341–350 of 578 posts
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Coins don’t cost what they are worth to make.
It's only true for the smaller denominations, 1c and 5c for USD. Other than that, coins are cheaper than bills on the long run, because they last longer. It would be cheaper for the US government to stop making $1 bills and have people use the $1 coins, but I guess old habits die hard.
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The latest use for AI in 2025: replacing obsolete and non-functional search engines like Google
Can we confidently say that top engineers have lost the battle with SEO spam ? Or they just gave up ? Or something else ?
Searching some terms from this PDF (not in Google) brings up https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/, which has a clearer narrative.
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why do you think businesses willingly pay visa 3-5%? *and get paid a month in arears ? * and take on more tax liability
Because they were spending more money on having their personnel tracking down these mistakes. /s The real reason is that payment processors like visa have a large network which is both technically challenging to maintain and has a massive barrier to entry to replicate. There are competitors but these are typically for niche applications, some of which are operated by banks, but beating visa and mastercard at their ow…
In other words these businesses know that paying visa and getting paid late is worth it because they are losing well more than 5% to losses (bad accounting & theft)
This guy could have pulled the greatest heist in the history of mankind. Steal the cube, take out $500K, leave $1 million inside (fluff it up a bit or put some Styrofoam in the center), then return the cube, saying it was a stunt to draw attention to climate change or similar and you intended to return it. Then they would count the dollars, you'd get a minor sentence (maybe)... Then you get to keep $500k.
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I'd say a small (single digit) percentage of people are able to accumulate $1.5 million over "a few" (2-3) years of working, but maybe I'm out of touch.
I would have thought a few meant 3 to 5, although I still agree that the number of people who could do it is small.
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This thread is very informative on your chances of carrying off a heist stealing this cube. Conclusion: Low, unless you're willing to take only a fraction of the face value. Thinking through it though - you might be able to get away with spending the cash overseas, where it will take some time indeed for the money to be under scrutiny by banks to see if the serial numbers are out of circulation. There's then problem…
I literally just said "Nothing from my end" on a zoom call. Still waiting on my million dollars though so not sure how reliable this method is.
> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…
Let's say the cube gets damaged and needs to go for a repair or rebuild - real money would require emptying it under supervision and counting the bills, where as fake money can just be sent as-is to the contractor, and any visible shortfall can be made up with more fake money upon return if needed).
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I'd say a small (single digit) percentage of people are able to accumulate $1.5 million over "a few" (2-3) years of working, but maybe I'm out of touch.
That sounds more like "a couple". Personally I think "a few" would be anywhere from 3-9, which is more reasonable, if still handily above the median national income (like 250k a year if you save and invest well).
For me:
couple(formal) = 2
couple(informal) = 2-3
few = 3-5
half-dozen = 6
[gap]
ten-or-so = 9-11
dozen(formal) = 12
dozen-ish(informal) = 11-14
And don't get me started on "this Friday" vs "next Friday"...
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Because they were spending more money on having their personnel tracking down these mistakes. /s The real reason is that payment processors like visa have a large network which is both technically challenging to maintain and has a massive barrier to entry to replicate. There are competitors but these are typically for niche applications, some of which are operated by banks, but beating visa and mastercard at their ow…
You're not considering cash losses. In other words these businesses know that paying visa and getting paid late is worth it because they are losing well more than 5% to losses (bad accounting & theft)