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+1 to this. I use Dex https://getdex.com/ and I see a few other apps in the feed too. There is clearly some market demand.

Life gets busy and it helps to have something more than just a stock contacts app.


With one of my recent Amazon deliveries, a picture was taken of the package sitting in front of my mailbox. It was accessible through the Amazon app when I received the delivery notification. It's an apartment building, so it was nice to know where it was left since the location of packages delivered seems to vary based on which company delivers it.

My very first thought when I saw it was this was a solution to prove that a delivery took place in cases of package theft.


Regardless if it's FAKO or FICO score that you are looking at, they are calculated on the same credit history in your credit report (as far as I know). So, even if the scores are calculated in different ways it's reasonable to expect a high VantageScore 3.0 score will also show as a high FICO score too, even if the numbers aren't exact.

Does anyone know the specific differences in how these two scores are calculated?


FICO is an acronym for Fair, Isaac, and Company. Their "FICO Score" is a piece of software that they make and sell. I'm sure the details are a little more complicated than I'm making it sound, but it's essentially software which is sold. Just like any software, there are different versions - and it's possible to get stuck on an old version if you don't pay for updates. There's FICO 98 (from 1998), FICO 04 (2004), FICO 8 (2008) and FICO 9 (2014). [1][2].

The FICO Software is a scoring engine which will produce an output based on the input you provide it. The three big credit bureaus collect data about you and feed it into the FICO Score software. Even if they all have the same version of the FICO software, because each bureau might have slightly different data on you, your score may be different from each one. Presumably, the FAKO companies also have the FICO Score software, but a much more limited set of data to feed into it - thus making the score less reliable to someone looking to issue you a loan (Big Bank).

At least, that is my understanding of how it works - admittedly, I may be mistaken and welcome corrections.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score_in_the_United_Sta... [2] http://www.fico.com/en/02-02-2015-fico-makes-additional-fico...


I believe the FICO algorithm is not public, so there would be no way for us to know exactly how they calculate our scores.

We only know the factors that go in to the algorithm, and the score that comes out. Basically, a black box.


I've read in another thread here on HN that we also don't know the factors that go in. Someone listed off things like company title, marital status, # kids, car make/model kind of stuff. No idea if they were full of BS, but there's no requirement that the score is based solely on items in your credit report. We can probably (hopefully?) be sure that no race or race-correlated factors are included. (And same for other protected classes.)


I remember at uni teacher asking why people with larger shoes are more likely to default?

Answer was: Men tend to have larger feet.

I guess even if you ignore race, sex and other factors, data will seep in eventually anyways.


I recommend the Bose QC headphones. I currently use the QC35 wireless ones but have also used the QC15 and QC25 before that. Open office plans are terrible for my concentration and wearing noise canceling headphones makes a huge difference.

I usually listen to lyric-less music such as Focus@Will, Spotify playlists, or use a white noise generator.


Came here to say this. I'm not normally a fan of Bose but I wear my QC35 maybe 12 hours a day and have for almost a year.

Excellent build quality, sound, battery life, and above all noise cancelling. I've owned maybe 30 sets of headphones over the years and never had anything like them.

Little known fact is that they make aviation headsets and the QC35 looks by all accounts to be a consumer version of that. Might explain the chasm between their quality vs competitors.


I was debating to buy the QC35 but was disappointed that the battery on these is not replaceable. Designed for obsolescence (why did they design it that way?). So I decided to go for the older QC25 version since that has the same noise-cancelling and is using AAA batteries instead. I don't really need the Bluetooth wireless aspect of it (though the QC25 can be converted to Bluetooth with a mod). Just a tip.


How do they feel on your ears? Not sure if you can relate to this but all headphones I've tried so far end up hurting my ears after a few minutes to a couple of hours of wear. My ears are small-to-average, but stick out slightly and many headphones create uncomfortable pressure there. Is there some space between the actual ear and the ear-cup with these?


The Bose QC series come with a very good "over the ear" variants that don't rest directly on the ear, but instead around it. That comfort issue was bigger to me, personally, than any noise cancelling options. I actually opted against a noise cancelling model because I found the over-the-ear configuration alone cuts down enough noise that I'm happy, and the cost and weight savings was a useful bonus.

I spent hours in a Best Buy trying to find headphones I would be comfortable wearing for hours and the over-the-ear Bose models won out by far as the most comfortable I could find.


Thank you, this is encouraging. I've just ordered the QC35; now hoping for some peace in the open plan office.


Update: Just got these. Where have they been all my working life? These make the open plan office considerably more tolerable.


You should try Brain.fm. I use it with my noise canceling headphones and the experience has been great so far.


I have a similar lightweight script I wrote [1] to generate white noise (actually brown noise) to concentrate when the office is busy.

There are a few other similar alternatives at the bottom of the readme, which I'll copy here for convenience:

- A Soft Murmur

- Brain.fm

- Coffitivity

- GitHub Audio

- Hipstersound

- Noisli

- Noizio

- SimplyNoise + SimplyRain

- Spotify playlists in the Focus section e.g., Ambient Chill, Deep Focus, or Music for Concentration

- Vicinity

- zenmix.io

[1]: https://github.com/tedmiston/zero-noise


http://somafm.com has some good instrumental channels, too. I also have a playlist of things I've curated from Magnatune over the years, there are some strong instrumental artists over there.


I recommend the same, though I use amazon music with taiko drumming. In the US, I used pandora.


Agree with this view. Only the state can force that type of cooperation. MN did a variation of this in the early 70's to stop Twin Cities municipalities from competing against each other with tax breaks in order to attract companies. The result has been the only metro region that works together for the benefit of the region, not individual towns.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-mir...

"No other large American city has adopted a plan like Minneapolis’s to sprinkle business taxes across a region in order to keep the poorest areas from falling too far behind."

"In the 1960s, local districts and towns in the Twin Cities region offered competing tax breaks to lure in new businesses, diminishing their revenues and depleting their social services in an effort to steal jobs from elsewhere within the area. In 1971, the region came up with an ingenious plan that would help halt this race to the bottom, and also address widening inequality. The Minnesota state legislature passed a law requiring all of the region’s local governments—in Minneapolis and St. Paul and throughout their ring of suburbs—to contribute almost half of the growth in their commercial tax revenues to a regional pool, from which the money would be distributed to tax-poor areas. Today, business taxes are used to enrich some of the region’s poorest communities.

Never before had such a plan—known as “fiscal equalization”—been tried at the metropolitan level. “In a typical U.S. metro, the disparities between the poor and rich areas are dramatic, because well-off suburbs don’t share the wealth they build,” says Bruce Katz, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. But for generations now, the Twin Cities’ downtown area, inner-ring neighborhoods, and tony suburbs have shared in the metro’s commercial success. By spreading the wealth to its poorest neighborhoods, the metro area provides more-equal services in low-income places, and keeps quality of life high just about everywhere."


I really wish domain registers offered a Google Authenticator option for 2FA. All of the ones I have seen that offer 2FA are SMS based.


www.nearlyfreespeech.net (mainly a host but you can register domains with them) offers Google Authenticator 2fa and control over what recovery options are allowed, including none, which is something I wish anyone that supports 2fa would offer.


NFS also emails you if someone tries an incorrect password on your account. Kind of a nice feature.


Just another happy customer giving those guys a big thumbs-up!


https://www.name.com lets you use Google Authenticator for 2FA.


https://www.gandi.net/ does as well and has been pretty great in my (somewhat limited) experience.


https://www.dynadot.com offers both Google 2fA and SMS, with a big push toward the Google solution. Dynadot has been a great all-around solution in my experience. Gandi is also excellent.


http://www.namecheap.com offers their own 2fa service, as well.


Yeah, that's the point. Everyone tries to re-invent 2FA or use SMS, both of which are bad for the end user. Even 2FA companies like Duo use some non-standard protocol which only their client can implement.


Of my registrars, Namecheap does not but Gandi.net and Hover.com both offer the standard TOTP option.


SMS is far better than nothing. Your average script kiddie is not going to be able to intercept your SMS messages. If you are specifically targeted by sophisticated attackers, maybe.


My biggest gripe with SMS 2FA is that it is prone to locking me out of my accounts on travel, if I suddenly need to log in to something and my phone number isn't the same abroad.


is it such a pain taking a small burner phone? Alternately, you can install 2FA app in your smartphone. And if you traven that frequently you need to revisit your security choices. There is no security without any efforts from _you_. Google/MS/Apple can only do so much.


They'll just social engineer your carrier into the transfer of your phone number to a different SIM card


Is it only me who is surprised that in the US no one has the notion of buying pre-paid SIM cards - which are unconnected to your SSN or credit card or bank account?


PairNIC (https://pairnic.com) now offer TOTP 2FA (use Google Authenticator or whatever else you want).


name.com offers a choice between Google Authenticator and SMS for 2FA.



If only it were available in Germany. :(


Hover supports 2FA with authenticator apps.


hover.com offers both SMS and TOTP (authenticator).


Amazon does ..


siteground.com


Agree. No mention of turning on 2FA as a security measure or using a password manager to help create those "total nonsense" passwords.


Does anyone know of a EMR system that could house my household/personal health data? One of the struggles I have is organizing my own health data in a singular place with structured data formats, document uploads, etc.

The closest thing I have found is http://mymedicalapp.com/ but it appears to have been abandoned by the developer.


You're looking for a personal health record (PHR), not an EMR. One option is Microsoft HealthVault. https://www.healthvault.com/


picnichealth.com


Thanks for the recommendation. It is what I am looking for except that it doesn't seem to offer any upload options if there are holes in the data they retrieve. Still, a step in the right direction and I'll give it a try.


PicnicHealth CEO here. You won't have this problem because we don't miss any data :) But really, if you have old stuff we can't get anymore we can find a way for you to send it over.


You can put data on a google drive and share a link with them. I did this for all my existing radiological data. They had no issue downloading it.


came here to say this. i use them. love it.


I live in San Mateo and also pay $50/month for 100mpbs, which is mostly reliable, and the speed is 'good enough'. I could pay more but the gains in speed aren't worth the extra $$.

The building next door to me is wired for fiber through one provider, Wave, and offers 1gig for $80/month: https://gowaveg.com. I'd love to switch and pay the extra $30 for much better internet but I can't get access to it as a single customer since it is decided building by building.


Self-introspection is also where I find the most value in M-B. It gave me perspective on my ISTJ personality preferences (preferences is the key word) that I didn't understand about myself prior to having these results.


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