ROFISH

I run a company where about 70% of my audience (in 2018 no less, so likely a lot higher now) use adblockers. To me, any amount of search ad spend or similar is pissing money down the drain.

For reference, our marketing strategy is opt-in email newsletters, organic social media, the occasional sponsorship of events, and natural word-of-mouth (no incentive). And we've been in business for 12+ years.

As someone who ships a decent amount of freight via UPS Freight (six time a year, at least), the integration is surface level at best. Yes you can go to the unified billing, but freight was it's own separate section. Yes you can get consolidated package/freight quotes but each had it's own website workflow. Yes you can generate a BOL on the ups.com website but it was way better to use the upsfreight.com website. The Freight API used the same ups.com API server and login, but it was it's own path with it's own xml schema.

It was pretty clear that the integration was, at best, surface level. Especially when the package reps and the freight reps had no clue what the other was doing, letting me know that it was just a siloed org.

Without too much detail due to contracts/NDA/etc, slipping a release date is even worse of a bother for others down-chain also. There are planned times for manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, all that fun stuff for the physical versions of titles. All that would basically need to be re-dated from scratch. You can't slip one week, you have to slip at least a month. More for platforms that don't use standard disc formats which are not made locally. (Which hilariously, CP2077 already did slip a month before release.)

Even for digital games, there's still approval processes where the first parties would have to test the game out. This process involves scheduling people for it; you can't just go to the front of the line as there are other games that have been scheduled for certain slots. (Which hilariously, it was rumored that CP2077 was given the 'don't test, push live ASAP' treatment.)

At lastly, all payments from the platforms and retailers are based on the actual release date. Unless there's a specific contract, games are not paid until months after release. Physical preorders don't pay the developers, they just help with preventing over/under stocking. (And digital preorders are... functionally worthless beyond the psychological value.) The release date starts the payment timer. When hurting for cash, releasing can start that timer.

The processes above can really benefit abusers who decide that "making street-date" is the most important thing above all other concerns.

Huh. I did the exact same job for a competing park, owned by a fair, and we got paid from when we showed up to the main office to when we ended at the main office.

The only unpaid time was the walk to/from the very back of the parking lot to the main office.

There are plenty of services such as Apple Pay (or equivalent tokenized services on other phones), 3D Secure, and/or PayPal that don't expose your PAN.

Honestly direct sales does seem to be where this might be headed.

Between safe, secure payment technologies such as (heh) Apple Pay and and safe, secure login systems such as (heh) Login with Apple, then really its super easy to not worry too much about the signup friction.

Product had been listed on eBay: Yes

Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses.

Had facilitated payment: Maybe, but eBay typically just links one Paypal account to another Paypal account. eBay does not actually touch the funds. (Paypal has been it's own separate company for awhile now.)

Shipped it out in eBay packaging: Unless they're using a service, typically shipping is up to the eBay seller.

So I doubt this ruling affects eBay.

Google isn't the only one.

Somebody must have used my domain to sign up for a Microsoft Teams something for some reason and NOBODY in my company can find out who or how. Microsoft is absolutely unhelpful in this regard, trying to activate our domain for Office Teams or whatever. Microsoft says it's for "security" reasons; but as CIO of a 50+ person org I should have some override on that in the event of erroneous signups.

I don't even need to access old content because none of us has used the service at all. Just delete the old domain. For all I know it was a troll signup.

I've since just forced my team to use Google Docs/Sheets because Microsoft is being so unhelpful that they won't even let us give them money, lol.

Bonus: They straight up declined my business because it was too marketing-y for them.

What was too marketing for them? A 100% opt-in list that reminded customers when a product was in stock. Fully made in-house, with captcha, privacy policies, opt-out, and with the user typing their email and name, the complete works for a one-time reminder email.

Nope far too marketing related for them.

Same. I finally found the time to get it fixed, and I used the iMessage chat. After going through a reset and answering some basic questions (version numbers, etc.), they just sent me a replacement.

I had the AppleCare and paid via Amex, the latter which gives me a longer warranty.

Those iTunes gift cards in stores are not cheap.

Network storage. MacBooks don't have a lot of space and artists like to make HUGE psd files.

Bonus points for small stuff like RADIUS for wifi and stuff. Groups charging $5/user for junk like that is absolutely awful with a high number of staff.

With a staff of 100, a single box with a bunch of hard drives is two months worth of cloud and SaaS.

TCO needs to come down by like at least 100x before I consider going server-less.

The proposed API, MRB_API, is used in mruby. With enough popular support for that C API, it could force mainline ruby to modernize it's C API to that one.

Assuming MRB_API thread-safe-able. mruby is not thread safe at all, being a single-threaded script runner.

Count me as one of the users who are getting annoyed at 1Password’s attempts at recurrent monthly spending. In addition, while their cloud service is probably fine, the best option is to locally sync and not involve the cloud at all.

I would much rather just keep using the “local app” license, which sadly isn’t even available for sale anymore. In fact, I can’t even use my Windows license I bought back in the day.

One of these days I’ll probably just stop using 1Password and move on to something else. Are there any good free/one-time purchase locally syncable password apps that works on Mac/iOS?

I had the same issue a few months ago; I wanted to get some advanced networking equipment and it was all "call for pricing". It was clear that the reason why was to determine if I was actually knowledgeable enough to handle advanced equipment as it's considerably more complicated than a home router.

The sales process did take much longer than buying something off of Amazon, which was very annoying. But I did get it relatively quickly and it did work for my purposes, so there's that.

Event tickets are explicitly on PayPal’s terms of service as needing a hold.

Needs to denote difference between price per month and price per user per month.

Especially on items like support and HR. Apps that charge per user in “flat hierarchy” companies like mine where any employee can do anything is death to your service because I’m not paying for all my employees when we equally share the workloads depending on schedule.

One thing that’s interesting is that is also how the SuperFX chip for the SNES worked, IIRC. It basically was it’s own processor and rendering loop. The SNES’s onboard CPU was provided only a basic program to interface with the frame buffer, sound, and input.

The major difference is that in addition to the actual rendering CPU, it also had hardware that specifically converted the frame buffer into the SNES tile format to easily dump without issues.

They shuck thousands of videos bought at hundreds box stores. It’s just faster and easier to put the code slip in the machine the same time as the disc rather than type all the codes by hand and maybe get it wrong.

Bonus points for that slip having redemption instructions.

Both serve different combinations of product from a set of few ingredients.

Heh, I went to that school and I had the same problem: literally everyone would ignore me because I went to a Midwest state school.

I went and did my own thing so my story is fine. But I wonder about how much good talent is ignored just on the basis of where one went to college.

My identity test questions were all wrong for me too. But I selected "None of the Above" for all of them and then it approved it.

> battery life is good and they connect super easily and stay connected? Or is there some other feature that pushes people over the top?

Yep, that's pretty much it. That and it's so easy to use: Insert into ear, music starts playing on headphones. Remove them, perhaps to talk to someone, and it stops playing. Put back into ear and it starts playing again. No buttons, no bluetooth settings, no setup screen; it just plain works.

Only if you buy specific Thunderbolt-supporting 5k displays. You can't get one off the shelf and have it "just work(tm)".

Only if you buy specific Thunderbolt supporting 5k displays. If you already own one that only does DP1.4 or some other cable, it won't work. :/

16GB RAM max, DP1.2 (so no 5k display support), worthless Touch Bar when I use my current MBP dual monitor with the lid closed. Pass.

Sadly I really wanted something better since I'm on an old 2012 MBP that badly needs an upgrade but I'm not dropping $1500+ for something that doesn't support 32GB and 5k displays.

No Displayport 1.3/1.4 means no 5k displays. :( Why spend thousands on a new device when you can't even use modern displays from a standard out since 2014?

I wish more places accepted NFC tokenized solutions like Apple Pay or similar. Replay attacks can't occur for those that got the raw data somehow.

I really wish there was some type of option to go "I really don't want all that fancy crap; give me the version that works via standard APIs"

So this means we're splitting the iPhone SKUs into AT&T and Verizon again? It's much nicer knowing one phone will work on all carriers. :/