if I want to buy some obscure gadget from a Chinese company
Buy it from aliexpress for 1/4 the price.
Are those guys really any better than Amazon?
For sure. They’re not all great, but they’re all better than Amazon if you’re looking at things from a worker treatment or anti-monopolistic standpoint. I’ve never heard of best buy workers pissing in jars because they can’t take a long enough break to go to the bathroom.
This is just false. That thing you’re buying from Amazon? Just go to the manufacturer’s website and buy it directly. Or if it’s a no-name thing like a generic charging cable, just buy it from literally any other generic [category] retailer.
My wife and I got sick of paying for prime, so we decided to try going a couple months buying as much as we can directly from the brand’s website. It’s easy. Customer service is way better, selection is way better, I don’t have to worry about getting fake crap. Only downside is that shipping usually takes longer, but that’s a small price to pay.
Amazon sucks.
You’ve thoroughly demonstrated yourself to be entirely devoid of any real knowledge or experience in this area, and yet you’re continuing to pontificate. You’re clearly enjoying the sensation of having an audience to which you can monologue from a place of ignorance ad nauseam, and I’m depriving you of that. Trust me, you may not be intelligent enough to tell, but I’m doing you a favor. Like averting my eyes when the mentally ill transient defecates himself on the streets. He may not know it, but it’s a mercy not to observe someone in such a state.
Please, feel free to continue. And I’ll continue doing you the kindness of allowing you the uninterrupted company of the only person ignorant enough to think any of your unfounded claims are intelligent.
Not gonna read all that lol you are a goofy little guy aren’t ya.
At its root, it is a TEST
No, at its root, this is an educational article meant to teach about recognizing internet scams. It includes a quiz designed to help you determine your natural reaction to many popular scams, along with information about best practices for how to identify them.
This differs from a test, which is designed to quantify your current knowledge on a topic. Sure, the article used a quiz as a teaching aid, but the results of the quiz aren’t the point and don’t matter. Which makes it super weird how you and others are getting so butthurt about thinking you deserved a perfect score, but we’re robbed by an unfair test.
Unless specified any TEST provides in the question the information to determine the answer
This is a foolish assumption outside of the context of academic examinations. There’s no reason to assume that’s a requirement on an online quiz, where many of the explanations of the answers specifically tell you that the best way to identify some scams is to verify information with authoritative sources.
You and I both know if we create a test phishing email with no mistakes, it’s not a failure if people click on it. It’s a failure on our part for creating a BAD TEST.
The best test phishing emails realistically emulate actual phishing emails. Intentionally adding errors only serves to train employees to catch bad phishing attacks. Regardless, I’m not sure what your point is, since every one of the scam examples here does contain either verifiably false information, or obvious scam indicators.
I’m the CEO of an anti-phishing training corporation that services multiple Fortune 500 companies and has a yearly revenue of over 10m USD (I can also share unverified credentials to make myself seem more credible).
Someone could potentially build a website that makes their phishing attempt seem more credible, and maybe they could get that website ranked highly on Google (even though that is far from straightforward for a website presenting fraudulent information to do), but that’s a total red herring. The article didn’t recommend that people Google for a single random website that confirms the questionable information, the recommendation was that you should check multiple authoritative sources.
You are absolutely wrong. Not surprising that you’re (ostensibly) able to scam the technologically illiterate with such bad information, a little ironic that your scam involves getting them to think that you’re teaching them how to avoid scams.
The correct thing to do if you got that email would be to try to verify the information that it presents. Is Geek Squad Academy a real thing? How much does their antivirus cost?
Which is exactly what the article says to do, and what you should have done before answering the question. Of course the getting the questions right doesn’t matter, but the question and explanation are an excellent example of what they’re trying to teach.
Also, the grammar was just a little bit funky in that email. Could just be that the geek squad email writer has funky grammar, but it’s definitely a red flag that should make you want to double check the info in the email.
You (and half the people in this thread) are totally missing the point here.
No where does the article say that you’re supposed to be able to tell if it’s a scam or not just by looking at it. In fact, in multiple places it says that you’ve got to Google use a credible source to externally verify some information to determine that some of the examples are scams.
The point of the article is to teach people how to recognize scams, it would be totally useless if it imposed the constraint that you can’t look for context. If you’re actually trying to recognize scams IRL, you should be doing exactly what the article says and looking for authoritative corroboration of any information in the potential scam.
Yeah, but the point is that if you open a web browser and look that settlement up, you’ll find a ton of authoritative sources that link back to that URL.
The point of this wasn’t to see if you could tell if each thing was likely to be a scam in the context that you would genuinely run into them.
If my grandma approached me with the class action website and asked if I was a scam, I’d tell her “it looks really suspicious, let’s see if we can find anything from a credible source that will link to this website.” Which is exactly what the article tells you to do. Of course nobody could just magically know if a screenshot of a webpage is scam just by looking at it.
The other options all either give you enough information in the screenshot to be able to Google a couple things and say “it’s a scam” confidently (class action, geek squad), or they’re full of super blatant red flags (Zelle bike).
I use windows for ~10 hours per day, 5 or 6 days per week because my team is currently maintaining a legacy .NET framework codebase. I’m sure there are people on earth who use windows more than I do, but I think it’s extremely unlikely that you’re one of them.
Sure.
MacOS is an excellent workspace operating system, largely due to its near-POSIX compliance and the fact that it has access to the enormous body of tools developed for UNIX-like OSs. For development work in particular, it can use the same free and open source software, configured in the same way, that Linux uses. Aside from the DE, a developer could swap between Linux and MacOS and barely realize it. Everything from Node, to Clang, to openJDK, to Rust, along with endless ecosystems of tooling, is installable in a consistent way that matches the bulk of online documentation. This is largely in contrast to Windows, where every piece of the puzzle will have a number of gotchas and footguns, especially when dealing with having multiple environments installed.
From a design perspective, MacOS is opinionated, but feels like it’s put together by experts in UX. Its high usability is at least partially due to its simplicity and consistency, which in my opinion are hallmarks of well-designed software. MacOS also provides enough access through the Accessibility API to largely rebuild the WM, so those who don’t like the defaults have options.
The most frequent complaint that I hear about MacOS is that x feature doesn’t work like it does in windows, even though the way that x feature works in windows is steaming hot garbage. Someone who’s used to Windows would probably need a few hours/days to become as fluent with MacOS, depending on their computer literacy.
People also complain about the fact that MacOS leverages a lot of FOSS software, while keeping their software closed-source and proprietary. I agree with this criticism, but I don’t think it has anything to do with how usable MacOS is.
I’m not going to start a flame war about mobile OSs because I don’t use a mobile OS as my primary productivity device (and neither should you, but I’m not your mom). The differences between mobile OSs are much smaller, and are virtually all subjective.
You’re welcome.
Having the highest market share doesn’t mean that windows uses logical conventions, it just means that lots of people are accustomed to the conventions that it uses. The vast majority of professionals that I’ve interacted with strongly dislike having to work on a windows machine once they’ve been exposed to anything else.
Off of the top of my head, the illogical conventions that Windows uses are: storing application and OS settings together in an opaque and dangerous, globally-editable database (the registry), obfuscating the way that disks are mounted to the file system, using /cr/lf for new lines, using a backslash for directory mappings, not having anything close to a POSIX compatible scripting language, the stranglehold that “wizards” have on the OS at every level, etc. ad nausium. Most of these issues are due to Microsoft deciding to reinvent the wheel instead of conforming to existing conventions. Some of the differences are only annoying because they pick the exact opposite convention that everyone else uses (path separators, line endings), and some of them are annoying because they’re an objectively worse solution than what exists everywhere else (the registry, installation/uninstallation via wizards spawned by a settings menu).
For basic usability functions, see the lack of functional multi-desktop support 20 years after it became mainstream elsewhere. There is actually no way to switch one monitor to a 2nd workspace without switching every monitor, which makes the feature worse than useless for any serious work. In addition to that, window management in general is completely barebones. Multitasking requires you to either click on icons every time you want to switch a window, or cycle through all of your open windows with alt-tab. The file manager is kludgy and full of opinionated defaults that mysteriously only serve to make it worse at just showing files. The stock terminal emulator is something out of 1995, the new one that can be optionally enabled as a feature is better, but it still exposes a pair of painful options for shells. With WSL, the windows terminal suddenly becomes pretty useful, but having to use a Linux abstraction layer just serves to support the point that windows sucks.
I could go on and on all day, I’m a SWE with a decade of experience using Linux, 3 decades using Windows, and a few years on Mac here and there. I love my windows machine at home… as a gaming console. Having to do serious work in windows is agonizing.
Of the three major desktop operating systems, windows is by far the worst.
The only advantage windows has is that Microsoft’s monopolistic practices in the 90s and 00s made it the de-facto OS for business to furnish employees with, which resulted in it still having better 3rd party software support than the alternatives.
As an OS, it’s hard to use, doesn’t follow logical convention’s, is super opinionated about how users should interact with it, and is missing basic usability features that have been in every other modern OS for 10+ years. It’s awesome as a video game console, barely useable as an adobe or autodesk machine, but sucks as a general purpose OS.
I was a dedicated Android user from the Galaxy S2 to the Pixel 3, and was on Google phones since the nexus 5. I always had my phone rooted, and until it became too inconvenient, I was really into ROM hopping.
When I got the nexus 5, I vowed not to get another Samsung phone because of how hard they were making it to unlock your bootloader. Then on the pixel 3, Safety Net kept realizing I was rooted and breaking the apps I needed for work, and I realized I was having to plug my phone into my computer to fix things way more than I wanted to. I ended up just running stock because I didn’t want to worry about not being able to log into my mobile banking when I was out of the house.
When I was looking at replacing my pixel 3, it was clear that Google was no longer as root friendly as they once were, so I started looking at other Android options. I wasn’t impressed. It occurred to me that the main reason I’d always avoided Apple was because of the lack of root support
So I went out on a limb and got the iPhone 12 Pro, and to my surprise, I loved it. If you’ve already accepted the idea of leaving the FW stock, it’s perfect. I get updates the day they roll out, the hardware is so much nicer than anything I’ve seen from Android (that’s partially subjective), the software/hardware integration is so good that it blows me away. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much as a UI stutter, I still get a solid 2 days/two nights of battery life on a >2 year old phone. The 3rd party apps are more consistently high-quality, and the native apps actually feel consistent and thought out, rather than feeling like the work of 10 different teams throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And a lot of people don’t care about this, but it’s a huge deal to me; Google is an ad-tech company that sells user data to advertisers. Apple is a hardware company that sells devices to users. The difference in their policies on user privacy are stark, which means I no longer have to worry about every website I visit knowing what prescriptions I’m taking.
Siri is useless, especially compared to Google assistant. Notifications are better on Android. Ecosystem integration is a huge selling point for Apple products, IT really can’t be overstated how well things work together, but that only matters if you are open to owning an Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, an iPad and a MacBook. I miss the *variety * of apps on the Play Store, especially free ones.
I’m not a loyalist for either team, they’ve each got pros and cons, but my best effort at an objective analysis makes me feel that the iPhone is a lot better of a fit for someone like me.
That is false.
Cops aren’t investigating misdemeanor thefts for the same reason that they don’t investigate anything that they’re not forced to. They don’t care.
It’s funny that you blame prop 47 for the fact that cops are refusing to enforce prop 47.
Do you not have pocket lint build up in your phone’s ports over time?
Are you mixed up? Prop 47 reduces jail time for nonviolent and non serious drug and property crimes.
Seems pretty disingenuous to represent that as preventing the police from doing their jobs. Unless you honestly think cops’ job is to maximize the amount of time that drug addicts spend in jail.
Which CA ballot initiative are you talking about stops the police from doing their work?
Sorry but it’s very uncommon for the people who are making a place into somewhere that the underprivileged hate to be the same people that are moving to other places.
If you’ve got the power to drive up housing prices in the state that you currently live in, you’re not going to be in the group that’s moving across the country to have a shot at being successful.
Of course when people can’t earn enough to be successful in CA and move to CO for a better life, the uncreased housing demand in CO is going to bring prices up a bit. But those people aren’t the ones who made CA so expensive. In fact, they’re actively making it less expensive by leaving the state.
Dude you had to bring up Fry’s, every time I think about that place a single tear rolls down my cheek.
Walking into that store used to feel like waking up in Christmas morning.