Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | paranoidrobot's commentslogin

A few years ago I was checking out of a reasonably up-scale hotel in Barcelona early in the morning.

They punch numbers into one of those wireless hand terminals. I tap my card, enter the pin and then before I can react to what the screen is now saying they've punched the 'Accept Conversion' button and submit it. By the time I realise what has happened, it's too late and has started printing the reciept.

I insisted they reverse it and redo the transaction without that - the staff didn't understand and didn't care they'd cost me another 10-15%. It really adds up for a week long stay.


I once asked a cashier about this and they said it saved me money. They said representatives from the large national bank had done a presentation and noted how this is the best option for foreigners. I think they truly believe they are being helpful. Closest thing to legalized robbery.

I had the exact same thing happen to me at a hotel in China. I could not get the person at the checkin desk to understand the problem so I ended up having to just eat the extra cost. Very frustrating, it was not a small amount of money.

What the fuck? Why are they tapping the terminal before you've confirmed the transaction?

In my experience, staff will do this if they are pressed for time, or when tourists don't know how to read or operate the payment systems and linger.

Well, it’s an unwise strategy to use on me if they’re feeling pressed for time. I will get enjoyment from putting my foot down for as long as is needed to reach a resolution.

That’s a 20+ minute decision they just made to try to save a few seconds.


Instagram did a similar thing for me back in 2016-ish.

A family member had been sharing some photos they were taking, but only on Instagram.

So I signed up an account, verified via email and phone number. I wasn't initially able to find the family member's account. A week later after I got the spelling of their username right, Instagram popped up "Your account has been suspended". They then sent me an email saying I needed to take a photo of myself holding government ID, and a piece of paper with a hand-written code they supplied, plus a close-up photo of said government ID. No way was I supplying all that just to be able to browse some photos.


A selection of times it's been previously posted:

(2018, 222 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135841

(2022, 166 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30595026

(2024, 139 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39136472 - by the same submitter as this post.


My desk has 2x 27" and 1x 43" Dell monitors. Unfortunately the new work MacBook only supports two external displays so one of those 27 sits idle.

What used to be nice is now a case of constantly shuffling windows, not made easy by MacOSs janky window handling.

I've been looking for a second 43" to replace the 27"s but the high price and sub-par quality of the 43 is making me wait.

I am also finding it difficult to find monitor arms that will carry such large and heavy screens. The 43 is already at the limit of the one reasonably priced arm I found and a definite struggle to mount.


good news: that seat design is available and some airlines use it.


> some airlines use it.

and there lies the rub.


I've run into this a bunch too.

Just this week I wanted Claude Code to plan changes in a sub directory of a very large repo. I told it to ignore outside directories and focus on this dir.

It then asked for permission to run tree on the parent dir. Me: No. Ignore the parent dir. Just use this dir.

So it then launches parallel discovery tasks which need individual permission approval to run - not too unusual, as I am approving each I notice it sneak in grep and ls for the parent dir amongst others. I keep denying it with "No" and it gets more creative with what tool/pathing it's trying to read from the parent dir.

I end up having to cancel the plan task and try again with even more firm instructions about not trying to read from the parent. That mostly worked the subsequent plan it only tried the once.


Did you ask it why it insisted on reading from the parent directory? Maybe there is some resource or relative path referenced.

I'm not saying you should approve it or the request was justified (you did tell it to concentrate on a single directory). But sometimes understanding the motivation is helpful.


If we define face scanning as specifically doing facial-recognition over multiple cameras, stores and/or time, then it's quite clear and simple.

A store could easily have security cameras operating without issue. They don't need to do any more smarts on it.

It's where you draw the line on smarts that's the thing.

- Person-shaped-object crossed from public-area to private area (eg through a staff-only door) without a corresponding door swipe event.

- Person-shaped-object appears to take an object off a shelf and put it in their bag/pocket.

- Specifically tracking a person over multiple cameras in one visit as they navigate the store, without associating with an identity

- Using facial recognition to recognise the same person over multiple visits/stores, and being able to track their activity over all of those visits.

There could be arguments for some of these being permitted without it being a total invasion of privacy.


I agree but unless the industry is forced they are not implementing this in a privacy friendly way. They rather collect as much data as possible.


One of the major advantages for Wireguard over OpenVPN (for me) is that it's quite difficult for random port scans to detect it.

With OpenVPN it's hanging out there responding to everyone that asks nicely that yes, it's OpenVPN.

So anyone with a new exploit for OpenVPN just has to pull up Shodan and now they've got a nice list of targets that likely have access to more private networks.

Wireguard doesn't respond at all unless you've got the right keys.

Also, fwiw - we're approaching 11 years since it was announced, and 5 years since it was accepted into the Linux/BSD kernels.


> With OpenVPN it's hanging out there responding to everyone that asks nicely that yes, it's OpenVPN.

I believe asing UDP mode and a ta.key go a long way towards making OpenVPN invisible to port scans. Double check docs for details.


The original site is down for me, so going based on the app I was thinking it was about the actual edible Honey product, not Honey the discount coupon thing.


> What’s the latest on this from the OP? Did Tim Cook’s team respond?

From their bsky account, maybe.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/hey.paris/post/3ma3of537kk2d


So just another case of getting proper support only if you make a big enough splash on social media and news outlets.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: