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Wall Street Journal complains about workers using their sick days
  • I’ve worked at a few places with “unlimited PTO” and I totally agree.

    It sounds great in practice: “as long as your work is getting done, take as much PTO as you want!” In reality, it never works out that way because there’s never a “good” time to take a vacation; if you don’t have vacation days that you have to use, you won’t use them.

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    Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements
  • I honestly think they didn’t disclose it precisely because there was no malicious intent behind it. It was something they did to extend the useful life of the phone, and I don’t think it occurred to them that it would be seen negatively.

    It also doesn’t make sense as a shady tactic to spur phone upgrades because you can always just get a battery replacement to restore the original performance. You don’t need a new phone, just a new battery.

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    What are the most mindblowing things in mathematics?
  • It took me a while to wrap my head around this, but here’s how I finally got it:

    There are three doors and one prize, so the odds of the prize being behind any particular door are 1/3. So let’s say you choose door #1. There’s a 1/3 chance that the prize is behind door #1 and, therefore, a 2/3 chance that the prize is behind either door #2 OR door #3.

    Now here’s the catch. Monty opens door #2 and reveals that it does not contain the prize. The odds are the same as before – a 1/3 chance that the prize is behind door #1, and a 2/3 chance that the prize is behind either door #2 or door #3 – but now you know definitively that the prize isn’t behind door #2, so you can rule it out. Therefore, there’s a 1/3 chance that the prize is behind door #1, and a 2/3 chance that the prize is behind door #3. So you’ll be twice as likely to win the prize if you switch your choice from door #1 to door #3.

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    What is an item below 100 bucks that everyone should own?
  • It sounds crazy, but trust me: a corn cob backscratcher.

    It’s essentially just a dried piece of corn on a wooden stick. But the texture is perfect, and because it’s rounded, it covers a much larger area than a regular backscratcher and is much more satisfying to use. My wife bought me one for $11 and I swear by it. You simply cannot go back to a regular backscratcher after trying one.

    Oh, and they’re indestructible. My in-laws still use one from 1979!

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