Tag: scam

Antivaxxer Spam

it turns out antivaxx nonsense has always been an auto-generated scam:

HealthMe’s business model is to make an automated program that runs through every single drug and every possible side effect, scrapes the FDA database for examples, then autopublishes an ad-filled web page titled “COULD $DRUG CAUSE $SIDE_EFFECT?”. It populates the page by spewing random FDA data all over it, concludes “$SIDE_EFFECT is found among people who take $DRUG”, and offers a link to a support group for $DRUG patients suffering from $SIDE_EFFECT. Needless to say, the support group is an automatically-generated forum with no posts in it.

Gendered products scam

the exact same product in pink costs significantly more. it’s crazy that this kind of nonsense is still going on, enabled by dumb consumers.

Radio Flyer sells a red scooter for boys and a pink scooter for girls. Both feature plastic handlebars, 3 wheels and a foot brake. The only significant difference is the price. Target listed one for $24.99 and the other for $49.99.

Crappy hipster chocolate

bros will be bros

In the chocolate community, the suspicions of remelting began early. The Mast Brothers’ original bars had a taste and texture that was too much like the palate-friendly kind available at the drugstore to be truly “bean to bar,” Scott explains in his first post. Bean-to-bar chocolate has a distinctive taste that, like wine, ties it to its origin, and craft chocolate makers use minimal processing to retain that taste.

Secret History Of Myers-Briggs

Less obvious at first, and then wholly undeniable, is how hard the present-day guardians of the type indicator work to shield Myers’s personal and professional history from critical scrutiny. For the foundation, as well as for its for-profit-research-arm, the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), this means keeping journalists far away from Myers’s notebooks, correspondences and research materials, which are stored in the Special Collections division of the University of Florida library. Although they are technically the property of the university — thus open to the public — Myers’s papers require permission from CAPT to access; permission that has not been granted to anyone in the 10 years since the papers were donated to the university by Myers’s granddaughter, Katharine Hughes.

the murky history of a very dubious organization. reminds me of scientology.

Apple Mafia Methods

Fiorina’s “good friend” Steve Jobs blithely mugged her and HP’s shareholders. By getting Fiorina to adopt the iPod as HP’s music player, Jobs had effectively gotten his software installed on millions of computers for free, stifled his main competitor, and gotten a company that prided itself on invention to declare that Apple was a superior inventor. And he lost nothing, except the few minutes it took him to call Carly Fiorina and say he was sorry she got canned.

Ashley Madison doesn’t exist

Out of 5.5M female accounts, ~0% had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created. The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20M men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10M of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there.

this is trolling as an art form