People Talk About the Scariest Thing That Woke Them Up in the Middle of the Night

It’s always pretty scary to be woken up by something that goes BUMP in the night.

Almost 100% of the time, you know it’s just the house creaking or your cat rummaging around, but every once in a while…something sinister is going on.

Have you ever been woken up by something scary in the middle of the night?

Take a look at these stories from AskReddit users.

1. I’d have a heart attack.

“I don’t know if it counts but we were in the field in Camp Pendelton, CA and sleeping in just our mummy bags under the stars and I woke up in the night for whatever reason and my eyes focused on the next guy over in our circle who had one of the largest spiders I’ve ever seen in the wild sitting on his forehead, maybe getting warm or something.

Freaked me the f*ck out, I flicked it off of him and zipped my bag all the way up so there was just the breathing hole and used my boonie cover to plug that and just breathed through the little vents.”

2. Severe weather.

“Tornado Siren.

In the midwest they test them once a month and you get used to it. But holy hell when it goes off at 3AM your subconscious mind dumps adrenaline into you. I thought i was going to have a heart attack.

Like literally 29 year old about to have my wife call an ambulance.”

3. Creepy kids.

“A silhouette of a small child at the end of my bed that whispered my name in a demonic voice.

It was my daughter.

I don’t care what people say, kids are creepy af in the dark.”

4. Rude awakening.

“A brick being thrown through my window by my *sshole nextdoor neighbors at the time.”

5. The stranger.

“My wife and I were separated and I was sleeping in the basement apartment of our home.

She woke me in the middle of the night to come upstairs. There in the kitchen was an intruder sitting calmly at the table. My wife left me alone with this person at 3 am. I was shaking scared that this person would snap and get violent.

Turns out he was stoned out of his mind and my wife had forgotten to lock the front door. She had left to call the police. I found out later that she had found him in my son’s room.

There aren’t many things scarier than funding a stranger in your house in the middle of the night.”

6. War zone.

“When I was in Iraq, I was woken up multiple times by gunfire or an explosion.

You’d think one of those instances would be the most scared I’ve ever woken up, but you’d be wrong. That dubious honor goes to my wife farting loud enough to make the dog bark about two weeks ago at 3am.

That was, hands down, the quickest I’ve ever shot awake, trying to mutter “…the f*ck kind of apocalypse is this?” around my heart, which had crawled up my throat and gotten a death grip on my uvula.”

7. Screams in the night.

“In college, my friend and I lived on campus kind of out on the edges, near the animal units (think lightly forested, set back from the main road a bit).

One night she knocks on my door and silently motions me to her room, eyes wide. We slept with our windows open because of the gorgeous night weather. Outside her window we hear a high pitched wailing.

After staring at each other for a couple minutes, we stupidly decided to go out with flashlights, expecting to find a woman, injured and wailing. We found nothing, and didn’t sleep soundly, but the next morning found a dead bunny.

Their injured screams are strangely human and I’ll never look at a bunny the same way.”

8. Oh, boy…

“My husband was on a work trip and he was supposed to come home on a Friday while I was at work, so I was home alone for a week.

No kids, no pets. They decided to comeback early and just drive in the middle of the night home. I was already on edge from staying home by myself. Next think I know, I hear my front door open, and I start to panic bc it’s 3 in the morning and someone is in my house!

I finally figure out it was him, but I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. He said he didn’t want to call/text me bc he didn’t want me to wake up. About a week later, our neighbor, who we call “Meth Head McGee” tried for break into our house in the middle of the night while he was high.

He had a small meth explosion in his house, so he came running over to ours trying to get help. Hearing him wiggle the knob and kick the door was terrifying!”

9. The nightmare room.

“Woke up terrified when my hair which was tied in a bun came undone slowly carefully and intentionally like someone did it.

Turned around and saw shadows dancing on the wall and when I blinked it disappeared.

That room was full of nightmares.”

10. What a creep.

“My landlord, drunk off his *ss and shouting at me that I had no right to be there.

I was 19 and alone because we were mid-move and my parents were still at the old house. I was also sleeping naked.

I was so f*cking terrified. He finally left and later denied it ever happened.”

11. True crime.

“I woke up to the sound of gunshots a few buildings down.

3 people were killed.”

12. What the…?

“I heard static, like from a radio in-between channels.

The static lasted about 30 seconds and then I heard the opening lines of the Gettysburg Address. “Fourscore and seven years ago—“ that whole bit. It scared the sh*t out of me and as soon as I sat up, it stopped.

I have no idea where it came from or how.”

13. Close call.

“January of 2020 started off with a bang for me. At 6 a.m. the boiler in my house exploded. 1,100 lbs of metal blew itself about 10 feet across my basement into a large metal wardrobe, reducing them both to unrecognizable heaps of shrapnel.

It literally sounded like a car bomb going off underneath me, and shook my entire house. Grabbed my daughter and we noped out of the house as fast as we could.

We were extremely lucky to get out without injury, and I never want to wake up like that again.”

14. Camping alone.

“When I went cycling and camping alone in Saguaro National Park, Tucson AZ, which maybe wasn’t the smartest thing to do by yourself.

I was in my mid twenties and went specifically to look for and photograph animals, namely snakes, so I had no fear of creatures. I set up camp one night in a gravely area, and was woken up in the middle of the night by footsteps approaching my tent in the gravel.

What scared the living sh*t out of me and kinda, sorry if this makes me sound like a p*ssy, put me off camping alone forever, is that it really sounded like something very heavy and bipedal. Like a crazy person coming to murder me. Or sasquatch. It appoached my tent with slow, heavy footsteps crunching in the gravel. I didnt hear any other sound, no breathing or rustling of clothing.

Just crunching gravel. There were just two footsteps not four. It came right up to the tent, then walked away, slowly. I have no idea what it was, and it may have been a mountain lion, they can walk pretty stealthily. But the thought of a human being walking around in the desert at night and slowly approaching me while I slept is what scared me the most, not the thought of an animal or monster.

I wanted to call out “hello?” but was literally paralyzed with fear. I didn’t sleep again that night, but came out at sunrise to find zero evidence, and just carried on with my trip without incident but have not been camping alone since.”

Have you ever been woken up by something in the middle of the night that was really scary?

If so, please share your stories with us in the comments.

We can’t wait to hear your creepy tales!

The post People Talk About the Scariest Thing That Woke Them Up in the Middle of the Night appeared first on UberFacts.

People Tell Their Stories About Making a Lot of Money by Sheer Randomness

Some people just have all the luck…

You can work your ass off your whole life and barely have two dimes to rub together, and then some schmuck makes a fortune totally randomly.

That’s life, huh?

You’re about to read about folks who made a lot of cash through totally random circumstances.

Let’s take a look at these stories from AskReddit users.

1. Bitcoin.

“Forgot I had 11.something bitcoins from back in the day leftover from buying “pizza”. Tried to set up a new account to invest in bitcoin since I’d used it before and saw I already had an account.

Logged in and WOW!! Sold it all and made like $7k.

Imagine the feeling knowing it would eventually reach $20k per coin.”

2. Business trip.

“I was on a business trip that passed through Lake Tahoe. Three people in one hotel room, so I went down to the casino to get some space. Couldn’t find a blackjack table to lose my $100 at, so I sat down at a Wheel of Fortune slot machine instead.

Ten minutes later, I’m absent-mindedly pressing the spin max bet and hit the progressive jackpot.

$1.1 million. Its the sort of thing you assume never happens, but it did. Took a lump payment of $690k, which after I pay taxes next week will end up being about $390k. I quickly got a financial advisor, bought my car, now own a couple investment properties, and bought my now-wife her ring! Everything else is quite literally the exact same, except I have an epic story to tell to strangers on reddit.”

3. A fat check.

“I got into a car accident on my way home from dropping my son off to his mom. I’m grateful that that’s when it happened, and not while he was in the car.

Dude in a company truck blew a stop sign and creamed the shit out of me, breaking my arm, and giving me a concussion. Well, a few months later, after I had almost entirely healed, I got a fat ass check for 70 grand.”

4. On a whim.

“I made a reaction GIF and posted it on Imgur/GFYCat, I got a message randomly months later asking if I had made it because they wanted to license it.

It ended up being used in a NIKE commercial & they paid me pretty handsomely for something I did on a whim.”

5. The funky bus.

“1999, Living in a school bus with 8 of my friends, traveling down the California coast.

The bus started to smell pretty funky so we stopped to collect eucalyptus nuts to make it smell better. Found a roll of cash under a tree.

Took it back to the bus, it was $3050.”

6. Stocks.

“Got lucky on my first career job which paid me peanuts 40k.

Company did exceptionally well. I was living at home at the time so I invested my earnings on the company stock.

My 12k turned into 230k in 1.5 years.”

7. Family money.

“Inheritance.

I’m sort of surprised there aren’t more inheritance stories in here. I got some money and land from my grandfather when I was 21. I invested it and I’ve never worried about money my entire adult life because I know I can pull that out in an emergency.”

8. Sugar daddy.

“I was working as a stripper for a while.

One night, I approached an older man, who looked like a regular joe. Turned out, he was actually very wealthy and he became my long-term sugar daddy. I stopped stripping shortly after meeting him.

He’s not J. Howard Marshall rich, but I’m living a very comfortable lifestyle and I don’t have to worry about working or paying bills.”

9. You just never know…

“I randomly emailed 3 YouTubers I watch, both at the time were all small. Paid me $20 a video this was for 2013 – 2017 and than Fortnite came out.

And now ever since about late 2017 I still edit for the three of them. They blew tf up big time. I got paid about $240K for 2018 and almost $300K for 2019 and I get paid monthly so you can do the math.

Their Organization pays me $25K monthly and I’m just a 21 year old living in Tokyo. It’s stupidly high just for editing cut comms. But I’m not complaining one bit.

I was a broke teen and this saved me and I was able to accomplish my goals and dreams of school and etc.”

10. Housing.

“I bought a really crap house that was due to be bulldozed down. The owner offered to knock it down for me with his bulldozer.

But I fixed up the rot and painted it up nice, and now it is valued at (over $2million) 15 times what I paid for it.”

11. One summer…

“I ended up making $50,000 in 3 months one summer when I was 23.

About 2 years ago I was working a job for my company, we were in a county with weird rules and I didnt fully understand why but instead of paying for my benefits, they just put the money on my paycheck.

Not only was I making insane hourly pay and 20+ overtime hours per week, but the benefits payout was a second paycheck.

We get paid weekly and when I saw my first weeks pay I honestly thought the company fucked up big time and over-payed me a few thousand dollars

I was also still covered by my dads insurance so it really was a win-win for me.

I just left that company for a huge pay raise, great benefits, phone bill paid for, and I’ll finally have a company vehicle with gas card. Exciting times!”

12. Good fortune.

“I moved to a new town because my fiance lived there. Got a job off of Craigslist and accepted the first thing I found. Company was a small but up and coming startup.

Cut to now it’s on the S&P 500 and I have a house and 4.25 million in investments.”

13. Nice job, Mom!

“My mom bought some paintings at a yard sale for no reason. Maybe spent $50 for the three artworks.

She listed them on ebay and sold them for around $3500 each, plus international shipping.

Turns out, they were painted by a world renown Japanese painter who has a museum in Japan. My mom packaged them and shipped them there where they are on display. If theres enough interest, I’ll ask my mom for more details and the name of the artist and such.”

Do you know anyone who’s made a fortune by chance?

Is that person YOU?

If so, tell us about it in the comments.

Please and thank you!

The post People Tell Their Stories About Making a Lot of Money by Sheer Randomness appeared first on UberFacts.

Teens Used the Randonautica App and It Led Them to a Gruesome Discovery

It sounds like a horror film, but it was all too real for teens who were led to a suitcase full of human remains in Washington.

The group was documenting its trip to a Washington beach after an app sent them there. Randonautica uses randomized coordinates that are close to where its users are located, allowing them to explore new areas in their general location.

Photo credit: TikTok

While walking on Alki Beach in Seattle, they noticed a black suitcase that had washed up on the shore. As they approached, the smell became overwhelming for the group, who knew right away that something was amiss.

They called the police; however, law enforcement took hours to show up, and the bag was in danger of washing back out into the ocean as the tide rose. It also started to expose the contents of the suitcase.

@ughhenry

Something traumatic happened that changed my life checkkkk 😐🥺 @natthecvt #fyp #viral #crime #murder #randonautica #randonauting #scary #washington

♬ Creepy, scary, horror, synth, tension – Sound Production Gin

The police eventually showed up, and later, reports confirmed that there were human remains found, but the teens weren’t mentioned, though it is assumed to be them because the location was the same.

Video of the find went viral on social media and has gotten millions of views so far. Viewers wondered about the state of the kids’ mental health after finding such a horrific discovery and wondered why Randonautica pointed them in that direction in the first place.

Photo credit: TikTok

So far, there has been no explanation as to the identity of the person in the suitcase, or how it got there.

Have you ever found something weird while exploring? Let us know in the comments below!

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Customers Treated a Server Poorly and Paid a Price for Their Actions

We hear all kinds of stories about customers who display lousy behavior—some get chastised for it, and some don’t.

The three women in the following story decided to treat a server poorly while on their lunch break and ended up suffering the consequences of that bad decision in a way they never saw coming.

According to a Reddit post, the trio decided to head out for sushi for lunch and displayed poor attitudes from the moment they stepped inside. A co-worker to the server in question tells the story:

Photo credit: Reddit

The ladies were impatient from the moment they sat down, to the point of even ignoring the restaurant’s signage.

Photo credit: Reddit

The waitress comes over to take to their orders, and it was evident they weren’t in a mood to be patient. They started giving her a hard time.

Photo credit: Reddit

The server is fair, but also doesn’t allow the customers to walk all over her. She serves them, but lets them subtly know their anger is not tolerated. They decide to talk to the owner as she listens.

Photo credit: Reddit

They leave the restaurant and mess for the employees and the owner to clean up. But they’re about to receive a shocking surprise.

Photo credit: Reddit

In that short amount of time, these three women took action that would change the course of their lives. And therein lies the lesson—treat everyone you meet with respect because you don’t know it will come back to bite you if you don’t.

The people who read this DEFINITELY had some similar stories about awful customers… and the sweet, sweet, revenge they exacted.

Photo Credit: Reddit

And sometimes… revenge is NOT exacted.

Photo Credit: Reddit

But then again… sometimes it is.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Hey all you people who encounter awful customers… speak up! It likely will get them fired.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Have you had experiences with rude customers? Did you get them fired?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Customers Treated a Server Poorly and Paid a Price for Their Actions appeared first on UberFacts.

Dentist Offers a Hack to Keep Your Mask Secure

This worldwide pandemic forces all of us to wear masks to be safe and keep others safe. But what can you do about a mask that doesn’t fit well, particularly for those of us who have smaller faces?

Masks have to fit well in order to be effective. While the general public wears isn’t a custom mask that someone in medicine would wear, it is necessary and does help. The CDC recommends that everyone over the age of two wear one when not around people in their household and when social distancing is impossible.

Photo credit: TikTok

One dentist has come up with a solution to your loose mask woes. Dr. Olivia Cui posted her quick and easy hack to Tick Tok, which immediately went viral. It takes about to minute to watch, but we’ll lay the steps out below anyway:

@oliviacuidmd

Highly requested 60s version of my viral mask hack #fyp #doctorsoftiktok #masktutorial #covid19 #viral #maskhack #learnontiktok

♬ original sound – oliviacuidmd

Fold your mask in half, and tie a knot in the ear loops. Make sure to keep the knot as close to the corners of the mask as possible. Reopen the mask—you’ll now see at the sides where you can tuck it in. That’s it—you’re good to go out into the world with a secure mask.

Celebrities and social media influencers shared the hack, which quickly spread across all platforms. Dr. Cuid said that in the absence of an N95 mask, doing this was the best bet.

View this post on Instagram

Hi folx! @katiecouric (via @tt_cui ) shared this great mask trick & I wanted to share with all of you & try it for myself. Masks won’t be a forever thing, but we are still in the middle of a pandemic that affects our bodies & our neighbors’ bodies. Wearing a mask is not an “attack on your rights” nor a government hoax. It’s a simple act of protecting yourself and others from a deadly virus. For me, it’s about being a thoughtful neighbor and putting the collective in front of my own individual comfort so we can beat this thing & return to work, to hugging each other & partying with our grandparents without fearing I or some gd Karen might potentially kill them with their infected breath. No shame in that. 💕 Stay healthy, stay kind.

A post shared by AnnaSophia Robb (@annasophiarobb) on

Now that you have this great mask hack at your disposal make sure you do one more thing—wash your hands!

What pandemic prevention hacks to you have that you can share? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dentist Offers a Hack to Keep Your Mask Secure appeared first on UberFacts.

This is Why Lefties Are Sometimes Called “Southpaws”

Left-handed people are very interesting. Why are there so few of them? Why are they so proud of something they randomly inherited?

We may not be able to answer all of those questions today, but if you’re curious about why they’re called “southpaws,” we may have something for you.

The term has been around since the 1800s, and comes courtesy of baseball players and boxes who swung from the left. In an 1813 letter to the editor in The Tickler, perhaps the first recorded instance, it seems to be linked to boxing specifically.

An 1848 political cartoon uses it as a term for someone striking a blow with their left hand, and applies it to a Democratic contender for president, the caption reading “Curse the old hoss wot a south paw he has given me!”

In 1860, the boxing references returned, with the New York Herald reporting that lefty David Woods “planted his ‘south paw’ under his opponents chin, laying him out flat as a pancake.”

In baseball, the term began to apply to any left-handed player, but especially a pitcher, in the 1800s. In those early stadiums, home plate was built facing the west, which meant a left-handed pitcher would be throwing with his “south” paw.

Not every stadium was built this way, but since Chicago’s West Side Park was, theories are that early sports writers popularized the term, which caught on.

Another theory (for my fellow Latin nerds), is that in ancient Rome, bad omens came from the left. The word for left in Latin is sinistra, which is where we derive the English word “sinister,” and is one reason left-handed people have been thought to be devilish in the past.

It could be as simple as someone re-equating south and left and then bad and left, though I’m not sure how many Latin scholars and baseball fans intersected at the time.

There you go – now you know one more fun thing about lefties!

Go forth and share the theories with your friends (and make sure to point out the Latin one, just for fun!)

The post This is Why Lefties Are Sometimes Called “Southpaws” appeared first on UberFacts.

A Girl’s Mask Was Attached to Her Earring in Piercing Mishap

Getting your ears pierced is a rite of passage, but getting your ears pierced during a pandemic sounds like nothing short of a nightmare. Just ask 16-year-old Sissy Sheridan.

The Tik Tok teen and Nickelodeon actress shared a distressing video of her piercing with the online community. As she choked back sobs, she said that an employee at Icing by Claire’s in Sterling, Virginia, near her home, pierced her face mask to her ear.

@itssissysheridanmoral of the story. don’t get your ears pierced during a pandemic♬ original sound – itssissysheridan

Sissy and her mom tried to get the mask out by cutting a good portion of the string away, but were unable to get it all removed. Claire’s said it would honor her request for a full refund, if she brought the earrings back.

When she went for her appointment, she made sure to wear two masks a precaution and didn’t feel the string as it went in. In fact, she didn’t notice that the mask was stuck until she tried to remove it as she and her mom drove home. That’s when she became hysterical.

@itssissysheridanwhere it all went wrong❤ (the first ear was the one she pierced my mask to)♬ original sound – itssissysheridan

The next day, a much calmer Sissy told Tik Tok viewers that she saw the humor in her situation, although it initially scared her.

@itssissysheridanEAR PIERCING UPDATE 👂 💍♬ original sound – itssissysheridan

She and her mom were also finally able to get the remainder of the mask off by “folding her ears forward.” She still had to wait a few days to remove the earring as it was too swollen, and she was still in a lot pain.

There’s no word on any other piercings in Sissy’s future—at least during the pandemic.

Have you ever had a piercings that didn’t go like you though it should? Share your stories below!

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People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash

We all dream about finding a hidden loophole that means we’re not as poor as we think, or that we don’t have to worry so much about our bank accounts, or that we might be able to take that vacation after all, but for most of us, we’re never going to be that lucky.

These 10 people were, though, and here are their secrets, in case you were wondering how they did it – and you know you are!

 

10. That person is the worst.

We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we’d work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime.

Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00.

Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate.

We did it for ages and then in the context of some team chat, some twat asked one of the managers whether the above scheduling would still be feasible.

Turned out the management hadn’t even noticed and stopped it immediately. And back to minimum wage we went.

9. Milked the internet for all it’s worth.

Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay-per-minute Internet policy. You’d buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining.

I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use.

For the entire cruise I took advantage of this. Start the timer, fire up your internet apps like Facebook and Instagram and let your timeline and emails download, or launch a website and let it load. Stop the timer. Browse your feed and photos and read your website and emails offline, compose posts and replies etc. Start the timer again to send/upload, stop it again within a minute.

I milked those 200 minutes for an entire 3 week cruise and still had 45 minutes left over at the end.

8. That’s a lot of potatoes!

Not me, but a friend of mine (among others I’d assume) managed to get an entire sales campaign cancelled that a bank in my country did.

IIRC the bank tried to promote one of their debit cards (which are basically prepaid credit cards) via some bonuses and gifts you’d get as customer, e.g. one of 20 products you can choose for free if you start using it etc.

One of these bonuses they offered was a small payback, you’d get after each purchase. What they did was basically rounding up the amount you paid (to full Euros) and give you the difference. So if you bought something for 27.63€ you’d get 37 cents gifted from this bank.

What he then did was only possible because we were university students back then, had very flexible work time and some of our friends were temping in super markets… he went to the super market our friends worked at at times when basically no one else was there and purchased hundreds of single potatoes. Each one = one purchase with the card. Depending on their weight each of these potatoes was like 2ct or 3ct, so for each purchase he got 98ct or 97ct gifted from the bank, making him profit about 94-96ct for each potato. He got about 250€ (plus an unreasonable amount of free potatoes) in 2 days with this until the bank called him like “uh… could you like maybe stop that…?” and he just shamelessly responded “why?” to which the bank person on the phone had no good answer. So then he just went on and made some more money until the whole incentive thing got completely cancelled a few days later.

Fun times.

7. Living rent-free is actually the loophole here.

Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions. I was young, lived rent free with my parents, Had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement. I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. I’d stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 annual pay. I had no life for about a year, but damn if it didn’t jump start my retirement.

6. Kids are the best at finding loopholes.

When my brothers and I were 6-10 years old we found a crane candy game where you were “guaranteed to win” something. We found a laser sensor in the area where you pick up your prize. This indicated whether or not something had dropped. So, by holding the flap door open at the bottom the sensor was never triggered so for 25 cents we nearly emptied the machine. Thanks Red Robin!

5. I’m pretty sure this is why they went out of business.

Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day. I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn’t care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription. In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks.

Moviepass went out of business but I still had all the Regal rewards.

4. I must have missed out on this one.

Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes.

The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn’t home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL. Turns out, the app had a grace period where if you had recorded the show on your TV you could still get credit, so I just pirated the shows and set my phone up to “watch” them while I did something else. Then I realized it only listened for about 2 minutes before it gave you credit so I was able to get through the log of shows in about 40 minutes and make a killing.

Because of that app I was able to get a kitchen aid stand mixer, a smoker and a bunch of other stuff because of the gift cards.

3. No one feels bad about scamming university parking, either.

In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn’t get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket. I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee.

A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage.

2. So many places forget to take the coupon.

I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers. They also didn’t have an expiration on them. They also didn’t tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order.

We’d order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you’re a broke college kid.

1. Wow, that’s a big one.

When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you’d print your documents, release them at the printer, they’d print, then after they’ve finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance. That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn’t deduct the cost from my balance. With this method I got free printing for nearly two years before they upgraded the system!

 

I’m so jealous! Maybe one day it will happen to me, too.

Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? Tell us your story in the comments!

The post People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash appeared first on UberFacts.

People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash

We all dream about finding a hidden loophole that means we’re not as poor as we think, or that we don’t have to worry so much about our bank accounts, or that we might be able to take that vacation after all, but for most of us, we’re never going to be that lucky.

These 10 people were, though, and here are their secrets, in case you were wondering how they did it – and you know you are!

 

10. That person is the worst.

We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we’d work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime.

Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00.

Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate.

We did it for ages and then in the context of some team chat, some twat asked one of the managers whether the above scheduling would still be feasible.

Turned out the management hadn’t even noticed and stopped it immediately. And back to minimum wage we went.

9. Milked the internet for all it’s worth.

Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay-per-minute Internet policy. You’d buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining.

I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use.

For the entire cruise I took advantage of this. Start the timer, fire up your internet apps like Facebook and Instagram and let your timeline and emails download, or launch a website and let it load. Stop the timer. Browse your feed and photos and read your website and emails offline, compose posts and replies etc. Start the timer again to send/upload, stop it again within a minute.

I milked those 200 minutes for an entire 3 week cruise and still had 45 minutes left over at the end.

8. That’s a lot of potatoes!

Not me, but a friend of mine (among others I’d assume) managed to get an entire sales campaign cancelled that a bank in my country did.

IIRC the bank tried to promote one of their debit cards (which are basically prepaid credit cards) via some bonuses and gifts you’d get as customer, e.g. one of 20 products you can choose for free if you start using it etc.

One of these bonuses they offered was a small payback, you’d get after each purchase. What they did was basically rounding up the amount you paid (to full Euros) and give you the difference. So if you bought something for 27.63€ you’d get 37 cents gifted from this bank.

What he then did was only possible because we were university students back then, had very flexible work time and some of our friends were temping in super markets… he went to the super market our friends worked at at times when basically no one else was there and purchased hundreds of single potatoes. Each one = one purchase with the card. Depending on their weight each of these potatoes was like 2ct or 3ct, so for each purchase he got 98ct or 97ct gifted from the bank, making him profit about 94-96ct for each potato. He got about 250€ (plus an unreasonable amount of free potatoes) in 2 days with this until the bank called him like “uh… could you like maybe stop that…?” and he just shamelessly responded “why?” to which the bank person on the phone had no good answer. So then he just went on and made some more money until the whole incentive thing got completely cancelled a few days later.

Fun times.

7. Living rent-free is actually the loophole here.

Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions. I was young, lived rent free with my parents, Had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement. I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. I’d stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 annual pay. I had no life for about a year, but damn if it didn’t jump start my retirement.

6. Kids are the best at finding loopholes.

When my brothers and I were 6-10 years old we found a crane candy game where you were “guaranteed to win” something. We found a laser sensor in the area where you pick up your prize. This indicated whether or not something had dropped. So, by holding the flap door open at the bottom the sensor was never triggered so for 25 cents we nearly emptied the machine. Thanks Red Robin!

5. I’m pretty sure this is why they went out of business.

Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day. I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn’t care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription. In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks.

Moviepass went out of business but I still had all the Regal rewards.

4. I must have missed out on this one.

Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes.

The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn’t home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL. Turns out, the app had a grace period where if you had recorded the show on your TV you could still get credit, so I just pirated the shows and set my phone up to “watch” them while I did something else. Then I realized it only listened for about 2 minutes before it gave you credit so I was able to get through the log of shows in about 40 minutes and make a killing.

Because of that app I was able to get a kitchen aid stand mixer, a smoker and a bunch of other stuff because of the gift cards.

3. No one feels bad about scamming university parking, either.

In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn’t get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket. I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee.

A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage.

2. So many places forget to take the coupon.

I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers. They also didn’t have an expiration on them. They also didn’t tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order.

We’d order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you’re a broke college kid.

1. Wow, that’s a big one.

When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you’d print your documents, release them at the printer, they’d print, then after they’ve finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance. That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn’t deduct the cost from my balance. With this method I got free printing for nearly two years before they upgraded the system!

 

I’m so jealous! Maybe one day it will happen to me, too.

Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? Tell us your story in the comments!

The post People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash appeared first on UberFacts.

8 Philosophical Thought Experiments That Are Easy to Understand

Many of us love philosophy and can sit around the table for hours discussing the events of the world and thought experiments.

The idea of combining philosophy with illustration is appealing, and many of you will probably enjoy this project that philosopher and artist Helen De Cruz put together of 8 illustrated philosophical thought experiments.

As Helen explains, many philosophers use thought experiments to contextualize and reveal the intuitions behind their ideas. Thought experiments are basically like short stories that help give meaning to ideas that can be difficult to grasp.

See if you can figure out how each of these thought experiences work!

1. The missing shade of blue

In this thought experiment, the man pictured has seen every color except for one specific shade of blue. However, if he’s seen other gradations of blue, he could arrange them in his mind and understand that one is missing.

The question: will the man be able to fill in the missing color using only the power of his imagination?

The story behind it:

Philosopher David Hume came up with this thought experiment while developing his idea that people learn about the world by experiencing it. This experiment is meant to be a counterexample of his argument.

If we really all learn about the world through our experiences, then the man would not be able to fill in the missing shade.

However: most of us can fill in the shade! But it might not be as easy as you suspect.

2. The experience machine

Here’s another one for you!

What if you had a device that could make any experience you want to happen? That’s what the experience machine is.

The experience machine can convince you that whatever you want is really happening. If you want to believe you are racing a horse, you will be. Amazing!

But the reality is that you are floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your brain.

The question is: would you plug into the experience machine for the rest of your life? You would be happy, but you would also be “living” a life that doesn’t really exist.

The story behind it:

Philosophers have asked themselves a key question for thousands of years. What is happiness? Is happiness more than just experiencing pleasure?

The belief that pleasure alone is all you need to be happy is known as hedonism, and the experience machine offers a direct challenge to hedonism.

If pleasure was the direct line to being happy forever, just about everyone would plug themselves in. But it’s not, and we know it.

The philosopher Robert Nozick believed this is because humans know that we want more than just pleasure in our journeys. We have dreams and goals that go far beyond anything being plugged into a machine can offer us.

3. The child at the well

The philosopher Mèng kē, or Mengzi, was a Confucianist who is widely celebrated as the “Second Sage” (second only to Kongzi, also known as Confucius).

Mengzi believed that compassion is a fundamental trait in humans, and he used this thought experiment about a child who is about to fall into a well to prove his belief.

Nearly all of us who see this image will immediately feel worried about the child, right? That’s a dangerous situation!

We wouldn’t feel alarmed and worried because we want someone to tell us we’re a good person for being worried about the child — we would feel worried because the child could get hurt, and others might think less of us if we didn’t try to prevent that from happening.

The story behind it:

Mengzi believed that all humans have four roots (or “sprouts”) that guide our morality.

The roots are ren (compassion), yi (rightness), li (ritual propriety), and zhi (wisdom).

While we each have these roots or sprouts inside of us, like any good gardener, we have to nurture them.

4. Sleeping Beauty

Many of us know the fable about Sleeping Beauty, right? In this thought experiment, the story has been modernized. Sleeping Beauty is participating in a research experiment, and she’s been put to sleep by the researchers.

Here’s how the experiment works: when Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she will be put back to sleep with a medication that will make her forget that she woke up in the first place. The researchers will toss a coin.

If it lands on tails, Sleeping Beauty will be awoken on Monday and Tuesday for a short while.

If the coin lands on tails, she will only be awoken on Monday.

And here’s the crux of the experiment: when Sleeping Beauty wakes on Monday without any idea what day it is, what proof does she have that the coin landed on heads?

The story behind it: 

Many of us believe that the odds of the coin landing on heads is 1/2, which makes sense — there are only 2 sides to a coin.

However, philosopher Adam Elga, who specializes in game theory, would argue that Sleeping Beauty should believe there is a 1/3 chance that the coin landed on heads.

Why? Because she doesn’t know whether it’s Monday or Tuesday, so she likely believes it’s either.

When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, P(Tails and Tuesday) = P(Tails and Monday) = P(Heads and Monday), so the probability of each occurrence is 1/3.

5. Otto and Inga visit a museum

This is a pretty fun one! Otto and Inga want to go visit the Museum of Modern Art.

There’s a catch, though: Otto has Alzheimer’s, and he has a notebook he carries with him that will help him remember how to get to the museum. The notebook tells him that the museum can be found on 53rd Street.

Inga, however, can use her biological memory to recall the same information.

Many of us would understand that Inga has an intuitive, understood belief about where the museum is because she can recall it from her memory. Would we assume Otto has the same belief even though he uses his notebook?

The story behind it:

There is one big question being asked here. Do thoughts only happen in our brains, or do they also happen in the world?

In this experiment, both Otto and Inga have a tool that they use to retrieve information. Their tools work in the same way, but are they the same tool?

It can be reasonably argued that Inga’s belief about the location of the museum is no more or less useful than Otto’s belief, though one is based on memory and one is based on information in a notebook.

Both memory and the notebook are not fail-proof; Inga’s memory can be impacted by something like having a drink at lunch, and someone could steal  Otto’s notebook (or he could lose it).

6. The invisible gardener

Photo by Emiel Molenaar on Unsplash

Two partners or roommates have returned home and their garden is overgrown and neglected.

However, they notice that there are still flowers blooming, and one comments that someone must have been sneaking in and taking care of the garden. The other doesn’t agree.

They decide to ask their neighbors if anyone has been in the garden, but everyone says no.

So then they commit to learning about what happens to a garden when no one takes care of it.

The skeptical partner believes that their research proves there is no gardener, but the other partner believes the gardener is invisible but that there is evidence of this person’s presence that can’t be seen or heard.

How will they ever solve their disagreement?

The story behind it:

If you haven’t caught on yet, this experiment is definitely an analogy about whether or not God exists.

The skeptical friend is not a believer, and he doesn’t see a larger sense of design in the world around him.

The experiment forces us to ask ourselves: to what degree will we bend reality so that it can support (or refute) a belief in God?

There’s also a second question to ask: is the debate really about God, or is it about having two different ways to look at the world? I might see a garden, but you might see a wilderness.

7. The Russian nobleman

A young Russian nobleman is planning to split his estate among peasants instead of his family members, but he knows he is young and idealistic and he’s not sure if he will have the same ideals in his old age.

He decides to put his idealistic plan into a legal document and to place his wife in charge of revoking the plan.

He then asks his wife to promise that she will not revoke his plan even if she does change his mind.

He also tells his wife that the ideals are so important to him that “If I lose these ideals, I want you to think that I cease to exist.”

Fast-forward a few dozen years, and now the man is middle-aged and wants to revoke the documents. What choice does she have?

The story behind it:

This experiment calls into question the idea of personal identity. Is the middle-aged Russian nobleman the same man he once was?

Should his wife have to decide what to do, or should she be relinquished from the agreement? After all, if she has changed, hasn’t she?

8. The floating man

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he is often referred to in the West, was one of the most important thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age.

He frequently debated the nature of existence. In this experiment, we imagine a man who is brought into the world as an adult.

The man just appears and has no memories of having lived any other part of his life.

The man is floating in the air with his eyes closed, he can’t hear a thing, and his limbs are spread out wide so that he cannot feel his own body.

With all this in mind, we now ask ourselves: is the man aware that he exists?

The story behind it:

Ibn Sina is asking whether our selves are the same as our bodies. The great philosopher did not believe that our bodies are the summation of ourselves.

If this were the case, the man would have some awareness of his body’s experience, and he would have memories as well.

Ibn Sina’s conclusion? Our awareness comes from our souls, not our physical experiences.

Those were pretty amazing, right? Don’t forget to share with your friends, and let us know which of the experiments is your favorite in the comments!

The post 8 Philosophical Thought Experiments That Are Easy to Understand appeared first on UberFacts.