Tell me about common cons/scams - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

ShadeofBlue posted:

That image describes a theoretical way to travel quickly across the universe. It’s a modification of the idea that you can warp space such that the distance between you and the destination is shortened, rather than you moving faster than light. It’s a theory that’s been talked about by respectable physicists, and in principle does not violate any of the physics that we currently understand. It’s been a while since I’ve heard or read anything about it. IIRC, the problem is that it requires generating a massive amount of negative mass, which we don’t know how to do (or even if it’s possible, although it doesn’t specifically break any theory), and also involves intense forces on the spacecraft, such that no material we know of could handle it. This is still just cool sci-fi, nothing concrete will come out of it in our lifetimes, or even close. I also don’t know what “beneath time” is supposed to mean.

To be clear, they’re definitely nuts, but the graphic on that slide isn’t gibberish. I think the equations are just a bunch of barely related general relativity things.

... Even if we could get materials which could stand up to it, wouldn't it cause intense forces on the passengers?

# ¿ Oct 24, 2017 10:34

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# ¿ Mar 23, 2023 21:10

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

What evidence do you have that "Bobby" is the actual boss? Because it sounds like you don't have any.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2018 20:42

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Konstantin posted:

It's takes effort to infect PCs, and some quick math and googling shows an income of $0.0002 per 24 hours for mining using a PC with a high end gaming card and zero power costs. Granted, the numbers may be different with altcoins, but I doubt it would be worth the effort compared to stealing power and mining the coins yourself, or doing one of a bunch of other scams with your compromised PCs.

Not when you open a webpage and it uses a javascript exploit to make you start mining it. Doesn't even need to install something. Sure, the setup takes some effort, but then you let it run. One computer doesn't get much, but that's why the scammer sneaks their compromised ad into something with major traffic and now they've got 30,000 people doing it for them.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2018 05:32

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Start fining carriers for letting spoofed calls through and they'll find a technical solution pretty quickly.

Hello Senator Alhazred, I'm a lobbyist from The Telephone Companies, thanks for meeting me here at this fancy restaurant for lunch. Now, I'd like to propose an alternative to your proposed legistlation: I give you a pile of money and you forget all about this idea.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2018 12:49

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Vavrek posted:

I've read the most basic description, and have a kneejerk response to describe it to people when they bring up that case as an example of a frivolous lawsuit, but I've never looked up photos. And I am not going to. Yeesh.

The mcdonalds was keeping their coffee illegally hot and had previous complaints about that, too

# ¿ May 15, 2019 00:34

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

EL BROMANCE posted:

Capitalism is designed to protect big business over us peasants. I've only been here and suffered 2 things that should've led to lawsuits, both of which are going to end up being "they're bigger than us so we can't win" or "the system is geared against us so we can't win".

You might be lucky and get "sign this contract saying you're no longer allowed to talk about it and we'll give you some money"!

# ¿ Jul 26, 2019 22:58

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

bamhand posted:

Because people want to do it and so the banks will charge you for the "convenience". The pricing is driven by demand, not cost.

Pretty sure this is penny wise and dollar stupid again, there's a lot of avenues for fraud that are open for checks that aren't for direct transfers. Some of which even hurt the bank rather than the consumers!

# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 15:04

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Blue Footed Booby posted:

Yeah, this. Companies won't ever improve payment systems without having their arms twisted. And our government doesn't actually serve us.

I use Google pay everywhere I possibly can and avoids skimmer fuckery.

Remember when the telecom industry got a bunch of grants to improve infrastructure, and then just... didn't?

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 17:53

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

don't forget the grating "SOMETHING hosed UP" error beep almost all of them use to indicate "i have successfully read the card, you can remove it now, everything is working correctly"

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 18:31

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Absurd Alhazred posted:

You know I've peeped at it recently and it's not changed a bit.

... it's still loving going???

# ¿ Aug 21, 2019 10:50

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

MrNemo posted:

It's also quite likely company policy. As has been mentioned, people realising that the listed price isn't a legal requirement for the item to be sold at that price could start people trying to haggle. Likewise getting people angry at being 'tricked' frequently is probably not worth it for bad publicity and scenes being caused.

There isn't and I don't think ever has been a legal requirement for it.

I think in California if you have, like, an actual ad for the product or shelf tag or the like, rather than "i found this in the $1 bin", you have to sell it at that price

# ¿ Oct 18, 2019 22:10

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Parallelwoody posted:

Right, PG&E weren't doing the required maintenance which led to this issue and then cried "waaa it would bankrupt us" when told tough poo poo you need to take care of it. So their response is well ok turn it off.

and then they didn't even turn off enough of it. a wildfire started, near one of their transformers, during a shutoff, and they confirmed that the transformer was live at the time

# ¿ Nov 1, 2019 17:43

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

I bought a mouse on Newegg a few months ago.

It arrived with a gift receipt from amazon in the packaging. The seller just turned around and ordered one off amazon and had it shipped to me.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2021 03:03

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

Bargearse posted:

I thought YouTube Kids was curated by hand to prevent that kind of fuckery.

Absolutely not. Kris Straub did some horror stuff that had the word "kids" in the title so Youtube decided it belongs in Youtube Kids. EDIT: And he cant' tell them "no this isn't for kids", either, the system is not set up to handle the idea of false positives here.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2022 16:37

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# ¿ Mar 23, 2023 21:10

Zereth: Jul 8, 2003

four dollars to get gluten-free toast instead of gluten toast?

Yes I know there'sa lot of other things to be baffled about here but. FOUR DOLLARS?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 02:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams