More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
@angusm@pluralistic my default with any unsolicited contact like that is to call back the company's main customer service line, or use their secure messaging system if they have one - so many banks have done away with them. But then I'm stuck in phone tree / L1 support hell for at least half an hour even if it was an authentic contact. No great answers.
I especially loved the Wells Fargo support call where they had a warning about never using SSNs while on hold, then required my SSN to verify.
Look, USians, I don't want to step into your internal politics, but you see, 45 years ago, we spaniards had the occurrence to write in our constitution that the head of state (the king) has immunity from prosecution for anything they do while they are in the job, and now we have an ex-king with a Wikipedia page that includes a "alleged corruption" section 55 paragraphs long.
And it's only "alleged" because he can't be taken to court even with the piles of evidence that exist.
They might have gotten away with this 30 years ago when HP inkjets were a premium machine that sold for $400-600. But they've spent 25 years giving them away for less than manufacturing cost and selling the cartridges at a markup. They've trained the public to believe inkjets are worth $36 to buy and own, not $36/month.
@cstross@Orb2069 generally in favor of Republicans spending money on ads excoriating other Republicans for not being Republican enough. And the Orange One's excommunication of Haley supporters from the MAGA movement - brilliant! Exactly the daring strategy needed! Why, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Trump children are not MAGA enough for him in the end.
@cstross if so, I expect fascist-era food & drug administrations will quickly find Reasons Ozempic is much deadlier than, say, radium or arsenic in food, so must be Banned.
If I had more energy I'd be tempted to write a snarky, satirical, 21st century Jetson's style short story set in a future where all the dot-com 1.0-3.0 hype turned out to be true and faithful predictions of our lives in 2025. Just so I could explore the unanticipated drawbacks ("oops, the Amazon drone delivering your neighbour's new dishwasher just fell through your roof; meanwhile trades.com only shows you roofers who live in Boston, England, not Boston, MA"). https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112317411058906212
@JHB17@jwz@cstross when I got to SGI in 1997, The Innovator's Dilemma was on the shelves of most of management. Nonetheless SGI fell prey to TID over the next decade. No idea where the books got to but a lot of the management got to NVIDIA and AMD.
@cstross@JHB17@jwz oddly, SGI CEO Bob Bishop, who presided over the aftermath of the initial deadly decisions, frequently compared changing the company direction to changing the direction of a supertanker, difficult and slow.
What he didn't say was that the supertanker was heading for the impervious horrors of a lee shore, and the reefs had already clawed out the bottom of the ship. But we all could hear the screeching from below-decks.
Articles in which people with bad opinions complain at length that their bad opinions make it difficult for them to get laid demonstrate that at least something is still functioning properly in this dystopian hellscape.
@tuban_muzuru@evacide maybe if girls hissed in warning, then unleashed their fangs and teeth when grabbed, it would encourage better behavior? Seems to mostly work for small children, after the first few times.
Vaguely related, I wonder how many catgirl fantasizers have any conception of how much fur they would get on everything they own, should the reality occur. Two regular-sized house cats are enough to keep my robovac quite busy, thanks.
@brawaru@shadow53@che5hire@eniko I was happy to discover bash autocomplete contextually handles branch names, though more for branch names like '3867-use-proper-grammar-and-syntax' than 'master' :-)
@swaldman I think someone should build a smartphone that can pop out tiny engines at each corner and turn itself into a quadcopter drone in extremis. With an air pressure and temperature sensor added, we can imagine a device smart enough to save itself from a sudden Boeing Event that was killing its owner! Added points if it could also save itself from a SpaceX Starship Goes Boom event!
@stux makes me think of poor Teddy from the Simon's Cat cartoons, who lives in a collapsing cardboard box he props up with a stick. At least our backyard ferals here in the Catpublic are well-fed and sleek.
Again I'm calling with #PayPal and the suckers keep saying this is totally normal :flan_laugh:
Getting locked out your account is part of te process now
Another guy just told me it was my fault because I was using the PayPal iOS app and that should only be done for "checking real quick" not daily use :nkoFacepalm2:
@stux I was happy to be in a position to close my account with them some time ago, though I know that's not an option for everyone. Once or twice a year someone's online payment system forces me into PP to make a CC payment, which forces me to create an account which I then delete immediately as soon as the payment is completed. Very annoying but about what I expect from losers like Thiel and Musk.
I see Dilbert Stark is having a perfectly normal Friday morning:
"Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman for breach of contract, alleging they have compromised the start-up’s original mission of building artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of humanity."
(Seriously though, NEVER use That Guy's true name on social media, he's getting litigious in his delirium and he has deeper pockets than you do with which to pay the lawyers.)
@flockofnazguls I don't see how the author makes the leap from "modernizing the Linux graphics stack" => "everything (in the new stack) is meant to be a file". Wayland addresses a bunch of issues that emerged from X over many years - but the main page of the project doesn't talk about Unix or Linux even once, and I doubt many "Wayland evangelists" care about whether it's a "Unix tool" or not. Article lacks compelling reasons to access Wayland objects and attributes as pseudo-files.
Reminder for folks unfamiliar with the geography of Israel: Tel Aviv is on the Mediterranean coast, to reach Tel Aviv the Iranian drones and missiles would first have to cross the entire width of Israel without being intercepted. AFTER crossing the width of Iraq, most of Jordan, and possibly cutting across Saudi Arabia.
(Via reddit): "Q: what gives away that someone is not a good person?"
Me: it's always a red flag if they start showing you pictures of their secret base inside an extinct volcano on a tropical island, and there are missile launchers and boiler-suited minions in mirrorshades in the background.
Especially if their selfies all feature a fluffy white cat and a control room with a map of the world labelled TARGET.
@cstross@kd2pyk I don't know if ULA has a volcano base, but they've got a "Vulcan" rocket and a CEO who isn't that far away from Dr. Evil by appearances, so maybe not just Dilbert. The current director of Roscosmos actually looks much more stable.
@GottaLaff
Here's my prediction on the Trump trial today...
Trump's lawyers will appeal for a dismissal because of the crisis building with Iran and Israel. Since Trump might become president, he shouldn't be distracted with this trial so he can focus on how to resolve the crisis once he takes office and save the world, because he alone is the only one who can do it!
@darthstar@Wileymiller@GottaLaff can the judge institute a ban on mobile device use in the courtroom? Not being able to rant on Pravda Social would step things up a few notches.