous place?”

“It’s at an undisclosed place, but Claire has been able to plant a tracker on Chan, so we will be able to monitor his movements once he leaves the club.”

“Good.  Keep on it Mr Claudel.”

“Yes sir.”

 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Throughout the night and into the early hours of the morning, Section One operatives had kept the target, Oliver Chan, under close surveillance. From their vantage point they’d been able to observe his movements, but Chan had not left his apartment nor had he received any visitors during the night. As they watched the building this morning it wasn’t long until they saw him exit his flat and get into his car.

Alerting Section One to the situation, Joe Abernathy contacted Fergus, “Chan’s on the move.”

“Excellent!” Then switching channels he alerted Jamie. “Standby ... Chan’s just left his apartment.”  

The operatives watched as he pulled out from the curb and headed north towards the club where he was to rendezvous with Claire.

“I’m not receiving any signal ... Is Chan wearing the same jacket?” he asked.

“He’s dressed similarly to last night and is wearing what appears to be the same suit.”  Geillis Duncan relayed.

“The tracker must have malfunctioned.”

“Do you want us to follow?”

“No ... I’ll tell Jamie to proceed as planned.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jamie waited in a silver BMW a little way from the club and watched while Claire paced nonchalantly along the pavement waiting for Oliver Chan to appear.  Many prestigious cars and chauffeur driven limousines passed by and slowed to a stop near where she stood.  The occupants of the vehicles lowered the windows and beckoned her over.  Most of the men in the limousines were well-dressed businessmen, but the request was always the same … How much? They asked propositioning the beautiful woman alone.  However, they sped off again when Claire ignored all of their “offers”.  

Cooling her heels she had been waiting for a while because the target had not yet made an appearance, and Claire was just about to contact Jamie when at long last he informed her of the target’s imminent arrival using her Section One code name.

“Jos-e-phine.”

James Fraser observed from a distance as he saw Oliver Chan’s car cruise along the road slowly as he approached the rendezvous point.  Rolling down the window, he aimed his binoculars at the target and attentively watched as he drove closer to where Claire was waiting on the pavement.  Looking up the road at the approaching vehicle, she finally saw a beautiful, slick, navy Jaguar sports coupe with the hood down pull into the curb.  

Oliver Chan took off his sunglasses and leaned over the passenger seat to greet her. “Hey babe.  You ready?”

“Yeah.  Is this okay?” Claire asked alluding to her clothing.

Chan got out of the car and helped her into the waiting vehicle.  “You look gorgeous. Madame Cheung will be knocked out when she sees you. She will be most impressed.”

“Thanks … you sure know how to stroke a girl’s ego. You don’t look too bad yourself Oliver ... New jacket?” Claire asked fingering the material and replacing a new tracker under the lapel.

“Yeah ... All part of the image babe.  Shall we go?”

“Okay.”

Jamie watched their interaction for a while, then put the car window back up as Oliver Chan sped off into the traffic, while he followed at a discreet distance.

Watching what was happening on his monitor Fergus beeped Operations in the Loft as to the state of affairs.

“Sir. He’s made his move. Claire’s leaving and Jamie’s in pursuit.”

“Good.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Oliver Chan drove through the traffic for a while weaving and dodging between the many buses and local traffic heading for the outskirts of the city. They had travelled a short distance when all of a sudden his car phone rang and Oliver picked up the handset this time and answered, “Chan here.”  

“Can you talk?”

“Yes”  

“There’s been a change in the rendezvous point … Don’t bring her here.  Proceed with Plan B. We will use a more discreet location.

“I understand.”

“Be careful … make sure you are NOT being followed.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Since Alain de Marillac’s death things have heated up. The police are suspicious of the Rising Dragons and I don’t want any slip-ups …”

“You can trust me.”

“Well … you know the consequences if you betray me Chan!”

“My word is my bond … We’ll be there.”

“I look forward to meeting your conquest … if what you say about this new girl is true.”

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised … I assure you.”

“Very Good ... and Chan.... do what you have to do.”

“Yes  ... I will.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Is everything all right Oliver?” Claire asked as he disconnected the call and replaced the receiver in the handset.

Oliver Chan’s arranged meeting with Madame Cheung had just been changed from her home in Repulse Bay to a more secretive place due to her suspicion of police interference. “Yes … Nothing to worry about … just a change of venues … that’s all.”  

“Oh … and just where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” he cagily replied.

Oliver had taken Madame Cheung’s warning to heart about being followed and was diligent in covering his tracks.  He manoeuvred the car along tiny streets and back alleyways avoiding the main traffic wherever he could.  If anyone were on his trail he would certainly know about it.  He had zigzagged and taken so many obscure routes that were unknown to others except for the local pedestrian traffic.

Claire hoped that Jamie was still on their tail, but he would not pursue if it risked exposure.  It was likely that Chan had lost him, which was highly probable given the clandestine round about route he had taken.   Nevertheless, Birkoff would be able to pinpoint the location coordinates from Chan’s tracker so they would be on the grid.

Eventually Chan slowed the Jaguar and pulled the car over and stopped for a moment in a commercial area.  This was obviously the hub of Hong Kong’s rag trade and was a highly industrialised estate.  

“Are we here already?” Claire inquired.

Turning to face her, he replied. “No.”

“Then why did we stop?”

“I’m sorry to have to do this Claire … but it is just a precautionary measure.  You do understand?” Oliver said as he reached out and pricked her arm with a pin treated with a tranquilizer drug.

Claire slapped it away, “Jesus H Roosevelt Christ! What … the…?” but the damage had been done.  The drug worked so fast she was unable to retaliate and slumped back in the seat.  As she lay there losing consciousness, Claire watched in a blur as Oliver dialed someone on his car phone. His voice sounded so far away and his words were the last thing Claire heard as the dark completely enfolded her. 

“We're on our way.  Prepare Madame Cheung’s helicopter.” 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

James Fraser was not happy and the expression on his face spoke more about his concern for Claire’s whereabouts than he would like to admit. “Chan’s given me the slip. Where are they Fergus?”  

Watching on his computer screen he reluctantly said, “We’ve lost them.”

“What do you mean?” Jamie replied anxiety and fear on his face for his Claire and where she was.

“They must have entered some kind of building, I'm downloading satellite Intel right now, standard protocol dictates an abort.”

“Standard protocol is suspended.  Find them!” Jamie barked back at Section’s Techie.

 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Some miles on, Chan turned the Jaguar into an underground car park at an impressive building nestled between other mercantile and manufacturing businesses.  Had Claire been lucid she would have seen the name of the building they had entered for … The Yee Lok Commercial and Industrial Guild… was written in bold letters.   Sun Yee Lok’s headquarters had just materialised, and it was here that Chan had taken her.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Oliver Chan, now with Claire in a wheelchair, made their way to the top of the roof where a helicopter was waiting for them. Still under the influence of the drug Chan had injected her with, an unconscious Claire Beauchamp was unaware of where she was.  Strapping her into the interior of the helicopter Chan took his seat beside her as the pilot readied the aircraft for takeoff.   It would take about thirty minutes for the flight to Madame Cheung’s hideaway, and by that time the drug usually had started to wear off somewhat.  Oliver however, had been ordered to give her an extra boost and he had given Claire a full dosage.  The affects of the drug therefore would take much longer under these circumstances. He knew that drastic measures were needed, but nonetheless he was sorry he had to inflict the drug on this woman.  But rules were rules and he was too close to his fortune to blow it by being insubordinate to Madame Cheung.

With the sound of the rotor blades echoing in the azure sky, the helicopter took off with Oliver Chan and Claire Beauchamp on board. Circling once in a loop over the sparkling waters of Stanley Bay below them, the helicopter flew off to the east in the direction of the New Territories.

  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued

[dapunoso-blog]

Ideas, Formulas and Shortcuts for Malaysia Visa

https://ja.ivisa.com/malaysia-visa

You have to know the model of the device that you want to unlock.  Coding isn't the only significant part tech.  The Giler Unlimited plans are probably a number of the simplest provider plan we may have seen in the marketplace.

1 name they must think about is the ROLB from UCLAAnthony Barr.  The very first big step to the trip was supposed to book my air tickets, which you are able to do by yourself essentially.  There isn't any particular shopping in Raja Ampat, and who'd want to, and there's limited shopping in Waisai.

So if you're filing a tax return, you will need to inspect box b.  All purchases have to be accepted by the State authorities.  Charge cards are rarely accepted beyond the absolute most touristy regions of Berlin, and even debit card machines can be difficult to find at many restaurants and shops.

The neighborhood folks are a few of the loveliest and most welcoming people we've met.  No significant business is going to abandon their employees in a foreign nation.  Capital gains might also be applicable if you choose selling the overseas property.

When you're applying for Malaysia visa online, you've got 3 options with various advantages and costs.  Proof of expenses is needed. First off, be mindful of 10s of sites that are online and promise to secure you Malaysia visa and once you've completed the payment, disappear all together.

An entry'' indicates the range of times you're allowed to go into the country with the visa. Even a little mistake may be the cause for your visa to become rejected.  For several entries, you've got to submit an application for a visa via offline mode.

Residencia is open 24-hours each day, 7 days per week for us to use.   You also have plenty of sites that offer services that will assist you with travel and hostel bookings.  There are plenty of camps to select from.

Malaysia Visa Explained The procedure is influenced by holidays in both India along with Malaysia.  If you've finalized the adoption in Malaysia, you will initially have to put in an application for a new birth certificate for your son or daughter.  Finding a visa for one more country depends a whole lot on where your original country is.

If you intend to go on a vacation in Malaysia, the very first thing you want to do is apply for a visa. Not so many remote visitors take a visa to go to Malaysia.   Several nations around the world desire a visa to get entry.

The Appeal of Malaysia Visa The statutory declaration (notarized affidavit) is not essential in the event the biological parents can't be found or should they have abandoned the kid. Choosing whether to go Greek is a significant decision because it is going to impact your whole college life.  The reality is that so long as you comply with all the present laws, you will be fine.

Packages stay valid provided that the base pack. Most companies either fully pay your accommodation or they will provide you with an allowance from which you ought to pay.  Safety is always priority in their opinion.

| Where to Find Malaysia Visa It's possible that not all requests are accepted at precisely the same moment.  A few of the documents that the sponsor is needed to submit are a duplicate of their passport and a duplicate of their employment contract or salary certificate. The procedure for visa application is time consuming and demands lots of documents to finish the whole procedure.

Malaysia Visa at a Glance The neighborhood folks are a few of the loveliest and most welcoming people we've met.  No significant business is going to abandon their employees in a foreign nation.  The staff do a lot of events, so make certain you will check them out.

If your company is seeking to operate overseas, then ensure you find a payments provider who offers optimized cross-border payments.  The net is an awesome resource once you really look hard.  The Giler Unlimited plans are probably a number of the simplest provider plan we may have seen in the marketplace.

A History of Malaysia Visa Refuted Successful applicants aren't permitted to take part in activities which can be deemed as sensitive to the neighborhood people like political or missionary pursuits. One of our highly trained education counselors are going to be in touch to talk about your study objectives!  Whether a lengthy stay gets necessary, the employer can ask for a lengthy stay for the employee.

Packages stay valid provided that the base pack. Most companies either fully pay your accommodation or they will provide you with an allowance from which you ought to pay.  Safety is always priority in their opinion.

The Chronicles of Malaysia Visa Upon you receive an approval letter you'll be able to enter Vietnam a few days later.  All purchases have to be accepted by the State authorities.  Consider there are still plenty of cards on the market which grant you a miserly 1 point for each RM1 spent.

The Pain of Malaysia Visa You may also enquire at the Consulate to learn more about the exact same. Vietnam is among those countries which makes it possible for you to receive your visa once you've landed there.  After you reach Malaysia, you will be asked to go through immigration.

Yes, now you've got a chance to register your own business in Malaysia.  Not so many remote visitors take a visa to go to Malaysia.  They require a visa to gain entry.

Up in Arms About Malaysia Visa? Therefore, if you're planning a global trip, Malaysia is a significant option to enjoy your vacation!  If you're planning to go to Langkawi island or still in doubt, I hope that my blog is beneficial that you make a choice.  Should there be changes in your trip program, you liaise with just one airline.

If it can bring in partners and automakers, the platform may be highly profitable.  Hacker Paradise (HP), in contrast to popular belief isn't just for men and women in tech but everyone is welcome!  In what considered as non-news, Malaysia isn't the perfect place to obtain Apple products.

Moreover, the Canadian citizen should have proof of ability to get expert licensing in the usa and either a passport or birth certificate. If you passport isn't fully valid your airline may not permit you to board and the immigration authority isn't going to let you land in Malaysia. If you're affected or believe your rights are violated, get in touch with an attorney.

If you might go to the country later on, obtaining a multiple entry visa now may help you save you money in the very long run. Even a little mistake may be the cause for your visa to become rejected.  It's possible to check if you require a visa or apply on line.

[arsenault16lawrence-blog]

Siacoin Wallet (SIA-UI)

Sia is a decentralized podium of storage, secured by the blockchain technologies. The particular Tanto Storage Platform (SSP) harnesses underutilized total capacity all around the world to create a files storage space place that is definitely more reliable and lower price compared to traditional cloud safe-keeping providers. Sia distributes plus scrambles your files around the decentralized network wherever you regulate your non-public encryption take some time and may own your data. Simply Wallet Siacoin v1.3.7 can get or perhaps control your data files, not like traditional cloud storage space suppliers. On average, Sia's decentralized fog up storage fees 90% a lot less than incumbent fog up storage vendors. Sia shops and directs redundant report segments about nodes throughout the globe, getting rid of any kind of single point of malfunction and ensuring uptime that will rivals traditional cloud storage space providers. Sia is one particular of the major forty five cryptocurrencies by market increased. Sia is some sort of assignment which offers a private, decentralized and secure cloud-based storage platform organised around the blockchain for a portion of the associated with various other well-known storage platforms such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, and Google Drive Sia, as a concept, was initially first dreamed up at HackMIT, a student-run hackathon, back in 2013 and even was officially unveiled in June of 2015; it is now backed by means of Boston-based firm Nebulous Inc., whose self-proclaimed mantra can be: �Re-decentralizing the Internet�. The standard idea is that as a substitute of hiring storage area through a central loan company of servers, as is the norm with traditional cloud-based platforms, peers on the Sia program rent space via each one various other via their �distributed cloud storage platform�. Sia employs erasure coding (distributing encrypted fragments associated with data redundantly across often the network) and an independent blockchain with tokens referred to as �Siacoins� to support the network. Not like most new coins, Sia�s launch wasn�t forwent by way of an ICO or pre-mining; instead, Sia begun existence when its genesis block was mined. Because of prominent investors such like Procyon Ventures, Raptor Class, Fenbushi Capital, along along with angel traders like Xiaolai Li, the Sia workforce managed to raise above $1. 25 mil around funding without an ICO. Who�s Behind It? Items [Show] Sia is usually backed with the Nebulous advancement team which is made up of some sort of central team of 5 industry persons all decided to see Sia have great results. Nebulous� focus will be trusted, decentralized infrastructure to help carry forward the future and even Sia is the primary project of the Nebulous team. TwitterFacebookGoogle+BufferLinkedIn Sia can be a project which offers the private, decentralized and safe cloud-based storage platform published on the blockchain to get some sort of fraction of this price of other well-liked hard drive platforms such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, in addition to Yahoo Drive. Sia, because a new concept, was first of all dreamt up at HackMIT, a gross annual student-run hackathon, back in 2013 and was officially launched inside 06 of 2015; the idea is now backed simply by Boston-based business Nebulous Incorporation., whose self-proclaimed mantra is usually: �Re-decentralizing the Internet�. The basic idea is the fact that alternatively of renting storage area from a central bank involving servers, as is typically the norm using traditional cloud-based platforms, colleagues on the Sia platform rent place from each other by using its �distributed cloud safe-keeping platform�. Sia employs chafing coding (distributing encrypted pieces of data redundantly across often the network) and a good indie blockchain with tokens identified as �Siacoins� to support the system. Unlike Siacoin Wallet v1.3.7 , Sia�s kick off wasn�t forwent by a good ICO or pre-mining; alternatively, Sia commenced life whenever its genesis block has been mined. As a result of prominent shareholders such as Procyon Efforts, Raptor Group, Fenbushi Cash, along with angel shareholders like Xiaolai Li, often the Sia team maintained to improve over $1. 25 thousand in funding without an ICO. Who�s Behind It? Contents [Show] Tanto is backed with the Nebulous progress workforce which includes a central team connected with five industry folks most determined to see Sia be successful. Nebulous� focus is definitely trusted, decentralized infrastructure to help bring forward the potential future together with Sia is the primary job of the Nebulous team. 3Commas Jesse Vorick is cofounder and even CEO at Nebulous. He�s a talented developer using a degree in pc science who spent a while as a software creator before taking the reins at Nebulous where he or she is an critical element in the managing of the Tanto project. Jake Miltenberger, originator of Nebulous, is an Us opportunity capitalist, entrepreneur and even investment decision banker for rising advancement companies. Todd presently serves as Associate for the Private Markets Group on Stifel Nicolaus, devoting the time for you to the group�s investment decision consumer banking and Vectis II deposit administration activities. Todd established Nebulous in last year as the niche consulting business. Lomaz Champine is definitely co-founder at Nebulous exactly where he is a specialist in writing software to re-decentralize the world wide web. He studied Computer as well as Techniques Engineering for a few several years, before him in addition to a good friend were, in his words �bitten by the new venture bug� and moved to cofound Nebulous. He�s in the past worked in Akamai and even Kronos, respectively. Other affiliates include things like Jae Heller, that takes care of company enhancement, together with Drew Volpe, Nebulous� plank observer. Likas? is a forward-thinking business owner and marketing strategist using an appetite to be able to break up, create and transform products and experiences which enhance industrial sectors, engage consumers, and even make it possible for positive change. Volpe is an investor, businessman, plus technologist with some sort of solid qualifications in seek, machine learning, devices, plus mobile technologies. Why Could very well this be Major? Tanto has the potential to be able to disrupt a multibillion dollars industry, namely the storage on the world�s files in a way that is more private, more secure, plus more price useful when compared to how ever before. With virtually no need intended for a fundamental bank involving severs on which to store data, Sia could totally better the cloud storage space field by utilizing blockchain technology to fit peer-to-peer file storage. The way it works can be hosts in addition to renters participate in file agreements which often is essentially an contract involving the storage service provider as well as the consumer; this requires place ahead of any storage area is given. The customer pays the Siacoins beforehand to the blockchain, which will acts as an escrow service, with the earlier contract serving as this rules for arbitration. In case the contract can be found and the storage service provider submits a proof involving storage area, the storage provider is definitely compensated and, in the event that not, the coins will be returned for the renter. Siacoin Wallet v1.3.6 expresses: �as involving January 2016, hard drive will be about $2. 25/TB/month having 6x redundancy�, although genuine prices differ slightly. Siapulse. com claims to observe market rates and selling price conversions. The SiaExplorer from official Sia domain as well caters for blockchain query, where some basic metadata regarding agreements and orders can be viewed. In case, in practice, Sia is able to to get even close in order to $2. 25/TB and typically the Nebulous team are able to successfully market their alternative, that could spell big trouble for the likes connected with Search engines, Amazon and Dropbox. Siacoin Funds Although Tanto did not hold an ICO, these people did crowd account together with the sale of �Siafunds� which are the second cryptocurrency and pay out several. 9% of all profitable storage space contract payouts in order to the holders of the Siafunds. 10, 000 Siafunds were issued in total, and even about 1, 000 have been sold in the crowd-sale along with the rest held by means of the advancement team. The idea is no longer possible to purchase Siafunds except if you attain one straight from a new case, many people are once in a while offered available for sale on their subreddit as well as Slack trading channel. Right now there is presently no lite finances readily available for storing your Sia Gold coins so a person have to download this Sia UI client which will synchronize the blockchain in your local machine. This required a lot of hours to get when I first placed that way up so get given notice, maybe you have to get away from your computer about all of day to get the full blockchain. You could create your wallet within the app, you will become given a seed which in turn is a good list of words � store this someplace safe as this will be precisely how your wallet will be backed up, you will will need it if you need to reconstruct your pocket. Once you have your wallet synced, you could begin mailing and getting Siacoins and in addition come to be some sort of host or number your own own files on this community. Conclusion Siacoin seems like it would be an useful project. Peer-to-peer safe-keeping may very well be this future of file storage as our respective internet foot prints grow larger having each passing year, gradually filling up the machines on Amazon, Google plus the like. From an investing point of view, Tanto did very well above the last six several weeks and it has proven itself to help be a good resilient and often high resource. A new quick glance at the relevant graphs regarding typically the coin�s flight, and even you are getting to get a good perception of the particular outstanding journey Tanto possesses been on during the last two years or so given that its launch. Possessing explained that, one issue which in turn is causing the Nebulous advancement team concern can be, whenever you can believe it, this speed where the respectful Siacoin has surged in value. The reason with regard to it is that the some what concept of Tanto depends on Siacoins being utilized to be a repayment for expert services presented, certainly not, as several seem to believe, like some sort of investment auto. Only time can notify whether the staff are able to efficiently stabilize often the currency, as a result rendering this fit regarding purpose which in turn could stop potential traders in often the coin. Another region intended for concern is the challengers which are now coming into the foreign exchange market, for example Storj which in turn just held a good successful ICO where that they raised $30mm in tokens and have combined together with the extremely popular FTP program Filezilla to combine his or her product straight in it is interface. That is usually projected that the cloud storage market place could get worth $74billion by way of 2021, if Sia may possibly get some way to recording a part of this market from the proven companies such as Dropbox, Microsoft and Google in that case it can prove in order to be a very lucrative investment. Sia-UI is a person of the very best Siacoin wallets online to maintain your own personal Siacoin. It's also the sole official app made by simply Nebulous, the developers involving the Tanto Storage Software. This can be obtained for Mac Linux and Windows OS IN THIS HANDSET and is one of the safe and sound Siacoin wallets, traders may use. It is suitable with iOS equipment and even is considered the most effective Siacoin wallet IOS. Anyone must check the Siacoin wallet deal with thoroughly prior to sending. As of this moment, no whole lot more wallets are supporting Siacoin, but as its becoming famous, more wallets is going to also begin supporting that.

[sheetforce5-blog]

Doctor BA Answers an Old Question: how the BA profession came into being

I wanted to get to the bottom of things once and for all. We had been having several discussions about the birth of business analysis and how the profession of business analyst came into being. There were no business analysts, at least as currently incarnated, in Data Processing when I started a long time ago, and a look into the history of business analysis might be interesting. So I went sought out Doctor BA who has been around a lot longer than I.

I joined Doctor BA at his invitation in his Club, a throw back to the yesteryear of exclusive clubs such as the one in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days or M’s Club in the James Bond series by Ian Fleming: big overstuffed chairs in libraries with floor to ceiling bookcases filled with elegantly bound books that no one read. He escorted me to a pair of wing backed chairs in front of a mammoth fire place and ordered us glasses of wine.

When we were settled in, Doctor BA stroked his pointed chin, pushed back his wavy white hair and lifted his glass.

“To all those in business analysis who came before us and are still with us in spirit.” He toasted. And then he went on to address the question of where business analysis started.

[note that, because Doctor BA can get somewhat obtuse in his references, especially with names, I have edited his narrative with an explanation or two.]

It All Began…

“If you get literal, it started eons ago. Business is a somewhat nebulous term, but we can adopt Keith Roberts’ definition as selling goods or services to voluntary buyers at a profit., As such then the first appearance of business analysis must have been back in Mesopotamian times when someone analyzed the exchanges of fish for grain or pottery for meat which at the time was probably done simply for subsistence of families or groups, and determined that he could step in as a middleman and facilitate the exchange with a common exchange rate and take a percentage or profit from the transaction. Then the market was analyzed, another form of business analysis, to determine what the people needed, how that need could be fulfilled and what they were willing to pay and / or receive for it.

   In other words, despite today’s insistence by various organizations and people, business analysis existed long before Ada, Charley, and Joe [Lovelace, Babbage, and Jacquard, respectively, early pioneers of computing technologies. I don’t know if Doctor BA knew any of these folks personally], ever even thought of differential engines or programmed devices.

Despite the youthful belief that computers and their off spring, smart phones, have been with us forever, business came first. As a result, business analysis should be focused on the business first, and not on some technological approach.

However,” he said, switching to coffee to chase the wine, and pouring it himself from the china coffee pot set on the side table next to him. “You are asking about the profession of business analyst as much as the origin of business analysis. For that again you would probably have to go back a hundred years or so to my friend Herman [Hollerith, the inventor of an electromechanical device for reading information stored on punched cards and for punching the cards using a code he developed in the 1880s. He went on to found the company that eventually became IBM]. He perceived a problem in the 1890 census and analyzed the business of census taking coming up with a novel and innovative solution. The essence of business analysis. Of course he was not called a business analyst at the time. Or ever probably, for that matter. He was a professor at MIT before he moved to Washington. You know, there is a plaque to him down around the C&O Canal in Georgetown. IBM paid for it. But he was a professor and a very good one, not a business analyst.

We have to remember that business analyst is a role as much as a profession. So even as a professor, Herman acted in the role of business analyst. He even had John Shaw [Billings, a statistician and surgeon and librarian who was head of the US Census and asked Herman Hollerith to help on the compilation of census data.] as his problem owner and spent a lot of time asking questions, testing solutions and analyzing the information and the results.”

Doctor BA paused to hold his porcelain coffee cup up for a refill from the silver pot in the hands of a charming fellow in a white jacket who hovered near by. It looked as though we might be in for a long night and I thought of signaling for another glass of wine, but then decided that I didn’t want to doze off and miss something important, so I opted for water instead.

Professionally Speaking…

“I suppose your question is more about when the term ‘business analyst’ first started being bandied about associated with IT. Back when Johnny [I think he is referring to John Van Neuman] started this whole thing there was no need for business analysis. We were all known as ‘computer scientists’. And I guess we were scientists of a sort. It took IBM to put the business into computers. We’re talking late 1960s with the advent of mass business and government use of the IBM 360 computers and Grace’s [that would be Grace Hopper, who Doctor BA knew and had dinner with occasionally according to other conversations I had had with him] introduction of COBOL. But still, as technical types we were called ‘software engineers’ rather than business analysts. Most of the time as we wrote programs to print reports, or calculate interest, or compute amortization, or produce payroll checks, we had very little concept of what the business did with the results of our code, or what the reason was for writing it. And really, at the time, it probably made no difference.

   But the actual term ‘business analyst’, that was in the 90s, that is the 1990s. Actually, I worked with business analysts in the 1980s. Telecom companies had business analysts who were the intermediaries between the technology of telecom and the business side. IT was a part, but only as a facilitator. Marketing comes up with a “Friends and Lovers Circles” plan and the business analyst helps the technicians define what information has to come off the switch and where it goes on the eventual bill.

It wasn’t until half a decade later when some business unit delegated it’s most power of power users, at that time PCs were starting to appear on all desktops, to cross the No Man’s Land between the business and IT to talk to the technical types. The idea was that the power user might understand ‘geek talk’ better. The concept caught on in many business units of organizations, all on the down low. Then at some point, someone went to HR and a new position was created to legitimize the role. Now remember that you and I have been doing this type of thing for decades, or longer in my case, but before this time the title was something like requirements analyst, or the much more prestigious requirements engineer, or system analyst.

“Well, some IT organizations recognized the value of having a greater view and understanding of the business, realized that such a view might indeed help them produce better systems, and assigned whichever technical type who had some relatively good soft skills to be a business analyst.

Back in the day most business analysts worked for the business side, but today it has reversed and business analysts generally work for IT.

And that, as Paul Harvey would say,” said Doctor BA, with a sip of coffee, “is the rest of the story.”

Doctor BA got a far away look in his eyes as he stared into the fire place while the nice fellow in the white jacket refilled his coffee cup. I knew it was probably time to depart. As I got up from the low slung overstuffed chair, I heard my joints creak and felt very old as I walked slowly out of the Club being helped by the friendly fellow in the white coat.

Author: Steve Blais, PMP, PMI-PBA

Steve Blais, PMP, PMI-PBA, is an author, consultant, teacher and coach who has nearly 50 years’ experience in Information Technologies working as a programmer, project manager, business analyst, system analyst, general manager, and tester. He has also been in an executive position for several start-up companies. He develops business analysis and agile processes and trains business analysts, project managers, and executive for organizations around the world. He is the author of Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success (John Wiley, 2011) and co-author of Business Analysis for Practitioners: a Practice Guide (PMI, 2014) and a contributor to the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge, V3 (IIBA, 2015).

Source: http://www.modernanalyst.com/Resources/Articles/tabid/115/ID/4967/Doctor-BA-Answers-an-Old-Question-how-the-BA-profession-came-into-being.aspx

[anonymousgrowthshop]

Taking A Shot

Today’s the first thing I’ve revisited Tumblr. I’m trying this whole anonymity and using it to gauge my personal growth. I’ve been dealing with life’s trials and tribulations like there were no tomorrows. The past two years dealing with the failing of my professional life and business, to my personal mental health and the constant battles between contemplation of suicide and revelations to get better. This is the intro into a revelation I’ve gotten after a long day with Instacarting followed by a night of drinking out on my balcony. 

Let’s take a flash back to 2019. I had a thriving business for phone repairs. I worked at a pretty big corporation while running the side business. I thought I was heading to what the perceived direction of success was. 

I shortly met an old flame I had in highschool and we quickly rekindled the fire. Oh how the toxicity of highschool drama re-entered my life so quickly like my parents were to abandon me. Shortly after we moved in together.I started paying for bills, dinners, rent... long last, pretty much everything.

I started seeing a progression of change in the interactions we were having with each other. I got curious, went through her phone and found she had texted an ex boyfriend at 3AM, saying “I miss you, I want to see you”, the audacity with her laying next to me. Mind you, she was in the game (selling/slanging weed). I confronted her about it. She played me like a fiddle, “the guys I used to date, they didn’t work like you do, they were with me all the time. With you being gone for most of the day it really affects me.” I started taking days off at a time from the corporate job I had, the one I’d consider a dream company to work for. Many people would of wished to be even in the warehouse. It’s a computer gaming company, you get perks like free game codes, computer hardware discounts, insider news and information, along with a slew of perks like the Funko mystery boxes, the monthly gifts, and not to mention, 4th year anniversary? A Rolex. 

Soon there after, I neglected my phone repair business and that started to die down. I actually closed my physical location and moved straight into mobile repairs on a schedule only basis. 

Then came the pregnancy announcement. She told me she was pregnant, I was so happy. Insanely happy that I went ahead and told all my friends and family. Soon there after, she told me she had a miscarriage and I felt guilty. I spent more and more on her. When my savings went dry, she convinced me to start delivering her weed for her. I never made a dime/kept a dime of those deliveries. I then started to see changes in her phone passwords, and a lot secrecy around her phone... She had started texting her ex, meeting up with him while I was out delivering her weed for her. I got petty, and started spoiling her with her own money. The money she had handed me to safekeep for her. She wanted fancy dinners, dates, gifts, I used her own money for that, but I did it in a douche-like fashion and started flexing on her with it. 

When the time came, I was already depressed from self sabotaging my own business and my career. I was feeling lonely and trapped in such a toxic relationship. I felt lonely as hell. The day it felt the worse was when I was out at dinner with her, I saw all the roommates had hung out without inviting me. 

I felt hurt as when I was doing well, all of them were there to profit by enjoying a night out on me. When I was doing my worse, no one cared to invite me to something so remedial as dinner at a Pho restaurant. 

I remember that night so clearly. We sat in the car after dinner, and I told her “I’ve never felt so lonely in my life”, her response? “They thought you were annoying and didn’t want to hangout with you.” She watched me cry in the car that night.

I decided to confront the roommates, and it had turned out. The girl I was dating at the time had told them I was going through some things and its best to leave me alone. I was absolutely segregated. 

After a few more months and her money ran dry from my senseless spending on dinners, dates, and her bills on her. I found a doctors receipt for some Plan B. Which hurt me even more because she told me she was depressed from the miscarriage and used that as guilt on me to continue delivering her weed for her.

At my lowest, I was at the beach for about 6 hours. On the phone with suicide prevention. After awhile, I decided that it was time. I had learned to tie a knot, put it around my neck. That night, I ended up in a hospital bed, then a psychiatric ward. Probably the worst experience of my life, and only a select few were there for me after. She had told everyone I had done it for attention, that I had so much guilt for “stealing” her money and couldn’t live with myself. AITA?

Fast forward a few years, I’ve joined the military and came back. Now I’m having a hard time readjusting to what normality is since COVID hit. What is normality? I can’t keep a day job for the life of me and moving into this apartment seemed like a dumb idea. I’m scrambling every month just to come up barely short on rent.

This is my last attempt at creating a future for myself. 

So through these daily posts you’ll either see my progression or digression. Nonetheless, it’s my way of finding therapy instead of going through a professional. This blogs meant for me, personally to track my growth personally and professionally and for all others who struggle alongside with me to know that they’re not the only ones trying to move forward. 

Follow me if you’d like to see the daily progression.