Had the same problem with Peacock despite constantly attempting to unsubscribe and mark spam. In the end I just created a filter rule to throw it in spam.
If you're in the US, I've had success by contacting customer service and threatening action under CAN-SPAM. The FTC has never really provided an easy way to file complaints or request enforcement by the public, but it seems to get their attention all the same. Now is a good time to try to exercise your legal rights against corporations before they are all executive order'ed away.
I missed that FAQ item, thanks. I've seen (and used) the "report fraud" page before, and I had seen something to suggest that it was the right place to report illegal spam, but it wasn't clear how "spam" and "fraud" were related.
I just said something like "If you don't remove me from the list within 24 hours I will report this to the FTC as a violation of US federal law." That's the easy part, the hard part is actually getting through to someone.
That might be out of concern of bad faith users abusing such a feature, such as folk who actually opt into a newsletter and then feed the results into such a filter.
I choose to drive the agenda, so bring one to the meeting. I also tend to avoid detailed technical discussions or blockers, that is what stand-up is for.
Areas of topics I focus on:
* Opportunity for Personal Growth
* Feedback on complex dynamics within my team or company
* Market opportunities for product (if relevant)
* Overall Engineering strategy
After my agenda is complete, then the manager can bring up items they feel are noteworthy. I generally leave half of our one-on-one open for them to drive a bit.
FrontPage Express was what I used to build my first website. (personal project with friends) I learned so much about HTML simply because of the limitations in FrontPage Express.
Digital storage is so far removed from this concept. Let us not excuse poor business practices by trying to offload a piece of their business systems on to their customers' devices.
I shouldn't have to provide space on my property to conduct business with another organization.
To extend the already poor and tortured analogy, imagine if a paper train ticket were the size and weight of an 800 page textbook that you had to lug around, and 799 of the pages were filled with some boilerplate copied from a different company's train ticket book, that nobody ever needed to look at.
But if you have a problem with the train ticket textbook, people will come out of the woodwork to tell you that you're not managing or carrying your belongings properly. I should get a bigger bag, or I should carry fewer of the books I actually want to read. Why am I carrying around so many things anyway? It's irresponsible! Sure I've got room for a piece of paper, but that's not enough these days. Don't I know that I'll need space for the train ticket textbook?
> If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside.
I really don't like this analogy. These are entirely different concepts. A backpack has weight, dimension in real space that impacts the real world. A phone full of videos has no extra weight or volume in the real world.
Clearly, they are facing very similar physical restrictions. Not in weight but in bytes. If they want to carry many TBs on a phone in 2025 but then complaining that they can't install a 100mb app, yeah, they are carrying too much in their backpack.
> If they want to carry many TBs on a phone in 2025
What are you talking about? Only the most expensive flagship phones have a terabyte of storage space. There are no phones that have "many TBs". Mine certainly doesn't.
Regardless, none of the following functionality needs an app. It all works great on a website, and doesn't take up any space permanently on my device:
- Buying a ticket
- Checking transit times
- Receiving notifications (not only does email exist, but websites can send notofications)
- Joining a loyalty program
I don't have any problem with people who want to carry these apps around, but as an infrequent user of many businesses, it's death by a thousand cuts. I resent how what were once perfectly workable mobile websites are slowly being degraded in order to force me to download hundreds of megabytes of copy-paste support libraries for what half the time are just wrapped webviews anyway.
I would have to pay more regardless. The closest McDonalds is a 2 hour drive each way and going up steep mountains on the way back. The burgers at the local restaurant are much better and healthier ... well ... as healthy as a burger gets.
Practically every store now significantly subsidizes their products through their apps. Especially all the fast food chains. But even my local rural gas station does. Need that juicy, juicy data and those notifications.
For me it is less about being concerned about my device running out of batteries. It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
It's one less thing to worry about when I just want to get on the plane. My paper ticket isn't going to lock before I get to the gate, or not be bright enough. I won't have to "play" with my ticket to keep it active and proper for the scanner.
> It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
I think I held up an entire flight for nearly an hour because the QR code on my Graphene OS Android phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but didn't scan at all at the gate. They ended up letting me on the flight without properly registering that I boarded in their system. That triggered some crazy security hold that prevented the crew from obtaining permission to pull back from the gate.
When that happens (and note it happens to paper boarding passes as well) I've always seen gate agents simply type in the details off the boarding pass. E.g. name, sequence number, etc and do a manual entry that way. I've had this happen to me at least once, and the agent very quickly just typed in something in their terminal and it was all done with no fuss. Really surprised no one thought of doing this in your situation.
> and god forbid if your drop your smartphone and get it cracked
Then you print a boarding pass at the kiosk? But I've cracked a phone once in ten years, it's not really something I'm worried about.
And paper isn't reliable. For most people, you're much more likely to lose a random sheet of paper than for your phone to suddenly permanently stop working.
Those kiosks are gone from many airports. You're going to have to wait in line to get anything printed. And if you fly Ryanair it will cost you over 50 euro.
I didn't know that. Based on what do they print a boarding pass, or perhaps rather: why don't they check {whatever the answer to the previous question is} at boarding instead of you having to hold onto a pass that apparently is a proxy for something else?
I've had a boarding pass reissued at the gate based on my passport.
Some airlines in Europe check both the boarding pass and the passport/identity card at the boarding gate, to ensure people haven't swapped boarding passes within the airport. I think I see this on flights outside the EU, but I'm not sure.
Hmm but what lookup does a human need to do? Identity documents have had chips for quite some years now so you just need to touch it to the reader and beep through, or for even older ones, they've had a machine-readable section since as long as I'm alive. A standardized government-issued passport is probably faster to read than a potentially dark and reflective phone screen or crinkled piece of paper, and equally fast in the case where the person presents a well-readable document. The gate doesn't even need to do any database lookup: it can locally store the list of the 200-odd names of passengers during boarding
I'm just speculating but if they can simply do a name+DOB-based lookup at a counter, it seems to me like the boarding pass thing might just be for historic reasons where people would feel weird if they are suddenly tracked based on personal details instead of a ticket
> That's not a thing. They're literally just cameras looking for a QR code.
And yet for me one time earlier this year said QR code on my Graphene OS phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but refused to scan at the gate, leading to mayhem as the crew couldn't figure out for nearly an hour why the number of people sitting on the plane wasn't equal to the number of people who they registered as boarding.
I've had airline machines fail to scan the barcode on my poorly printed paper boarding passes (e.g. faded ink or unfortunate located gaps etc in the barcode area). The solution is simple, just type in the details off the BP into the terminal to look up my PNR and type the command to confirm I've boarded. I've seen this done for both paper and mobile boarding pass issues. Not a mobile issue but obviously poor staff training and problem solving which occurs with or without mobiles.
> I don't think most people worry about that at all. Why wouldn't it be available? If you're heading to the airport from home, your battery is charged.
You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive. That's a lot of trust in thousands of moving parts.
Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
While I always use the paper boarding pass, I do also check the boarding pass on the app out of curiosity. Easily like half the time on the American Airlines app, when I'm at the gate about to board and click on show boarding pass, the app hangs for many minutes and never responds. I'm always glad I have the paper boarding pass in my pocket instead.
> You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive
At check-in (24 hours before my flight), I add the boarding pass to Google Wallet. From that point, displaying it doesn't require an internet connection, or having to rely on the airline's often-shitty app.
Yes, the phone has to not be broken, but that's a pretty low bar: in my 15 years of owning smartphones, my phone has been broken and unusable for perhaps a grand total of a few days of time (so under 0.01% of the time). Yes, Google Wallet has to be functioning, but that particular app being broken would be an unusual, surprising occurrence.
And if by 0.01% chance, I can't get the boarding pass off my phone for some reason, I can always go to the check-in desk or kiosk or gate and ask them to print me one.
> Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
I've never lost a phone before, but I have lost paper boarding passes on more than one occasion.
The point is that the mobile boarding pass is a nice convenience (especially with the auto-updating gate number on it), but the ability to get a paper boarding pass printed is never far away if the mobile one fails. So why not just use the mobile one, and save some paper, and the need to keep track of one more item?
Maybe I'm weird, but when I go on a trip, I generally pack my smartphone, if I bring it at all. It would be a royal pain to go find it again when I get into line to board.
Same, I do recognize that walking around without a smartphone starting to become "weird" to others though. I don't mind being weird.
I live in a major US city and get hit up for cash by the homeless sometimes. When I explain I do not have a cellphone to them when they ask for money through some cash app. They look bewildered. Just 20 years ago I was the only one carrying around such a device for IT reasons. Now I am putting limits on my digital life, and it makes me socially "weird".
OTOH
Currently, the only thing I don't pay regularly by using a smart device, are bus fares, which are a solved problem, my city just hasn't implemented that yet
Everything else, I can either use a digital wallet for, or an instant bank transfer (Which I've been given to understand are a bit more of a hassle in the US)
I'd basically never expect to be without a device for an extended period of time, specially not in an airport
I am aware of the single point of failure though, so I do take particular care of not running out of battery, keeping an accesible spare, and some cash around for emergencies I just never use it
Almost nobody carries around small cash or change anymore.
And social services provide the homeless and those in poverty with free smartphones, since they're far more effective at ensuring communications with social services.
So how is the world weird? It all seems quite rational and reasonable to me.
I won't call it "weird", because generally I like the idea that some people aren't actually glued to their phone at all times, and don't even have it handy.
But I will call it unusual, because the vast majority of people will have their phone in their pocket or purse while at the airport.
