North Carolina tied Medicaid funds to hospitals erasing $6.5B in debt at no state cost
A charity and 99 hospitals wiped debts for 2.5M people after the state tied extra Medicaid payments to joining.
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300 RECENT CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDMy Old Apartment: PEI tenants mail the old rent to the new tenant (interview)
In an NPR interview, Darcie Lanthier says her card lets departing tenants report their last rent so new ones spot illegal rises.
Read the caseMeituan lets volunteer 'kangaroo jury' users settle small order and review disputes
Meituan's app, since January 2020, lets panels of volunteer users vote on petty disputes, resolving 500 to 700 cases a day in 2021.
Read the caseMapatón CDMX turned mapping Mexico City's unmapped minibuses into a points game
Riders earned prizes for GPS-logging pesero rides, and an algorithm raised points for ignored routes, mapping nearly the whole system.
Read the caseEvansville's grocery sold $75 memberships for 24/7 app access to a mostly unstaffed store
A Minnesota couple reopened their town's grocery with app-unlocked doors and prepaid memberships, hitting year-one sign-ups in a week.
Read the caseA visiting surgeon taught a Tanzanian non-doctor brain surgery, starting 'train forward'
Dr. Dilan Ellegala spent six months teaching Emmanuel Mayegga basic neurosurgery at Haydom, then built an NGO around the model.
Read the caseLondon CLT sells Lewisham flats at local-income prices that stay locked to local earnings
Citizens House flats cost about 35% below nearby homes because price tracks local income and an asset lock fixes resale terms.
Read the caseHezam Kittani rebuilt a USAID-funded strawberry system for a third of the irrigation cost
A West Bank farmer swapped plastic boards for wood and plastic sheet, and a coded $500 irrigation computer, so neighbors could copy it without grants.
Read the caseJ.W. Westcott delivers mail to moving Great Lakes freighters by tugboat and bucket
Since 1874 a Detroit River company has served ships that barely slow down by running out alongside and swapping mail in a pail.
Read the caseJared Mauch built a fiber ISP when Comcast quoted $50,000 to reach his Michigan home
A network architect laid fiber himself with a $50 homemade blower and $5,000 prepay deals, hooking up 30 homes at a 70% take rate.
Read the caseIndiana University mailed students their running debt total, and borrowing fell 11%
Student debt accumulates in installments, so IU began telling borrowers their running total, rate and future monthly payment.
Read the caseICRISAT's GreenSIM delivers farm advice as free voice calls — no literacy required
When English websites and SMS failed illiterate Indian farmers, ICRISAT switched to voice messages recorded by farmers themselves — and profits multiplied.
Read the caseA Ghana teacher teaches Microsoft Word by chalking the screen on a blackboard (interview)
In an NPR interview, Owura Kwadwo Hottish says he spends 30 minutes drawing Word's interface before each class.
Read the caseNepal's largest hospital replaced its incinerator with a biodigester fed on placentas
HECAF360 added a second chamber to Nepal's village biogas design, so hospital placentas and food waste now make cooking gas.
Read the caseHavre, Montana fed a brewery's spent barley to its sewage bacteria, dodging a $1M upgrade
Havre's wastewater plant dumps a daily bucket of Triple Dog Brewing's spent barley into its bacteria, replacing a purchased chemical.
Read the caseGreen Mountain Power leased batteries to homes, built Vermont's largest power source
For $55 a month, GMP puts two batteries in a home; together 5,500+ users supply about 110MW and replaced peaker plants.
Read the caseGoogle cut cafeteria food waste with bowls an inch less deep
Shallower bowls led Googlers to take 30-50% less food and cut waste 30-70% — no menu change, no rules, says Google's Food for Good head.
Read the caseJames Goodfellow patented the PIN-and-card cash machine so only genuine customers get cash
Kelvin Hughes engineer James Goodfellow solved ATM access with a secret number plus a plastic token, filing in May 1966.
Read the caseFreund chased an SSH performance anomaly and caught a multi-year backdoor (interview)
In an NPR interview, Microsoft engineer Andres Freund recounts how a routine benchmark's SSH slowdown exposed a backdoor built over multiple years.
Read the caseFreightWaves, Nodal and DAT launched futures to let shippers lock in truck-route prices
The first US trucking futures hedge a route's per-mile rate up to 16 months ahead, priced off DAT's load-board data.
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