Paypal locked my account after years of use for absolutely no reason. I never had a invalid charge, dispute, or any other kind of problem with it, just one day they decided to shut it down. They flatly refused to explain what was going on. With all the decent alternatives out there now there is no longer a reason to use their crappy service.

Love that they believe they’re the only game in town and can demand your bank statement.

It’s beyond belief, but insurance companies do the same thing to amputees.

We have all become unwilling, unpaid employees of every company in their pursuit of higher profits. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Corporations have discovered that there is no real downside (for them) when they don’t function. Customer satisfaction no longer has much of an impact on their profits because the few companies left in each sector are doing the exact same thing.

IMO this is yet another side effect of unchecked corporate power. It’s the same reason prices have risen so rapidly and corporate profits have reached 70 year highs. We are dealing with near monopolies and the billionaire class who created them. Until our government addresses the problem it’s not going to get any better.

In other words it’s not going to get better in our lifetimes.

Depends on the phone. Oneplus has a 65 watt charger.

These are the same people who want to know why Obama wasn’t in the Oval Office on 9/11.

I know that Boeing’s on everyone’s shit list these days, but the company doesn’t even make aviation tires. Unless a failure in one of Boeing’s systems caused tire damage this is probably due to poor maintenance by the airline, or a defective tire manufactured by Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone or Dunlop.

Lol - that’s possible. I spend time in Mexico and Canada so I keep the exchange rates on my dashboard. Easier than looking them up every time.

I could set my the thermostat higher on cloudy days in the winter or more usefully, increase the setting when our cell phones are in the house and decrease it when we’re away. One guy put a vibration sensor on his nightstand and tapping on the stand turns on his bedroom light. There are way too many possibilities, useful and not.

My Home Assistant software and smart devices all are controlled locally and cloud access isn’t used but there are other, much more important reasons to avoid running it.

You should avoid it because Home Assistant is an addictive monster. It starts as a hobby and then the next thing you know you’re putting temperature sensors in your refrigerator and setting different brightness levels for your bathroom lights depending on the time of day.

Seriously though, the software gives an amazingly useful single dashboard for things you might use everyday including lighting, HVAC, alarm systems, weather, currency exchange rates, and entertainment systems. I use it every day.

The 1% pay their taxes.

Really?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/irs-has-already-collected-more-than-500-million-in-back-taxes-from-delinquent-millionaires/ar-AA1mRSsD

If you’re thinking about buying, be aware they removed the audio jack.

True. We must all make sacrifices so Amazon’s profits can grow. Maybe their marketing department should call the increase a “Mandatory Donation for the Good of the World” to help us keep things in perspective.

This is a 26% price hike. Amazon’s marketing BS shouldn’t fool anyone.

Even Hersh’s article lacks any kind of supporting evidence, only siting a single unidentified source. His story is plausible, but plausible does not mean true.

A friend’s neighbor just fell for this. She received a call from the “nicest” Microsoft tech and decided she’d let them into her PC. Within 10 minutes after hanging up she received a call from her bank asking if an $800 debit was valid. It took her weeks to clean up the mess.

nottheonion

Whatever happened, the robot rebellion has begun.

Not the case. What’s happening here is Windows is removing the ext4 partition completely, expanding the ntfs partition and writing to all of it.

Windows update did that to my <1 year old laptop. I figured it had just wiped out grub, but when it was booted from a live-usb there was no ext4 partition there at all. This has been reported many times.

Microsoft should be sued for this shit. Legal protection from destroying people’s data that is not part of Windows or in a Windows partition, whether deliberately or by negligence, is not something that can be legitimately covered by a license agreement.

True if Soylent Green was immortal and sought money and power at any cost.

The GOP and right wing justices’ blithering about the Founding Fathers, Originalism, and “historical tradition” is absolute, self-serving BS and regularly the opposite of historical reality. If you have a few minutes this history of U.S. corporations is fascinating. An excerpt:

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:

• Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.

• Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

• Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.

• Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.

• Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.

• Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.

For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight control of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.

Don’t forget, Corporations are Peopleᵀᴹ

State law always trumps seller policies. The seller can force you to check a box agreeing to their terms of sale but those terms are not enforceable if state law gives you other rights. Unenforceable clauses have been in literally every contract or terms of sale I’ve ever read.

Rightful rejection laws make sense too, especially when you start looking at large purchases. Let’s say you ordered a black car from a dealer 500 miles away and the dealer delivered a pink one. The terms of sale say that you have to return the car to the dealer and pay a restocking fee for a refund. Those terms mean that the dealer has no obligation to deliver what you ordered or paid for and will make a profit (from you) even if they deliver something you didn’t order. That’s where Rightful Rejection laws become indispensable. All you have to do by law is make the product available for retrieval by the seller.

Funny you should mention Amazon - I’m literally dealing with this issue this week. They sent me a DOA item that has to be sent back. Amazon suddenly wants to charge me a fee to return a defective item that they have the legal obligation to retrieve. While I don’t mind dropping things off at a UPS store because I’m regularly a block away, they want me to make a special trip to a Staples or Whole Foods which is not convenient or reasonable. I was just going to order a replacement from them, but because of their new return fee I won’t be buying the replacement from Amazon, or much else going forward. My Amazon purchases will easily decrease by 90%.

Here’s the rub - a retailer does not have to continue to do business with you. If you force Amazon to retrieve an item they can close your account and refuse to sell to you again.