The same scheme is very common on the market for "new" laptop batteries sold by Chinese retailers on for example eBay. The batteries will come with a reprogrammed charge cycle count of 0, an unlikely serial number of all-zeroes/ones/nines or 123456789 etc., and with about 50% of its marketed capacity.
As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating. Now you've still paid them for a bad battery, and you've helped keeping the systemic economic crime alive by not warning other customers.
y-c-o-m-b 35 days ago [-]
This has happened to me on eBay twice for items marked as "free returns" which claimed to have a hassle-free return process. My response was that they're obligated to return full price, or they can expect me to open a claim with eBay to get it, and that I am for sure giving negative feedback! Both times they caved and gave me 100% refund and told me to just keep the broken item. I still gave negative feedback. I'm not just losing money with these bastards, I'm wasting valuable time, and that is not something that can be refunded.
dkjaudyeqooe 35 days ago [-]
> Both times they caved and gave me 100% refund and told me to just keep the broken item.
This is because eBay will ALWAYS side with the customer, and the seller will get a ding to boot.
Never ever do a return with Chinese sellers, they will use it against you and you will lose your chance to dispute the transaction.
If you are sold junk complain to the seller, then if they don't refund you go ahead and raise a dispute. If they offer a return then ask them to refund you ahead of time, in full, and to provide a label for the return.
tveyben 35 days ago [-]
> Never ever do a return with Chinese sellers, they will use it against you and you will lose your chance to dispute the transaction.
Well - that’s not my experience!
Case 1
Packages lost, no track’n’trace one vendor sent order once more for no charge, another om gave a 50% discount
Case 2
Product defect, returned it and later received the refund (matching their t&c)
Case 3 (different, but shows customer service is working as expected)
Wrong item received
Full refund received
In all cases I initiated a dialog, not just posted a bed review (‘keeping the leverage’)
So maybe SOME Chinese shops misbehave, but for sure US and EU shops are similar…
AliExpress is the shop in question…
Just don’t think all are the same !!!
bluedino 36 days ago [-]
Amazon and eBay should crack down on this crap.
I bought some tools on Amazon, sent them back because of quality issues, and left a 1 star review (they don't allow zero star reviews but that's another issue). Sure enough I get an email offering to send me a replacement, asking me to remove my review, I reported it and who knows what happens from there.
Now, I have had very similar things happen on a website like HomeDepot.com, the manufacturer reached out, sent me a different tool as a replacement, and said I did not have to remove my review but they would appreciate if I did.
Just as bad, IMO. The whole point of reviews is to let other consumers know your experience with the product.
teddyh 36 days ago [-]
> Amazon and eBay should crack down on this crap.
Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 36 days ago [-]
Yes and no. Once (if) the government cracks on the retailer, the retailer cracks down on sellers who use their platform.
Additionally, the retailer could actually have ethics of their own and choose willingly to raise the bar.
yndoendo 36 days ago [-]
Worked for a company that made a machine used for automated. Built with USA government specifics and it could remove limbs. Over 1600 Newton force, equivalent to an adult panda. Model A.
It was risk assessed and needed a complete redesign for the EU market. Model B is so safe it cannot even take off a finger.
Now model A is no longer built and model B is sold in the USA and EU. It was not the goodness of the company that re-engineered safety into the product. It was EU laws and regulations that demand safety be built into the product.
The cost savings of manufacturing only model B is why A is no longer sold in the USA. Economic side effects of multinational trade is what gave USA a better and safer product.
Proper regulation works. It saves limbs and lives. USA is one of the countries with the lowest standards. USA companies and law makers care about money, not your safety or not consumer protection. And if they do they are the GREAT minority.
EU has better quality of food standards. USA allows for designing food to be addictive. Just look at the difference in sugar in bread standards. USA consumes sugar loafs.
Japan has their food packaging to resemble what is actually inside. USA will edit mold riddled images to look fresh and a dream of what is actually being sold versus the real thing. Learned that from a family member that delivered food product to a marketing company.
Norway requires advertising photos to be labeled if they are modified and unnatural. USA helps promote unrealistic body standards which amplifies emotional, mental, and physical harm. Something I have been trying to help a family member with for over a year. Anorexia and suicidal behavior of go hand in hand.
USA standards are more harmful than other 1st world countries. USA companies and lawmakers actively harm their citizens for profit.
omer9 35 days ago [-]
This is so true. But the message is too complex for simple minded people to understand.
They are easy targets for populists with their lies and oneliners:
- EU is suffocating us with their laws.
- EU is meddling with what we eat.
- Plants need co2 to grow, so more co2 is better.
But when you ask the same people:
- Do you want to be screwed over by companies so that they can make more profit?
- Should companies be allowed to mix everything in your food for more profit?
- Plants also need water, would it be OK to flood them?
They would answer NO to all of the above.
But people seem not capable of asking the same questions themself.
AnthonyMouse 36 days ago [-]
The problem is they're both doing it wrong. The way you protect consumers is with a competitive market and a low rate of fraud. So the government is primarily responsible for preventing market consolidation and prosecuting fraud.
The problem in the US is that they don't do either of those things well and then you get consolidated markets that are insulated from competition or competitive markets where fraud is rampant, and the latter tend to become the former because a high rate of fraud causes people to turn to major brands to protect themselves until the market consolidates.
The problem in Europe is that they not only don't prevent market consolidation, they pass rules that make it worse. You don't need to micromanage how stuff is made or how people interact with each other as long as you have competitive markets and informed consumers, because then people just don't patronize abusive businesses because they both have alternatives and know about them. But if you do micromanage everything then compliance costs go up, which are fixed costs that increase barriers to entry into the market, which reduces competition and then you're screwed again. The best case there is cost disease where everything costs an order of magnitude more than it should because everyone is paying for an army of bureaucrats to check boxes, but even more common is that you get that and abusive cartels that take advantage of consumers in every way that hasn't already been regulated. Which becomes a vicious cycle where more abuses lead to more regulations which lead to higher costs and even more market consolidation.
yndoendo 35 days ago [-]
Lets look at one regulated area of the EU. Color coding of cables. Colors are defined by what they are used for and their voltage and amp allowed levels. In the USA black can be source while red can be ground, highly deregulated area.
EU allows for ease of maintenance because opening the electrical cover allows for quick glimpse of what wires do what. In the US, you need access to the production manual, or a lot of time with a multi-meter, to know what that black wire really does. This saves money and time by having color coding standards, for the manufacturer and consumer.
Electrical standards is another example. In the EU extension cords must supply the amperage they are being plugged into. Often the cord and surge protector need fuses to prevent fires. In the US, they sell 13 amp extension cords for 20 amp outlets. This greatly increase the chances of an electrical fire in the US and pushes the EU to near zero.
I know not to buy anything below the outlet amperage when buying an extension cord or surge protector. This requires education that the average person does not have. Regulations help remove the need for this type of education while providing a quality and sound solution that does the least chance of harm.
Talking to those from EU and Japan, they often restate the same benefits the the USA has. 1) Access to natural resources. 2) Fast changing business strategy pivots. Not once have I talked to someone from their wished they had the low standards in the food and other industries.
This free market and competitive market that people always talk about does not exist and never can truly exist. How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
Should the EU abandon the USB-C charger and allow Apple to keep producing the lightening charger, increase unnecessary e-waste? Selling the lightening exclusive helped increase Apple's bottom monetary line. So should EU allow Apple to move back to the lightening charger?
Should we remove all regulation so that Grünenthal can sell thalidomide again?
Should we completely abandon all food manufacturing standards and allow Johnson and Johnson to sell asbestos in their baby powder or Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis to sell baby formula with cronobacter?
USA McDownlad's has show they are willing to lower their standards when they can make more money from having to service their franchise's ice cream machines instead having quality and making money on the profit of their ice products.
Regulations need a proper balance. Zero regulation is an improper balance. If you believe in no regulations you don't have any standards yourself.
Which machine would you prefer using daily, along with your loved ones? Model A or Model B? One that can take off a limb and even decapitate you or the one that cannot?
AnthonyMouse 35 days ago [-]
> In the US, you need access to the production manual, or a lot of time with a multi-meter, to know what that black wire really does. This saves money and time by having color coding standards, for the manufacturer and consumer.
Excellent example. Let's suppose you pass a law requiring the red wire to be source and the black wire to be ground. Now you go to manufacture your new solar battery system. The system has wired connections for the AC power grid, DC power from the solar system, DC power from the batteries and AC power to supply the building. The system contains an inverter so if you want it to it can take 220V 50Hz input and produce 110V 60Hz output or vice versa. The system also has a USB port being supplied with DC power. If the law requires the source to be red, you now have five different sources at different voltages, some are AC and others DC, different frequencies, but they're all the same color. The law is then requiring something confusing and dangerous. Is a red wire the 5V DC for the USB port or the 220V AC from the power grid?
Okay, so then we'd need a much more complicated law that specifies a bunch of different wire colors. Now the law is creating something complicated and dangerous, because there are lots of different combinations you could have. What if there is three-phase power and a neutral? What if there is a third AC connection for a backup generator? If the law says that systems using both AC and DC power should use different colors for AC and DC, you now can't produce a modular component that contains any wires because what color they need to be would depend on what other components are in the system. If you try to assign a separate permanent color to each possible combination so they could be modular, you'd need so many colors in the standard that many would be confusingly similar to each other.
The better solution is, have best practices that nobody is required by law to follow if they don't make sense in context, but everybody is required to document whatever it is they actually do.
> How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
> In the US, they sell 13 amp extension cords for 20 amp outlets.
The US has two standard 110V power outlets, 15 amp and 20 amp, and 15 amp plugs are compatible with 20 amp outlets under the theory that the 20 amp outlet is more than sufficient to supply a 15 amp load. That decision was made in the 20th century and is impractical to change. Prohibiting <20 amp cords from being plugged into a 20 amp outlet would then effectively be a prohibition on <20 amp cords, but 20 amp cords are more expensive and almost never necessary, especially in homes that typically have 15 amp breakers.
Should they have designed the plugs better before, so that you can plug a 15 amp load into a 20 amp outlet but not a 15 amp extension cord? Sure, but it's too late for that.
You're essentially asking for a law that wastes many metric tons of copper and raises prices on everyone in exchange for a marginal safety improvement in an edge case for people who aren't paying attention. It's exactly the sort of poor cost/benefit rule that shouldn't exist.
> This free market and competitive market that people always talk about does not exist and never can truly exist. How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
It's not just a question of how many companies currently sell them, it's a question of who else would sell them if that company started abusing its customers and the customers started soliciting alternate suppliers. In other words, what would it take for someone else to start making those machines?
And putting more rules on how you can do it makes it harder to compete, and reduces that competitive pressure.
> Should the EU abandon the USB-C charger and allow Apple to keep producing the lightening charger, increase unnecessary e-waste? Selling the lightening exclusive helped increase Apple's bottom monetary line. So should EU allow Apple to move back to the lightening charger?
The premise here is competitive markets. Apple is a vertically integrated conglomerate, which impairs competition. The EU shouldn't be demanding they use a particular standard (which is now enshrined in law and prohibits any future innovations), they should be breaking the company into operating systems and Apple Silicon and phones, so that the phone maker has the same incentive to use the current standard as any other.
> Should we completely abandon all food manufacturing standards and allow Johnson and Johnson to sell asbestos in their baby powder or Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis to sell baby formula with cronobacter?
Selling baby powder with asbestos in it without listing asbestos as an ingredient is fraud. Listing asbestos as an ingredient is not likely to garner a lot of sales.
> USA McDownlad's has show they are willing to lower their standards when they can make more money from having to service their franchise's ice cream machines instead having quality and making money on the profit of their ice products.
But why is this a problem when you can buy ice cream from Wendy's or become a franchisee of some other restaurant chain?
> Which machine would you prefer using daily, along with your loved ones? Model A or Model B? One that can take off a limb and even decapitate you or the one that cannot?
But that's the point, isn't it? If there is competition, i.e. both are available, which one do you buy?
bitzun 35 days ago [-]
> Listing asbestos as an ingredient is not likely to garner a lot of sales.
Apollo private equity buys a respected but financially struggling baby food company and starts putting asbestos in it to cut costs. After kids start getting sick, nobody really feels better that asbestos was listed on the label and that the free market is going to correct it.
AnthonyMouse 35 days ago [-]
What do you think would happen if they actually put asbestos on the label?
Not everyone reads the label, but enough people do that it would be discovered on the first day, if not before the first day as some retailers check for label changes before putting a modified product on their shelves. Any retailer who didn't notice this to begin with would then notice the front page story condemning the company for doing it and all of the products would be removed from the shelves and returned to the manufacturer to save the retailer from the reputation hit of carrying it in their store. The manufacturer's reputation would be destroyed and no one would be willing to carry their products, depriving them of the incentive to do this because it would immediately tank the company, and this would be an obvious outcome to private equity firms who want to make rather than lose money.
Notice that you can currently buy things like arsenic for use as rat poison and this is not a problem because the label tells you that it's arsenic so you know not to use it as a food additive.
likeabatterycar 35 days ago [-]
No one in history has ever looked at a piece of machinery and thought, "You know what would make this better? Castration by EU government regulations."
Meanwhile the EU bathes in the same Chinese garbage imported by the boat-load as long as it carries the CE mark, which they are allowed to self-certify in nearly every case, making it meaningless.
Yes, some products have been found with incorrect dimensions on their CE markings. Yes, some products have been found with non-compliant specifications. But AFAIK no products, having been accused of non-compliant specifications in spite of CE markings, have ever defended themselves with the excuse that the mark is not a true CE mark but instead some mythical “China Export” mark. It has never happened. It’s an urban myth.
teddyh 36 days ago [-]
> Additionally, the retailer could actually have ethics of their own and choose willingly to raise the bar.
And my grandmother could get some wheels and become a bicycle.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 36 days ago [-]
That transcends laughably unlikely and is instead impossible. At least it’s possible for ethics to come without law and it’s worth recognizing that.
The UK now has an offence of "failure to prevent fraud", but it seems to me that it doesn't include this case (it includes things like fraud by employees and associates who "act on behalf of" the organisation).
Amusingly the same legislation also mandates that "A company must not be registered under [the companies act] by a name that, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, consists of or includes computer code.”
So no more "drop tables" company names.
unyttigfjelltol 35 days ago [-]
> The entity which should crack down on this is the government.
The problem with fraud is what else these same people are organizing themselves to do. Today it's fake gadgets, tomorrow it's fentyl precursors, the next day it's kidnap for ransom. You go after it for the same reason the US Federal government took on the mob 60 years ago.
Ekaros 36 days ago [-]
Ebay to me is always bit of an uncontrolled market. But on other hand I fully expect Amazon and other such marketplaces to fully vet their suppliers. And if they are doing fulfilment take any legal hits from not doing reasonable due diligence with stolen or fraudulent merch.
onli 36 days ago [-]
A reasonable, but unwarranted expectation. Amazon's marketplace functions without effective oversight since basically forever now. Heck, they sell radioactive metals without warnings and despite those being illegal, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmJNllQyoRI.
sneak 35 days ago [-]
In thirty seconds you can find fake 2TB flash drives for sale for like $25 on amazon.
So can amazon staff.
They are still for sale. Lots have negative reviews from people who lost data because these are 64gb drives with reflashed firmware to report 2048gb.
Spooky23 35 days ago [-]
I’d argue that it’s the opposite. eBay has a lot of individual grifts. They tend to be responsive to grifts that can be easily enforced and proven.
Amazon is next level — it has made a lot of money from being the world’s largest fence. Co-mingled inventory makes it trivial to launder stolen goods. They react to things very slowly, as they are at arms length and both make money having criminal FBA sellers operate and by weakening the competition. Walgreen’s pain is Amazon’s gain.
The brands slowed down for some things — you can’t sell Tide easily on Amazon now. But now Walmart is locking up men’s briefs because the gangs move to the next commodity.
tgsovlerkhgsel 35 days ago [-]
Customers avoid your platform because they associate it with scams is unprofitable, but since the effect is delayed, it'll be ignored until it's a blatant problem and the majority of customers have learned the hard way.
makeitdouble 35 days ago [-]
Unless you succeed in killing half of the competition in the meantime and the remaining sellers follow the same pattern as you as you're getting away with it and they see the end game.
Customers will then suck it up and it becomes the new normal.
stevenwoo 35 days ago [-]
Or they have incorporated the cost of returns into their pricing and it is still profitable, like Amazon.
csomar 36 days ago [-]
Losing consumer confidence is not profitable. There is a reason people spend more with credit card protections. Amazon is abusing its dominant position to make short-term profits. It is short-sighted and negligent.
makeitdouble 35 days ago [-]
It's been going on for at least a decade, Amazon is still the online retail leader, the main competitors are scammers on Instagram, Temu and AliExpress. Some people will make a point in patronizing more local platforms, but that's far from the critical mass.
I'm curious where you see the short-sightedness of this objectively successful and already long lasting strategy ?
reaperducer 36 days ago [-]
Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government.
Amazon and eBay should crack down on it so the government doesn't.
History is full of examples of companies doing the right thing if only to prevent government regulation.
rjmorris 36 days ago [-]
> History is full of examples of companies doing the right thing if only to prevent government regulation.
Citing a couple would help your argument.
mschuster91 36 days ago [-]
Everyone but Apple going for mini-USB, micro-USB and finally USB-C is probably the most well known example. Another decently well known example was the early stages of social media moderation.
The "business model" of the EU is to check if something is going wrong or could be changed to make the life of European citizens better, to then show that to the industry with "hey, we noticed X - you got a chance to clean up shop on your own, or we will force you by passing laws".
reaperducer 35 days ago [-]
Citing a couple would help your argument.
I'm not making an argument. I'm stating a fact that is well-known if you follow business at all.
In the United States, it is common for:
1. Politician to complain about situation.
2. Congressional committee holds hearing about situation.
3. Congressmen threaten to pass laws about situation.
4. Industry involved in situation makes changes so that laws are unnecessary.
The airline industry is full of examples. This is basic knowledge. Google is your friend.
tlb 36 days ago [-]
It's profitable for Amazon and eBay to have reliable reviews and fewer dissatisfied customers.
sneak 35 days ago [-]
Not all customers are created equal, and amazon and ebay control what reviews are shown on their own websites.
waltercool 35 days ago [-]
Nah, this is not government competence. They will make everything more expensive and we will pay those salaries.
Just put a bad score and ask for refund. Amazon does a good job here as you never interact with the seller
UltraSane 36 days ago [-]
Amazon enables this by commingling products from multiple vendors making it impossible to know which vendor you are actually buying from.
agumonkey 36 days ago [-]
Amazon rarely does anything that won't benefit them first. Even the customer first policy is a way to attract more people so they spend time on their listings, which are degrading and full of cheap / scam parts and prices nowadays.
sidewndr46 36 days ago [-]
Why? They make money off it too.
cjbgkagh 36 days ago [-]
This stuff is trivial to detect by the platform. At best the platform could say they don’t search for it, but the only reason not to would be because they don’t want to find it. In essence they’re knowingly outsourcing fraud to sellers.
thayne 36 days ago [-]
All they would have to do to prevent it is make it so if you give a 1 star review, you can't change it to something else later.
cjbgkagh 35 days ago [-]
If you do let people change it then annotate it with (edited) so people can perform their own heuristics, if 10% of 5 stars were edited then it’s a bit suspect. Or keep the history of the reviews - it doesn’t take much to spot check and if platform users can do this on an individual basis then obviously the platform could do this algorithmically. They’ve just made the conscious decision not to.
gruez 36 days ago [-]
What happens if a customer made a hasty negative review but the vendor reached out and genuinely resolved/fixed the issue?
aspenmayer 35 days ago [-]
It would be nice to see the entire interaction, from verified purchase on Amazon, to first review, and any subsequent changes or updates to the review, and whether or not a return or replacement of the product in the original verified purchase has occurred on a timeline per review.
aaronax 35 days ago [-]
You know, 1 star reviews are ok. It's like people want to do anything to keep from a single undeserved 1 star review from happening. What if the same logic was applied to 5 star reviews?
gruez 35 days ago [-]
>What if the same logic was applied to 5 star reviews?
I see plenty of 5 star reviews being edited to 2-3 star reviews afterwards though?
greggsy 36 days ago [-]
Handling the seller appeals would quickly become expensive
cjbgkagh 36 days ago [-]
I concur, fraud is much cheaper and more profitable
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 36 days ago [-]
> As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating.
So I take the 50% and give them a bad rating once the money is in my bank account, complete with the documentation of their bribe for a good review. What do they do, realistically? (Probably get the review taken down by the platform administrators, but I did not contribute.)
daneel_w 35 days ago [-]
Realistically they will do nothing, because only a fraction of the customers will put up a fight like this. The 99%, which make up the customers these organized fraudsters are banking on, won't bother because "it was still cheaper than buying it in the computer shop", and it's likely that most of them won't even notice in the first place.
gruez 36 days ago [-]
It's unlikely, but theoretically such offers constitutes a non-disparagement/NDA contract, which means if you break the contract by leaving a 1 star review they can go after you in court and probably win.
daneel_w 35 days ago [-]
They are Chinese retailers, and these frauds are organized. They won't go after anyone in an overseas court - just as they don't worry one bit about an overseas court trying to reach them in China.
ryanhecht 35 days ago [-]
> about 50% of its marketed capacity
> they will offer a 50% discount
I feel like I would need more than a 50% discount in order to go along with this...needing to charge/swap a battery more frequently is added cost! :p
mock-possum 35 days ago [-]
> As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating.
Wait how is that supposed to work - why would you buy another bad battery from them at 50% off? why would they have any say in why review you leave?
hyperdimension 35 days ago [-]
I believe it was a 50% refund on the (purchased) battery; not a 50% off coupon on another. That's how I read it anyway.
Alternatively the "reader view" feature in Firefox can be used as the entire article is loaded in memory (as opposed to other websites where they'd load a preview till you agree to cookies / pay for a subscription)
neilv 36 days ago [-]
Unless it's been fixed recently, Firefox Reader View inexplicably bypasses your uBlock Origin, so you actually get violated harder by using Reader View.
ce4 35 days ago [-]
Is there more information on this?
anilakar 36 days ago [-]
And this BS comes from a German company. Oof.
Stop pushing EU-wide laws you cannot yourself adhere to.
rcthompson 36 days ago [-]
Are they breaking the law? I don't love that they're requiring either payment or allowing cookies, but at least they're fully disclosing that and giving you the choice. I'm pretty sure that's what the GDPR requires.
tyfon 36 days ago [-]
This is under consideration now due to the meta case.
The GDPR states that consent should be freely given and one can argue that forcing you to choose between payment our tracking is not a free choice but cohersed. I personally think that interpretation is correct.
Since a large part of German media in also doing the same, they are lobbying for this to only apply to "large online providers".
You forgot the 3rd option… don’t consume their content. Pay, allow cookies, or surf elsewhere. GDPR doesn’t require them to give away content for free.
Edit - ok, being downvoted - how should content be monetized if both targeted ads and subscriptions are off the table? Are we saying GDPR requires a site to operate off generic, non-targeted ads?
Tarq0n 36 days ago [-]
Targeted ads aren't the only kind of ads. Disregarding for a moment that you can do some amount of targetting without collecting PII too.
IshKebab 35 days ago [-]
Some sites can do that. E.g. Hacker News would easily be able to do targeted advertising without collecting any data because it's a self-selected audience. Even someone like The Verge could probably do a decent job (just advertise games and tech stuff). But what the hell would The New York Times advertise? They're back at TV-style cars and perfume advertising which isn't profitable enough to sustain most businesses.
I think Google's flock was the only serious attempt to solve this, but obviously it got heavily criticised by HN fundamentalists who think that the web should be entirely free and ad-free with zero tracking. To be fair it does have a rather big practical issue in that only Google has any incentive to actually implement it (I don't see why Microsoft or Mozilla or Apple would ever bother).
We're probably stuck with tracking unless the EU gets some sense and mandates a do-not-track style preference system, and actually enforces it with fines.
chgs 35 days ago [-]
Fairly sure the New York Times carried adverts for decades before computers existed
IshKebab 35 days ago [-]
Have you somehow forgotten that physical newspapers cost money? They weren't funded solely by advertising.
alistairSH 35 days ago [-]
Sure, but do those ads generate enough revenue to stay in business?
How is this site’s “Pay or Take a Cookie” approach worse for the consumer than a total paywall?
I’d rather we didn’t have to have annoying ads, but generating and hosting content costs money.
dvdkon 35 days ago [-]
The downside of this approach is that the publishers don't want to remake their business model, so they make the subscription fee so high that they couldn't possibly ever lose money on people they don't track.
Then even the small part of the population that would consider going through the process of adding yet another subscription to their life either leaves or consents to tracking, because who's going to pay 5 EUR (and Heise is pretty "cheap" compared to some) for access to one article?
I would not be so angry with the concept if the costs, and the effort necessary to pay, was more in line with the income from personalised ads. Pay two cents per view with the push of a button? Sure. Pay 2 EUR for a week of access? Maybe. But so many publications want me to pay almost a print subscription price for any access, clearly showing they don't intend this as a real alternative.
dvdkon 35 days ago [-]
They could use non-tracking ads, though I understand serving ads without spying on people is much less profitable. Or they could mandate a subscription or per-article payments, maybe only on certain long-form articles? Maybe keeping news articles behind a paywall until they're a month old, like LWN, could work? And I'm sure the subscription fees would drop dramatically once they're not just a half-hearted attempt to appease the EU.
There's plenty of options, but they can only be explored once nobody offers news in exchange for personal data. People used to pay for physical newspapers, and it worked, better than the current web approaches IMO.
flotzam 36 days ago [-]
"The tactic has been criticised by privacy advocates and non-governmental organisations such as NOYB and Wikimedia Europe, which claim that it is illegal under the GDPR. On 17 April 2024, the European Data Protection Board released a non-binding opinion stating that in most cases, consent-or-pay models do not constitute valid consent within the meaning of the GDPR."
GDPR states that consent must be freely given. If there are financial incentives, the consent may be invalid.
Havoc 35 days ago [-]
Wow. Heise takes #1 prize in most anal advertising consent form. Literally a individual reject button for every one of their billion individual ad partners and consent to advertising as a whole has only an Accept button.
At that point you may as well just cover the entire screen with a "Agree to anything" button
Frustratingly bad article about an interesting story. Has no one moved on the obvious step of checking the drives for deleted data to track down where they’ve come from?
gist 36 days ago [-]
Also what happens to a user whose hard drive is seized (and forensic tools are used) to find deleted files? Hard to believe (and why would they) take time to properly sanitize the drives.
pajko 35 days ago [-]
Cannot read this article (requires subscription without allowing cookies), but have seen a couple of german stores mentioned in another one. Those are most likely small shops (just online or garage) which get the cheapest stuff they can and sell with some margin.
So I've had to idea to look at Alibaba, and voila: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Seagate-Exos-ST16000N...
That seems to be too cheap to be true.
metalman 36 days ago [-]
loads for me, have cookies,java script, dom storage, off by default..add blockers on, I get just the text
which is just fine
still dont understand how a major disk maker got caught up in something as skeezy as this though
geor9e 35 days ago [-]
>dont understand how a major disk maker got caught up in something as skeezy as this
I'm not sure what you mean by "caught up in". You make it sound like their employees were involved. It's a pretty universal organized crime problem affecting all sorts of industries - used part dealers rolling back the odometer on things and sneaking them back into the supply chain as low milage or new. A store might be an "authorized distributor" but that doesn't mean they can't be tricked by a fake salesperson. Every brand battles counterfeiters and fraudsters somewhat. Here's a Western Digital odometer reset for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9u6QwTsW8 Gotta be careful what alleyway you buy your rolexes from.
bbarnett 36 days ago [-]
It sounds like Seagate has nothing to do with this. It sounds like someone is scamming retailers and distributors.
None of the drives in this article were shipped by Seagate, only some by authorized resellers.
EG, Amazon, newegg are authorized resellers.
ldoughty 35 days ago [-]
Indeed. Force the seller to be the retailer itself and see if you still have this problem...
Any other seller is (at a glance) indistinguishable as a legitimate business or a scalper/scammer.. and there's plenty of legitimate businesses operating in the grey area in-between too.
metalman 35 days ago [-]
ok, then.
A hardware solution.
These drives are not mechanicaly serviceable, at least by meer mortals. So pot everything, with all of the fasteners and ports, injection molded with simple breakaway covers, that get removed by snapping them off, little holograms torn, it is now evidentialy used. It wont be worth the effort
refurbish in such a way as to look new.
got to be worth the trivial extra effort by an oem, just to return serv.
Alternative would be a tiny window, with a tiny fuse, attached across the input power, blows the first time it powers up
gota be a hundred easy ways to fox em, just keep switching up
snvzz 35 days ago [-]
There's a little serial port in the header of every Seagate drive. I have connected to it.
Documentation is easy to find online. There's commands giving access to a lot of functionality. Modifying SMART values is trivially done.
Thus, they likely wrote a script that gets the job done in seconds. Attach device to hdd and remove when LED turns red. Done, next.
Seagate could make this a little harder, but hasn't. This is likely the case only because nobody has abused this at a scale before.
AzzyHN 35 days ago [-]
My uBlock Origin has blocked 64% of the page so far, and I've read two paragraphs.
35 days ago [-]
Pushy 35 days ago [-]
I suspected eastdigital drives were dodgy. Lucky I resisted the cheap prices
maep 35 days ago [-]
That must be the bigest scandal since Watergate-gate.
ahoka 34 days ago [-]
What’s with the GDPR violating cookie popup?
merillecuz56 33 days ago [-]
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34 days ago [-]
merillecuz56 34 days ago [-]
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waltercool 35 days ago [-]
Are you new at technology? China is well known to produce counterfeit products.
Most of the time, they just resell products from factories who didn't pass the quality tests.
As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating. Now you've still paid them for a bad battery, and you've helped keeping the systemic economic crime alive by not warning other customers.
This is because eBay will ALWAYS side with the customer, and the seller will get a ding to boot.
Never ever do a return with Chinese sellers, they will use it against you and you will lose your chance to dispute the transaction.
If you are sold junk complain to the seller, then if they don't refund you go ahead and raise a dispute. If they offer a return then ask them to refund you ahead of time, in full, and to provide a label for the return.
Well - that’s not my experience!
Case 1 Packages lost, no track’n’trace one vendor sent order once more for no charge, another om gave a 50% discount
Case 2 Product defect, returned it and later received the refund (matching their t&c)
Case 3 (different, but shows customer service is working as expected) Wrong item received Full refund received
In all cases I initiated a dialog, not just posted a bed review (‘keeping the leverage’)
So maybe SOME Chinese shops misbehave, but for sure US and EU shops are similar…
AliExpress is the shop in question…
Just don’t think all are the same !!!
I bought some tools on Amazon, sent them back because of quality issues, and left a 1 star review (they don't allow zero star reviews but that's another issue). Sure enough I get an email offering to send me a replacement, asking me to remove my review, I reported it and who knows what happens from there.
Now, I have had very similar things happen on a website like HomeDepot.com, the manufacturer reached out, sent me a different tool as a replacement, and said I did not have to remove my review but they would appreciate if I did.
Just as bad, IMO. The whole point of reviews is to let other consumers know your experience with the product.
Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government.
Additionally, the retailer could actually have ethics of their own and choose willingly to raise the bar.
It was risk assessed and needed a complete redesign for the EU market. Model B is so safe it cannot even take off a finger.
Now model A is no longer built and model B is sold in the USA and EU. It was not the goodness of the company that re-engineered safety into the product. It was EU laws and regulations that demand safety be built into the product.
The cost savings of manufacturing only model B is why A is no longer sold in the USA. Economic side effects of multinational trade is what gave USA a better and safer product.
Proper regulation works. It saves limbs and lives. USA is one of the countries with the lowest standards. USA companies and law makers care about money, not your safety or not consumer protection. And if they do they are the GREAT minority.
EU has better quality of food standards. USA allows for designing food to be addictive. Just look at the difference in sugar in bread standards. USA consumes sugar loafs.
Japan has their food packaging to resemble what is actually inside. USA will edit mold riddled images to look fresh and a dream of what is actually being sold versus the real thing. Learned that from a family member that delivered food product to a marketing company.
Norway requires advertising photos to be labeled if they are modified and unnatural. USA helps promote unrealistic body standards which amplifies emotional, mental, and physical harm. Something I have been trying to help a family member with for over a year. Anorexia and suicidal behavior of go hand in hand.
USA standards are more harmful than other 1st world countries. USA companies and lawmakers actively harm their citizens for profit.
They are easy targets for populists with their lies and oneliners: - EU is suffocating us with their laws. - EU is meddling with what we eat. - Plants need co2 to grow, so more co2 is better.
But when you ask the same people: - Do you want to be screwed over by companies so that they can make more profit? - Should companies be allowed to mix everything in your food for more profit? - Plants also need water, would it be OK to flood them?
They would answer NO to all of the above. But people seem not capable of asking the same questions themself.
The problem in the US is that they don't do either of those things well and then you get consolidated markets that are insulated from competition or competitive markets where fraud is rampant, and the latter tend to become the former because a high rate of fraud causes people to turn to major brands to protect themselves until the market consolidates.
The problem in Europe is that they not only don't prevent market consolidation, they pass rules that make it worse. You don't need to micromanage how stuff is made or how people interact with each other as long as you have competitive markets and informed consumers, because then people just don't patronize abusive businesses because they both have alternatives and know about them. But if you do micromanage everything then compliance costs go up, which are fixed costs that increase barriers to entry into the market, which reduces competition and then you're screwed again. The best case there is cost disease where everything costs an order of magnitude more than it should because everyone is paying for an army of bureaucrats to check boxes, but even more common is that you get that and abusive cartels that take advantage of consumers in every way that hasn't already been regulated. Which becomes a vicious cycle where more abuses lead to more regulations which lead to higher costs and even more market consolidation.
EU allows for ease of maintenance because opening the electrical cover allows for quick glimpse of what wires do what. In the US, you need access to the production manual, or a lot of time with a multi-meter, to know what that black wire really does. This saves money and time by having color coding standards, for the manufacturer and consumer.
Electrical standards is another example. In the EU extension cords must supply the amperage they are being plugged into. Often the cord and surge protector need fuses to prevent fires. In the US, they sell 13 amp extension cords for 20 amp outlets. This greatly increase the chances of an electrical fire in the US and pushes the EU to near zero.
I know not to buy anything below the outlet amperage when buying an extension cord or surge protector. This requires education that the average person does not have. Regulations help remove the need for this type of education while providing a quality and sound solution that does the least chance of harm.
Talking to those from EU and Japan, they often restate the same benefits the the USA has. 1) Access to natural resources. 2) Fast changing business strategy pivots. Not once have I talked to someone from their wished they had the low standards in the food and other industries.
This free market and competitive market that people always talk about does not exist and never can truly exist. How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
Should the EU abandon the USB-C charger and allow Apple to keep producing the lightening charger, increase unnecessary e-waste? Selling the lightening exclusive helped increase Apple's bottom monetary line. So should EU allow Apple to move back to the lightening charger?
Should we remove all regulation so that Grünenthal can sell thalidomide again?
Should we completely abandon all food manufacturing standards and allow Johnson and Johnson to sell asbestos in their baby powder or Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis to sell baby formula with cronobacter?
USA McDownlad's has show they are willing to lower their standards when they can make more money from having to service their franchise's ice cream machines instead having quality and making money on the profit of their ice products.
Regulations need a proper balance. Zero regulation is an improper balance. If you believe in no regulations you don't have any standards yourself.
Which machine would you prefer using daily, along with your loved ones? Model A or Model B? One that can take off a limb and even decapitate you or the one that cannot?
Excellent example. Let's suppose you pass a law requiring the red wire to be source and the black wire to be ground. Now you go to manufacture your new solar battery system. The system has wired connections for the AC power grid, DC power from the solar system, DC power from the batteries and AC power to supply the building. The system contains an inverter so if you want it to it can take 220V 50Hz input and produce 110V 60Hz output or vice versa. The system also has a USB port being supplied with DC power. If the law requires the source to be red, you now have five different sources at different voltages, some are AC and others DC, different frequencies, but they're all the same color. The law is then requiring something confusing and dangerous. Is a red wire the 5V DC for the USB port or the 220V AC from the power grid?
Okay, so then we'd need a much more complicated law that specifies a bunch of different wire colors. Now the law is creating something complicated and dangerous, because there are lots of different combinations you could have. What if there is three-phase power and a neutral? What if there is a third AC connection for a backup generator? If the law says that systems using both AC and DC power should use different colors for AC and DC, you now can't produce a modular component that contains any wires because what color they need to be would depend on what other components are in the system. If you try to assign a separate permanent color to each possible combination so they could be modular, you'd need so many colors in the standard that many would be confusingly similar to each other.
The better solution is, have best practices that nobody is required by law to follow if they don't make sense in context, but everybody is required to document whatever it is they actually do.
> How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
> In the US, they sell 13 amp extension cords for 20 amp outlets.
The US has two standard 110V power outlets, 15 amp and 20 amp, and 15 amp plugs are compatible with 20 amp outlets under the theory that the 20 amp outlet is more than sufficient to supply a 15 amp load. That decision was made in the 20th century and is impractical to change. Prohibiting <20 amp cords from being plugged into a 20 amp outlet would then effectively be a prohibition on <20 amp cords, but 20 amp cords are more expensive and almost never necessary, especially in homes that typically have 15 amp breakers.
Should they have designed the plugs better before, so that you can plug a 15 amp load into a 20 amp outlet but not a 15 amp extension cord? Sure, but it's too late for that.
You're essentially asking for a law that wastes many metric tons of copper and raises prices on everyone in exchange for a marginal safety improvement in an edge case for people who aren't paying attention. It's exactly the sort of poor cost/benefit rule that shouldn't exist.
> This free market and competitive market that people always talk about does not exist and never can truly exist. How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?
It's not just a question of how many companies currently sell them, it's a question of who else would sell them if that company started abusing its customers and the customers started soliciting alternate suppliers. In other words, what would it take for someone else to start making those machines?
And putting more rules on how you can do it makes it harder to compete, and reduces that competitive pressure.
> Should the EU abandon the USB-C charger and allow Apple to keep producing the lightening charger, increase unnecessary e-waste? Selling the lightening exclusive helped increase Apple's bottom monetary line. So should EU allow Apple to move back to the lightening charger?
The premise here is competitive markets. Apple is a vertically integrated conglomerate, which impairs competition. The EU shouldn't be demanding they use a particular standard (which is now enshrined in law and prohibits any future innovations), they should be breaking the company into operating systems and Apple Silicon and phones, so that the phone maker has the same incentive to use the current standard as any other.
> Should we completely abandon all food manufacturing standards and allow Johnson and Johnson to sell asbestos in their baby powder or Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis to sell baby formula with cronobacter?
Selling baby powder with asbestos in it without listing asbestos as an ingredient is fraud. Listing asbestos as an ingredient is not likely to garner a lot of sales.
> USA McDownlad's has show they are willing to lower their standards when they can make more money from having to service their franchise's ice cream machines instead having quality and making money on the profit of their ice products.
But why is this a problem when you can buy ice cream from Wendy's or become a franchisee of some other restaurant chain?
> Which machine would you prefer using daily, along with your loved ones? Model A or Model B? One that can take off a limb and even decapitate you or the one that cannot?
But that's the point, isn't it? If there is competition, i.e. both are available, which one do you buy?
Apollo private equity buys a respected but financially struggling baby food company and starts putting asbestos in it to cut costs. After kids start getting sick, nobody really feels better that asbestos was listed on the label and that the free market is going to correct it.
Not everyone reads the label, but enough people do that it would be discovered on the first day, if not before the first day as some retailers check for label changes before putting a modified product on their shelves. Any retailer who didn't notice this to begin with would then notice the front page story condemning the company for doing it and all of the products would be removed from the shelves and returned to the manufacturer to save the retailer from the reputation hit of carrying it in their store. The manufacturer's reputation would be destroyed and no one would be willing to carry their products, depriving them of the incentive to do this because it would immediately tank the company, and this would be an obvious outcome to private equity firms who want to make rather than lose money.
Notice that you can currently buy things like arsenic for use as rat poison and this is not a problem because the label tells you that it's arsenic so you know not to use it as a food additive.
Meanwhile the EU bathes in the same Chinese garbage imported by the boat-load as long as it carries the CE mark, which they are allowed to self-certify in nearly every case, making it meaningless.
Yes, some products have been found with incorrect dimensions on their CE markings. Yes, some products have been found with non-compliant specifications. But AFAIK no products, having been accused of non-compliant specifications in spite of CE markings, have ever defended themselves with the excuse that the mark is not a true CE mark but instead some mythical “China Export” mark. It has never happened. It’s an urban myth.
And my grandmother could get some wheels and become a bicycle.
Amusingly the same legislation also mandates that "A company must not be registered under [the companies act] by a name that, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, consists of or includes computer code.”
So no more "drop tables" company names.
The problem with fraud is what else these same people are organizing themselves to do. Today it's fake gadgets, tomorrow it's fentyl precursors, the next day it's kidnap for ransom. You go after it for the same reason the US Federal government took on the mob 60 years ago.
So can amazon staff.
They are still for sale. Lots have negative reviews from people who lost data because these are 64gb drives with reflashed firmware to report 2048gb.
Amazon is next level — it has made a lot of money from being the world’s largest fence. Co-mingled inventory makes it trivial to launder stolen goods. They react to things very slowly, as they are at arms length and both make money having criminal FBA sellers operate and by weakening the competition. Walgreen’s pain is Amazon’s gain.
The brands slowed down for some things — you can’t sell Tide easily on Amazon now. But now Walmart is locking up men’s briefs because the gangs move to the next commodity.
Customers will then suck it up and it becomes the new normal.
I'm curious where you see the short-sightedness of this objectively successful and already long lasting strategy ?
Amazon and eBay should crack down on it so the government doesn't.
History is full of examples of companies doing the right thing if only to prevent government regulation.
Citing a couple would help your argument.
The "business model" of the EU is to check if something is going wrong or could be changed to make the life of European citizens better, to then show that to the industry with "hey, we noticed X - you got a chance to clean up shop on your own, or we will force you by passing laws".
I'm not making an argument. I'm stating a fact that is well-known if you follow business at all.
In the United States, it is common for:
The airline industry is full of examples. This is basic knowledge. Google is your friend.Just put a bad score and ask for refund. Amazon does a good job here as you never interact with the seller
I see plenty of 5 star reviews being edited to 2-3 star reviews afterwards though?
So I take the 50% and give them a bad rating once the money is in my bank account, complete with the documentation of their bribe for a good review. What do they do, realistically? (Probably get the review taken down by the platform administrators, but I did not contribute.)
> they will offer a 50% discount
I feel like I would need more than a 50% discount in order to go along with this...needing to charge/swap a battery more frequently is added cost! :p
Wait how is that supposed to work - why would you buy another bad battery from them at 50% off? why would they have any say in why review you leave?
As you cannot deny cookies without paying.
Stop pushing EU-wide laws you cannot yourself adhere to.
The GDPR states that consent should be freely given and one can argue that forcing you to choose between payment our tracking is not a free choice but cohersed. I personally think that interpretation is correct.
Since a large part of German media in also doing the same, they are lobbying for this to only apply to "large online providers".
Here is a good writeup on the situation: https://iapp.org/news/a/pay-ok-or-a-third-way-context-analys...
Edit - ok, being downvoted - how should content be monetized if both targeted ads and subscriptions are off the table? Are we saying GDPR requires a site to operate off generic, non-targeted ads?
I think Google's flock was the only serious attempt to solve this, but obviously it got heavily criticised by HN fundamentalists who think that the web should be entirely free and ad-free with zero tracking. To be fair it does have a rather big practical issue in that only Google has any incentive to actually implement it (I don't see why Microsoft or Mozilla or Apple would ever bother).
We're probably stuck with tracking unless the EU gets some sense and mandates a do-not-track style preference system, and actually enforces it with fines.
How is this site’s “Pay or Take a Cookie” approach worse for the consumer than a total paywall?
I’d rather we didn’t have to have annoying ads, but generating and hosting content costs money.
Then even the small part of the population that would consider going through the process of adding yet another subscription to their life either leaves or consents to tracking, because who's going to pay 5 EUR (and Heise is pretty "cheap" compared to some) for access to one article?
I would not be so angry with the concept if the costs, and the effort necessary to pay, was more in line with the income from personalised ads. Pay two cents per view with the push of a button? Sure. Pay 2 EUR for a week of access? Maybe. But so many publications want me to pay almost a print subscription price for any access, clearly showing they don't intend this as a real alternative.
There's plenty of options, but they can only be explored once nobody offers news in exchange for personal data. People used to pay for physical newspapers, and it worked, better than the current web approaches IMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_or_pay
At that point you may as well just cover the entire screen with a "Agree to anything" button
That seems to be too cheap to be true.
still dont understand how a major disk maker got caught up in something as skeezy as this though
I'm not sure what you mean by "caught up in". You make it sound like their employees were involved. It's a pretty universal organized crime problem affecting all sorts of industries - used part dealers rolling back the odometer on things and sneaking them back into the supply chain as low milage or new. A store might be an "authorized distributor" but that doesn't mean they can't be tricked by a fake salesperson. Every brand battles counterfeiters and fraudsters somewhat. Here's a Western Digital odometer reset for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9u6QwTsW8 Gotta be careful what alleyway you buy your rolexes from.
None of the drives in this article were shipped by Seagate, only some by authorized resellers.
EG, Amazon, newegg are authorized resellers.
Any other seller is (at a glance) indistinguishable as a legitimate business or a scalper/scammer.. and there's plenty of legitimate businesses operating in the grey area in-between too.
Documentation is easy to find online. There's commands giving access to a lot of functionality. Modifying SMART values is trivially done.
Thus, they likely wrote a script that gets the job done in seconds. Attach device to hdd and remove when LED turns red. Done, next.
Seagate could make this a little harder, but hasn't. This is likely the case only because nobody has abused this at a scale before.
Most of the time, they just resell products from factories who didn't pass the quality tests.