Tunicate posted:

that's boilerplate for anything with encryption due to arms treaties

CleverHans posted:

Quoting myself here as, upon re-reading, this is probably more what you are looking for.

All the modern slot machines are engineered to have the absolutely most insidious combinations of lights/sounds/mechanics/payout ratios to basically act like crack cocaine on the brains of the customers.

Space Gopher posted:

"Big ER Docs will just kill you for your organs if you're a donor" is an idiotic myth. Nobody in an emergency even has time to even figure out if you're an organ donor, and if that ever happened to anyone it would be the mother of all malpractice suits, with plenty of people involved enough to blow the whistle.

MightyJoe36 posted:

Got a call from Kingston, Jamaica yesterday telling me that I won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, mon.

Mister Kingdom posted:

Got my first "You qualify for zero interest on your credit card" today.

I told the guy I didn't have any credit cards. He told me, "My information indicates you have several. You are lying to me. Goodbye."

PhazonLink posted:

I forgot which video essay it was, but some MLMs also do their own version of loot boxes or other cultish things like telling your spose/SO to quit their job and help you.


(the lootbox one was some zuckbook clothing MLM that gave you like one nice legging in a box full of ugly rear end leggings or something)

ToxicSlurpee posted:

So they target people whose lives kind of suck, who don't have a lot of friends (or any, really), or who are disappointed with how their lives are turning out. This is why MLM meetings resemble cults. They use the same recruiting tactics and know precisely what they're doing. They're finding people without a tribe and they're offering them one. That's a siren song that's difficult to deny.

Guest2553 posted:

A goon scanned the book onto imgur and linked it somewhere in the Bad With Money 2018 thread. I'll see if I can find it.

Last Visible Dog posted:

I found this from the last time that book got brought up in this thread.

For convenience: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3555678&pagenumber=642&perpage=40#post464595967

Alkydere posted:

I always love the people who hate the development of any apartments, because why would we ever support the people who make our lives and industry run with affordable housing? Oh did I say love? I meant to say loathe.

Seriously though it always weirds me out that there are people out there who think I'm sub-human because I rent instead of going bankrupt trying to afford a home.

BiggerBoat posted:

Uh...doesn't the owner of the apartment complex pay property taxes? Or was that your point?

EorayMel posted:

BiggerBoat posted:

I know people don't like Cracked around here and these aren't technically scams even though I put them in that category. Basically just common and dishonest sales techniques that commission are taught to implement

https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-1599-heres-how-stores-trick-you-into-spending-money/

Also, along similar lines are fine print, terms of agreement check boxes and sped up radio ad disclaimers that no one can read, understand or hear but are legally binding in the event you get ripped off. I see and hear these bank, car loan and healthcare ads and there's illegible type and sped up audio every time.

E: fixed my link. Thanks Proteus Jones

Mister Kingdom posted:

This is a new one: I got an email that told me they had my passwords for all the porn websites I am a member of. They hacked my webcam and will send copies of my masturbation videos to eight random people on my contacts list unless I send them $3,000 in Bitcoin.

I have 24 hours.

What WILL I do!?!?!

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Retail's been dying for a while. I remember walking around a big local mall last summer and being shocked at how few people there were. I guess it could have also been a dead season for it, but still, made me wonder how they actually stay above water.

wizzardstaff posted:

I just completed annual security training for my work. Hell is a place where they make you play "spot the phish" flash games forever.

Sydin posted:

I asked the head manager at a place I used to frequent often before COVID what Doordash takes from them, and he told me that it's apparently something you bargain with them. Doordash originally came at them demanding a 25% cut but they were able to negotiate it down to 18%. Note that this is a well liked and frequented business that has three locations in town and is in the process of opening a fourth up north. So my guess is that if you're a small mom and pop then gently caress you either you eat 25% or they walk, if you're reasonably successful you can hover around ~20%, and I'd imagine national chains are even lower then that.

Eric the Mauve posted:

Why in the hell did you actually buy a car from them after you caught them trying to scam you twice??

Pekinduck posted:

This has been my experience as well. Tiny used dealer, cash only, just wants to move cars. I also wonder if wealthy areas have a surplus of perfectly good used cars.

It also sounds like you weren't a time-waster which I've heard goes a long way.

axolotl farmer posted:

I think there was a thread here a loong time ago by someone who was involved in that cult/scam org that drives teenagers around in vans and make them go door-to-door selling books.

Sounds familiar to anyone?

quote:

Last month my girlfriend came home after a day at University excited; some people from "Southwestern Company" wanted to interview her for a position selling books, in America. The selection process was gruelling, she said, and they only take the most driven, most capable students from each University in the UK. It would be tough but she looked forward to the challenge, she is that kind of person.

A few days later, she came home even more excited; she had been picked! Hooray I thought! Good for her! My girlfriend gets to do something she is really pumped about and I can watch bad Science Fiction on her HDTV!

As far as I was concerned at the time, this was fantastic! Sure, it would mean 12 weeks of the summer without seeing my girlfriend, but the results might be astronomical!

People come back from the summer loaded, apparently. Her current student manager (people who did well the previous year are sometimes invited to take on this role the next) made around $200,000 during the summer. But there are downsides. Eleven to sixteen hour working days, a tough job selling books door-to-door. All-in-all, she was sure, it would be worth it. After all, she had been chosen out of all of Edinburgh Uni!

So the weeks role by, the student manager arranges things, and even visits my girlfriend's family to answer any questions they may have. Where will she be staying, etc. He answers that he will be helping her find accomodation with a family that he knows from his last visit, that she will have a rigorous sales course of knowledge and that there is the safety net of the strong teamwork-based dynamic whilst out there, doing the job.

quote:

It is now 4:17 in the morning, and I am so knotted up over this I feel I can no longer make salient points. I shall bullet point the things that really get me and anything I have not mentioned so far:

*Teamwork is shouted about, but none is involved. She walks around suburbia for up to 16 hours of a day, alone, and then is compared and found wanting to other members of her "team".

*On one of their days at the "selling school", a woman takes all of the girls aside, and tells them that it is perfectly normal for their period to stop whilst they are selling. These people know fully well that the girls work so hard, stress so much and have such a poor diet that this will happen to their bodies.

*She is doing all of this in the 40 degree California sun.

*The word "Cultish" would apply to most of the teaching and indoctrination practices, including everything she was told before she went being a lie, and the main thing drilled into her head every day being "Do not quit!"

*She is allowed to e-mail only during a certain slot on Sundays, which is supposedly their "own time".

*She is not allowed a phone or any other comms whilst doing her job; we are supposed to have no way of contacting her. They want her as divorced from real life as possible.

*She is so buzzed and bent after only 2 weeks that she wholly forgot our anniversary.

*Her manager outright lied about what to expect out there. The actual projected earnings for a 1st-year are about $10,000 which you could earn working 16 hour days over here too.

*The selling permits are frequently 9-5, which means that they are actively encouraged to sell illegally if their days contain so many hours.

*Her Sundays are theoretically her own days off, but actually involve spending time with the team, doing team excercises, and spending as little time alone thinking or contacting people as possible.

*My girlfriend wholly accepting in that earlier conversation that she had to find a place to sleep but that her manager also told the truth. This showed such cognitive dissonance and double-think it seriously worried me.
But most importantly:

*Perfect is a private contractor, all the students are. Southwestern Company does not pay for anything and has nothing to lose. She paid for her Visa, for her flights there and back, for any food or lodgings whilst she is over there, everything. Because of this the company feel NO loyalty towards her, either financially or ethically. There are reports of people who were hospitalized being called up and badgered to get back on the streets. Most costs of the book selling, including the delivery, gets taken out of their commisSion too. It is truly pyramidesque.

After talking to her parents, they wrote a detailed e-mail to her manager complaining about a few things; they still "strongly discourage" Perfect having a phone, but we now have the number of her manager, so we can atleast contact her in an emergency.

She will call today, because it is now Sunday as I have been sitting here stressing about it so much. I think that I should talk to her parents, and all of us as a united front ask her to come home.

It will be difficult, they operate on a similar basis to Scientology: The worst thing you can do is quit. Plus! Now it is built into her in much the same way that believing in Xenu is built into the Church: She has vested so much time and so much of herself into this thing that she will lie to herself about it being okay, that she's having an alright time, that this is all normal, that she needs to stay to recoup the money she's spent, that coming home would be failure and that she must be strong to show us she can and so that we don't worry about her.

Frankly I don't even know if I'm doing the right thing. She's a very driven, potent individual. As an illustration, she had her Oxford interview at 15; maybe she would be one of the few that have a positive, changing experience. But from what people have said, she could come back an emotionless robot or a once Perfect girl with a now crushed spirit.

She *was* smart enough to tell them she had to go to Germany the same summer, and so she is expected to be there 6 weeks, instead of the customary 12. That is some small relief.

Guest2553 posted:

Sweet jesus. How did that one end?

I canvassed for newspapers for like a week before quitting because it was sketchy as gently caress. The 'team lead' was a poor hygiene neckbeard motherfucker who wore sweats everywhere and bought cigarettes for kids (for a fee). He'd pick us up at home or school, drive us to a strange part of town (in a day before cell phones), and keep us out until he was happy with our numbers (typically after dark and later than we should have been working). The crew ranged in age from 12 - 16 and we were encouraged to do illegal things (take money from children, lie about our cost or what would be delivered, invent subscriptions to pad numbers) because fixing it was someone else's problem. One of the kids routinely abandoned the five year old sister he was supposed to be watching, which wasn't a secret since he was one of the guys who'd get picked up from home and we could see the other kid crying through the window. Everything was done cash under the table because of course it was.

A couple other kids didn't last as I did, some just showed up for 1 or 2 shifts. Those who stayed probably came from really broken homes for that to be better. If there's a silver lining in the death of print media, it's that some of the people involved in building that system will die broke and unemployed, possibly disabled, and likely addicted to opioids.

BiggerBoat posted:

ANd I started going down Kitboga's Youtube rabbit hole and god drat what always gets me is how pissed off and slighted the loving thieves manage to feel. "gently caress you you motherfucker for not letting me steal from you and for wasting my time!" They're all so god damned indignant about getting busted and all act like their mark is the real rear end in a top hat.

BiggerBoat posted:

This out of control trend of connecting EVERYTHING online is going to create far more problems than it solves - and that's assuming 90% of that solves any "problems" in the first place. Do I really need my fridge, thermostat or oven online? Being able to unlock my car with my phone seems like a bad idea. Abagnale says one of the main things we need to do is eliminate the ubiquity of passwords.

BiggerBoat posted:

I have a fairly old Imac that I mainly use for freelance graphic design. I have older versions of Adobe CS that has always run fine. I don't routinely update it or much gently caress with it since I don't play games, watch movies or do much else with it besides make a little money on the side but it's gotten to the stage that Chrome is outdated and I need it for certain job websites and teleconference things lately so I needed to update my OS.

But Apple makes this almost impossible. I can't look at it any other way other than they are intentionally breaking my machine and wants me to buy a new CPU. My Adobe software, which has always been fine, is running noticeably slower too in spite of me not changing anything, even if I run it offline. I've heard that Adobe is actively trying to break older software by detecting older users who paid for their poo poo and are happy enough with older versions. Like me.

Inspector 34 posted:

It's honestly not that big a hassle on Android either. Maybe it's because I've specifically only owned Google devices since the G1 but especially the last few phones I've had (various generations of Nexus/Pixel) you pretty much just sign into your
Google account and it asks if you want to download all your apps/contacts. Sure you then have to sign into those apps as you open them and probably setup security stuff, but it's over the last 3 or 4 phones I've owned it's never really taken more than a few minutes from boot up to functioning device. Maybe not as simple as what you described for Apple, but certainly not a difficult process.

BiggerBoat posted:

Even putting my contact info and portfolio up on LinkedIn has led to a barrage of highly suspect incoming cheesy bullshit. I'm an illustrator, graphic designer and sign maker with a background in printing. There is NOTHING in my skill set or job history that would lead someone to think I'd be good at selling life insurance or anything else let alone managing a sales force but apparently I'm "really sharp" and "just the self starter their team is looking for".