Too many steps. Honestly just delete your account, the app and forget about it. After a few days the people who matter will text you or find a way to reach you and that's it.
Yeah, I left Facebook a decade back. Zero issues keeping in touch with folks that mattered. On the rare occasion I need to find someone I lost for something, it's been trivial.
It's no impressive, it's scummy hiding news behind a paywal, they simple use some CSS trickery to set the height of the content to the size of your view, so there is nowhere to scroll to.
I don't think I understand what you mean, the "not particularly dangerous" comment was in relation to the vulnerability that was found right ? Surely they would know what constitutes a lower severity level.
My guess is that it is in category of "you are holding it wrong". Still worth fixing, but requires very specific user input for example. Or very weird scenario. Or in some less used protocol or flag combination.
> The single confirmed vulnerability is going to end up a severity low CVE planned to get published in sync with our pending next curl release 8.21.0 in late June
My mind still cannot understand the quality and refinement that's gone into cURL. It really is the perfect example of something done so right, that people barely think twice about.
Easy, it shows what is achievable if there is a high bar for quality in every single line of code that gets commited, reviewed and merged, regardless of the programming language.
However in the days of race to bottom, offshoring for penies, and now LLM powered code generation, this is a quality most companies won't care unless there is liability in place.
> Easy, it shows what is achievable if there is a high bar for quality in every single line of code that gets commited
This is becoming a more and more overlooked/underrated feature. I genuinely believe it would be impossible in any company that depends on shareholder value. I am yet to convince any company I've worked in without bloody hands that we need to solve old tech debt and refactor certain things etc.
If you can get that message across the right way, you're a better company man than me. There's always someone more important than me to say 'but this needs to be delivered first'.
Curl and SQLite are my favourite examples of properly engineered, rigourously tested _anything_. It's really philosophical - those projects' contribution requirements demand such rigor, and the maintainers stand by that demand. A non-load-bearing document (not project code) is what makes that possible - very reminiscent of Einstein's thought experiments leading to tangible projects such as GPS or Descartes's belief that all problems can be solved through rational thinking.
Some people must be working on training some models exclusively on high quality OSS code base like curl and SQLite without the noise of low quality training data.
I would do that with 100% local models from scratch.
> My mind still cannot understand the quality and refinement that's gone into cURL. It really is the perfect example of something done so right, that people barely think twice about.
And all that to then end with people doing: "curl ... | bash" and not seeing anything wrong about it. Then they'll deflect about "threat models" and other non-sense.
I leave you your curl-bash, I keep my cryptographically signed packages installer.
> Pix is a good local idea, but the world needs something better.
There is no problem to continue using maybe Visa/Mastercard when dealing abroad or external, but when you are a normal citizen, it's far better to use Pix in this case, you are supporting a national company, paying fee's to them and not at the whims of an external countries policies.
Edit: They also tend to be non profits ironically enough.
In Ireland many years ago there was a system called "Laser" which was very similar, the only reason it was changes was for 'convenience' but in reality it was because Visa and MC had taken over all the POS market, and so Laser cards couldn't give cash back. So the banks just folded.
I can't wait to see Europe being some competition to the duopoly that is Mastercard and Visa.
> in reality it was because Visa and MC had taken over all the POS market
Do you happen to have any insight on this? I mean, how is it that one or two companies can manage to squeeze everyone else out so completely? If two big players control Point of Sales (POS), shouldn't someone be able to come in and make a business out of underselling the competition? I would think that smaller overhead means smaller margins are needed.
I've talked to small businesses about fees and charges for their POS and they are always thrilled when people pay with cash, because it means they get the full amount. (These conversations have come up because I've run small businesses in the past, and I remember how horrible it felt to "sell" something for $30, only to get like...$5 out of it between fees, taxes, and insurance costs. It seems like every business I've spoken to hates Visa and MasterCard with a passion, so I would think that small business would be thrilled to have a new player.
At a guess, I would think that part of(?) the reason may be due to (and rightfully so) whatever regulations are in place to force money transfer companies into meeting certain security ratings or whatever. Even so, surely there are people that are willing to fight for a piece of the action, right? It seems crazy to me that no one else sees that as an opportunity to do it better. I'd really like it if fees for small-to-medium businesses could be dropped entirely, and it was only the major players that offset the costs for everyone else.
Do you mean that they have lobbied virtually all countries though, or what? I don't understand how they can be so dominant on a kind of global scale. I suppose there may be some places where they are not (I.e. North Korea, and a few other outliers) but I would assume they do have a certain amount of broad, global reach. Have they really just managed to bribe/make "friends" with (almost) every country on the planet?
> If two big players control Point of Sales (POS), shouldn't someone be able to come in and make a business out of underselling the competition
When your business depends on a customer focused payment, your primary goal is reach, more possible customers, bigger market. If a competitor or offering lower fees, it's still fees, of which those userbase might cross over. I hate this framing of the problem as a "well it's the shops fault"
It's short sighted limiting. And ridiculously oversimplified. Steam being dictated what they can sell being a great example thanks to pressure from the visa and MC duopoly.
Thanks for the response. I'm not quite getting it though. Are you saying something like, "If there are fees, the amount of those fees between A, B, and C are relatively inconsequential"? Or something else? I would think that if I am shop owner, I want to get as much of the sale as I can. So, if Company A and Company B both want 7%, but Company C only wants 4%, I'm going to switch from A/B to C as soon as I can. I don't get why there isn't a Company C trying to snag more shops in that way.
I'm also not very well versed in what you mean about Steam; are there specific types of games that Visa and MasterCard have prevented them from selling recently? I've used that service for a number of years now, and usually the only titles I don't see on there are ones that have some kind of exclusivity deal either with a gaming console, or with Epic or whatever. I know that they had some controversy a while back over the game "Hatred".
I have also been a little grossed out at the amount of Hentai-like content they've started to allow on their platform, but once I turned on the "Hide adult-content" setting, and setup a few additional filters, it's been pretty painless for me. Is there other types of games that they want to sell, but have been prevented from selling?
Europe already has plenty of alternative card systems e.g. France's Cartes Bancaires (CB) and ironically Germany just last year turned it's Girocard/Maestro system off in favour of Visa/Mastercard; the problem is the banks in individual countries in Europe are not willing to give up their control in favour of a compatible standard.
Germany didn't turn off Girocard that's just fake News.
I literally paid yesterday using Girocard.
It also works with some big German retailers outside of Germany (like with Billa in Austria which is a subsidiary of Rewe Group)
Maestro and Visa just stopped offering Maestro/V-Pay so they can charge the higher fees vor Visa/MasterCard. The only thing that changed is the Co-Badge on most Girocards
> the problem is the banks in individual countries in Europe are not willing to give up their control in favour of a compatible standard
Well this is flat out wrong. Every countries banking system pays fees for processing visa and MasterCard. When there is a viable alternative in place with less fees, the bank like any money making enterprise will take it. Framing it as "countries" blocking it demonstrates you either have an agenda against EU or you're not sure how the EU works.
Europe spends way too much time and money on various Fintech pet projects. There's the Digital Euro and then there's Wero and Target and a bunch of other shit that doesn't reach consumer scale usage or attention.
And your point is what? That nothing should ever be investigated, trials, or invested in until it has as you call it "consumer scale useage".
The EU is not perfect, but these kind of black and white comments highlight why it can be slow to align everyone to get on board with an idea. The empty vessle makes the most noise.
No, my point is to focus on one thing and get it done right. The right time to build an EU-wide payments processor was pre-COVID, as is the case with Pix, UPI, WeChat Pay, etc. If developing countries can build one over the course of a decade, what stopped the EU? Project managers and CV padding bureaucrats who really weren't serious about doing a good job. Compare that to the concerted efforts by the central banks in India and Brazil to actually work with the private sector to build out this system.
The EU has had the plumbing needed for this since at least 2 decades, yet has not managed to create this.
Again, that's a silly argument, when you're saying "It should have been done before" but at the same time saying "Europe spends way too much time and money on various Fintech pet projects."
> If developing countries can build one over the course of a decade
What countries are you talking about ? The EU countries have some, we also have instant IBAN transfers without any payment processor, we have PCI compliance in all banks to allow it. This feels like another example of you not knowing what you're talking about when you say 'The EU has had the plumbing needed for this since at least 2 decades, yet has not managed to create this.'.
The foundations to never rely on payment processors is already there, now we need to remove the dependancy on payments like visa and mastercard because of nescessity. And as someone above posted, it in progress, it will be done standardised across the entire EU, in Brazil, it's one country.
Edit : There was also never a demand for it because the EU reasonably assumed it could rely on US partners to cover areas in which the EU didn't focus. Only recently those priorities changed, politics has that effect here of dealing with the most pressing issues and not those that are lobbied for the hardest.
> So if this sort of "insider trading" is bad, what does this mean for other sorts off strategies hedge funds do to get an edge, like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are?
This is allowed because you've gotten that extra information through your own methods that in theory anyone else can get access to. The problem here is they're using information that nobody else could possibly have access to, therefore its "insider" trading and it's been illegal for a long time.
And when they need to find a way to circumvent this, they will ask for the full height picture without clothes on. Instead of addressing the problem of this entire idea and implementation they will continue to double down on it.
If they can do some accounting trickery to pull this off then they deserve it. Makes zero sense to me but I did not think GameStop had even close to that in assets.
It's the leveraged buyout playbook. You buy a company and use its own assets to secure a loan. Then you "find efficiencies" (strip it for parts to pay yourself and the creditors).
In this case, if the deal goes through at the price given, eBay's liquid assets are untouched. The cash portion is paid out entirely through the loan and Gamestop's cash.
This debt will carried by company resulting from merge. It might be not classic leveraged buyout but if they have any trouble with repaying it, it will end in asset liquidation all the same.
Yes, the loan is the leverage. It's secured against the assets of eBay. If the acquisition fails to produce efficiencies the resulting company has a bunch of extra, arguably unnecessary debt from the acquisition that a free-standing eBay wouldn't have.
In theory eBay should be one of those bubbly dot-com companies that kind of settled into a lifestyle business by virtue of longevity. It's no longer commanding insane multiples but it has revenue and a dedicated fanbase. They sold off Paypal which was (afaik) the only stable/growing part of the company.
So you're taking a big, but slow-changing auction website and stapling it to a dying brick-and-mortar retail business which survives on meme stock issuance and their die-hard fanbase gambling.
They own eBay + GME + some financial alchemy. If you aren't a financial wizard you should assume that the value of the financial alchemy is negative. (Because 99% of the time it is.) Now, what are the synergies of eBay + GME that outweighs the chaos caused by the merger and the finance stuff?
I’m not totally sure how it would be structured but if GME is the purchaser then the merged company would be listed under GME and eBay would become a brand in the GME group and no longer a stock listed under the eBay ticker.
The whole thing seems incredibly dubious and fishy. The eBay board should vote this down which is why the CEO of GME has already realised that and said he’ll appeal to the shareholders directly. If eBay wanted to load themselves with twenty billion dollars of unnecessary debt and extra complications which would kill the company then they could do it themselves. They’re not in that kind of business.
There is, literally, nothing fishy about this offer. It’s a cash and stock offer from a public company to public company shareholders. We could call the financial or shareholder benefits to ebay dubious (I don’t hold any opinion about this) but this is a very aggressive offer, and allows the chance for GME to keep some cash - if enough shareholders of ebay opt for stock, then they’ll have cash available after. Plus they’d keep whatever current net assets ebay has.
ebay was at like 100 before the offer went out, it’s trading up to 120 or so in early hours this morning, so speculators and institutional desks do not find this offer fishy or dubious - they are pricing it as likely to be pretty well received.
As a side note, one of many plays you might make in this situation is what Cohen has done here; they bought a bunch of options. Those options are now worth a lot; before the letter if it was all options, they controlled $2b of EBAY shares, today that’s $2.6b. We might imagine the options at least doubled the underlying return. The market had not priced in a rapid jump to $120 when he bought them. If the deal closes, then this will put at least another billion or two of liquid capital into GME.
TD Bank also believes it will work, i.e. return them a profit.
They've seen the detailed plans and I haven't. But they're the ones with real skin in the game. It seems like an opportunity for them to lose their shirts.
So yeah, eBay shareholders should take TD Bank's free money and run.
TD Bank believes it will make them a profit. Their interests are not those of eBay’s shareholders: if they can juice the financials long enough to sell their loan, they don’t care if the company goes bankrupt the minute after that sale closes.
reply