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Handy way to determine if some behaviour from a company is deliberately malicious or not, while minimizing personal bias:

Think of what they would optimally do if they *were* malicious, and of what they would do if they *weren't* malicious and genuinely had the claimed intentions.

Whatever they are actually doing, which of the two answers is it closer to?

@eythian Yeah, it's Lunenburg, the one in Nuland/Rosmalen (I named them elsewhere in the thread but it's easy to overlook probably 🙂) - do keep in mind I don't know their exact service area, they're a local chain and they do at least seem to ship webshop orders for appliances NL-wide, but I don't know what their service setup is like for that.

So they might provide service outside the local area or they might not!

My anxiety is really strong curse at times, but sometimes I look at people's decisions and wish I could gift them some of my anxiety.

Datalek bij de politie, je weet wel, die organisatie waar straks miljoenen false positives met privé foto's naar toe gaan, want kinderporno. ofzo.

security.nl/posting/859795/Pol

#chatcontrol #datalek #CSS #politie

@bumblebeedc@strangeobject.space Yeah! It does handily prove that it's entirely possible to run a financially healthy company with excellent service, and that when companies provide shit service, that's a choice...

just stop oil, court case 

"The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure"

So what you're saying, Mr. Judge, if I am getting this correctly, is that... there was no damage, as was expected? Yes?

Funny how a bit of framing changes the implied meaning, isn't it?

re: mutual aid post, please help, mention of homophobia 

@mynameistillian If it's what you need, then it's what you should ask for. People can decide whether they are okay with giving it to you!

Wow. Got a letter from the landlord; they are doing the scheduled window frame repainting in the block now, but they've received complaints from some residents that the new color is unpleasant. So they're changing the color to a more neutral color in the middle of the painting round, and repainting them in gray instead???

What is this, a landlord listening to feedback?!

@bumblebeedc@strangeobject.space They provide *some* sort of service nation-wide but I don't know how much. They definitely seem to ship appliances bought from their online shop to anywhere in NL?

Presumably at least their warranty handling (done by the same repair team) would extend to all of NL as well then, though I'm not sure if that also goes for repairs of third-party machines (and they were pretty booked full already when I called for this appointment).

Hi can every electronics company be like this please, thank you

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re: Things that "everybody knows" that are wrong :boost_requested: (has references to crimes) 

@3TomatoesShort That is pretty much what happens in reality, yeah, and I'd say that that would be a much more fitting meaning for the term! It's also something that can be prevented with collective commons management.

But usually when people use the term, they're trying to make the assertion that central and hierarchical control and domination is needed because if left to their own devices, people will be unable to manage the commons without someone taking more than they are entitled to.

Basically, it tries to frame it as some fundamental inability of individuals to collective manage things to justify appropriation.

One really cool thing that they told me, was that apparently "repair over replacement" is their standard policy; they do sell new machines, but only if they can't repair the old one within a reasonable cost.

I assume that's also why they have the trade-in policy where if you try a repair, and it ends up unfixable, they will apply the repair costs as a discount if you buy a new machine from them. As that makes repairs low-risk for the customer, and presumably helps them with customer retention at the same time.

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Update: repeat visit from another tech today because even with the fixed shock dampeners, it still made more noise than it should (albeit less now); after a lengthy investigation of a really-not-maintenance-friendly machine (welded front panel...) it turned out that one of the front concrete counterweights had shaken loose.

This was very annoying to figure out, because, well, the front panel was welded - they ended up asking in the repair tech group chat whether anyone had any ideas, and someone came up with the idea of concrete block tightening, and shared that on these machines you can remove the rubber seal and tilt back the machine, and then stick a hand inbetween panel and drum to get at the front blocks.

Took them a bit over an hour to diagnose, repair, and run a test cycle to confirm. Total cost was... 0 EUR, because it apparently fell under the warranty for their previous repair, being the same issue within the limit of 2 months. Awesome.

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spicy security take, 2FA 

The common understanding of "two-factor authentication" (something you know and something you have) is terrible, because it relies on classification that is really hard to do. Do you *have* a 2FA app or do you *know the key* to a 2FA app?

A much better model is "a factor is a separate environment that would need to be compromised independently", because it can be reasoned about and directly reflects the actual thing that needs to happen to bypass it.

This means that a 2FA app on a phone and a password manager on a PC are two factors; two devices that need to be separately compromised. A 2FA utility *in* the password manager is *not* two factors, because compromising the computer is enough to bypass both. Biometric+password *is* two factors, because compromising the computer does not get you biometric data, unless it's actively stored on there.

And yes, this is something that non-security-specialized folks can understand too, if you use slightly different wording ("hack two different devices instead of one" for example).

(They also said something to the effect of "we welcome the presence of new providers, as long as they have a sound business plan", which suggests that they are very well aware of what shit this company was trying to pull)

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A rental electric moped company declared that they would stop providing service here in Den Bosch, and then asked the municipality for a subsidy to remain here.

The municipality of Den Bosch seems to have told them to piss off. "They are a commercial provider, so this is not an option." Excellent.

Mastodon, the software where quote tweets are too toxic but there's no way to turn off replies.

nix governance, grumbling, sarcasm 

I'm sure that a core developer disclosing a vulnerability in Nix on their for-profit company's Twitter feed instead of coordinating the disclosure through official channels isn't a conflict of interest again, it's just a community service!

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