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The Senator from Canada is great at guaranteeing an L for Texas teams

temporary as the appeals continue.

This article summarizes the situation

5-year old or 80-year old mom/grandmother/aunt, eff them, right?

WHW

rebate checks for tariffs which consumers paid or (2) $5000 checks to buy votes.

Dumb and Dumber.

Waiter stealing your CC number is a blip compared to someone else using your card or you just disputing you ever went to that restaurant and reversing the charge. Card numbers are easy to get and too easy to use. The real fraud problem is relying on signatures.

US consumers won't tolerate PINs and the massive rake in the US more than pays for the fraud that results from not having to type in your PIN.

If they capped the rake like in Europe, we would have modern POS terminals and be typing in our PINs a lot more.

[Edited by Toolie92: 09/12/2026 at 09:42 AM ET]

Seatgeek tix start at $123, incl. fees
Stubhub $133, incl. fees

(Seatgeek cheapest Club Level seats are $178 Section 308, $193 on Stubhub ... A/C'd lounges, better restrooms and concessions/bars)

...a system that would help reduce fraud.

I don't have any insight into how all that works but perhaps they can't dictate to a retailer to upgrade their system, and they probably aren't going to pay for it unless they would save more in eliminating fraud from the old system, which I doubt they will. I suspect of all the fraud a relatively small amount of it is from restaurant staff stealing a patron's CC number.

Sort of crazy when I worked at Domino's in HS at the turn of the century we'd just take their CC number over the phone and punch it in manually. Which still happens, obviously, and I give it out myself. Mostly confident in that if something does happen it's my credit card and not debit card (i.e., not my money) and that my few fraud experiences have been extremely limited and all resolved successfully in my favor.

did not see him. I didn’t think those guys were good to go?

and had a meeting with my advisor that afternoon. The only computer with internet in the cleanroom was attached to a piece of equipment that everybody used, so I couldn't sit and reload the news on that. One of the senior scientists had his own laptop that he used to record results and that became our window into the world.

Maybe it was the engineers in all of us, but we all kept working. The lab was really a bubble with unspoken expectations of embracing the grind. You don't spend your 20s working toward engineering PhDs unless you are a bit off, you know?

IIRC, it was Thursday when one of the senior researchers unofficially announced he was going home for the day, and the rest of us fell in line. Unbeknownst to us, one of the PhD candidates in our lab (who didn't talk much) had a ticket for one of those flights, but overslept and ended up renting a U-Haul to get back to Charlottesville.

US allows large rakes for credit card transactions, so controlling the sale is lucrative and merchants are often locked in to a particular merchant bank (BofA, Wells, Chase, etc.) who provides their preferred POS machines as well as handling their payment flow as a bundle. Companies like Stripe are slowly taking this role in the US, which makes it easier for merchants to switch banks and breaking that lock-in.

In Europe the fees are more tightly capped, there is more regulation and you need to cross borders more often so its less lucrative for your bank to maintain and force you to use their in-house payments service. Pan-european payment processors dominate the payments layer between merchants and their banks so the POS stuff is more lean and modernized like Stripe here.

In my mind is similar to real estate commissions - easy profits for controlling the transaction leads to a more predatory market for managing transactions. There's a reason US banks and US realtors spend so much on lobbying - they are raking over consumers every day.

[Edited by Toolie92: 09/12/2026 at 09:24 AM ET]

is the only good reason I can think of for Big 10 not to give them the boot

No one actually cares about Rutgers, the same way Cal and Stanford aren't actually drawing tons of viewers from the Bay Area Market to the ACC, SMU from the Dallas Ft. Worth Market. It was originally, partially, about just getting more access to eyeballs from these markets (not the latest round of expansion, obviously). Big 10 pulls in UMD and Rutgers for the DC and NY markets. UMD is only bringing half the DC market, and haven't been that good in football or basketball (in general) the entire time they've been in the Big10.

Things have changed with TV with so many games being available nationally (via linear TV or streaming) and fewer regional-specific broadcasts. I don't think conferences are considering gaining access to specific markets anymore, because they're already there with the national broadcasts.

Got up for work here in Seattle (so 3 hours time difference), kids still asleep, Ms ODR showering. I logged to the Sabre, don't remember exactly what the first post I saw was, but it immediately made me turn on the TV. The first tower collapsed minutes later - just awful. We both stayed home that day, not knowing if the west coast was next.

[Edited by Old Dorms Rule!: 09/12/2026 at 09:12 AM ET]

I thought the broadcaster mentioned one of the people in eligibility purgatory made it back to the line up. I forget the name. Cazeem Moore? If he was approved to go is Holmes still a possibility?

Had turned on a small TV in our break room to watch coverage of the first plane that hit. The news reporters were still calling it a small plane hitting the WTC, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. Then we saw the second plane hit, and knew we were under attack.
After the third plane hit the Pentagon, there were all sorts of rumors spreading, about the White House and the Capitol being hit, and truck bombs at the State Department. Cell phone service was disrupted pretty quickly, so no one could confirm anything.
I walked outside my building to try and get a sense of what was happening, and I remember it was a warm, sunny day. There were sirens going off too, a jarring contrast.
I was one of the lucky people to get out of the city quickly after they released us, made it to the Vienna metro station where my car was. I gave two other feds a ride back to their cars in Manassas. They had taken the VRE in to DC and couldn’t get a train out.

...and mentioned The Cow an Eatery and Ozzies (apparently fluctuating hours) in Morrison. I passed through on my way to the airport back from Southern CO but was looking for more fast casual so I kept on moving.

people get tired of being told what to do/say so it is a fairly harmless outlet other than the 5 year old fan hearing the f bomb and thinking it is funny

They are the ones with the Verizon franchise agreement and this sounds like Verizon is violating state law. They have two options - continue providing you 911 service through copper, or get you some alternative that will actually work in an emergency.

You obviously have power so there must be poles - they are probably like in my area and all owned by Dominion and Verizon does not want to pay pole rental to Dominion.

1 bar of cell service is not 911-level of reliability (in my technical opinion as an engineer, any wireless option should only be allowed in cases there are no poles within a half-mile of your house). I would insist to your county government that Verizon not be allowed to retire their copper infrastructure until they can provide you an equivalently reliable hardline service alternative for a similar monthly cost.

If your county won't listen, next step is your state senator/delegate. They do constituent service and this sounds like Verizon trying to roll your area over and degrade your emergency service.

I’ve observed that in New York City it’s becoming common to bring the machine to the table. In fact two years ago when we were there in December, there was only one restaurant that didn’t bring the machine to the table (a burger place on 51st Street across from our hotel). That was the only time my card was out of my direct control and it was almost certainly not a coincidence that a week after we ate there, fraudulent charges hit my Mastercard. I get push notifications and text messages from the card issuer, so I was on the phone to them within 10 minutes of the first such charge hitting. They were surprised I called so quickly.

Outside of New York, it seems to be unusual for any restaurant to bring the machine to you in the US.

Of the handful of erroneous/fraudulent charges I've had none of have been denied when I reported them. I'm sure it can happen, but I've never had it come up that someone was denied on their legitimate fraud claim.

So you think the credit card companies would push for it.

The real reason is likely inertia combined with the businesses that have to purchase new equipment for it. Perhaps as restaurants upgrade their POS systems this will become normal.

Of the last four meals out I can remember only one charged the card at the table.

Did NIL do them in?

I doubt they bring the New York market, and their athletic program is way in the red, with no clear way out.

tech and vick suck

our games when we aren't playing Tech, like last night.

[Edited by chefhoo: 09/12/2026 at 08:18 AM ET]

running clock on occasion. When ODU was FCS, UNC was kicking their butts so bad one time they went to running clock.

[Edited by JMHoo: 09/12/2026 at 08:18 AM ET]

[Edited by JMHoo: 09/12/2026 at 08:18 AM ET]

him than the old recruiting methodologies.

--TheHoodore