Forget about anonymous data; sometimes PII is not sold, it's just given away by staff who don't know better. See my comment here from my own experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183682
Maintenence. I grew up in the north (Michigan) and spent time in Massachusetts, living in Texas now it's very different how infrastructure is funded. I'd call it a result of the general politics, no one wants to spend money on infrastructure.
I believe the latest stat I heard was that over 70% of the roads & alleys in the city where I live are >40 years old. That also means all of the infrastructure under the roads (water, conduits, etc.) are also >40 years old.
This was similar to my experience in SE Michigan & NW Ohio in the late '90s to early '00s. Ameritech required you to order 2 ISDN phone lines, which cost somewhere around $80 per month, each. ISPs charged extra for the ISDN services, too.
Many cancer cells travel around the body. The cells may only attach and grow in certain kinds of tissue, but that isn't always the case. At a basic level, cancer is mutated cells...sometimes they mutate more.
I had seminoma testicular cancer. If you must have one, it's what you want. It's very treatable, but also affects the lymphatic system of the body. I had tumors in one testicle and 2 lymph nodes in my abdomen.
Surgery for the testicular tumor, chemo for the others.
It is specifically a testicular cancer. The cell type originates in the testicle. It’s a germ cell which are only found in reproductive organs. In my case doctors don’t really know why it “starts in the chest”. Some think it starts in the testes, moves up into the chest and the testes clear up. But there is no definitive science pointing to that. It is very rare. But it is definitely a type of testicular cancer. A rather shitty one unfortunately.
heh, ok. I always assumed testicular cancer meant cancer in the testes, what I'm hearing you say is that it's a type of cancer that starts in the testes so it's considered testicular cancer regardless of where it's found.
Sometimes it starts in the testes, but in extremely rare cases they believe that it is of primordial origin. For example, when you are developing as an embryo, perhaps the germ cell gets stuck in the chest and takes many years to mutate. But they don’t really know how this works. Very weird stuff.
Long story short, GV or VOIP numbers will forever be a big red flag for me moving forward.
Longer story:
A few months ago, I posted a job for a remote US-based developer. 90% of the applicants were not in the US. Some of those who were immediately rejected re-applied with new US addresses and phone numbers, but that's another story. In the end, hired someone who was a great fit, passed the background checks, etc. The only odd thing was their phone number was GV and didn't match the location of their address. My mobile number doesn't match where I currently live and lots of people use GV, so we didn't think much of it.
About 4 weeks in, they sent me a message on a Sunday saying there was a family emergency. They would not be online during normal business hours, but would check in and would still work on tasks as they could. No big deal, I asked for follow-up on two assigned tasks so they could be handed off to someone else to finish a sprint that week.
After two days, haven't heard anything, reassigned the tasks and tried to reach out to check on the person. Phone number goes to the generic GV voicemail prompt, I leave a message. I tried calling the emergency contact, same thing. I reach out through LinkedIn & personal email, no RESPONSE. At this point, we disabled accounts and access to systems. No real reason or policy why, just seemed like a good idea.
Two days later, now Thursday, I start getting calls from a random phone number (also GV from another area of the US), but leaving no messages. Then I get texts, "This is <missing_dev> I've been trying to reach you, please call me back." I call back within 3 minutes, straight to GV generic voicemail.
A few hours later, the number calls again, I answer "Hey, this is <missing_dev>, I was trying to get some work done but it seems my accounts are disabled". After explaining the situation, they simply offered "Well, everything is good now and I'm ready to work." I tried asking some basic things like, are they okay, is their family okay, can we help with something, did you get arrested? Anything to give them a opportunity to offer something. The only response they gave was, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts." Over and over.
I explained it wasn't that simple, walked through the communication inconsistencies and asked how that would affect their reliability in the future. You will only need one guess for the response, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts."
I thanked them for reaching out and said I'd talk to HR and CEO so we could discuss (both had also reached out through personal LinkedIn, email and phone numbers to check on the person, no responses).
They were still in the 90 day probationary period, so we let them go. They were a very good developer, smart, good coding practices, but inconsistency is a killer. And yes, a GV or VOIP number will be a hurdle any future applicant needs to overcome with flying colors.
One quick trick that has worked for me to weed these people out is saying “You live in <city>? That’s great! We have another employee who lives 30 minutes away, would you be able to do an in person interview later in the process?”
They will make excuses (and blame Covid) for why they can’t meet in person. At that point you can politely reject the candidate.
If you already hired one that you’re suspicious of, ask them if they’re willing to fly to you to meet in person. If they’re legitimate, then they’ll fly out and you’ll have a great opportunity to meet the new employee in person (a good practice in general IMO), and if they’re not in the US they’ll have a bunch of excuses why they can’t.
They will never admit to anything and when confronted with the lie they’ll continue to deny it with silly excuses or they’ll totally ghost you.
Longevity is not part of this scam. The goal is to get a couple paychecks and bounce. (1 month of a US salary is a ton of money to them)
We had plans to get together as a company (about 15 of us from all over the US) about 3 months later. They seemed excited about this. But, we never made it that far.
> The only odd thing was their phone number was GV and didn't match the location of their address.
How is that even remotely odd? Ever since cell phones became popular the phone area code no longer means anything. People tend to have the area code of wherever they were when they got that phone, which is often many location moves in the past.
I sat on the board in my previous neighborhood and served two terms as president, this was definitely true for that community too. And, many other HOAs of individual homes (structures) too.
We were lucky to have a decent management company that provided a lot of guidelines and information about what we should be doing. As well as the things we were obligated to do (either because of bylaws or laws, in Texas). Still, any time there was a storm resulting in additional costs for landscaping/cleanup, or work on a damaged/degrading stone wall, or the pool area, etc. We heard about it from some neighbors who didn't want to spend any money, because it didn't directly affect them.
It's definitely an area that more regulations would help everyone involved. We were not experts, but could make some decisions if we had the right information (or knew what questions we should ask).
We went a few years ago and loved it. We happened to be there on the day the Memphis Belle exhibit was being opened (rained out the day before), which also meant they were doing flyovers of WWII planes and bussing people out to the runway to do tours in and around the planes.
All that being said, the highlight for us was seeing the WWII planes fly overhead and then seeing one of the VC-25As flying past seconds later. Multiple times. The rumor was they were doing takeoff/landing training.
My wife and left Texas in 2013, moved back about 18 months later in 2014. They told us we couldn't renew/update our licenses and had to get new ones (both would have not expired yet). When we recevied the "new" ones, the numbers and expiration dates were the same.
Texas is by far the worst state I've lived in for getting your drivers license and vehicle registrations.
My understanding is that there is some dependency on the type of cancer, but mostly it depends on your immune system response. Doctors are pretty clear that just having a cold can affect the numbers.
