I once used the analogy of the PM coming to the shop with a car that had a barely running engine and broken windows, and he's only letting me fix the windows.
His response: "I can sell a good looking car and then charge them for a better running engine"...
It feels like there's quite a lot of spin on this. There's no hint as to how many users were actually affected. It only really seems to mention Estonia, and probably only a region of it.
The ISP there claims they haven't received any reports of SPAM. But that sounds wrong. No reports probably means your reporting system is broken.
So putting that together, it seems like a small ISP screwed up and let spammers go wild, and Outlook blocked them for it. I can't really fault Outlook for that.
Someone recently leveraged some kind of automated spam attack against my domain using Zendesk's email servers. For some reason, Zendesk doesn't enforce SPF and DKIM checks when opening new tickets, so I got flooded with "your new account has been registered" and "thank you for filing a ticket" emails.
I blocked off Zendesk entirely because they didn't fix their shitty email system. The other newsletter mail services (mailgun/sendgrid/etc.) are just as bad for this.
There are plenty of reasons why large email senders could (and should) be on reputation blacklists. None of these email delivery companies seem to care very much about the spam they send until shit hits the fan, and now that it did it seems everyone blames the people maintaining the blacklists.
This was widespread, I was also affected. I think you can create spoof tickets / accounts over Https with no verification and zendesk don't want to do anything which adds friction.
My org (USA) was affected. I wasn't the primary person dealing with it, but from what I gather one user marked one of our emails as junk, and then suddenly all of our emails to Outlook users started getting blocked.
One IP address (exclusively ours) among our email IPs at my place of employment was affected. We have used that IP for nine years. Emails are strictly transactional (receipts, password resets, et cetera).
The "rate limiting" started two weeks ago, giving us a code that Microsoft's documentation doesn't even list. It remains unresolved. Never had critical issues like this on our transactional IPs prior to this, and this particular IP address is still delivering just fine to other consumer and corporate email systems.
Your intuition is way off, like dangerously off. But your comment is a great example to show a smug lawyer at Microsoft when they try to say there is no basis for the claim that these blocks against legitimate senders are defamatory.
This has been affecting reputable senders who take spam reporting seriously, including MXRoute and Discourse.
> No reports probably means your reporting system is broken.
"No reports" can mean a lot of things. There is no "probably".
The "you" in "your" is Microsoft because under a certain volume of email, they don't even send reports. I regularly test the abuse contact address for my server because of this exact unfair assumption - that it must be my fault. I have never once gotten an abuse report notification from Microsoft, but I have gotten a bounce message saying that I'm blocked because I apparently send spam! Btw, this was in reply to an email from a Microsoft user.
Worse, I figured I'd just disallow any email from a Microsoft property - if an outlook (or hotmail or live or anyone else) sends an email, I can just bounce it and tell them to use a different service to reach me since I can't reply. Nope! Microsoft won't surface the bounce message to the user.
So, I am barred from replying to Microsoft emails. I am also barred from informing the sender that their email won't reach me.
It's defamation - the sender is always going to assume that it is my fault if I didn't reply even if the reason I "didn't reply" is outside of my control.
> So putting that together, it seems like a small ISP screwed up and let spammers go wild, and Outlook blocked them for it. I can't really fault Outlook for that.
Yes, in your imagined scenario, you can't really fault outlook. In the real world, however, outlook is very much to blame.
This is an extremely widespread issue. I send close to a million emails per month across dozens of different providers (all newsletters.) These are all from high reputation domains and email accounts. We are completely unable to make anything happen with Microslop. It is infuriating.
If you could identify where fees get decoupled from profit in finance, I’d be open to the position that they aren’t related but you didn’t share anything along those lines. Considering the costs like cash-back programs that would erode the profitability of those fees are largely in the banks control, I don’t think that is a strong position.
You are the one implying that the revenue becomes profit. The burden is on you to make the case not on me to prove a negative. There are plenty of high revenue low margin businesses. There are also low revenue high margin businesses. So there is not a direct correlation between revenue and profit.
This is bordering on a non-productive discussion but:
Yes, revenue provides cash flow, not profit. And costs provide the other part, as was already mentioned. But if it increases cash flow without increasing relative costs, it increases profit. Do you think banks would charge fees if they could make more money by removing them? Again, the banks are largely in control of these costs, like the amount of cash back they provide. For example, the federal reserve reports that bank fees account for 1.82% of purchase volume, while cash back programs account for 1.57% of purchase volume. In other words, they make a profit on balance.
You can read the financial statements to get more information. That's where the above numbers came from. They don't generally say "Fees contribute to X% of profits" but they do indicate they are relatively large parts of revenue. For example, JPMorgan lists $5.97B in fee revenue and rewards cost $4.28B, with the difference being profit. So where are the extra costs you are implying coming from that make fees a net cost?
>> Cards don't make money from their fees. They make money from people who fail to pay and then pay the ridiculous interest.
> Interchange fees seem to be a sizable portion of revenue. Discover has listed them as 29% of revenue, BoA at ~$10B annually…
My complaint is that pointing at revenue alone does not rebut the initial statement. That's all. The argument was insufficient, not your side of the argument is wrong.
I understand that, and I was trying to be helpful and foster an discussion instead of snark. I clearly pointed to costs as well, but it didn’t seem to sink in.
Saying “revenue doesn’t equal profits” is superficially true but lacking any real substantive claim. It’s like saying “to lose weight you just need to burn more calories than you consume.” True, but a lazy attempt at a retort.
I tried to foster discussion. If profits = revenue - costs, I asked where those costs are coming from that would erode those profits. Yet again, you replied in a manner that limits discussion. Many of us come to HN because we expect higher levels of discussion than the typical Internet forum cesspool, like the guidelines lay out.
Do people who pay ridiculous interest qualify for 2% cards? Honest question; I don't carry a balance so have no idea what is advertised at other types of consumers.
I was just under the impression that the cards with the best benefits were somewhat harder to get. I do understand that credit card companies make money on interest and late fees, so they should find consumers to be attractive so long as they ultimately pay the bill/interest.
I guess the question is whether they can distinguish between people who are going to carry a balance but ultimately pay and people who are a true default/bankruptcy risk.
My wife wanted one of these so bad that she fought the HOA on it to install one. It's been better than you describe, but yeah... Pamphlets, stolen books, etc. And we know they were "stolen" because if all the good books disappear at once and never return, you know someone stole them.
I've considered getting a stamp... But just haven't bothered yet. If the thefts start to really bother my wife, I'll get one.
She gets a ton of joy from seeing kids use it. And that's what really matters.
I don't understand the meaning of the word "stolen" in this context.
I've never seen a LFL with explicit rules on who can or cannot take out the books, or what they're allowed to do with the books afterward.
If someone sees "all the good books," are they not allowed to want all the good books? What if they take them and don't get around to reading them, are they stealing them?
I understand that there's a potential tragedy of the commons with a LFL, but if I put some of my books in one, am not going to worry about whether they're being read the "right" way. Mostly I'm happy to have had a place to donate my books, and figure there's a non-zero chance they'll be read again.
Sure, but how do you honestly know that? Is it based on the profile of the person you see looking through them? Some people don't look like they should be readers? Or the fact that the "good ones" -- the ones that people presumably want to read -- get taken?
I guess I'm happier not getting angry over things that I don't know for sure, I'm happier generally assuming the best of my neighbors, and I accept that the books are out of my control once I drop them off at the library.
Well first of all if thirty books disappear in one day, that's probably an inorganic usage. If none of them ever reappear, that's another indicator. And then if the person you see taking thirty books is dressed in rags with a shopping cart, you can be pretty confident.
Or maybe OP just means that none of them ever return; it's supposed to be a LF Library after all, not a LF bookshelf.
Huh, I've literally never heard of someone before thinking it's supposed to be a library that you return books to. Must be different attitudes in different places. I've always seen people treat it as a swap-shop. Take some books you want, and some other day drop off some books you want to give away.
Both are okay. Returning or just keeping, as long as you aren't excessive. You aren't supposed to just take all the "good" ones, no matter if you're keeping or selling.
And there's an unspoken rule that you should probably give back, too. It's a community good, not a charity.
I don't understand how it's bad to pirate a book, but fine to freely give one away. Both deprive the author of a sale. Either they should both be allowed or both be prohibited.
Same reason you're allowed to gift your gold watch to someone, or sell your car.
Both of them do potentially deprive the creator of a sale, but they keep the same total number of things in circulation.
Sure, you can argue that philosophically it comes to the same thing, but the problem is that, if you win that argument, the powers that be are more likely to ban giving away things you own than they are to allow piracy...
Interesting idea, but isn't the value of a book derived from the entertainment or reference usage? If I enjoy a story, the transaction is complete. I paid my money, got my product, consumed it , and now I can get another. If I transfer it to someone, the content is potentially consumed twice, but only one payment was made to the author. "Can't have your cake and eat it too - except for books"
It's both regional and depends on how you are perceived.
I'm an introvert and I'm always surprised when a stranger talks to me, no matter where I am. But I make a point of always being pleasant back, no matter how I feel about it at the moment.
Sometimes it's just a couple sentences, and sometimes it's more of a conversation. It'd probably be more if I was better at conversations.
The only exception is if I feel the other person wants something from me, or they seem crazy or dangerous. I don't engage with those types.
#2 - Can be. Or it might actually make a difference.
We had 2 "living room" setups for a while, upstairs and down. We eventually realized how dumb that was, and condensed to 1.
Doing that, we stopped using some really expensive speakers and started using some that were 1/5 the price because we couldn't tell the difference.
Then, one day, I brought those expensive speakers down and set them up. Wow. There was a definite difference after all. I'm not an audiophile and can't tell you what that difference was, just that both of us could immediately tell the expensive speakers were better, and we were not going back to the cheaper ones. Nothing else in the setup changed.
Also, I eventually upgraded the receiver to something that could better drive those speakers. An upgrade from $600 to about $900. And there was a definite difference there, too. The older box should have been enough, but it just wasn't.
Do I recommend that someone on a budget spend $4000 instead of $1500? Nope. It's not enough difference. But for stuff we already had, or for someone that really cares, it's definitely better.
You can't make a bad speaker good, but also: people spend lots on gear, but forget the room. The room can break a good speaker easily.
Also... 'good' is something you first need to agree on when talking with people. Some people like to have 'distorted' playback (compared to the original), because they "like" that better. That is the moment retailers can sell objectively worse but overpriced stuff.
Genelecs for instance are very detailed, neutral etc (there is a reason you see them everywhere in professional settings), but consumers don't necessarily have an appetite for 'objectivity'.
The lessons are questionable. I did the Japanese one, and despite answering all of the incredibly easy questions perfectly, it dumped me into lesson 6, which is also incredibly easy and was the same thing I'd already answered correctly.
Beyond that, some of the Japanese text didn't exactly match what was being said, and some of it was basically the same thing twice, but once with more emphasis. (An exclamation mark.) As a long-time Japanese learner I knew which to expect would be expected as the answer, but a novice would not and it would be just frustrating.
Another was a whole question spoken out loud, but just 1 word from the question as an answer. It can be used like that, but it's asking a lot for a learner to get through it. It's like asking, "Okay?" when you mean "Are you okay?" and expecting a learner to figure it out.
I'm not really sure who this is for. It doesn't seem to fit well for beginner, intermediate, or advanced learners. Beginners need more basic info and explanation. Intermediates probably need things that are more topical. Advanced users probably need things that are more... Well, advanced.
Yeah - on the second point. AI-based Japanese TTS do that, issing arts of ords and/or inexanct with literacy import used. I don't know precisely why, but probably part labeling, part over-acting. Agreed on lessons being shallow.
The UI also hanged the browser for full 5 seconds in places.
It says you "may be licensed" to use the source code under AGPL v3.0, but never actually makes an unambiguous statement that suchandsuch code is licensed under AGPL v3.0.
The concept of MIT licensing a compiled software artifact, but not the code used to generate the artifact, is also extremely strange.
Right, the correct way here is to simply grant _everyone_ a license to _everything_ under the terms of the AGPL (or whatever). You can then separately license portions under other terms.
You don't need to note the commercial licensing option in the license itself; it's irrelevant to that grant. You just state that elsewhere.
They want a conversation to see how you think, not an actual answer.
Which is stupid, because they asked a question that the person didn't need to think to answer. So they didn't get to see them think.
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