Common enough that there's been a fair bit in the media[0] regularly, ever since instant transfers took off, and warnings from the Financial Ombudsman[1].

There's also been stories of people randomly discovering a few thousand appearing in their account and stupidly going out to spend it that day.

[0] First link in results https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-account... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22815716

Up til that point, people would type. If they were having a bad time they'd type A LOT. You couldn't help getting to know them better than you did.

Then Facebook etc arrived, and now it's "Life's shit. Inbox me", if that, or a photo of lunch/cat/coffee.

I think we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

1. There is no mechanism to obtain a refund for a mistake - eg I mistype the account number, someone else gets the money. Banks won't reverse but ask the payee to refund. If they still exist and are willing to cooperate. This is the route used for many, many scams like Microsoft calling because they noticed a fault with your Windows.

2. There is no protection under the Consumer Credit Act to obtain refund in the event the company goes bust or the product is defective and they won't refund. Credit cards have to provide that.

I use it with friends in preference to any other method, especially Paypal though.

I'm sure you can sprinkle some of those into the classes to give a little light relief if the students are really finding things too dry. You don't have to go as far as recreating TheDailyWTF. Perhaps use some to provide worked examples of designing yourself into blind alleys and how to get out again, or just to provide awareness of a few real world issues that might come up with whatever topic is the day's lecture.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwj R3 Drama Page

Two old multipart series I happen to remember, just to give an idea of past scope:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03nv05z Listening to the Dead - 5 part series.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mxgxl Tracks - 9 part SciFi conspiracy thriller.

At such a vast time distance there's likely nothing whatsoever left of us - except in the geological record as a few rare fossilised artefacts and environmental clues. We have a hard enough time understanding life a couple of thousand years back and religion is all too often trotted out as easy explanation for "we don't know why".

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432125

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Most juries will have around half, perhaps more, who've done nothing at all mathematical since school 10-45 years previously and think percentages are in the difficult part of maths (ie it's more than basic arithmetic). HN is going to be very unrepresentative for numeracy. :)

You want them to achieve "beyond reasonable doubt" conclusions from probabilities, percentages, false positive rates and perhaps standard deviations, well you may as well be making your case in French or Ancient Greek that they can pick a few part-understood bits from.

Or hope for an eloquent statistician on the jury!

"Our facial recognition has over 90% accuracy" from the prosecution's expert can easily become "clearly guilty" in the jury room.

Then like archaeologists everywhere will conclude it was of religious significance.

Very much. I voraciously consume Radio 4, radio plays and audiobooks, and a few podcasts.

Tried episode 2 at lunch - ooh it's a bit long. Might have worked better as a 2 parter? We're very impressed with your level of quality for a new project. :)

> 2. Any suggestions how to gain initial traction and reach broader audiences

Random thought and perhaps not relevant or of interest as it's a bit of a tangent.

Have you thought of looking into submission requirements for BBC Radio4 Afternoon Drama? No idea what the rules are, but I know they feature new playwrights and experimental content fairly often. They also often make series of 5 linked daily plays exploring some SF theme or alternate reality. The Beeb are surprisingly easy to have email or social conversations with for an org their size.

Episode 1 honestly wouldn't have seemed out of place had I heard it in that slot. Audience is around 1m I believe. :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qrzz

TL;DR I mostly find what I need quicker with least faffing around changing terms to try and fight them "knowing best".

Google shot themselves in the foot when they removed code search, and "improved" results by constantly knowing better with synonyms and other semantically linked results. It rather broke code searches and led to more of the wrong language turning up instead. Language reference and standard library type searches they do just fine at.

Google spoiled it for the obscure and code when even + and - modifiers and advanced searches became optional. They felt able to give a page of results with only one result having my must-have term. Makes searching for a specific release hellish - not everyone integrates latest and greatest v9 the week of its release. No, I really do want v7. I never fathomed the rationale of that change for anyone.

DDG do the least additional messing with my search terms with helpful expansion, pluralisation and so on. DDG got a little worse at obscure error searches when they started on some "oh you also meant" games fairly recently. They still do the least of this. There's still occasional cases where the content simply isn't there - but they're far better than say a year or two ago.

When I first tried DDG a few years ago I was !g or !sp all the time and it was barely worth the effort. Now I very rarely go near Google and don't feel I'm losing out.

Where are the 2 years or older, 4 years or older options at the other end of the scale or let me specify two actual dates.

Sadly I often need to search for older content - DDG are least worst, but they're all poor to hopeless at it.

I find it better than Google for code / technical searches, and all things work related

I find it better than Google for historic or old content as Google barely acknowledges such content is possible any more. Admittedly DDG is "least worst" in this respect but it hasn't entirely thrown the results out with the obsession with recency and update frequency (I consider this to have essentially ruined Google). Google were better at this and dated searches in their first 2 years than now.

Google then ruined themselves further by feeling it can overrule my keywording attempts and gives a page of results featuring no result with the must have term. Adding insult to injury they proceed to heavily promote brands over small companies and blogs, or anything really.

Once a week I'll try !sp and not find what I need on Google either. The rare times I want video search Bing is orders of magnitude better than Google.

Great production quality, I was surprised. We both enjoyed it and sat to the end before going to do other stuff, will definitely be checking out the other two.

I'm interested to see how this develops.

The till receipt or invoice breaks down the VAT element for you, and most places even pick out what is zero rated or exempt should you care.

Every receipt breaks out the VAT and rate. Food, books and children's clothes (and a few other things) are exempt (UK).

All online purchases show VAT in the checkout and basket, and in the invoice after purchase.

Pennies and 2p became copper plated steel for the same reason. Pre 92 bronze ones are worth about double.

Coppers can't be worth keeping around much longer. I doubt even penny sweets still exist.

If we really get the vast majority of the world using air con we may as well get them to power their homes by diesel generators 24/7 too and be done with the planet, environment and any claims to care for it.