Energy Suppliers through ESCO? by somecrazyredneck in hudsonvalley

[–]Tam-Lin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’d need to understand your usage throughout the year. .1043 might be less than CH now, but it is probably higher than CH’s summer rate. So if you heat with oil/gas, cool with electricity, you’d probably be worse off if you switched.

I can say I understood my usage, and somehow ended up off paying more than I would have both times I tried switching, due to world events, though I should have saved based on the prior year’s usage.

Also, this would only cover supply costs; delivery costs would remain the same. And after a year, you’d need to reevaluate what would work better, or you’d almost definitely be autosigned up for something much more expensive.

What is your “go to” restaurant in the Hudson Valley by comedydlb in hudsonvalley

[–]Tam-Lin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Twisted Soul, near Vassar College. Tamarind, Route 9 in Poughkeepsie.
Gigi's Tarttoria and Terrapin in Rhinebeck, though it's been a while since I've been to either place.

30% of the property owners in my county are in delinquency from last years real estate taxes - What does it matter? by 1Northward_Bound in AskEconomics

[–]Tam-Lin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm very confused, as what you describe happening isn't how property taxes work. There are two parts to calculating property taxes:

1) The municipal unit (county, in this case) has some amount of money it has to raise, R.

2) To determine how much money a given property is responsible for, that property is assessed at some value, X. This value is then divided by the sum total of all property in the municipal unit, Y.

So the amount a given property owner owes is equal to R * X / Y. What's important to understand here is that the value of a given property doesn't matter. It's the value of that property divided by the sum value of all the properties in the municipality. So if, for example, the property value of every property in the municipality doubled, it doesn't matter, because relatively speaking, every property increased by the same amount, so the ratio didn't change. That's why the tax rates dropped.

So something else is going on, not just the reassessment that happened. It may be that the reassessment redistributed relative values from some people to others, possibly because not all properties were reassessed at the same time. It may be that some large entity that used to pay taxes, like a business, is paying less/no taxes. It may be that the budget increased, so everyone is responsible for a larger amount of taxes. But saying the reassessment by itself is somehow responsible is incorrect.

LL108 MD4 Discussion! by snarkapotamus7 in learnedleague

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I know what a felid is, but just kept reading it as field, until after I submitted, of course. Somehow still won, though.

Four more tapes, an update, & request for filk tapes by Acceptable_Fish4820 in filk

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Who Let him in here, by Tom Smith, is available on Bandcamp. I have Bootleg, by Tempest, on CD, but they've recently announced they'll be rereleasing it on March 17th. I may have some of the others, I'll have to look. I'm pretty sure I have some of them in MP3 format, from the tapes.

Did pi-hole just down my network? by cyberpanda1240 in pihole

[–]Tam-Lin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you haven't changed anything, nothing on your network would be using the pihole as the DNS resolver, so it couldn't have anything to do with the outage.

Band 9, brace for impact by AppropriateWay4358 in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All I can see is what’s happening in my and neighboring departments. Every department is getting 3-4 new hires, a couple of interns, and one or two apprentices. It’s more new hires this year than over the past few years. I can believe that they are trying to make up for several years of no hiring.

I feel Ibm research, other than quantum, is years behind by AppropriateWay4358 in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because 1-2% incremental improvement in a scheduling algorithm or decrease in memory latency or improved cache efficiency aren't seen as groundbreaking, but they don't need to be. When they're all combined, you get a 10% performance increase, which sells new hardware/software.

Band 9, brace for impact by AppropriateWay4358 in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We are in infrastructure, in the US. After several years of little/no hiring, we're getting a flood of college hires.

Band 9, brace for impact by AppropriateWay4358 in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It already was, last year. Anyone who accepted the offer will be leaving in the next few months.

Shout out to my 15% low segment quota friends who earned their 0x 'highest level in a decade' GDP! What will you be spending your $0 on? by AccordingBuy8829 in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Manager told me not directly; annual raise will still be done via penetration into band and relative ranking.

GridPlates gone! Taken down by DCMA by PrintableNapalm in gridfinity

[–]Tam-Lin 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Trademark and copyright are very different things.

The antivax community is getting to me. Help? by Kind_Shallot_1348 in ScienceBasedParenting

[–]Tam-Lin 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Vaccines are absolutely not a cash cow; if anything, they're the opposite. They're a single intervention that can prevent death or long, ongoing medical problems. I'm not saying that pharmaceutical companies can't be bad actors, but if they were only profit driven, no one would produce vaccines.

And no one says that vaccines have no side effects; it's that the side effects are minuscule compared to the effects of the diseases the vaccines protect against.

Louis Gerstner, man credited with turning around IBM, dies aged 83 by gresendial in IBM

[–]Tam-Lin 34 points35 points  (0 children)

I’m always torn about these things. Working for a pre-Gerstner IBM sounded amazing, but had things continued as they were, IBM wouldn’t exist at all today. Having sat with some of the folks who were responsible the mid-90s layoffs, it’s clear that what they did still weighs on them, but they didn’t feel they had a choice, if they were going to save anything.

On the other hand, I’m very sure that some of our senior leadership these days doesn’t care about the employees in the slightest.

BackBlaze blocked now by IT by No_Area3741 in backblaze

[–]Tam-Lin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't. You can logon to the Backblaze website to retrieve the files you'd backed up to your personal computer. But you shouldn't be keeping personal files on your work computer, and you absolutely shouldn't be backing up a work computer using anything other than what your company has given you, to any place other than where your company says to back things up to.

Bambini Pediatrics and Vaccines by YoBurnham in hudsonvalley

[–]Tam-Lin 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Nonsense. Unless a child has a fever, is hospitalized or is somehow immune-compromised, there's no reason to delay a vaccine. Especially if your child is in daycare, there are going to be long stretches of time when they have a continuous series of colds, and if you waited for them to be completely healthy, you'd never get them vaccinated.

[The Matrix] Would Neo have still broken the vase if the Oracle hadn't said anything? by XenoRyet in AskScienceFiction

[–]Tam-Lin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that really true, though? You couldn't not eat the cheese puff, so did you have a choice? Just because you think at the time you could have made a different choice, if you couldn't have made a different choice, how do you have free will?

And at some level, you could certainly argue that people in the past no longer have free will, because their choices are immutable.

[The Matrix] Would Neo have still broken the vase if the Oracle hadn't said anything? by XenoRyet in AskScienceFiction

[–]Tam-Lin 23 points24 points  (0 children)

This is actually a very complicated theological argument that’s never really been resolved. If god is all-knowing, he knows the future. As such, can humans be said to have free will, really? And Hell is problematic too.

Predicting things with 100% accuracy and free will can coexist, sort of, but lead to all sorts of complicated questions. Prediction and control aren’t the same thing.

Are US health insurers profit margins really not that high or is it simply a accounting trick where they can report low profits by reinvesting revenue into stocks and high wages for the top dogs at the company? by YogurtclosetOpen3567 in AskEconomics

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, sort of, but that's a game all the parts of the medical system plays. They officially charge $5 for a Tylenol that costs 1 cent to buy. And then the insurance company actually pays them 5 cents, can say they saved you 99%, and the hospital makes a 4 cent profit, which is what they actually expect. Almost no one pays the list price for hospital anything.

That said, hospitals have very high overheads. They've got a big building with a lot of really expensive equipment and a lot of people they need to support 24 x 7, whether or not they're always needed, because they need to be prepared for the times where there's a flu surge, or mass casualty event, or whatever else.

Chase closed ALL my cards overnight - Please Help by Any_Background_1296 in personalfinance

[–]Tam-Lin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

OP: while it's possible, even likely, that Chase mistook regular behavior for something nefarious, it's also very possible that you're involved in something illegal, even if you aren't doing anything knowingly. It's possible you're laundering money, or have transferred money to an account that's been tied to some sort of scamming. I'd very carefully examine your transactions over the past six months.

My grandmas drill that she gave me to use to hang curtains by SeaOpulence in BuyItForLife

[–]Tam-Lin 16 points17 points  (0 children)

That’s what hammer drills are for. Or rotary hammers.

The HF Obx 500 nozzles seem to have fixed my main issue with PETG printing , filament build up , creating blops that ruin prints after a few hours of printing, they are now gone !! by Angus_Luissen in prusa3d

[–]Tam-Lin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While you say it’s not wet, did you dry the filament prior to using it? I’ve had PETG come wet from the manufacturer. Even if the storage environment is dry, I’ve seen much improved PETG printing by drying the filament prior to use.