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The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

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Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#541

Post by onionisafruit »

ryx wrote: post #471
leipie wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Dutch the literal translation is "half tien" which means 9:30 in Dutch. This can be quite confusing ;)

In Germany it‘s even more confusing. In the West people say „Viertel nach Neun“ and “Viertel vor Zehn” which is pretty much „quarter past nine“ and “quarter to ten”, while in Eastern Germany people say “Viertel Zehn” and “Dreiviertel Zehn” which rather means “quarter of ten” and “three quarters of ten”. Even though they are meaning exactly the same times.

My English-speaking father with German heritage said both “quarter to ten” for 9:45 and “quarter of ten” for 10:15. He’s the only person I’ve heard say “quarter of ten”. Now I know that could be from his German heritage even though he never learned German.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#542

Post by jjk166 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #484
jjk166 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's substantially more than 1 million $1 bills.

So more than a metric tonne swiveling like that? Sounds dangerous.

Not particularly. That whole cube could be supported by a 1/4" diameter steel pin. The actual support almost certainly has a double digit factor of safety.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#543

Post by onionisafruit »

Daneel_ wrote: post #389
onionisafruit wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handful is 5 unless you are talking about something that can physically fit in your hand ( in that case it’s however much can fit in your hand ).

Handful is more than "several" to me, and several tops out around 10, hence 10-20 being a handful. Anything that's a word instead of a precise number implies a range to me (eg, few, handful, several).

Despite coming across like I was trying to correct you, I only meant to give my personal understanding of “handful”

I don’t know where I got my idea of handful, but it probably came from how high I can count using the fingers on one hand. So far that understanding seems to work for me when other people say it as long as I do what you said and treat it as an approximation.

On the “several” topic, I used to think it meant “about seven” because of the shared “sev” prefix, but it didn’t take long to realize several has a much bigger range than that.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#544

Post by miles »

c249709 wrote: post #152
behnamoh wrote: post #132

the homepage of this website is so cool, but also a bit pretentious. like, why would the OP include things like "#1 on Hackernews", etc.?

glad you like my website. it's there due to the lack of other meaningful achievements

I was nodding in modest agreement with @behnamoh's comment on self-aggrandizement, but your reply brought a huge smile to my face. And visiting his linked website dialed the mirth up to 11.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#545

Post by carefulfungi »

tonymet wrote: post #344
jjk166 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Tell me you've never worked as a cashier ...

NRF reports that total retail shrinkage in 2021 was 1.44% - from all sources.

> The survey found that the average shrink rate in 2021 was 1.44%, a slight decrease from the last two years but comparable to the five-year average of 1.5%

Apparently the most recent survey was 1.66%..

https://invue.com/resource-center/blog/6-retail-shrinkage-st...

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#546

Post by PebblesRox »

adolph wrote: post #334
jmkni wrote: post #192

Kind of off-topic, but I've always thought a good way to suss out what sort of background somebody comes from is to ask them to visualise $1million dollars. People from a "working class" background tend to see a massive pile of money, more middle class, a smaller pile, upper class maybe a cheque or a small stack of $100 bills or a bank transfer. It's maybe one of the weirdest parts of the JBR ransom note (getting rea…

What is the background of someone who visualizes Scrooge McDuck diving into a pool of doubloons?

German

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#547

Post by antod »

frereubu wrote: post #518
antod wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonably commonly used in Commonwealth countries. Next Friday is sometimes too ambiguous, you can never be sure you share the same definition with the other person. Is it the same as This Friday (the very next occurring Friday), or Friday Week (ie next week's Friday).

I always thought of "Friday week" as "Friday plus a week" rather than "next week's Friday".

yeah, that's a better way of expressing it.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#548

Post by antod »

antod wrote: post #493
kiwijamo wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never seen or heard this in New Zealand from native speakers.

We must move in different circles then ;) Maybe I should ask my kids...

My kiwi teenage daughter and her friend didn't really use it, but did hear it used occasionally.

Interestingly they both had different definitions of Next Friday though, and both thought there was only one way of defining it.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#549

Post by rand_r »

RajT88 wrote: post #218
onionisafruit wrote: post #195

From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...

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…

> to see if the serial numbers are out of circulation.

Cash cannot be invalidated like this. It would ruin the value of all cash since you could no longer trust cash from anyone. Only damaged notes are taken out and replaced by the government.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#550

Post by Liquix »

acatnamedjoe wrote: post #474
eru wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that, and Germans need the 1 Euro coin to unlock their shopping trolley. (Or at least they used to; when I visited back recently many supermarkets had free trolleys! Can you imagine my shock?)

Unlocking trolleys with a coin is normal in Britain too. I'd never considered that this might be unusual. Is this not a thing in other countries? How do they get people to return their trolleys to the bays?

> How do they get people to return their trolleys to the bays?

There is no external force compelling US shoppers to do so. This has led to the (in)famous "shopping cart theory" [0], first posited like this:

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test as to whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with the law and the force that stands behind it.

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_cart_theory

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