froindt

> Even if they don't sell, the process would have shown light on potential liabilities and issues they hadn't even been thinking about.

If I recall correctly, some VC's make their companies put together quarterly reports of similar nature to a normal publicly traded company. It sounds like it would have similar value.

Doing so requires significant thought and focus, and provides a structure and cadence to the business.

I'm from Iowa but had no idea the DOT ran such a network! Thanks for sharing!

That's true, but if you're spraying a field and veer off by ~12", you're running over corn and killing your profit.

I belive they were enhancing it with terrestrial base stations (Loran-C was mentioned in the discussion, which was 10+ years ago). John Deere has proprietary secret sauce and if I recall correctly, they can get sub 1" accuracy. That precision farming has enabled things like different amounts of fertilizer for different parts of the field, a substantial material savings and improvement for the environment.

You can go with non-John-Deere equipment and get a relatively cheap and simple tractor. I'm not sure about the minimum you can get in terms of electronics.

A big challengefarm equipment manufacturing companies are facing are related to emissions controls. A 40 year old tractor doesn't give a rip about CO2 emissions, but new equipment has to meet the strict standards. This means you've probably added a computer to fine tune performance, or perhaps you're simply operating moderately less efficiently than optimal.

A number of years ago, some dust control laws were passed. If farmers were to follow the letter of the law, their harvester would have needed to spray water to prevent dust from the gravel road, and needed to do similar out in the field (harvesting corn is very dusty). It would be hopelessly uneconomical, and would have absolutely killed efficiency in harvesting. It was talked about on the farm radio programs pretty extensively in the context of "the politicians don't get what it takes to farm. These sorts of controls sound great for factories, but they're not adding nuance to the bill for farmers, and it's unrealistic they we could follow the law if we wanted to."

I've heard of farmers going so far as to make their own GPS guidance systems, enhanced before they were widely available and reasonably priced. I'm not sure how accurate and repeatable they were.

Going to any farm that's been around for 20+ years, you'd see so many custom solutions that are really functional.

Farmer one-off solutions are kind of like homebrew Excel applications - they're infinitely customizable, the end user knows exactly how it should work and can reasonably make it happen, and it's a small fraction of the cost of a commercial/IT SOLUTION. It may not be as reliable, but it's good enough.

I was recently home and found a classic Klutz book we read growing up called Earthsearch. It has an aluminum cover and talked about tons of worldly topics.

Recycling, race, population growth, poverty. All done at an elementary school appropriate level.

I thumbed through the book and read some excerpts and was surprised at how good it still is. So many times books from 20-30 years ago cover things wildly differently than we would today, but nothing was that way.

I'm thoroughly impressed with Klutz and will definitely make sure some of those books end up with my nieces and nephews.

The Ames, Iowa city library expires cards on an annual basis, likely because so many students cycle through.

Thinking about it now, I think my Lynda access was through Iowa State.

My old library provided this, but unfortunately it's not available in my new city.

These look like great resources, thanks!

I started reading this book this week in an effort to open up my job prospects down the line. I'm a "technical" Industrial Engineer often serving as a liason between IT and the business. I can program in VBA and do anything you can name in Excel, but I want to move to a more programming oriented role down the line.

I want to be able to do statistical analysis, queries, and just "be better" at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps.

I'm using this book as a "learn the basics" stepping stone, and Project Euler as a list of solvable problems which will let me practice solving problems. After that I'll move into some personal projects I have in mind.

Does anyone have additional book or resource recommendations beyond that? I know packages like NumPy and/or SciPy will be useful down the line.

* Codecademy feels overpriced at $40/month or $250/year (no refunds for using a partial year).

* Google Python class was free but about 10 years old. With the Python 2->3 debacle, I was unsure if fundamentals had changed and hesitant to sink my time into it.

* Lynda runs $25 or $40/month but would offer python as well as many other resources.

* Udemy - has a number of courses including one by Al, the author of this book. Looked like it'd be a good value, but I'm not sure how much more value the videos add than the book.

Freetaxusa was a very easy experience last year. Federal is free, state is $10.

I haven't read their privacy policy. Perhaps a profile of me was sold to dozens of companies - but I think they fit your criteria pretty well.

I've looked at the difference with a few people. It depends on the balances and interest rates, but the difference is smaller than I would have guessed. With tens of thousands of dollars of debt, I've seen the difference be just a couple hundred dollars.

Smallest to largest balance frees up cash flow faster, making it more likely the person won't go into additional debt (and hopefully won't get discouraged and quit the program all together).

For anyone wanting to explore, here's a handy calculator: https://www.magnifymoney.com/calculator/snowball-avalanche-c...

>The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they use to help aircraft see them at night.

I'm also from Iowa. It's a really eerie effect driving through a wind farm in the pitch dark! I noticed it most recently on 80 near Newton when they put in a wind farm in the last couple years.

Oh I know that. I've been reducing my insurance as my financial position has improved. I think almost nobody on this forum would buy insurance on low value items, as the math and straightforward probabilities explain themselves.

But there are many people who don't understand the math or theory of insurance. And those people often have less overall education and earning potential. And those people are getting swindled hard.

Maybe my mistake was acknowledging I have insurance. The billing person said they run into issues with the insurance company if they let covered individuals bypass the insurance.

This blog post describes some of the mechanics in a bit more detail.

http://selfpaypatient.com/2014/01/03/insured-patients-can-sa...

It really feels predatory when they do it on consumables. I hope I'm never offered it again on a consumable.

I was shocked by the 15% premium! I could self insure and break even if 1/6 products were defective.

Televisions will be around for years. The 3 toothbrush heads should last under a year. How are they going to break? I'm sure the manufacturer would give me a coupon for a free head if something was wrong, and it'd take about the same amount of time as finding the receipt, driving to, and doing a return at Walmart.

>...so we kind of feel like we are contributing to a future problem by using dental insurance, but it’s hard to turn down the savings now.

I agree. It feels awful to make a rational choice in your best interest and to see the mess it can cause at scale. The reason health insurance is such a mess in the US was from a tit-for-tat battle of people operating in a rational way (providers, insurance companies, and drug companies).

Insurance companies have pre-negotiated rates for everything. I didn't like paying for my dental insurance, and asked my dentist what the cost would be for 2 cleanings/year with no insurance. Something like $120/cleaning and another $75 for x-rays periodically. No cash discount because they'd run into legal issues by offering a better rate for non-insured patients.

My insurance is around $10/month. Since I get my teeth cleaned 2x/year, the rational choice is to buy my insurance and realize I breakeven after the first cleaning. But it feels bad. If my dentist is getting $40/cleaning through insurance, I'd rather be able to pay him $45/cleaning and keep insurance out of it all.

For $3 I could get protection on my ~$20 Sonicare toothbrush heads from Walmart. It's a premium, consumable item.

That offer really caught me off guard.

Sounds like more customer buy-in or system capability would save Amazon a few seconds and packages stolen.

Possible process: FBA driver scans box and carelessly tosses box towards front door.

Ring or Amazon app push a notification that the package has been delivered, saving about 20 steps for the driver.

Customer (hopefully) lets the package sit fewer minutes reducing the risk of theft.

Amazon pushes notifications from their app, but I much prefer not having their app on my phone.

We like to at least have the allusion that you can start anywhere on the socioeconomic scale and end up better (sometimes far better) than you started. Education has long been one of the best ways to increase your lifetime earning potential, and having the government backing allows someone who had little growing up to receive the same education as the kid whose parents are paying for everything, and to go as far in life as they possibly can.

There are obviously holes in this narrative, but we like telling ourselves this can happen.

While there's not enough value in 17th century art history for the US to graduate 200k scholars per year and expect in-field employment, there is value to society in general to not losing our history and learning more. Letting the banks decide who gets loans will instantly mean those who can't pay cash cannot pursue that education or need to go on cheaper routes for college. They may or may not be viewed as a comparable education and quality candidate.

I'm not a fan of our current system, but a purely utilitarian system I see proposed seems likely to continue the spreading the social divides between the rich, middle class, and poor.

I'm an advocate for cutting a lot of the unnecessary fluff and expenses from college. Administrative overhead is excessive. Dorms are way nicer than they need to be. Alas, other colleges have nice dorms, so a single college choosing to go cheap on the dorms will probably decrease admissions and thereby revenue.

>Well it's been 100 years and no one's gotten hurt.

I'm curious if this is true. If there was a high speed crash anywhere along that path, the best move for the driver is to definitely not mention they were doing the Cannonball Run. Participating in the Cannonball Run is a guaranteed way to get 0 sympathy from a jury for a civil claim, and get the max sentence from a judge for whatever criminal charges you'll be facing.

I think it's entirely possible people have been hurt/killed without much fuss getting linked to the race.

Safety tip: wear safety glasses and a face shield. If the disk breaks off, it can get nasty.

Examples:

Sewn up - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3319119/man-carves-open-throat...

Grinding wheel still in the face - https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/comments/1sq6v7/wear_your_f...

We've seen massive consolidation of health groups over the last 20 years. I believe that's the point Ms. Gee is making. There used to be competition 10 or 20 minutes away. Now it's entirely plausible you'll be driving for hours to find a different medical group with similar services available.

In my area (250k people, Iowa) there are 2 health groups.

I actively tried finding a PCP who wasn't part of the two health groups but accepted insurance - as mega health groups greatly increase the total cost of care. I gave up after looking up about 20 from the hundred or so names insurance sent me. Basically everyone

Unity Point recently announced it wouldn't be merging with Sanford health group. That would have expanded Sanford's strong footing in northwest Iowa, gaining 5 hospitals in Des Moines and at least one hospital in most locally large cities across the east half of state.

It's hard enough to make the math work for hospitals in rural areas. The merger would have made it more difficult for the entire region to find competition.

I'm an industrial engineer and geek out about manufacturing stuff.

Lego used to make custom pieces all the time. That, along with other missteps, nearly killed the company.

Product variety means changeovers (switching molds in the plastic injection molding machines). More quality problems will occur. Low volume parts for one set may use a tiny fraction of the mold's useful life, making the unit cost much higher than a 2x4 brick. You need more inventory to successfully fulfill any bulk order you receive. You also need to store the molds in an environment where they won't degrade over time.

Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) and Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) work hand in hand dictating how to economically run a facility like this. EOQ considers storage costs, the fixed cost to setup the tool, demand per unit time, and time value of money to minimize the per-unit cost.

SMED reduces the fixed costs which are spread across a batch of pieces. This is the lever you can pull to reduce batch sizes, reduce inventory levels, reduce working capital, and help maximize profits.

To your specific comment, the difficulty lies in fulfillment. Making sure the robot picks up the right number of pieces which are unceremoniously ejected from the injection molder in no particular order. Having inventory of all the pieces people want - or having a relatively long lead time hoping you get enough demand to run batches on a make-to-order basis. SMED would make this a much more viable business model.

This article goes into more depth on the turnaround they went through.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/04/how-leg...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-minute_exchange_of_di...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_order_quantity

If I recall correctly, Ubiquity had a network around this concept for broadband connections in the late 2000's. I don't think it ever caught steam, but I could be wrong.

I hate how patient consent is typically implemented. I've seen two ER's firsthand who have someone come in with a computer, ask some questions about insurance and all, then say "please sign for the HIPPA privacy form, and again to release the information to your insurance provider".

For all you know, you're signing away for an assisted suicide and authorizing your organs to be transplanted. I refuse to sign on the pad, I'm the patient who asks for it to be printed out on paper, signs it, and gets a copy too.

I'm very much behind on movies. It's on my list though.

I saw this when I saw Finding Dory. The sea foam was so good! I geek out about digital animation and was absolutely blown away.

I'm not ashamed to admit I teared up a bit at how good it was.

Google Voice number for car dealerships.

Turo to try cars out for a few days. The owner would probably be happy to tell you what they do or don't like as well - and perhaps sell it to you if they were looking for something else.