i2ndshenanigans

I support a few business that have locations in Texas that can’t get fiber or cable internet. We use Viasat for them. I wanted starlink since we were seeing people with the service that had way better speeds and latency compared to Viasat.

I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.

My Apple Card gives me 1-3% depending on the purchase type. I average 2% since I use Apple Pay all the time.

Fraudulent parts on Amazon is a mix clever and just plain dumb I got bricks instead of a GPU. For work I’ve gotten a handful of hard to notice frauds. We got some Samsung SSDs the older sata drives not NVMe. One was a different shade of black and looked altered. It had the guts of a USB drive with a usb to sata homebrew conversion. That one Amazon took back no questions but it was a company purchase so they probably treat those differently.

For Legos if they were frauds I would imagine it would be noticeable. It’s probably a discount because of the volume they purchase.

If you buy legos often I’ve had some good luck going to goodwill stores and getting them super cheap. It’s not going to be a set. Usually it’s mixed pieces in a vacuum sealed bag or bin if there are a lot.

Appreciate the advice I didn’t think about the CFPB.

I’ve definitely got a few things at Microcenter that were obvious repackages. I bought a cpu once to find the pins covered in thermal paste. Clearly someone made a bad choice and just returned it. I believe for the most part their returned items are sold at a discount after a review but people repackage things well and some get away with returning something as unopened. If I’m spending 150 or more I just open in store to just in case I find something odd I can return it and they never question it because I never left.

Microcenter is my go to. I live about 45 minutes from one but any PC parts that are expensive I get there, I also open in store to check for GPUs that were returned to the store to make sure someone didn’t swap out with a cheaper part. I don’t build too often so I don’t make my way over there too often.

I stopped buying electronics on Amazon after getting bricks instead of a GPU for my PC and they treated me like shit when I went to return it. I filed a complaint with the state about the fraud and their unwillingness to correct it. Complaint didn’t do shit but I was pissed. Now the only stuff I buy on Amazon is random household items and stuff for the kids that’s under 100 bucks.

Why do people agree to take those jobs if a dirt nap is your retirement plan for some?

I am an older millennial born in 83 and I’ve been in IT for about 21 years now and grew up building and fixing PCs for everyone. I think the newer generation is going to be the ones that need the most help. Might be anecdotal but in my years in IT at first it was the older folks with all the problems taking on and using tech. Now it’s the younger kids coming in. In my opinion it’s the way we consume tech now. All tech in the 80’s - early 2000’s required a lot of tinkering and figuring out I always figured the older folks were just set in their ways and didn’t want to learn anything new. My first 15 years in IT I always heard people say “I’m not a computer person” as an excuse to not knowing how to change a signature in outlook, an app they’ve been using for a while, or some other basic business app everyone should know how to use.

Now consumer tech just works. Out of the box you don’t need to tinker or do shit to the stuff. Younger gen is coming us used to shit just working and when anything goes wrong they don’t do well with troubleshooting also companies make anything beyond basic troubleshooting nearly impossible without them so most just don’t try to figure shit out. This type of behavior is getting worse now people get tech that can do a few hundred things and they only use it for two of the few hundred and now you are stuck trying to explain how to do basic tech tasks to an end user who is just going to forget it an hour or so later.

I’ve noticed this with IT employees and the rest of the business. Maybe I’m just a salty IT guy but I do cyber security now and the tech skill levels are just bad and it causes me grief on a regular basis.

My assumption is it passing the traffic across multiple TOR relays. Other than using it a few times on a few PC’s I really haven’t dug into it and haven’t done any troubleshooting. It wasn’t worth it to use for clearnet sites that can be accessed with a standard browser.

My testing was for an IT project to block all of TOR on corporate devices and test blocking users that log into their company account on a tor relay/browser/IP.