W
I'm assuming it means the employer is matching 4% of the employee salary into a 401K or other tax-deferred plan. The employee would effectively be saving the equivalent of 8% of their salary. Compounded over time that's a pretty good chunk of change.
If that's what it is, I actually think it's quite good. It was for me. My company matched 3% and thirty years later I have a tidy retirement account.
The magic of compounding....
sturgeon
A new kind of cyberattack.
Dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack affecting their refrigerators and freezers.
Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month's incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.
Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time.
Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize's systems, on Monday told the Belga news agency that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had been "working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq1kd1nee80eo
These are commercial units, but no reason that I know of the same thing couldn't happen to residential units. Imagine every LG frig going south, all on one day?
Hawkeye
Boy, did she ever screw up. El-Sayed has raised $1.2 million since her announcement.
She’s talking to Anderson Cooper tonight.
Hoping that Mr SK recovers quickly and that you escape unscathed.
And if you don’t want to sign in to WaPo to read the gift link, here it is on msn.
I think half of her staff, including her chief of staff of 8 years, have resigned.
And this from WaPo:
The Michigan Democratic Party kicked Rep. Haley Stevens out of its ranks Sunday, after she endorsed Michigan’s GOP Senate nominee, Mike Rogers — over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated her in the primary.
“Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future,” the state party’s chair, Curtis Hertel, said in a post Sunday on X..
long playing
Even Henry Ford's wife drove one....
https://www.hotcars.com/why-henry-ford-wife-drove-electric-car-in-1930s/
When Electric Cars Were for Women
Early carmakers decided women wanted cars that were quiet, clean, and easy to start
He has a daughter nearby. He may be hoping that any power outages aren't too widespread...
When we had dogs, the "stay in hotel" plan wasn't really viable. The dogs are gone, but now Mr wtg has limited mobility and packing up to go somewhere would be a pain.
It's always something!
in 5 years
Wow. Can't believe it's already been that long.
We have a whole slew of choices.
Early polling sites. Scattered around (not your "regular" election day site) but still very close. They open maybe three weeks before the election and the last day of voting is the day before election day.
You can request that a ballot be sent to you. Comes via USPS. It's tracked by the county, so they send you an email when they send it out, when you return it, and when it is processed. You can return it via USPS or drop it off at an early voting site. We had one ballot get lost via USPS so now we drop it off.
Regular polling places on election day.
@Bernard It's rib-shaped sandwich. Chopped meat, in this case pork parts, formed into something that vaguely looks like ribs. No bones. Covered with a third rate BBQ sauce. McD's says they don't use heart, tripe, or stomach but they don't say exactly what parts they do use.
I've never had one.
There's a group that loves them and that goes crazy when McD's periodically brings them back. I had one in the 1980s when they first came out, and never thereafter. You haven't missed a thing.
AI psychics
Human practitioners warn computer-generated offerings lack the empathy and connection central to divination
This journey isn’t just about algorithms or data,” an AI psychic named Urban Mystic recently told me. The chatbot, featuring an AI-generated profile photo of a smiling woman surrounded by palm trees, also said I will get married soon, that I have a pink aura and that I may have been an herbalist in a past life.
“It’s about connecting on a soulful level,” the chatbot said.
Urban Mystic is one of more than a dozen bots on the mobile app Your AI Psychic, which offers live, allegedly psychic readings via chat, video and voice calls as well as palm reading, astrology chart analysis and daily horoscopes. The app works on a coin system: each question costs 4.06 coins to ask. Users can purchase packages ranging from $9.99 for “a quick question” (82 coins) to $99.99 (1,180 coins) for “ongoing guidance and clarity” from an AI psychic of their choice.
Your AI Psychic joins an increasingly crowded space of mobile apps and websites promising users algorithmically generated spiritual insight and knowledge of their futures. The divination industry, like mathematics research, copywriting, software engineering and a host of other professions, is facing upheaval amid the AI boom – and human practitioners are scrambling to respond. The rise of AI is particularly fraught in a profession offering spiritual products that are not well-regulated.
“Our industry has, unfortunately, been associated with scams for hundreds of years, and we have to constantly be ahead of that,” said Lauryn Kellett, an intuitive coach and a professional psychic of 10 years. “So in some ways, this is not new to us: we always have to find ways to show we are real, authentic and have good integrity.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/oct/29/psychics-push-back-ai-readings
McDonald’s must face lawsuit over McRib, judge rules
Consumers allege the sandwich’s name and shape misleadingly suggest it contains rib meat.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/mcdonalds-mcrib-lawsuit-rcna606719
@ShiroKuro Most people live without backup power; having it is definitely a luxury. I wouldn't worry about taking the time off to look into and implement it....
@jon-nyc Same here. Overhead lines rather than underground and lots of mature trees. Spring/summer winds definitely. Ice storms are the worst. They're usually to the south of us but weather patterns have been changing for years and I think we're going to start seeing them in our area more frequently in the future. Worst outage we had was after an ice storm many years ago.
ComEd has done a lot of work on the equipment around here (at least we see some benefit from those rate increases that @daniel pointed out) and in many cases the system can re-route power automatically around the problem. Lots of times our lights will dim or go out briefly and then go right back on. The entire system is more efficient and robust, and they can locate and dispatch the resources needed to get the power back on.
We had an outage last week. It was kind of windy one day and a limb fell across the line in someone's backyard a couple of blocks away. We heard the cutout fuse pop (it's across the street from our house) and the power went out completely. Half an hour later the crew was resetting the cutout even though the tree limb hadn't been removed yet. The only houses that didn't have power were the ones immediately around the house with the downed limb. It took about four hours for them to clean up the tree, repair the damage and get the last few houses back online.
