My uncle in China had a seat belt chime defeater that also doubled as a bottle opener.
Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
141–150 of 215 posts
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have statistics to indicate biking is inherently more dangerous than other activities or are you just repeating a certain assumption you have?
This is interesting... I am in my 20s and bike ~20 miles per day. Over the last 5 years I have had 3 broken bones due to bike accidents including one which required an ambulance ride. With few exceptions, I only go to the doctor for bike-related injuries and my annual physical. To my health insurance provider, do the benefits to my cardiovascular system and general fitness offset the cost to treat my injuries? I am g…
3 incidents per year at 20miles/day is higher than the statistical average. Are you biking in a way to increase the likelihood of an incident, biking in an area that is less safe than the average bike ride, or did you just have an unlucky year?
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#143I've seen folks wrap their step tracker in a couple pairs of socks, then either throw it in the dryer, or tie the socks to a ceiling fan on low. Those particular folks called it "going jogging."
I'm so glad these incentives have contributed to expediting the eventual heat death of our universe
To be fair, you posting this comment also contributed to expediting the eventual heat death of the universe, so.
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#144EconTalk from three weeks ago was The Tyranny of Metrics [1] about how when metrics are tied to compensation, they often have disastrous consequences, even to the point of achieving the opposite of the desired effect. [1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2018/04/jerry_muller_on.htm...
Yes, this reminds me of the Cobra Effect from India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because I dislike the idea of insurance companies nosing in on my private life and telling me how to spend my time. I'm sure someone will object that participation is voluntary, but I expect it to go along the familiar voluntary with perks -> penalties if not participating -> outright mandatory progression.
I also have a stubbornness gene in me that encourages me to spitefully resist all attempts to meddle in my lifestyle by sanctimonious blowhards that couldn't care less about my actual well being. The last contact I had with such a voluntary insurance program, it consisted entirely of the insured calling in to a call center, to have someone nag them to create health goals and then nag more to make progress. No thanks;…
I don’t have much to add but I’d like to point out that you can see that "voluntary" -> "economically enforced" -> "mandatory" progression pattern in other areas too, not just in insurance. Look at those electronic toll tags that used to be voluntary. Then you got a “discount“ for using them. Now there are lanes you can’t use without them. Credit cards are going down this path, with the big push towards a “cashless” society.
Introduce some thing that not everyone wants, then incentivize it’s use, then punish it’s non-use.
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#146It always makes me smile when I see the hoard of people proudly step forward, and boast, “oh yes, here are examples of how I’ve cheated various systems!!” Which is fine. That’s human nature. But. No shame.
Not sure I see anything shameful here. More like clever.
I’m reminded of that guy[1] who earned tons of airline miles by taking advantage of an ill-thought-out pudding promotion.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur...
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the AllAdvantage.com cheat as well. It became so popular to game that one that not only were novel tactics like yours employed, but automatic mouse hijacking apps for Windows made some headway for those that didn't want to sit and click ads ad nauseum. I may have made a quick buck on this back in the early 2000s.
click ads ad nauseum There is a browser extension that does this for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611594 It was removed from Chrome's appstore, so it must be very effective... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327228 ...and shows very clearly whose side they're on.
"So, an advertising company that used to have a motto about not being evil, but abandoned it, built a web browser."
Realistically that wasn't going to end any other way :)
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#148Next up: GPS cradles to proxy your driving habits into granddaddy mode to get cheap car insurance.
It seems like the additional miles added might defeat the purpose
Yeah, but spoofing GPS is possible. The black box insurance gadgets typically wire directly into a car, so it'll be harder send fake data from that pipeline, but totally possible.
The benefit would come from smoothing extremes. Lie about speeds over 80, reduce big accelerations and hard breaking. Lieing about total miles could also work, but I think that could be done by just unplugging the box, or only sending it power and not data.
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#149I did something similar in college. A company paid cash for installing software that displayed ads on the bottom of your monitor. It qualified your ad viewing activity based on mouse movement. At night I would open the software, wrap my mouse cord around an oscillating desk fan, then go to bed. Earned myself $50/month
That was my first ever exposure to programming. I installed as many of those crap ad bars as I could on a backup computer and wrote a macro that would open Internet Explorer, browse thru the same 10 sites in a loop, close IE, repeat. This setup provided enough income to cover the costs of my dedicated phone line and ISP access.
Not that i have not done many questionable things like this when i was a kid, but at what point is it an admission of fraud that can get one in trouble?
Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is it is childhood. I see poor people eating junk food all the time and feed that to their kids - the kids are fat on empty calories and so the brain doesn't get what it needs to grow smart. That is just a guess though. I don't have the ability to verify it.
There are plenty of fat smart people. The brain does not develop, and especially does not develop knowledge, as a result of the passage of time and metabolic processes. It develops, both structurally and in terms of 'contents', solely as a response to repeated stimulus. We don't really have a word for a situation where a persons life is impoverished due to lack of intellectual stimulus, but we certainly have the cond…
That being said, insulin resistance / T2DM is associated with the thinning of cortical tissue [0] - insulin resistance being the typical cause of burgeoning fat storage. Additionally, the brain runs well on ketones [1], which are an abundant supply of fuel on the insulin-resistance-reversing ketogenic diet.
All I'm saying is there may be some benefit for the many fat smart people in taking up some kind of insulin-resistance-reversing diet; lo, for all the fat people (, as well as the thin-yet-still-insulin resistant people, too). But ketosis is not exactly the default path-of-least-resistance for most people, given the standard american diet, conventional nutritional 'wisdom', etc.