I agree. Give me a short, concise, unapologetic error message.
Some years ago, the Google Voice app for Android would put a message in the notification bar whenever there was even the most brief connectivity issue (which in the early days of 3G on android was frequent) starting off with "We have a problem ... <connnecting to your google voice account or something>". Considering that I used that GV number for two highly regulated activities with potential high liability, my heart would skip a beat every time a pull out my phone and see "We have a problem".
> NMS claims CLIA certification. This is the older law where labs self-certify compliance. Congress left CLIA in place alongside FDA IVD regulations to protect small pharmacists, but obviously Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp run fleets through that loophole, and most labwork is CLIA-certified, not FDA-approved.
This is highly misleading. CLIA and the associated federal regulations are the standard to which diagnostic clinical laboratories are held, not an "older" or "loophole" regulation. All laboratories in the US that provide patient results for clinical use are regulated by CLIA. There are FDA-approved test systems and "Lab-developed tests" (LDTs) that are BOTH subject to CLIA obligations, which are unbelievably complex (and in my opinion are a source of regulatory capture in laboratory medicine, but that's not directly relevant). Most high complexity lab tests are LDTs.
FDA-approved tests go through a formal FDA process such that the performing lab only has to "verify" the performance characteristics prior to patient testing. An LDT requires a much more stringent lab-level validation plan prior to patient testing. Both requiring strict ongoing quality control and quality assurance. And while the validation plan for an LDT can be self-designed, there are still strict requirements for what it most contain.
Compliance is NOT "self-certified," instead there are routine, extremely intensive compliance inspections (scheduled and unscheduled), either by a regional CLIA office, or by an organization accredited by CMS to provide such verification of compliance (such as CAP or COLA). These are not cursory inspections but a deep dive into all lab operations and personnel, equipment, maintenance and quality records, and other documentation.
I'm not a huge fan of Quest or Labcorp's presence in the field, and I don't know the specifics of NMS and this PFAS testing (CLIA compliance isn't required for research or non-clinical). If NMS has CLIA certification and they state the methodology and limitations of their LDT it's generally perfectly valid to provide the test, and the burden is generally on the downstream physician or provider to ensure the results are properly interpreted and applied.
A music theory instructor from my past told us a story about his equivalent practical exam. He had to demonstrate proficiency with multiple string instruments. Instead of learning fingering for each instrument, he claimed he tuned them so they could all be played the same way. I don’t have any training in string instruments, so I’m not sure how feasible this actually is...
It is and it isn't. All of the violin family instruments are tuned in fifths, but the strings have limited tuning range and would either break or produce no sound if you tried to force-fit a single tuning onto all of them, e.g., tuning a violin like a viola or vice versa. The double bass is its own beast, usually tuned in fourths, but in fifths is virtually unplayable without injury by mere mortals. And fifths require careful choice of strings.
You still have to read the clefs.
A remote possibility is that the person was a guitarist or bassist, and tuned the instruments in fourths. I have a friend who studied classical guitar as an undergrad, and music theory in grad school, while earning a living as an electric bassist in R&B bands, then became a theory professor, now retired.
It's bizarre. It's certainly possible to do this but there isn't much point given the different instruments need different fingering tequniques to reach notes anyway, and getting a feel for these fingerings ought to be harder than the transposition.
This is great, though with the usual formatting caveats of pdf printing from any browser! Firefox for Android used to have this feature up to version 60's somewhere but it was removed. I've found it useful on my android to keep an old version of firefox for limited use when I need things like pdf generation or various "unapproved" addons. Now that most of my extensions work on Firefox Nightly (with AMO), and with restored pdf functionality, there isn't much reason to keep the old version around. I'm very happy lately with firefox, both on desktop and android. I wish it would recover some market share from chrome.
EBay is actively de-integrating PayPal. E.g. sellers are being required to provide their banking info to eBay for eBay to deposit payments directly.
It was dumb to see eBay send two verification payments to “authorize” my bank account, of 1 cent and 3 cents, and after confirming, they let me know that they were going to take their 4 cents back.
There's nothing dumb about it. This is common practice when linking accounts throughout
the financial services industry. Like my stockbroker did it when I linked my bank checking account. By verifying the amounts on two small payments you give them reasonable assurance that you actually control the account. This protects against both fraud and accidental account number data entry errors.
It was the clawback of the hilariously low amount that I found dumb, not the verification technique.
In my experience, it’s 2x double digit amounts, not two single digit amounts. I guess if they’re clawing it back, maybe my low sums are out of randomness, or maybe they’ve really lowered the cap on the test deposits (less float/fraud loss but less security?).
I suspect it’s because they want to verify they can withdraw from the account, not just deposit.
Maybe they have deposit-only account links but IIRC the default is two-way. That’s because, for example, you can subscribe to various services using PayPal (if you have no funds in your PP account they will withdraw it from your bank account).
random under $1 in every bank I've had do this. It better be a good random algorithm, if it isn't you can defraud a lot of people fast. (I won't say how, but I think anyone here can guess quickly)
2 Small payments can provide a larger range of random numbers for an account verification at lower cost to you.
Let's say you want a random number between 0 and 91, you can take up 9c times 2, for a maximum of 18c, giving a much lesser chance you can guess the number on the confirmation. Otherwise, for the same range you would take up to 91c out.
Indeed, this is an important point that I missed. So if I get this right, this isn't about actually AML activity, but a civil claim under something like ToS.
So I looked up the AUP, and indeed: they claim $2,500(!) liquidated damages per violation of the AUP, which is on average a ridiculously high amount. Selling 10 individual bottles of wine without approval will incur $25,000 damages under this scheme.
Given these terms, you have to be absolutely nuts to sign any agreement with Paypal.
[1] http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/Sleuths.html