Lowness 72 posted:

I posted this in the legal advice thread but thought it belonged here too

How Sovereign Citizens Helped Swindle $1 Billion From the Government They Disavow https://nyti.ms/2CJ6ptL

BonerGhost posted:

Because it's a ~4hr infusion in a doctor's office/infusion center with attendant monitoring and not covered by any insurance because it's not FDA-approved for depression treatment. There aren't that many places that will administer it.

quote:

How to lose $172,222 per second for 45 minutes

This is probably the most painful bug report I've ever read, describing in glorious technicolor the steps leading to Knight Capital's $465m trading loss due to a software bug that struck late last year, effectively bankrupting the company.

The tale has all the hallmarks of technical debt in a huge, unmaintained, bitrotten codebase (the bug itself due to code that hadn't been used for 8 years), and a really poor, undisciplined devops story.

https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-second-for-45-minutes.html

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf

Sepherothic posted:

Hold on to your butts, butt holders

colachute posted:

A guy I work with needs a new car. He found a 2007 v6 Mustang for $7500. The bank denied him because the car is too old. So he considered using his 0% introductory rate for 15 months credit card that he just got approved for to buy it. But then decided a 16% personal loan would be the better option.

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

Yeah some guy on reddit bought an M2 and was only able to put $1,000 on a credit card. Why even bother allowing ANY of it on CC at that point

canyoneer posted:

So, one of my coworkers is in the process of selling her husband's franchised business. The buyers are cartoonishly incompetent. I'll give the highlights:

canyoneer posted:

So, one of my coworkers is in the process of selling her husband's franchised business. The buyers are cartoonishly incompetent. I'll give the highlights:

- Sale contract written up by the buyer's "lawyer" was missing several important terms and key parts. The buyer groused and complained any time changes needed to be made. Whenever a new revision would come out, there would be old sections that would disappear and some sections would be duplicated twice.
- This is because there actually is not a lawyer involved. The buyer paid a couple hundred bucks for a paint by numbers PDF of a contract online and has been making all the changes herself using a free pdf editor (lol)
- During what was supposed to be a contract signing, the new contract was not correct and missed several key points. The seller said he'd like to actually read through it before signing it, and the buyer threw a screaming tantrum because "if this isn't done in the next hour the bank won't fund the sale on time!". They did not sign that day.
- They're supposed to close next week, and as part of the sale the buyers are entitled to have a month's access to the store to train on all the relevant parts of running the business (they have zero experience in this industry). Instead of putting in long hours getting trained by the seller, they have been dropping in for an hour or two every few days. They still have not been exposed to some of the business critical processes that only the owner can train them on.
- They don't know how to use the computer systems or do invoicing, because the owner was doing that stuff on a Saturday and the buyers didn't want to come in on a weekend.
- Because they're nuts and so unpleasant to be around, one of the long time employees is probably going to leave. The buyers are counting on learning all there is to know from the other full time employee, who has been there for only 6 weeks.
- Buyers were ready to torpedo the sale over the clause that the security deposit paid by the owner to the landlord be returned to the owner, instead of the new buyers. No, buyers, you don't get a gift of that security deposit. We keep it or we price it in to the sale.

I'm amazed that they found some buyers who have the overlap of being able to afford it but also being complete and utter morons.

BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:

If I was that seller I would make a very thorough contemporaneous document outlining all of the efforts that were made to educate the seller about the business, and thoroughly thoroughly document the usual routines of business and how they were carried out in the weeks and months heading up to the sale. In about a year probably this franchise will be run into the ground and maybe this buyer will be looking for a lawyer to accuse the seller of sabotaging the business before selling it.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I’m wondering how well insufflation will work,

quote:

Johnson & Johnson, the pharma company sponsoring its FDA application, did four official efficacy studies. You can find the summary starting on page 17 of this document. Two of the trials were technically negative, although analysts have noticed nontechnical ways they look encouraging. Two of the trials were technically positive, but one of them was a withdrawal trial that was not really designed to prove efficacy.

The FDA usually demands two positive studies before they approve a drug, and doesn’t usually count withdrawal trials. This time around, in a minor deviation from their usual rules, they decided to count the positive withdrawal trial as one of the two required positives, and approve esketamine. I suspect this was a political move based on how embarrassing it was to have everyone know ketamine was a good antidepressant, but not have it officially FDA-approved.

But if ketamine is such a good antidepressant, how come it couldn’t pass the normal bar for approval? Like, people keep saying that ketamine is a real antidepressant, that works perfectly, and changes everything, unlike those bad old SSRIs which are basically just placebo. But esketamine’s results are at least as bad as any SSRI’s. If you look at Table 9 in the FDA report, ketamine did notably worse than most of the other antidepressants the FDA has approved recently – including vortioxetine, an SSRI-like medication.

One possibility is that ketamine was studied for treatment-resistant depression, so it was only given to the toughest cases. But Table 9 shows olanzapine + fluoxetine doing significantly better than esketamine even for treatment-resistant depression.

Another possibility is that clinical trials are just really tough on antidepressants for some reason. I’ve mentioned this before in the context of SSRIs. Patients love them. Doctors love them. Clinical trials say they barely have any effect. Well, now patients love ketamine. Doctors love ketamine. And now there’s a clinical trial showing barely any effect. This isn’t really a solution to esketamine’s misery, but at least it has company.

Another possibility is that everyone made a huge mistake in using left-handed ketamine, and it’s right-handed ketamine that holds the magic. Most previous research was done on a racemic mixture (an equal mix of left-handed and right-handed molecules), and at least one study suggests it was the right-handed ketamine that was driving the results. Pharma decided to pursue left-handed ketamine because it was known to have a stronger effect on NMDA receptors, but – surprise! – ketamine probably doesn’t work through NMDA after all. So there’s a chance that this is just the wrong kind of ketamine – though usually I expect big pharma to be smarter than that, and I would be surprised if this turned out to be it. I don’t know if anybody has a right-handed ketamine patent yet.

And another possibility is that it’s the wrong route of administration. Almost all previous studies on ketamine have examined it given IV. The FDA approved esketamine as a nasal spray – which is a lot more convenient for patients, but again, not a lot of studies showing it works. At least some studies seem to show that it doesn’t. Again, usually I expect big pharma not to screw up the delivery method, but who knows?

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I wonder if that’s why insufflation was the first route for the esketamine.

quote:

The FDA, in its approval for esketamine, specified that it could only be delivered at specialty clinics by doctors who are specially trained in ketamine administration, that patients will have to sit at the clinic for at least two hours, and realistically there will have to be a bunch of nurses on site.

...

This removes most of the advantages of having it be intranasal, so why are they doing this? They give two reasons. First, they want to make sure no patient can ever bring ketamine home, because they might get addicted to it. Okay, I agree addiction is bad. But patients bring prescriptions of OxyContin and Xanax home every day. Come on, FDA. We already have a system for drugs you’re worried someone will get addicted to, it’s called the Controlled Substances Act. Ketamine is less addictive than lots of chemicals that are less stringently regulated than it is. This just seems stupid and mean-spirited.

The other reason the drugs have to be given in a specially monitored clinic is because ketamine can have side effects, including hallucinations and dissociative sensations. I agree these are bad, and I urge patients only to take hallucinogens/dissociatives in an appropriate setting, such as a rave. Like, yeah, ketamine can be seriously creepy, but now patients are going to have to drive to some overpriced ketamine clinic a couple of times a week and sit there for two hours per dose just because you think they’re too frail to handle a dissociative drug at home?

I wanted to finally be able to prescribe ketamine to my patients who needed it. Instead, I’m going to have to recommend they find a ketamine clinic near them (some of my patients live hours from civilization), drive to it several times a week (some of my patients don’t have cars) and pay through the nose, all so that some guy with a postgraduate degree in Watching People Dissociate can do crossword puzzles while they sit and feel kind of weird in a waiting room. And then those same patients will go home and use Ecstasy. Thanks a lot, FDA.

tater_salad posted:

cash advance brah.. 0% for 6 months or something I dunno.

anyone buying a 12 year old mustang for their primary transportation is good at being BWM / making bad decisions.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Also for all the people who made purchase or renovation decisions based on the nonstop hype fron real estate morons about how the "new crop of millionaires" will drive prices up up up.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Also for all the people who made purchase or renovation decisions based on the nonstop hype fron real estate morons about how the "new crop of millionaires" will drive prices up up up.

howdoesishotweb posted:

0% on purchases, not cash advances. Usually the cash advance rate is the standard 20-30+% with NO grace period.

howdoesishotweb posted:

0% on purchases, not cash advances. Usually the cash advance rate is the standard 20-30+% with NO grace period.

Raldikuk posted:

Before the 08 crash I would get 0% cash advance offers all of the time...seems like they learned from that period and the cash advance limits are low along with usuorus rates

Bird in a Blender posted:

Is this where we post about how Lyft's stock price has already dropped below it's IPO price? Maybe they should try making a profit next time. BWM for any initial investors that didn't sell out on the first day.

ChipNDip posted:

The point of the IPO was for employees and early investors to cash out (ie dump the options they've been granted immediately). LMFAO if you're one of the suckers that bought their shares on the first day.

DaveSauce posted:

Are you SURE that's cash advance, and not balance transfer? I've only had credit cards since around 2003 or so, but the cash advance rate has always been ridiculously high and interest starts accruing the day you take the advance (rather than waiting until the end of the billing cycle).

But that said, I've been on the "opt-out" list forever so I never see those special offers...

Bird in a Blender posted:

Is this where we post about how Lyft's stock price has already dropped below it's IPO price? Maybe they should try making a profit next time. BWM for any initial investors that didn't sell out on the first day.

Cyrano4747 posted:

It’s also why cocaine (a drug with recognized medical uses) is less bad in the eyes of the law than crack (a drug with no recognized medical use)

Volkerball posted:

Johns Hopkins is always doing something.

Dik Hz posted:

Volkerball posted:

I smoked weed with John Hopkins.

Moatman posted:

IPOs generally tank double digits sometime in the first month. Six months from now is gonna be the real question (assuming we don't go into a recession by then).
And Uber. That's gonna be fun to watch.

canyoneer posted:

- Buyers were ready to torpedo the sale over the clause that the security deposit paid by the owner to the landlord be returned to the owner, instead of the new buyers. No, buyers, you don't get a gift of that security deposit. We keep it or we price it in to the sale.

Sepherothic posted:

Hold on to your butts, butt holders

quote:

The consequences of the failures were substantial. For the 212 incoming parent orders that were processed by the defective Power Peg code, SMARS sent millions of child orders, resulting in 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares in approximately 45 minutes. Knight inadvertently assumed an approximately $3.5 billion net long position in 80 stocks and an approximately $3.15 billion net short position in 74 stocks. Ultimately, Knight realized a $460 million loss on these positions.

Sepherothic posted:

Hold on to your butts, butt holders

Devian666 posted:

I always thought the procedure for runaway trading computers was to pull the plug on everything, then try to close/cancel everything.

SiGmA_X posted:

Why wasn't this priced in? Isn't that the normal course of business? I assumed it was.