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Comment This particular safeway (Score 4, Informative) 125

This safeway is directly across the street from the main "downtown" caltrain station and also two muni rail lines (n judah and ... 4th st? 3rd st?) it's extremely high traffic and they regularly taze resisting shoplifters ,like, a couple times a day. It's both high revenue (mission bay is 14,000 pop/sq mile) and high "loss"/shoplifting. It doesn't surprise me at all that they've had to resort to this. Also "unhoused" encampments pop up along the southern side of the caltrain station on the regular as well as nearby overpasses which.... there's a lot of correlation between that and shoplifting. This is not a bright sunny suburban grocery store, it is part of the ground floor of a huge urban complex building with 600 condos on the 4th-16th floors a couple blocks from Uber and OpenAI headquarters, major genetech offices etc. Context matters.

Comment Re: Microsoft Store is the monopoly (Score 1) 159

Anybody could vibe code an online video game store backed by s3 in about 20 minutes, where is the monopoly? Before steam existed people distributed games on floppies and CD/DVD. Nobody is stopping you from selling your video games mail order, or on your own squarespace store or whatever. There's zero economic moat here. I routinely pay a premium to buy my games on steam because I don't trust the developer to keep track of my account or even keep their store up in 90 days.

Comment Bring back the WoT! (Score 2) 11

Spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam didn't provide enough incentive to try to distinguish between humans and skin jobs, but now "AI slop" does? Ok, great!

Check the OpenPGP signature.

Unsigned? /dev/null.

Signed but no trust path? /dev/null

Signed and with a trust path? Can still be trash, but its claims to be of human origin, are worth taking seriously. If you find a problem (e.g. someone trusted the wrong person) then deal with that then.

Comment Re:The takeaway (Score 1) 56

Notable point: If you are a US citizen they might seize the device but you WILL be admitted into the country - a citizen cannot be denied entry.

If you don't cooperate with the search.. In theory you will be allowed entry as a citizen - probably yes - you just may be inside the US but in jail: without the property, and potentially you could possibly be on your way after a few days in detention -- Or possibly longer due to additional things officials are going to find to charge you with in retaliation for said noncooperation.

Comment Re:The takeaway (Score 1) 56

What if you don not have the codes for let say a company device?

I'm sure you could explain that to customs most likely, And they would probably let you go, but the device stays behind with customs until they can get into it. They will just hold the property as potential contraband until someone from the company calls and provides them access to search the contents of it.

A company with trade secrets does not allow them to be stored at rest on a laptop being flown overseas -- you probably have to acesss your work data through an online user interface.

Comment Re:The takeaway (Score 1) 56

So a reboot before going to places like customs etc can defeat these tools

Customs would be an example of an agency that does not need something like Celebrite for routine searches.. only in extreme cases would they.

If you power off your phone or reboot it or have it locked going through customs: Customs holds you at the gate and requires you to provide the passcode to unlock the phone or laptop. If you fail to provide the passcode: they seize the device, and you at the border. If they demand to search it: You aren't getting across the border through customs, and you aren't getting yourself or your property released, until you provide them with the keys.

Comment Does anyone know how? (Score 3, Insightful) 206

Even if the people who know how didn't move on over the last few decades, surely they would have been fired some time in the last few months as part of the overall effort to weaken the US economy, health, and defenses.

Is there anyone left who knows how to do the job? Can they be hired back, after the Epstein shutdown is over?

Comment Be grateful for the wake up call (Score 2) 140

This sure sounds like something that can be completely solved by getting a new account. But then there's this hilarious excuse for insisting that the problem remain:

Although users can "abandon the accounts and start again with new Apple IDs," the report notes that doing so means losing all purchased apps, along with potentially years' worth of photos and videos.

If there's any risk of losing photos and videos, then they should already be working on fixing their backup system immediately, before something bad happens. This isn't so much a problem as a wake up call that they haven't yet done one of the most basic first-things in using computers: get data backups going.

Loss of access to an external data storage account is just one of the risks they aren't protecting themselves against, with regard to that data. (And geez, since they're already cloud-storage enthusiasts, what was their plan for what they were going to do if they ever found a better cloud provider?)

As for proprietary apps: same problem, they already faced the risk even without this parental splitup. Either stop doing that, or accept that you occasionally have to repurchase your proprietary software. Given how much crap is monthly subscriptions now, I suspect there's very little loss here anyway, since having to continuously repay is already the status quo for an increasing number of .. [sighing and trying to remember to be nice] .. inexperienced computer users.

But if it's not (yay! it shouldn't be), then either suck it up that you have to re-do a "one-time" purchase, or [gasp] contact the manufacturer of that software and tell them the problem.

Oh, it's some company who is unresponsive or says "fuck you, pay me?" Well, then you're the one who decided to do business with an unresponsive company. You were already fucked and just hadn't run into the already-looming disaster anyway. Glad you're learning about how stupid that was while you're a teenager instead of later, when the stakes are going to be even higher.

All objections to "get a new account" are bullshit. And worse, they just point out problems that these people can/get-to/should face now, before anything bad happens.

Comment Re:Perfect is the enemy of good enough (Score 2) 239

a high accident rate will cause them to get less rich

I'm reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

[ED-209 kills someone]

Dick Jones: "I'm sure it's only a glitch. A temporary setback."

The Old Man: "You call this a glitch?! We're scheduled to begin construction in six months. Your "temporary setback" could cost us fifty million dollars in interest payments alone!"

Comment Re:If delivery is destroying your business (Score 3, Interesting) 176

The companies like door dash etc do not care if you do not deliver. They list you anyway, pay full price for the food, slap a 35% fee on top and sell your food.

Then something doesn't add up. My understanding is that the fees that the delivery company charges the restaurant are what is hurting the restaurants. But if your restaurant doesn't have a contract with the delivery company (i.e. "they list you anyway") then that fee is $0, isn't it?

So what's the harm? It sounds like any fees the restaurants are paying, are something they've opted into.

I can see how bad experiences (caused by the delivery service which otherwise wouldn't have happened) could reduce order frequency, but that doesn't seem to be what people are talking about here.

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