I just checked again. It is service provided by citibank's account page "check your FICO® score". The values are Mar: 867, Apr: 863, May: 867, Jun: 867, Jul: 856, Aug: 856.
My guess is the drop in July had to do with us getting a line of credit against the equity in our house.
At the bottom of the chart it says "Score ranges is 250 to 900." I have never found an explanation as to why credit score ranges don't use a more intuitive scale, such as 0-100 but they have always done this.
Credit is a scam so wise up and don't use it. Buy things you can afford with money you have.
Credit is a scam on those willing to be scammed. The term "loan shark" is quite honest about this.
However the credit card companies offer lots of benefits and perks. If you don't fall into the interest and finance charge trap (mostly by living beyond your means) credit cards are quite worth having.
Try renting a car or buying an airline ticket or checking into a hotel without a credit card. It can be done but it is a hassle.
On top of that I get airline miles with every purchase and that indeed is a good deal.
Correct. The dealership had to get my sign-off to get the report for which they paid. (At least up front -- I am sure they made a profit off the sale). I signed off because I didn't feel any reason not to but I wonder what they would have done had I refused.
As for "reason" I suppose they consider themselves vulnerable to scams. When I said "cash" I really meant personal check which of course be kited. Of course also they could have called the bank to clear it. Maybe they had some kind of insurance that protected them as long as they had a credit report on the customer.
For as long as I can remember all credit scoring companies always behaved in opaque and obscure ways. That continues right up to this day.
When I was in my twenties the law was they had to disclose "everything" if you asked for it and it came on a form that was printed on a 132-column line printer. So I was in credit trouble (that of course is the age for it) and got turned down for a card so they sent me the free report. Most of what was on it was wrong or benign. The late payments on credit cards that I actually did have were not on the report except for Sears who was always the most aggressive on reporting these things. There was nothing on it that would explain an extremely low credit score even though in my case the low credit score was deserved.
I could only conclude that "everything" report in fact did not have everything on it in clear violation of what the law seemed to say. There was nothing I could do about it and nobody with actual influence seemed to care.
Today I have a very high credit score: at the moment my FICO score 876 out of 900. A few years back I bought a car and the dealership had to run a credit report even though I was paying cash. The guy said he had never seen a score that high and his customers he had sold to included highly successful silicon valley execs. I'm not rich by any means but I can pay my bills so whatever.
So I get a copy of the report and it had scant data on it but has a section "things that can adversely affect your score." It lists things there like "too many accounts with balances open." Say what? I don't owe a dime on any account except my mortgage. I have two credit cards with zero balance for months and I haven't paid a dime of interest or finance charge on them for a decade. But that's a problem: "No recent revolving balances." So if you aren't spending enough that's a negative.
I am pretty sure that none of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk could get a 900. (Not that they would care, nor anyone giving them credit), My point is if it is impossible to ace the test then it is not a good test. But that's the way the credit industry is built -- a complex data base of hidden rules that they can exploit to make money.
It should surprise nobody that Equifax is using this crisis event to skim cash.
Does anyone here besides me remember BYTE for the incredibly clever artwork on their covers where someone would make sculptures out of electronic components? I used to love looking at that.
"hoping some miracle revelation or networking connection will save you" isn't the model for most startups?
Speaking to the article, anybody with the chops to bail out a highly stressed and visible startup will either not be hanging out at Burning Man or if they are they won't be in any mood to do business.
The actions of the person of the article is basically saying it doesn't matter anymore what I do. What happens will happen so I might as well enjoy myself.
As far as the investors are concerned, their corrective action would be to dismiss him and get someone else but that is unlikely unless there is some really markable IP the company is holding. Even then if the problematic founder has too much stock it would make it very hard to make an offer attractive to someone capable of taking the company to generate an ROI.
For what its worth in the thread about India's Hyperloop project jma05 informed me that my observations about public transit were invalid because not all states in India are the same and I probably can't name them all anyway and India sends engineers to the U.S. (like who knew). So my comment went from +5 Insightful to -1 Troll based on that. I know where you are coming from.
Shouldn't people be allowed to take vacations? I have no problem with this.
Yes people should be allowed to take vacations. Not under all circumstances.
When you are an entrepreneur and you take money from an investor you are not just like any other employee of the company. You are getting a deal other employees don't get. You get a bigger payout in return for a bigger commitment.
As an investor I would say: if you are hitting the planned milestones (i.e. investor return) then do whatever you want. If you are not generating a return or not hitting the milestones then you do nothing except those activities that will increase the likelihood of getting a return. Traipsing of to BM for a week does not count and is in fact the opposite. Think about how that looks to any potential buyer.
An entrepreneur has to have many qualifications but a sense of entitlement is not one of them.
I haven't been to India for decades and there is a reason for that. The place horrifies me. Even the "nice" parts.
I am all in favor of any effort to make the country sane and habitable but I just don't see making something like the Hyperloop will help any but the top 1%
Go on youtube and look for videos to see what train rides in India are like for commuters. What trains they do have are reasonably serviceable but are way overtaxed. You have swarms of tens of thousands of people crammed onto platforms designed to max out at maybe a thousand all trying to cram themselves onto trains that are over capacity by at least 2x. And a mob waiting outside the station.
The stench of sweaty bodies must be epic. I'm happy to say I haven't experienced it myself.
The Hyperloop even if the most optimistic projection helps this how? By squirting a pod of 30 people (crammed with 100 no doubt) even 10-15 minutes? Don't make me laugh.
Instead they should upgrade and add to their existing rail infrastructure. The local population is obviously willing to use it. I would bet money that 99.9% of them would prefer a 30-minute clean ride on an available comfortable seat with air conditioning as opposed to a 6-minute woosh in an over capacity system that probably would not be available to them anyway at any reasonable cost.
Show me the numbers that say HyperLoop could solve the problem they really have there rather than the Gee-Whiz space technology fantasy some geek has and I will be in favor of it. I haven't seen those numbers and I doubt they exist.
... The short interest merely shows that I'm not the only one who thinks that
I've spent time thinking about this and what to do.
I bought Tesla stock right after all the hysterical news stories (including/. articles) screaming TESLA FIRES TELSA FIRES ZMOG BURN BURN and the stock price dipped about 25% because all the panicky lizard brains ceased to think of anything other than scrambling under a rock. At the time that all started I had been kicking myself for not buying TSLA when it was first offered (just was distracted at the time) and I saw this as a 2nd opportunity to get it at a good price. Turned out to be the right move.
Side note: at the time Musk was making casual statements about "yeah maybe it is a bit overvalued."
Yes so clearly now it is pretty over-priced (last trade $354 about) and maybe I should just take my profit and go. I just don't see how the market cap can go higher but I was wrong before. Mostly I am hanging on because I don't see any reason short of major disaster for it to go down because the market has shown it won't abandon TSLA just become some inconsequential but highly visible thing goes wrong.
TSLA has successfully mowed down all the electric car skeptics and they just won't get traction again.
Actually I think they actually did. This is last century and the patent trolling industry was much earlier on. You are right that they did want us to buckle under and expected us to because we didn't have the resources to fight much. However not because they would really make any money off of us but because their strategy was to get enough companies like us so that it would bolster their claims against the big guys doing big volume.
As far as I know that strategy doesn't work (today) but with what little information we had to go on it seemed that is what they were going for. Even if we had paid their claim it wouldn't have been enough to pay their attorneys fees for a month. At the end of the day we just ignored them and they went away.
I remember the name of the company that had the ARCnet patents. It was Datapoint.
Now we know what law firm to go to if we are ever targeted by a patent troll.
I've had a patent troll on my case before and it is one of the most annoying pitfalls of doing business in the USofA. The plaintiff was some invisible company that got ahold of some ARCnet patents from a defunct workstation maker and thought they could nail every Ethernet product maker. We were small potatoes they wanted 3Com and Intel.
Fortunately this particular claim was so specious that it didn't go anywhere. Still annoying.
a) a true Trump believer that thinks all the bad press Trump has gotten is just partisan fear mongering.
b) they think they are smart and independent and strong-willed enough to run the department credibly in spite of any shortcomings Trump or the rest of his crew might have.
c) the increase in prestige of high office will do more for their reputation than association with Trump will hurt it.
d) the entire structure is going to come crashing down regardless and the best plan is to be has high up on it as you can so you land on top and not underneath.
That's a pretty cool robot but I have to wonder how useful it is to stack bricks without mortar or rebar. Most civilized building codes (or for that matter sane buyers) would not let you occupy a structure that is not reinforced. Particularly in earthquake prone regions.
Maybe that's part of the job that humans are still supposed to do. It is a step in the right direction.
It's more a question of how much they could actually understand of the content.
I get your point, but I would think that any species/entity that would/could actually capture and analyze the record to that extent would also have a fair amount of experience in environments not like their own native environment.
I wonder if we were going to re-do it today if we could come up with better media? A billion years of memory retention ain't bad but this was 1972 we were talking about. Computer RAM memories were still mostly magnetic core with a 1.6us cycle time.
ICE cars are better at some things and EV cards are better at other things. Apparently there are a lot of people around that think this makes EVs are worthless, not viable, a waste of time and purchased only by easily duped starry-eyed fanboys.
Case #1: Having your own national resources and wealth plundered by foreigners by force and corruption. Most people would agree that is wrong.
Case #2: Putting a stop to Case #1 and developing a public policy that stops Case #1 and results in an economy where the former plunders are forced to trade for what they used to just take and the terms are not close to what they would choose. I don't see that as a second "wrong." You might, however, make a case for the wrongness of the draconian and at times brutal command economy practices the Communist party put in place but at the end of the day they are producing a middle class that China has never had before.
For centuries Western nations have exploited China to extract its wealth. Kudos to the Communist Party for managing to reverse the process. Whatever else they have done on human rights or international relations they have started to build a substantial middle class which will be an essential ingredient for any long term stability.
In other news: China has anti-trust laws? Who knew. Any major corporation I have ever dealt with there seem to be mostly owned by the state. So I am now wondering what an anti-trust statute is supposed to accomplish.
Gee. Why did we bother moving beyond ISDN? I mean that was teh awesome. You could even get two lines for twice the price.
Would it be helpful to point out that South Korea has gigabit service now to most homes? In the United states we can't have that it seems because MAGA or something.
My Comcast service has >100Mbit download and has been very reliable. Enough so that I can do video Skype and WebEx to Asian and European countries where they permit it. Why would anyone accept anything less than that as a baseline?
Slashdot Mirror
I just checked again. It is service provided by citibank's account page "check your FICO® score". The values are Mar: 867, Apr: 863, May: 867, Jun: 867, Jul: 856, Aug: 856.
My guess is the drop in July had to do with us getting a line of credit against the equity in our house.
At the bottom of the chart it says "Score ranges is 250 to 900." I have never found an explanation as to why credit score ranges don't use a more intuitive scale, such as 0-100 but they have always done this.
Credit is a scam so wise up and don't use it. Buy things you can afford with money you have.
Credit is a scam on those willing to be scammed. The term "loan shark" is quite honest about this.
However the credit card companies offer lots of benefits and perks. If you don't fall into the interest and finance charge trap (mostly by living beyond your means) credit cards are quite worth having.
Try renting a car or buying an airline ticket or checking into a hotel without a credit card. It can be done but it is a hassle.
On top of that I get airline miles with every purchase and that indeed is a good deal.
They can't just get your report for no reason
Correct. The dealership had to get my sign-off to get the report for which they paid. (At least up front -- I am sure they made a profit off the sale). I signed off because I didn't feel any reason not to but I wonder what they would have done had I refused.
As for "reason" I suppose they consider themselves vulnerable to scams. When I said "cash" I really meant personal check which of course be kited. Of course also they could have called the bank to clear it. Maybe they had some kind of insurance that protected them as long as they had a credit report on the customer.
For as long as I can remember all credit scoring companies always behaved in opaque and obscure ways. That continues right up to this day.
When I was in my twenties the law was they had to disclose "everything" if you asked for it and it came on a form that was printed on a 132-column line printer. So I was in credit trouble (that of course is the age for it) and got turned down for a card so they sent me the free report. Most of what was on it was wrong or benign. The late payments on credit cards that I actually did have were not on the report except for Sears who was always the most aggressive on reporting these things. There was nothing on it that would explain an extremely low credit score even though in my case the low credit score was deserved.
I could only conclude that "everything" report in fact did not have everything on it in clear violation of what the law seemed to say. There was nothing I could do about it and nobody with actual influence seemed to care.
Today I have a very high credit score: at the moment my FICO score 876 out of 900. A few years back I bought a car and the dealership had to run a credit report even though I was paying cash. The guy said he had never seen a score that high and his customers he had sold to included highly successful silicon valley execs. I'm not rich by any means but I can pay my bills so whatever.
So I get a copy of the report and it had scant data on it but has a section "things that can adversely affect your score." It lists things there like "too many accounts with balances open." Say what? I don't owe a dime on any account except my mortgage. I have two credit cards with zero balance for months and I haven't paid a dime of interest or finance charge on them for a decade. But that's a problem: "No recent revolving balances." So if you aren't spending enough that's a negative.
I am pretty sure that none of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk could get a 900. (Not that they would care, nor anyone giving them credit), My point is if it is impossible to ace the test then it is not a good test. But that's the way the credit industry is built -- a complex data base of hidden rules that they can exploit to make money.
It should surprise nobody that Equifax is using this crisis event to skim cash.
Does anyone here besides me remember BYTE for the incredibly clever artwork on their covers where someone would make sculptures out of electronic components? I used to love looking at that.
"hoping some miracle revelation or networking connection will save you" isn't the model for most startups?
Speaking to the article, anybody with the chops to bail out a highly stressed and visible startup will either not be hanging out at Burning Man or if they are they won't be in any mood to do business.
The actions of the person of the article is basically saying it doesn't matter anymore what I do. What happens will happen so I might as well enjoy myself.
As far as the investors are concerned, their corrective action would be to dismiss him and get someone else but that is unlikely unless there is some really markable IP the company is holding. Even then if the problematic founder has too much stock it would make it very hard to make an offer attractive to someone capable of taking the company to generate an ROI.
Do people still actually buy software at the store in a box as opposed to downloading it?
How retro.
For what its worth in the thread about India's Hyperloop project jma05 informed me that my observations about public transit were invalid because not all states in India are the same and I probably can't name them all anyway and India sends engineers to the U.S. (like who knew). So my comment went from +5 Insightful to -1 Troll based on that. I know where you are coming from.
Shouldn't people be allowed to take vacations? I have no problem with this.
Yes people should be allowed to take vacations. Not under all circumstances.
When you are an entrepreneur and you take money from an investor you are not just like any other employee of the company. You are getting a deal other employees don't get. You get a bigger payout in return for a bigger commitment.
As an investor I would say: if you are hitting the planned milestones (i.e. investor return) then do whatever you want. If you are not generating a return or not hitting the milestones then you do nothing except those activities that will increase the likelihood of getting a return. Traipsing of to BM for a week does not count and is in fact the opposite. Think about how that looks to any potential buyer.
An entrepreneur has to have many qualifications but a sense of entitlement is not one of them.
I haven't been to India for decades and there is a reason for that. The place horrifies me. Even the "nice" parts.
I am all in favor of any effort to make the country sane and habitable but I just don't see making something like the Hyperloop will help any but the top 1%
Go on youtube and look for videos to see what train rides in India are like for commuters. What trains they do have are reasonably serviceable but are way overtaxed. You have swarms of tens of thousands of people crammed onto platforms designed to max out at maybe a thousand all trying to cram themselves onto trains that are over capacity by at least 2x. And a mob waiting outside the station.
The stench of sweaty bodies must be epic. I'm happy to say I haven't experienced it myself.
The Hyperloop even if the most optimistic projection helps this how? By squirting a pod of 30 people (crammed with 100 no doubt) even 10-15 minutes? Don't make me laugh.
Instead they should upgrade and add to their existing rail infrastructure. The local population is obviously willing to use it. I would bet money that 99.9% of them would prefer a 30-minute clean ride on an available comfortable seat with air conditioning as opposed to a 6-minute woosh in an over capacity system that probably would not be available to them anyway at any reasonable cost.
Show me the numbers that say HyperLoop could solve the problem they really have there rather than the Gee-Whiz space technology fantasy some geek has and I will be in favor of it. I haven't seen those numbers and I doubt they exist.
Disclosure: I am an Elon Musk fanboi.
I've spent time thinking about this and what to do.
I bought Tesla stock right after all the hysterical news stories (including /. articles) screaming TESLA FIRES TELSA FIRES ZMOG BURN BURN and the stock price dipped about 25% because all the panicky lizard brains ceased to think of anything other than scrambling under a rock. At the time that all started I had been kicking myself for not buying TSLA when it was first offered (just was distracted at the time) and I saw this as a 2nd opportunity to get it at a good price. Turned out to be the right move.
Side note: at the time Musk was making casual statements about "yeah maybe it is a bit overvalued."
Yes so clearly now it is pretty over-priced (last trade $354 about) and maybe I should just take my profit and go. I just don't see how the market cap can go higher but I was wrong before. Mostly I am hanging on because I don't see any reason short of major disaster for it to go down because the market has shown it won't abandon TSLA just become some inconsequential but highly visible thing goes wrong.
TSLA has successfully mowed down all the electric car skeptics and they just won't get traction again.
They don't want 3Com and Intel because ...
Actually I think they actually did. This is last century and the patent trolling industry was much earlier on. You are right that they did want us to buckle under and expected us to because we didn't have the resources to fight much. However not because they would really make any money off of us but because their strategy was to get enough companies like us so that it would bolster their claims against the big guys doing big volume.
As far as I know that strategy doesn't work (today) but with what little information we had to go on it seemed that is what they were going for. Even if we had paid their claim it wouldn't have been enough to pay their attorneys fees for a month. At the end of the day we just ignored them and they went away.
I remember the name of the company that had the ARCnet patents. It was Datapoint.
Now we know what law firm to go to if we are ever targeted by a patent troll.
I've had a patent troll on my case before and it is one of the most annoying pitfalls of doing business in the USofA. The plaintiff was some invisible company that got ahold of some ARCnet patents from a defunct workstation maker and thought they could nail every Ethernet product maker. We were small potatoes they wanted 3Com and Intel.
Fortunately this particular claim was so specious that it didn't go anywhere. Still annoying.
What's your patent troll story?
The candidate must be
a) a true Trump believer that thinks all the bad press Trump has gotten is just partisan fear mongering.
b) they think they are smart and independent and strong-willed enough to run the department credibly in spite of any shortcomings Trump or the rest of his crew might have.
c) the increase in prestige of high office will do more for their reputation than association with Trump will hurt it.
d) the entire structure is going to come crashing down regardless and the best plan is to be has high up on it as you can so you land on top and not underneath.
Any other options? Any bets?
My god you can't get that boy to sit still can you.
Someone tell me if he has a market-disrupting sex toy investment. He has to have one by now he has pursued just about everything else.
That's a pretty cool robot but I have to wonder how useful it is to stack bricks without mortar or rebar. Most civilized building codes (or for that matter sane buyers) would not let you occupy a structure that is not reinforced. Particularly in earthquake prone regions.
Maybe that's part of the job that humans are still supposed to do. It is a step in the right direction.
It's more a question of how much they could actually understand of the content.
I get your point, but I would think that any species/entity that would/could actually capture and analyze the record to that extent would also have a fair amount of experience in environments not like their own native environment.
I wonder if we were going to re-do it today if we could come up with better media? A billion years of memory retention ain't bad but this was 1972 we were talking about. Computer RAM memories were still mostly magnetic core with a 1.6us cycle time.
What would we use today?
ICE cars are better at some things and EV cards are better at other things. Apparently there are a lot of people around that think this makes EVs are worthless, not viable, a waste of time and purchased only by easily duped starry-eyed fanboys.
In other news, local hospitals report no cases of constipation for the prior 48 hours.
You are arguing that two wrongs make a right.
I don't see how.
Case #1: Having your own national resources and wealth plundered by foreigners by force and corruption. Most people would agree that is wrong.
Case #2: Putting a stop to Case #1 and developing a public policy that stops Case #1 and results in an economy where the former plunders are forced to trade for what they used to just take and the terms are not close to what they would choose. I don't see that as a second "wrong." You might, however, make a case for the wrongness of the draconian and at times brutal command economy practices the Communist party put in place but at the end of the day they are producing a middle class that China has never had before.
There's plenty of hate speech on both sides, and, frankly, probably far more from the left than from the right.
Do you have any evidence of this or is it just something that sounds truthy to you?
That's funny but for the record the brain's principle chemical components are fat (lipids) and cholesterol. I'm not sure that qualifies as "meat."
For centuries Western nations have exploited China to extract its wealth. Kudos to the Communist Party for managing to reverse the process. Whatever else they have done on human rights or international relations they have started to build a substantial middle class which will be an essential ingredient for any long term stability.
In other news: China has anti-trust laws? Who knew. Any major corporation I have ever dealt with there seem to be mostly owned by the state. So I am now wondering what an anti-trust statute is supposed to accomplish.
Gee. Why did we bother moving beyond ISDN? I mean that was teh awesome. You could even get two lines for twice the price.
Would it be helpful to point out that South Korea has gigabit service now to most homes? In the United states we can't have that it seems because MAGA or something.
My Comcast service has >100Mbit download and has been very reliable. Enough so that I can do video Skype and WebEx to Asian and European countries where they permit it. Why would anyone accept anything less than that as a baseline?