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How to hack the NFL, Youtube, Netflix, and old age

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HOW TO HACK NETFLIX AND HOW TO WATCH THE NFL ONLINE: In theory, it’s not possible to watch NFL games online in the United States. In practice, it is:

What’s a cord-cutting fan to do? For just a couple of dollars you could digitally pretend to be from somewhere overseas, which would give you access to every single NFL game, live and in high definition, through your Internet connection. And while doing so almost certainly violates the NFL’s terms of service, it might not be otherwise illegal.

That’s the promise of Canadian startup Adfreetime.com, one of a handful of providers to offer what’s called a DNS-switching service. Launched in May by 26-year-old Richard Probst, the website offers subscribers the ability to mask their browsers’ location by rerouting the embedded geographical identifier through a server somewhere else in the world. Turn on the region-unlocking service through a simple Web interface—Adfreetime has designed these as on/off buttons, like light switches—and it will appear as if a user in, say, Iowa is actually signing on from Ireland.

The origin story is interesting too:

Probst launched his startup out of frustration with Netflix, which offers a very different menu of movies and TV shows to subscribers in different areas. “We Canadians kind of get screwed on Netflix content. Americans have 10 times more than we have here,” he said. “Half of what we get is French crap that I can’t understand.” For $1.99 per month, Adfreetime allows users to access the Netflix streaming libraries in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Brazil, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, or Canada with a simple click. The differences are pronounced: British viewers can see the most recent episodes of Breaking Bad, which remain unavailable to American Netflix subscribers; the Swedish have access to such recent blockbuster fare as The Hobbit that is likewise not offered in the U.S.

I noticed the Netflix thing when I was in Nicaragua last winter: the movie selection was better, and Spanish subtitles were an option on a lot more films.

HOW TO RIP MUSIC FROM YOUTUBE: This is probably old hat to the technophiles among you, but it was news to me: there’s a site that will let you extract music from youtube videos. If you the sort of reader who like lots of pictures and helpful arrows to guide the way, then here you go.

LIFE-EXTENDING BIOTECHNOLOGIES: Get caught up with the latest science on John Mauldin’s website. Plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future! Well, the long-term future, anyway.

OBAMACARE EXPLAINED: Until science figures out how to make us all perfectly healthy, this post from Dough Roller gives the best overview of Obamacare I’ve seen so far.

CHIPMUNK’S PLAN FOR FUTURE BETTER CRAFTED THAN THAT OF 8 OUT OF 10 AMERICANS: The Onion has the scoop:

Researchers stated that the striped 7-inch mammal displayed a degree of foresight and determination far exceeding that of the average U.S. citizen. In contrast to most Americans, the chipmunk was said to routinely work toward meaningful goals in an orderly and decisive manner without procrastinating for days on end, melodramatically sighing and complaining, or becoming immediately sidetracked by emails or online videos.

That one hit me a little too close to home.

A great credit card offer ends soon, cost-cutting for the lazy, and cheap Toys R Us gift cards

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CHASE SOUTHWEST 50,000 OFFER ENDING NEXT WEEK: The Points Guy reports that the Chase Southwest 50,000-point sign-up bonus, one of the better deals currently out there, will go away August 6.  This offer has been coming and going for a while, but as TPG points out you never know if or when it will come back. How good is this deal? Mommy Points rates it as her pick for the best deal in family travel.

HOW LAZY PEOPLE CAN CUT EXPENSES: Here’s an interesting business model: there’s a company called BillCutterz that will make phone calls on your behalf to cut your costs–in exchange for a cut of the savings. So if you’re too lazy or too clueless to call the cable company to ask for a lower rate, they’ll do it for you.

I’m not using terms like lazy and clueless in the pejorative sense–plenty of perfectly decent people simply are that way–I’m sure all of you have friends like that–and if a company like BillCutterz can save them money they otherwise wouldn’t save, then good for them. (Via MaximizingMoney)

$10 TOYS R US GIFT CARD FROM COINSTAR: We’re only a few months away from Christmas shopping season, so you may be interested to know that Coinstar will give you an extra $10 on your Toys R Us gift card when you exchange $40 or more at a kiosk at Kroger, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, King Soopers, Dillons, City Market, Smith’s, Baker’s, Ralphs, QFC, and Gerbes. (And I’m sure those of you with kids know that Toys R Us gift cards are also valid at Babies R Us.)

Note that there is no fee if you exchange your coins for a gift card instead of for cash. So this actually seems to be a way to get $50 worth of Toys R Us credit for $40, which is better than you can get buying from resellers. In fact, 80 cents on the dollar is actually lower than what most places will give you if you’re selling, though I have no idea how fungible the Coinstar gift cards are. (Via HustlerMoneyBlog)

THE OBAMACARE SUBSIDY CLIFF: There’s a study at a site called ValuePenguin detailing some of the incentives put into place by the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. There’s a summary of the study at CNBC as well. Long story short, some folks may face the incentive to earn less money lest they lose their health care subsidy, though it’s hard to say for certain because nobody’s been able to thoroughly work out all the details yet.

Has anybody read the Wikipedia entry on the ACA? It is not an easy read.

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU DEAD DONKEYS: For all you enterprising capitalists out there, here’s a good joke from Quorum:

A city boy, Raju, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for Rs 100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day the farmer drove up and said, “Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died last night.”

Raju replied: “Well then, just give me my money back.”

The farmer said: “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.”

Raju said: “OK then, just unload the donkey..”

The farmer asked: “What ya gonna do with him?”

Raju: “I’m going to raffle him off.”

Farmer: “You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!”

Raju: “Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.”

A month later the farmer met up with Raju and asked, “What happened with that dead donkey?” Raju: “I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two rupees a piece and made a profit of Rs. 898.00.”

Farmer: “Didn’t anyone complain?”

Raju: “Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his two rupees.”

$15 off $75 at Walmart, miles for taxes, and how to get a coronary bypass for $1,600

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$15 OFF A $75 WALMART PURCHASE: Amex has another nice Twitter Sync promotion, so have at it! The limit is one $15 credit per Amex card. Along similar lines, if you shop at Gap or Old Navy, you can get a $15 CVS gift card when you buy a $100 gift card to one of those stores.

EARN POINTS AND MILES BY PAYING TAXES: Frequent Miler has a good introduction to paying taxes with miles-earning debit cards.

THE GOLDMAN SACHS ELEVATOR: The NYT has an interview with the man behind the Goldman Sachs Elevator Twitter account, with which I was previously unfamiliar. Here’s a sampling of Goldman Sach’s elevator conversations:

  • “If you love something, break its spirit so it never has the courage to leave you.”
  • “If you can only be good at one thing, be good at lying… Because if you’re good at lying, you’re good at everything.”
  • “Too many people are smart enough to be angry, but not smart enough to be successful.”
  • “I don’t read fiction. Unless you count an Indonesian bond offering memorandum.”
  • “Starbucks needs a separate line for people who have their shit together.”
  • #1: “The Cheesecake Factory looks like a restaurant poor people think rich people might eat at.” #2: “Same with anything Trump.”
  • “From my experience, most people really should have lower self-esteem.”
  • “I already know I’m going to Hell. So, at this point, it’s go big or go home.”

CHEAP SURGERY: Remember the recent story about the hospital in Oklahoma with a transparent pricing policy? If domestic medical tourism still isn’t cheap enough for you then perhaps you’d like to consider India. Bloomberg reports:

Devi Shetty is obsessed with making heart surgery affordable for millions of Indians. On his office desk are photographs of two of his heroes: Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

Shetty is not a public health official motivated by charity. He’s a heart surgeon turned businessman who has started a chain of 21 medical centers around India. By trimming costs with such measures as buying cheaper scrubs and spurning air-conditioning, he has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

How do they get the prices so low?

One of the ways in which Shetty is able to keep his prices low is by cutting out unnecessary pre-op testing, he said.

Urine samples that were once routine before surgery were eliminated when it was found that only a handful of cases tested positive for harmful bacteria. The chain uses web-based computer software to run logistics, rather than licensing or building expensive new systems for each hospital.

When Shetty couldn’t convince a European manufacturer to bring down the price of its disposable surgical gowns and drapes to a level affordable for his hospitals, he convinced a group of young entrepreneurs in Bangalore to make them so he could buy them 60 percent cheaper.

In the future, Shetty sees costs coming down further as more Asian electronics companies enter the market for CT scanners, MRIs and catheterization labs — bringing down prices. As India trains more diploma holders in specialties such as anesthesiology, gynecology, ophthalmology and radiology, Narayana will be able to hire from a larger, less expensive talent pool.

One positive unforeseen outcome may be that many of the cost-saving approaches could be duplicated in developed economies, especially in the U.S. under health reform.

John Mauldin is fond of saying that anything that can’t continue, won’t. Ever-increasing medical expenses are the sort of thing this truism applies to. I have no idea how or when we’re going to reign in prices, but there certainly seems to be plenty of opportunity to do so.

“SIMPLE, BORING AND CHEAP”: That’s how Nate Tobik describes REO Plastics, his latest find over at Oddball Stocks:

What’s so great about REO Plastics?

  • Trades at $15, although it hung around $12 for the past year.
  • Earned $3.07 p/s last year, and $.79 p/s the prior year.
  • NCAV is $15.39
  • Book value $27.66, grew 12% from the previous year.
  • EV/EBIT 2.12
  • P/E 4.88
  • ROE ex-excess cash 12.86%

There’s more about the stock here.

$200 KeyBank bonus, domestic medical tourism, and another real estate boom

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$200 BONUS FROM KEYBANK: KeyBank is offering a $200 checking bonus to new customers. You’ll need to enter the code MASC0713 and you’ll probably want to see the terms of the deal over at Hustler Money Blog. You’ll need to be a resident of AK, CO, CT, ID, IN, KY, ME, MI, NY, OH, OR, UT, VT, or WA.

RIP, $500 GIFT CARDS AT OFFICE DEPOT:  By all accounts, that deal is dead. Requiescat in pace. Over at TPG, Jason Steele has a good rundown of some manufactured spend options.

AVERAGE NYC RENT PASSES $3K: Once again, I have to wonder how the heck people live in New York:

The average monthly apartment rent in the city has soared past $3,000 for the first time, and the scarcity of housing is driving home hunters out to suddenly pricey Brooklyn and Queens, new reports on the super-tight market show.

In contrast, the average national apartment rent is $1,062, a little more than one-third the average city rent of $3,017 excluding Staten Island, according to Reis Inc., a real-estate research firm.

Second-place San Francisco isn’t even close, at a mere $1,998.82 a month.

Residents who feel priced out of Manhattan may soon be priced out of the five boroughs altogether.

Median sales prices for Brooklyn homes rose 15.3 percent in the past year — to $550,000, a 10-year high, according to a new Douglas Elliman market report.

In Queens, the inventory of homes for sale is at an eight-year low, and the median price jumped 9.9 percent to $390,000.

I get that the city has a lot to offer, but I still don’t understand the attraction of sacrificing so much to live there. Do any of you reading this live in NYC? Or do you all dwell in $50,000 houses somewhere in the Midwest where the livin’ is cheap?

TRANSPARENT HOSPITAL PRICING: A hospital on Oklahoma decided to post surgery prices online. What do you suppose happened? This:

“When we first started we thought we were about half the price of the hospitals,” Dr. Lantier remembers. “Then we found out we’re less than half price. Then we find out we’re a sixth to an eighth of what their prices are. I can’t believe the average person can afford health care at these prices.”

Their goal was to start a price war and they did.

Their first out-of-town patients came from Canada; soon everyday Americans caught on.

Matthew Gang, 22, tore his patella tendon, dislocating his knee-cap playing basketball earlier this year.

Gang is from California and he is uninsured.

Surgery in his home-state was going to be about $30,000.

The posted price at Surgery Center of Oklahoma was $5,700, one-fifth the price.

Matthew and his father Tom Gang flew from California to Oklahoma for surgery.

How do they stack up vs the local competition?

  • Mercy Hospital charged $16, 244 for a breast biopsy; the procedure will cost $3,500 at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
  • OU Medical Center billed $20,456 for the open repair of a fracture; the procedure will cost $4,855 at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
  • OU Medical Center billed $21,556 for a gall bladder removal surgery; the procedure will cost $5,865 at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
  • OU Medical Center billed $23,934 for an ankle arthroscopy; the procedure will cost $3,740 at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
  • Integris Baptist billed $37,174 for a hysterectomy; the surgery costs $8,000 at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

Domestic medical tourism: the Next Big Thing?

PARTY LIKE IT’S 2007: Remember the Las Vegas housing bubble? It’s back, baby!:

Many builders are raising prices for homes on their existing lots. Increasingly, buyers must join wait lists or enter lotteries for the chance to bid on new homes. At a development called Villa Trieste, Pulte HomesPHM +7.20% is selling new Tuscan-style two-bedrooms starting at $261,000. A year ago, comparable newly built homes sold for $190,000 and previously owned homes sold for around $160,000. A spokeswoman for Pulte says it has been able to raise prices due to less competition from foreclosures and low interest rates.

The cause:

The number of available homes has plunged here after a sweeping state law subjected lenders to stiff new foreclosure rules and penalties. With banks exercising caution, many homeowners—including those seriously delinquent on their loans—have been allowed to remain in place. As a result, there is little on the market at a time when first-time buyers and real-estate speculators are anxious to tap both cheap prices and low-interest mortgages.

What happened in Vegas has stayed in Vegas, unfortunately.

THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA?: And speaking of Nevada, Ric at Loyalty Traveler has a recap of his journey through Nevada’s Route 50, a.k.a the Loneliest Road in America. If you have ten minutes to spare, you may be interested in this time-lapse video of the route.

ACTUALLY, THIS ROAD IS EVEN LONELIER: The New Yorker has a fun article on Desert Bus, also known as the worst video game ever created:

 The drive from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, takes approximately eight hours when travelling in a vehicle whose top speed is forty-five miles per hour. In Desert Bus, an unreleased video game from 1995 conceived by the American illusionists and entertainers Penn Jillette and Teller, players must complete that journey in real time. Finishing a single leg of the trip requires considerable stamina and concentration in the face of arch boredom: the vehicle constantly lists to the right, so players cannot take their hands off the virtual wheel; swerving from the road will cause the bus’s engine to stall, forcing the player to be towed back to the beginning. The game cannot be paused. The bus carries no virtual passengers to add human interest, and there is no traffic to negotiate. The only scenery is the odd sand-pocked rock or road sign. Players earn a single point for each eight-hour trip completed between the two cities, making a Desert Bus high score perhaps the most costly in gaming.

The weekend is here, and now you’ve got something to fill it with. Enjoy!

In your face, Route 50!

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