And to elaborate further, there isn't just a "dash," but rather an "en dash" and an "em dash."

The "en dash" is used in ranges (e.g. "from [x] to [y]") which is typically numerical but can be words: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sussex.ac.uk%2Finformatics%2Fpunctuation%2Fhyphenanddash%2Fhyphen. So it is a cousin to the hyphen in that it can connect words, but as you said, is most certainly not interchangeable with a hyphen.

The "em dash" is the dash you mentioned: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sussex.ac.uk%2Finformatics%2Fpunctuation%2Fhyphenanddash%2Fdash. What I did not know as an American (though one familiar with the OED) is that the double hyphen is (was?) acceptable in American usage as an em dash. Most word processors set to U.S. English will automatically convert a double hyphen to an em dash -- which begs the question, if MS Word's autocorrect for U.S. English converts an American-style dash to a British-style dash, is it still U.S. English? And yes, I know this is a configurable setting in Word AutoCorrect/AutoFormat, but it is enabled by default, suggesting that the Brits write better English. :)

The thruster failures reappeared during Starliner's return from ISS...failures that previously violated safety thresholds for approach and docking. If the crew and NASA were following procedure, they would have aborted docking in the first place and attempted return to Earth. They intentionally ignored procedure because the test pilots evaluated the situation and risk and determined that docking was the safest option. Starliner returning to Earth in one piece is irrelevant if there is a known flaw posing a high risk of vehicle loss. Wilmore said in hindsight he should have asked more questions about the thrusters. Clearly he didn't feel the vehicle was safe post-docking, otherwise why say that? Boeing (and NASA for that matter) need to act like Wilmore and publicly take responsibility for not doing enough due diligence on a known issue ahead of a crewed test flight.

Two of my cars (2014, 2021) from the same manufacturer have a configurable two-stage soft speed limiter. Since I'm in an exurb, 55 mph is the max, so I set it to 72 (for exurb and urban driving) and 82 (rural interstates where 70 mph limit is standard). Yes, it chimes -- once when the limit is breached -- and it can get annoying, but it's been useful as a secondary driving aid, especially for vehicles that were engineered to drive well over 100 mph and don't feel like you're going that fast. As long as it's an alert, it's not impeding my ability to drive defensively. The so-called vehicle black box and your phone (if you use your insurer's tracking app) are what matters anyway, not the dash alert.

Exhibit A: SiriusXM Satellite Radio receivers.

Though typically you can haggle over the activation/reactivation/transfer fee and they will waive it.

For those of us who can't easily ride outdoors (allergies and humid conditions; ice and snow in the winter) what would be the cost of a reasonable bike and a stationary trainer? Wondering how that compares to the cost of the Peloton Bike base model.

My understanding is that you could use the Bike in "just ride" mode without a subscription. You wouldn't have access to any of the actual content, and your stats wouldn't upload to your OnePeloton account, but the bike and the metrics still work. It sounds like the new reactivation fee is only if you attach a subscription to a Bike. Of course you could argue that the Bike, even used, is pricey if you're not going to use Peloton's content ecosystem, and you'd be better off with a basic stationary bike.

Traditional credit card imprint is mostly dead...pretty much every credit card I've gotten in the US the last few years have gone to printed vs embossed card details. Now it's just manual entry where they write up your CC details and punch it in to the POS when it comes back online. And of course the swipe fee is higher and you're hoping the retailer destroys your written info.

Fast food restaurant in the late 2010s in the DC area (US). Had a small paper sign on the register. I think they tacked on a 3% fee for credit cards. Switched to cash and vowed to never visit that location ever again.

Dropping a buy/sell order for 8 figures will move a stock violently with the computer trading algorithms. The role of humans (or at least the hybrid model used by NYSE) is to help break that huge order into smaller chunks that won't affect the price as much. Of course there are order types with some brokers that will submit the order in small bits. But a NYSE market maker might agree to take the whole order, offload it during the day, and give you a volume weighted average price.

If you're in a margin account, and your cash is tied up in money market funds, they already settle in 1 day. The only risk for burning up margin is if you don't get a sell order in for the MMF before close of business, like you put an order in at 3:59 pm. Mostly this is a risk for foreign trading desks that don't keep a high level of reserves in USD. Forex trades are still T+2, so if you buy $500k of US stocks but only have $100k in USD and 2m in Euros, you're in trouble.

Not just a Tesla thing, Honda used camera-only systems for collision warning (not auto braking though) in the 2010s: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fowners.honda.com%2Futili... I had a 2015 Honda Accord and it repeatedly alerted on shadows and sharp turns at controlled intersections (imagine a car stopped in a turn lane and the road curves at 90 degrees) which made me swear off Hondas and Acuras permanently.

The CTO said in the press conference that the lander's comms system post-landing is designed to look for a good lock with Earth, and if not, switch arrays. I think he said the window is 15 minutes to establish and verify a full carrier lock. Because of the limits of the ground stations and their procedures to instruct the lander to move past that sequence, they weren't able to get it all completed in 15 minutes, so the lander would switch arrays (there are two with two antennas each) and the whole process restarts. He did say in the presser that the team expected it to be solved soon and get the lander out of its comms loop. But that suggests they're currently getting less than 15 minutes of data at a time, and the time to recycle means they're probably not getting a full four windows per hour. He also said they use data error detection/correction on the transmits so while they expect to get all of the data, there's clearly overhead for integrity that eats into the max data payload.

The IRS wouldn't care as long as the taxes were paid, and since he played in national marketable securities, the broker is required to report full cost basis data, so there's no fudging the profit/loss. Except...this guy's 1099 probably didn't get generated until last week. (The trade was in 2023.) The broker's transmission doesn't get processed immediately, he files an extension in April 2024 to October 2024...yeah no, the IRS is not flagging insider trading on the basis of a 1099 filing, otherwise the target will be in a different country long before they see that 1099.

The SEC will notice simply because of the large size of the trade. This guy bought over 46k shares ahead of the deal. The PR announcing the deal said the 30-day average price, prior to announcement, was nearly $47. That's $2 million of stock. Back of the envelope, he would've needed at least $600k in cash to buy on margin, assuming standard 30% maintenance (and the willingness to pay margin rates). He might as well have bought a Ferrari and drove it in front of SEC HQ revving his engine...

There's a columnist at Bloomberg (sub required to read articles) who writes frequently about insider trading and securities fraud. His shtick is "is fill-in-the-blank securities fraud" and you will be amazed at some of these financial crimes cases. Frankly, this one is boring, run-of-the-mill insider trading.

One of the regional supermarkets in the Northeast US (Wegmans) just ended their scan-as-you-go program about a year ago, outright telling customers it was due to shrink. And their version required you to go through their app (you would use your phone's camera to scan barcodes) and connect to the store's Wifi. So even with all of the personal data they were collecting (supermarket loyalty account, your device info, etc.) people were still stealing.

Irony was, when they shut down scan-as-you-go, they added a new bank of six self-checkout kiosks...

Because their rewards program incentivizes use of reloadable cards. You get two stars (their rewards currency) per $1 spent when purchases are charged to a reloadable card, but only one star for other payment methods. (You don't earn stars for topping off a gift card, though they do sometimes offer star bonuses if you reload a certain amount or reload from a particular source, like Paypal or Venmo.)

I've never run a Starbucks card down to $0 but I assume in person it would act like a split transaction and the barista will ask for another payment method to make up the balance. Maybe in the app it's different and requires you to have the full balance? But most ecommerce platforms I've used with an in-house gift card know how to split the transaction so this is not a hard problem for Starbucks to solve. Perhaps it's intentional to "encourage" a reload as WA alleges -- except you have to go in person to the store anyway, so one could just order in person and split the transaction...

One can argue that if you're interested in reloading the card, you're participating in Starbucks Rewards. In that case, I'd argue the scummy part is earning/burning stars and not the minimum reload amount...Stars expire after the 6th month they're earned and you can only redeem at predefined amounts. And if WA wants to whack that, they're going to have fun going after most ecommerce rewards programs *cough*Shopify*cough* and credit card rewards programs.

For traditional media there is no longer "the" headline for a story...print media in particular, the headline in print may be completely different from online. There's SEO involved for online headlines, space constraints for print headlines. See:

• https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F04%2F19%2Fpublic-editor%2Fhey-google-check-out-this-column-on-headlines.html (NYT, 2015, Public Editor Margaret Sullivan)
• https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F04%2F09%2Finsider%2Fhow-to-write-a-new-york-times-headline.html (NYT, 2017, Stephen Hiltner)
• https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F09%2F15%2Finsider%2Flessons-learned-from-the-print-hub.html (NYT, 2023, Sarah Bahr)

In your pharma example, if the drug is not well-known, the print headline would likely go out with "New Drug" (people may not recognize the first word as the drug name -- per Margaret Sullivan's criteria) but the online headline would use "[drug name]" (scores better in PageRank). Ten years later, after it's become a blockbuster drug and everyone knows "the Provasic lady" from the annoying TV/streaming ads, it's referenced by name in the print headlines: "FDA Pulls Provasic From Market As Patient Deaths Grow".

You're absolutely right about click-bait headlines. Traditional print outlets, though: headline writing hasn't been simple for them since the 2000s.