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Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

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Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#151

Post by GSimon »

verelo wrote: post #149
xythian wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When the incentive to prosecute (i.e opportunity for resources gained vs opportunity for resources lost) reaches a certain thresh-hold there's action. Generally, that thresh-hold is high because the value gained from prosecution is low, even in cases were one party is quite apparently guilty.

The only real exception would be the "let's make an example of out this person" case. When crime is rampant, prosecutions might happen with greater likelyhood in order to deter more crime for occuring. An example would be pirating music. It is not feasible to prosecute people for pirating music, but suing 1 party publicly will get 1000s of people to stop instantly.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#152

Post by jasonmp85 »

verelo wrote: post #149
xythian wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Certain companies deserve it?

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#153

Post by Trav5 »

jtreminio wrote: post #75
vanadium wrote: post #40

Earlier 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.

There were programs that would run up the 40 hour weekly limit in seconds. I'm assuming AllAdvantage had no real sanity checking when receiving data, which to my eyes means they deserved to go out the way they did.

It was a game. The sanity checks were added and workarounds were formed...

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#155

Post by fyfy18 »

photojosh wrote: post #130
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife , the first 20 minutes of moderate exercise is worth 2 microlifes (or -2 micromorts). At 15 miles/hour, the means the first 5 miles of biking costs you about 0.25-0.5 micromorts of accident risk and gives you +2 microlifes of fitness. Riding in a car, on the other hand, incurs accident risk AND has effects on fitness.

23x sounded pretty high, and indeed the GP's Wikipedia article cites 23x as one option from the original 1979 work, or 11.5x as a more recent one. The latter seems much more reasonable, and a quick look at stats for Australia suggests current stats put it at something like 6-10x. But the more interesting article to me was [0] which presents a study that says around 30% of "cycling" deaths are due to natural causes su…

The key part of your clickbait article is this:

> It also signals that older males need to be mindful that vigorous cycling – as with any form of exercise – can be fatal if the rider has a serious medical condition like heart disease. It’s likely though that the exercise benefit of cycling prevents many more premature deaths from disease that it causes.

It would be interesting to break down the statistics on cycling to seperate those who cycle to commute, and those who cycle for leisure. I’d assume they have vastly different mortality causes.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#156

Post by djrogers »

8_hours_ago wrote: post #86
8ytecoder wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

You are correct - this is interesting. I run, and in the last 2 years my only medical visits are for bacterial pneumonia (non-flu related, just appeared to be really bad luck) and a stress fracture in my knee from ‘overtraining’. The stress fracture involved 3 visits with an orthopedic surgeon, an x-ray, and an MRI.

Wonder what the tradeoff is there for my lifetime medical expenses if I wasn’t running?

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#157

Post by tempestn »

wpietri wrote: post #136
stale2002 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are a negative sum game, IMO. The less money that ad companies make the better. Or in other words, the ad companies deserve it.

I'm not sure about the latter part, but I think the first part is pretty clearly true. The theoretical economic value of advertising is new product discovery. If you needed a thing but didn't know there was a solution and you saw an ad, then some of the value you gain would be attributable to the ad. Imagine a world entirely without ads. Would you really be lacking a lot? I doubt it. Especially with the internet, it'…

Advertising can be very helpful to get a new product or service in front of people, which then allows you to start building word of mouth referrals etc. Without it, there are many things that would never see the light of day. And because it costs money, it provides somewhat of a filter; while we all feel inundated with a lot of garbage advertising, you'd have to wade through far more to find interesting new products otherwise.

This isn't to say that you can't currently find useful things in ways other than ads; obviously that happens all the time. But without ads (or other similar forms of marketing) it might not be viable for many of these things to be launched in the first place, allowing you to then discover them.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#158

Post by djrogers »

btrettel wrote: post #140
fpgaminer wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between walking, driving, and biking, biking is the _most_ dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Travel Given the same commute you can expect riding a bike to be 23 times more dangerous than driving a car. Put another way, it looks like people get into car accidents roughly once every 18 years. If instead of driving your car for your commute you rode your bike, you can expect to get into an accident ever…

Only the first estimate given there is reasonably sourced. And it's almost 40 years old. Bike safety has improved dramatically since then, so I doubt it's as bad as you suggest. [1] suggests that the number of trips made by bike increased from 1.7 billion in 2001 to 4 billion in 2009, but [2] suggests that the number of cyclist deaths was roughly constant over that range. So per-capita, cycling safety has likely impr…

> I think there are many cyclists who are an order of magnitude safer than your average cyclist.

Statiscally, that’s not likely - maybe even not possible. There will be some who are that much safer, but not many - otherwise the average would just be pulled up.

Re: Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

#159

Post by dv_dt »

mplewis wrote: post #68
gascan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn it around- perhaps the low risk individuals find subsidizing the high risk individuals equally repellent. Wellness programs allow those individuals to recover some of their premiums.

Low-risk individuals subsidizing high-risk individuals? We just call that "insurance."

And after all the accounting of minuitae is done, after we pay for layers of actuaries, account administrators, and executives that rebalance all the groups and variable, we end up paying a risk and profit optimized system price that is, on average, double other modern nations bills. And for the privilege of paying more than any other modern nation, we die earlier, exclude the poorest, and subject even those with that optimized insurance to bankruptcy should they need to exercise their benefit in a major medical episode.
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