9,936 karma · joined January 2, 2010
They've cracked down so hard that the only way to do SIM swaps is to talk to a human who can be (and still routinely is) socially engineered. Self-service changes have been blocked for over a year "to enhance security".
What if we change the last bit after the "because" to "these sometimes are used at unsafe speeds and, intentionally or not, kill people who are not in cars?"
Because, at least for me, the answer is an unambiguous yes.
I agree that privacy and security should be available to everyone. But we also shouldn't count on being able to find people who are doing vile things--to children or adults--because the person messed up their opsec. I think Apple is correct here but as an industry we have to be putting our brains to thinking about this. "To outlaw large sections of mathematics" is hyperbole because we use mathematics to do a lot of things, some useful and some not.
They are responsible for their actions, same as the people implementing these ill-informed changes are responsible for theirs.
What you miss, other than people who simply don't know, is that there is a whole universe of people for whom these solutions do not work and who are not accounted for. Accessibility is a gigantic problem in app-only spaces. Plus people who temporarily do not have a device due to loss or lack of money or simply a dead battery.
There was another article posted recently that humans are, by and large, "temporarily abled." We are born not being able to care for ourselves, we go through various stages of being or not being able to do so, and most of us die being unable to care for ourselves. Our relationship with technology is the same way.
For everywhere, but especially for sole-source things like government, transport, large public venues, and so on, accessibility must be paramount and that absolutely includes both people who cannot hear or see through people who do not have the latest technology either by choice or necessity.
This brings up one of those cultural things: ever noticed how in movies and TV shows from the 80s and 90s, if the caller hung up, the person called immediately got a dial tone?
It's a trope that prop wranglers, set designers, and writers picked up because the telephone company around Los Angeles (Pacific Bell) had switches that would reset the line state for the destionation back to "ready for call", which meant dial tone, when the origin side disconnected. If the destination side disconnected, the origin would only be disconnected after approximately 20 seconds.
Almost all other exchanges would put the destination--after the origin disconnects--into an off-hook-but-not-ready and then, after 10 or so seconds, play the "if you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again" recording, then Special Information Tones, then a rapid busy.
Yet because the service in and around LA is what a lot of people in the TV and movie business experienced, it is what got baked into those productions.
You are being very reductive and writing out entire categories of reasons why housing is unsustainably expensive. In your next two sentences:
> People are forced by market forces to move into ever denser cities.
Lots of us already live in cities but our neighbors and elected leaders have let this get massively out of hand. I have lived in Seattle my entire life, as has my wife, and we raised kids here. One of them has had to move away because they can't afford housing here and the other has moved to Marysville just to be able to afford something.
My wife and I are both getting older and didn't want to climb stairs to be able to get to our front door (Seattle, as you may recall, has a lot of hills). Even though we had nominal equity in our house, the red hot housing market here means that equity didn't go as far because we wanted to stay in the same region to be near family and friends we've had our entire life.
Never mind that a lot of those "trendy" areas are where jobs and cultural activities are. Housing is "cheap" in the US if you follow the "just live in the middle of nowhere" model, which of course lots of people don't want or are unable to do.
And there's the problem. There's no slack in the existing housing system so there's nowhere for people to be temporarily "displaced" even for people who did everything right and had insurance and savings. So people will absolutely take the quick-money offer made by people who have bought themselves that flexibility elsewhere (e.g. a buyer who lives on the mainland and who can live in their existing house while helping to turn Hawaii into a second-house state).
Because we are so wound up in what housing means to our finances and culture, there's no political will to fix this even as climate change worsens. So, like always, people with lesser means--even people with lesser means who did everything correctly--still get screwed.
Weather is one of those intensely personal things. I am very much outside of the norm, especially when it comes to sun.
I've lived in Seattle my whole life and right now it is in the mid-80s and not a cloud in the sky; the whole week is predicted to be like this. The people I know have filtered, as they do every year, into two groups. One group is posting on social media about how they're out to "enjoy the sun" and "such marvelous weather". The other, like me, is sitting inside waiting for the grey to return. (Anecdotally to my friend group, people who move here tend to be in the first group; people who were born around here in the second.)
Which is to say, I would happily take a pay cut to get away from the sun so I suppose I'm glad the "gloomier" places tend to pay more.
Which is, to your point, exactly what has happened with Ubers and Lyfts in Seattle.
In any popular neighborhood on any popular evening, public transport becomes even more difficult to use because Uber and Lyft drivers absolutely do not respect bus lanes or bus stops. They turn, even more than they already are, into fare pickup zones for these private companies. If a bus driver does manage to make it close enough to honk but far enough to not pick up someone safely, the gig worker does not do anything.
I'm starting to see this at the new train station that opened on the north end of Seattle. There is a "kiss and ride" area and it is routinely covered up with people driving vehicles festooned with the logos of the app companies. Some have even figured out that, apparently, they can get even better ratings by dropping their fares off at the bus stops in the bus-only lanes.
Meanwhile, there's nothing any of us can do because there is no public registry or complaint process for the public to gripe about app gig workers, and if you ask for one you are pilloried as wanting to "take away good pay from hard-working immigrants" or some other trope.
ASL is based on LSF, or French Sign Language, because of a long history (more or less involving the person with the last name Gallaudet) but the main point is that a lot of sign languages descend from LSF. Much like how someone who only knows English can go to Germany or France or Italy and make out some of the basic words, the overlap between LSF descendants is pretty good for basic or everyday use. I'm semi-fluent in ASL and I've successfully communicated with people who use Irish Sign Language and German Sign Language (DGS).
The big stand-out is British Sign Language, or BSL. BSL's manual alphabet and root signs are dramatically different from LSF. (Since a lot of ASL words are initialized motions, like taking the first letter of the English or French word and using that handshape sign in a motion, BSL doesn't translate as quickly.)
I live in another HCOL area allegedly famed for its walking and biking facilities, and I hoped the same thing. Unfortunately, the process here seems to have turned into "each individual group vs car drivers", probably by design. For example, where I live has separate pedestrian, bicycle, and transit advisory boards to the city council. Never mind that projects should be built to benefit all three, not just one.
What's wound up happening is, because we "obviously cannot" take space from car drivers, the precious little room given over to modes that don't involve driving are forced to compete with each other. A new train station was built on the north end of town and the former sidewalk area on one side of the train station has been repurposed as a bicycle-only lane. The other side of the street is still a pedestrian sidewalk...but the street itself is a four-lane thoroughfare with very wide lanes and a median turn lane in spots. Of course, narrowing the car space on that road to make the corridor more comfortable for people on feet and on bikes was completely out of the question.
Also, the sidewalk didn't get fully rebuilt so I routinely see people in wheelchairs and pushing prams on the "bicycle-only" side because that's much smoother and even.
They are completely different menus and dining experiences. Though if The Cheesecake Factory ever adds soup dumplings to their menu, I bet they will be pretty good and cheaper.
I think you answer your own question with this bit:
> I'll admit, I loved Cheesecake Factory as a kid, but then as an adult I feel bad to say I was afflicted by a bit of the "anti-Cheesecake Factory snobbery": it was too kitschy, too "chain theme restaurant", too "American excess" with its giant portions and million menu items. I hadn't been in years (there is also not one close to where I live).
A lot of my friends and coworkers have the same view. If it is a chain, it is most likely bad (which is a statement that has a decent chance of being correct) but then extends to "and people who like to eat at chains are bad eaters."
My experience with The Cheesecake Factory is like yours:
> I then went recently as part of a family get together, and it was just plain great. My meal was really, really good: well seasoned, not overly salted/cheesy/creamy but still delicious, the veggies were crisp and fresh.
It's really good food. My wife and I eat there a couple of times a month for "fancy dinner". I feel like so many independently owned restaurants go overboard in either their "conceit", trying to find a way to stand out that winds up being over the top and puffery, or they are aiming for an experimental/possibly-outlandish food menu that winds up falling flat. So many of these places feel like "celebrity chef wannabe outlet that sells a ton of alcohol to make up the profits."
Meanwhile, The Cheesecake Factory merely...exists. Doing its thing, pretty well, with enough variety that it doesn't get boring.
In short, it's about making an experience that draws people in who are looking for the comfort/familiarity/ease of a chain, while not just relying on that. The Cheesecake Factory is an above-average restaurant masquerading as a Sysco-food-reheating-service.
The very large menu is a feature--something for everyone--that would be a bug if a lot of other restaurants tried it because the execution is often so dismal once a particular level of size or growth (or both) is reached.
Assignments that predate the RIRs are called "legacy" assignments and are, theoretically, not subject to the RIR system because those who received those addresses only agreed to the terms as they existed at the time. Those terms were usually "you asked, here you go."
In practice, legacy assignments are left alone because no one wants to go to the trouble of arguing with big entities about it. (Most of the /8 assignments people gripe about as being wasteful are assigned to entities with lawyers, guns, or both.) People who have a handful of small legacy assignments get the protection of this because it's especially not worth the effort to say "well, if all you have is a /22 legacy, yours is now part of the RIR system, deal with it". Especially since the only recourse would be to allocate it to someone else and wouldn't that be fun.
But no IP address is actually "unrevokable." All you have to do is piss off a handful of the Tier 1s or a slightly larger number of Tier 2s and you'll quickly find your "bulletproof" addresses quite useless.
As someone who lives in a city that's popular with tourists and has a major summer cruise industry, that's...not entirely accurate. A lot of tourists exit the boat and head straight for a line of taxis and app-based gig workers. This results in a staggering amount of added car traffic. The city has tried adding tourist-focused bus routes and branded shuttles but rail bias is a major thing in tourism.
> I am putting money in to the local economy. I do not use international chain (except Ikea in Sweden - meat balls). Local worker in local shops.
I understand that it feels like this and maybe it is true to a limited extent, but when an area becomes dominated by tourism, tourist-focused industries take over and shops and services that cater to longer-term residents are pushed out.
CityBeautiful has an insightful video on this happening in Venice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SClC9TtQlco
They got rid of it because few people used it (I tried it and it was very clunky) and replaced it with more self checkout lanes.
I hope you're right but this hasn't been the case at the grocery stores around me. QFC (a Kroger-owned brand in the Pacific Northwest) has, at least at two I usually frequent, stopped staffing checklanes after 8 or 9pm. It's self-checkout only. These are at stores that have a lot of signage advertising that "summer hours are here, all locations open until 1am!"
I normally shop around 9 or 10pm and there has historically been at least a "push this button to ask someone to come to the in-person method". Much as I like self-checkout, I don't like doing it with a full cart of groceries. Both recent times, I was told rather bluntly that a full cart was my problem.
With service like that, I'd rather just go to the Amazon spyware grocery store. At least I can put everything in a bag myself and they're open until 11pm.
I got hit by a merchant using "NoFraud" as well. After making an order from the merchant's site, using Apple Pay on the web (which is, allegedly, rather hard to fake), I received an email saying my order was canceled as it "appears that a merchant-specific email address was used" and to "please resubmit the order using your personal contact details".
They were right, because I always use [merchantname]@subdomain.mydomain.com. Whatever it was couldn't have been that important because I didn't bother redoing it if they're going to be that picky.
(I can't find the purchase confirmation and subsequent email in my email, probably because I deleted it out of annoyance, so I'm not naming who I think I remember it being just in case I'm wrong)
https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-accoun...
https://www.creditcards.com/education/recurring-charges-upda...
Me, upon reading something about this: "Oh, this sounds interesting, I would like to have a go at something nea--"
observes it is released by Google
"Well, never mind, I'm not going to invest the energy into it until it reaches its third birthday."
Google could simply stop taking a scythe to products at a rapid clip and shed their reputation if they want to benefit from not being slagged for it everytime they release something new.
"Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36356476
("Substacks" was quickly turned into synonym for "newsletter".)
If you mean want to quit but can't in the sense that there is no other place on the Internet to have a like-minded community forum around fountain pens or a particular bank or third-tier game shows, yes, this is true.
But if you mean in a broader sense, of "I just can't quit you!", then no. Reddit steamrolled all of the older forums--and, before that, Usenet and Echomail groups--I used to participate in. Much like how so many sellers of niche products have moved to Amazon, Reddit is where the quirky forums have moved to.
I don't use Reddit as a general-purpose site. It's simply the place where the community that discusses the topics I want to gas on about live. And, yes, I object to what Reddit is doing so I will leave it if the changes come to pass.
Because if every restaurant doesn't do it, the one that holds out from doing it and hides the extra cost behind a noticed-on-the-menu-later surcharge (or simply keeps asking for tips) will get more business because customers have trained ourselves to sort by lowest-price-first-then-choose-that-one.
> or remove the "restaurant wage" and force them to do minimum wage?
Several states and cities don't have the tip-credit restaurant wage and do require restaurants to follow minimum wage, regardless of tips. Tipping is still incredibly prevalent in those places because it's still a way for employees to make more money without the owner having to figure out how to pay for it through prices.
There's a lot you can do when other expenses aren't eating up your take-home pay. For instance, they mention not having to own a vehicle or drive. Car ownership is a substantial expense in the US[0]. Were it not for Seattle's mostly-passable transit system, my wife and I would be a lot deeper in bills (neither of us drives).
Plus, if everyone around you is earning approximately the same thing, wealth-display-competition just isn't a thing. I know people will scoff at it--"that's what you get for trying to keep up with the Joneses"--but humans are social creatures. We want to be like people who are around us and we want to be around people who are like us. Not having that added stress is freeing. This also makes more room for social and leisure activities that don't involve going out to eat and spending a bunch of money as a result. Thus, society is more geared to providing those activities, instead of a plethora of semi-public spaces that cost money to be in.
0 - Just under $1,000/month, on average: https://www.bts.gov/content/mile-costs-owning-and-operating-...
There are restaurants in Seattle that I've stopped visiting for anything beyond takeaway because my wife and I can't hold a conversation for more than a few minutes without being interrupted. It is very frustrating.
On the other hand, when we have taken friends to the places we like that are far more laid back, at least one person has commented on how the service is "poor" or "inattentive." I think we are culturally used to being asked if we need service and are reticent to go find help or do for ourselves (except when it comes to using a machine at the grocery). So I'm not sure it's solely in search of a better tip, except that everything in a US restaurant is for that.
Foodservice in Europe, broadly, is one of those amazing but unexpected things I tell people who are preparing to travel for the first time to really look at and try to enjoy. It's wonderful, in my opinion.
A friend of mine has encountered this with the TOTP authentication code method. During a move from the US to Europe, they lost their phone. Google let them log in to their regular account no problem, but a second account they use infrequently for a social group got locked out when they tried logging a month after the move. The TOTP secret key string is stored in their password manager and Google doesn't say that the password or TOTP key is incorrect, simply that "for your security, you must complete an additional step" by confirming in an app they no longer have.
Maybe I have been doing IT for too long, but knowing the username, password, and any[0] second factor should always be enough. Surprising users with something else, that they might not have, is unacceptable.
0 - I'm willing to forgive if a second factor was recently enabled; maybe the scammer got in and added a new phone number or backup email account or generated emergency access codes. But, configured more than 14 days ago? Must work.
The major difference was that several of the steps went in parallel instead of sequence because there was the money, people, and will to do it.