Fixing Macs door to door • Hacker News Board

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#151

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:03 PM UTC

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #69

qingcharles wrote: post #48

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequen…

> That job put me in contact with a criminal gang who went on to supply with me dozens of GBs of stolen hard drives that I used to create what was probably the largest warez FTP Statements like this seem to agree with the anti-piracy groups' narrative about piracy being closely related to organized crime, a claim that initially seemed questionable to me.

They ran a legit front business of fitting double-glazed windows I discovered one day by accident, when I ran into them mid-install at a hair salon lol. I'm guessing it gave them some access to the buildings they were stealing from, and at least the opportunity to scope out jobs. The stuff I was buying was mostly commercial, sometimes Sun equipment, etc.

I eventually got raided by the cops and they took all the stuff at my house, but not all the servers which were shoved directly on the JA.NET.

Funnily I would rip off the criminals. Especially on hard drives. They would bring me bags of HDDs and they would say "Hey, we got this 5GB drive for you" and I would bullshit them, "No, that's a 500MB, you're reading it wrong", or "That's unformatted capacity.. it's only 3GB formatted mate".

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#152

Post by flumpcakes » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

christoph wrote: post #92

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That job put me in contact with a criminal gang who went on to supply with me dozens of GBs of stolen hard drives that I used to create what was probably the largest warez FTP Statements like this seem to agree with the anti-piracy groups' narrative about piracy being closely related to organized crime, a claim that initially seemed questionable to me.

Back in the VCD/SVCD/DVD/PS1/PS2 days, piracy was absolutely heavily interwoven with organised criminal gangs. I couldn’t comment on the current state, but I’d be surprised if there was enough money in media piracy for organised crime to even glance at it, given the vast and easy profits now available in narcotics and fraud. “HK silvers” were industrially pressed and printed CDs and DVDS you could buy in any market s…

I am very annoyed by TV and streaming services. I have a very nice TV which I specifically chose because it had Google TV builtin, so I wouldn't have to suffer through any third party TV interfaces.

My gosh, it is not very good. I get advertised TV shows I cannot watch all the time. I have legally purchased several streaming services (netflix/disney/prime/apple/etc.) but I have to open each service as a separate application to just browse.

I do not own a TV license, but I will be advertised shows on iPlayer which I _legally_ cannot watch.

My friend has an illegal IPTV subscription, something in the order of $100 for 12 months of access. This has one single interface that lists thousands of live channels, across multiple countries. It has streaming content from every paid streaming service in one searchable / sortable / listable interface. The provider also has their very own branded 'streaming service' which has content in true 4K HDR. Films ripped from 4K disks in full bitrate.

With the rise of Steam / Netflix I have only not paid to consume media when it was not available in my region, now we have another half-dozen services the content has become fragmented.

I currently pay 4x for 1/10th of the service my friend does with illegal IPTV.

Piracy has become attractive again. I'm not sure how this is going to get solved.

Really I want a service where I pay my $10 a month and can stream/watch _everything_ and the royalties just get paid to the content creator. Much like Spotify does for music. I wonder if we will get the same content fragmentation in music streaming in the future; Swift's new album only releasing on Tide, for example. I hope not.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#153

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #65

qingcharles wrote: post #48

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequen…

Just a PSA (not trying to harp on parent commenter, just taking their comment as an opportunity to soapbox) but never, ever, every go into a room or building that is getting smokey from something burning. It's how you N+1 the casualty/death count in a fire. Unlike the heroes in films and movies, you don't have Plot Armor. It is incredibly common that people think they can just go back in holding their breath or stay…

Yes, it was dumb as hell. I realized that once I'd taken several steps in and could no longer see the way out o_O

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#154

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #44

rfrey wrote: post #26

>I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something I'm not sure why he didn't take…

How does a teenager have access to $500 they haven’t spent and can spend without their parents knowing (especially the kind of parents who’d want tracking on their kids phones)?

Possibly dealing drugs (or prostitution), hence not wanting parents to access their messages? The highschools in my small UK city that are known for having drug problems are the ones with the richer kids.

It seems like poor kids have to get in to crime first to afford drugs, richer kids can just use their pocket money. YMMV.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#155

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

peterpost2 wrote: post #124

qingcharles wrote: post #48

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequen…

>I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. When you applied for the job did they list this under the benefits?

It was mentioned by my predecessor who was then my boss lol. I thought he was joking...

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#156

Post by pseingatl » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #140

yardie wrote: post #96

One of the things I miss by reading this post is how empowered CSRs were back in those days. Today, everything is scripted and highly metricized. Going through the customer service line today will get you the run around and lot of toothless solutions. No one can do anything and even "escalation" mostly means handing you off to another powerless CSR to continue the runaround. This post reminds me of my youth. I had a…

It's interesting how rapidly the beancounters quashed CSR autonomy and put everything behind inscrutable ticketing systems. Even at relatively small companies, with internal tools and support teams this happened pretty rapidly in the 2010s. I've worked at all sorts of small companies with as few as 500 employees where we initially just had a list of "guys" to call for different issues.. and eventually some Big Compan…

Thank McKinsey.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#157

Post by dingdong33 » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #149

smith7018 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also did this in the 2000s and while it was fun to peer into their lives, the amount of porn I was forced to see on elderly people's machines was... not great. Especially during those rare occurrences where they wanted to watch what I was doing to "learn how to use the computer." Just awkward all around.

It's weird, I must have repaired hundreds of computers. Hundreds of backups, reinstalls, but never once did I come across any porn. This was around 1995 though, so it was very early days of the Internet, and pre-digital cameras. Now, in the early 2000s I had to buy dozens of smartphones to test out an SMS relay (SMSC). I bought them all on eBay. Like 70% of them had homemade porn of the owners on them still...!

Could you share them?

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#158

Post by OldGuyInTheClub » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 7:23 PM UTC

Neil44 wrote: post #58

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #13

Thought provoking article. I like to think I acknowledge the people I call for services, at least to the extent they want the conversation. I'm sure there are many more in daily life I don't notice but whose work makes my world go around. The anecdotes about the rich in Chicago match the ones I hear about the rich in California. The divide is nearly complete.

It's just an awkward social situation, and most people just want to be left to get on with their work when they're on the clock.

Building a list of good, reliable service people that one can go to in the future takes effort. Some want the minimum, some like a little give-and-take. Getting that balance is tricky. Becoming known as a good customer can help in some cases both for later work and referrals to other specialists.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#159

Post by gen220 » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 7:24 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #138

Stampson_Gerhig wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year working for an A/V installation company - whole house integrated sound systems, media servers, security, etc - and their clientele was solely multi-millionaires of various nationalities. My job was primarily as a programmer for the control systems these installations used so I spent the majority of my working day in clients homes. They were without exception the most sterile, vapid, soulless environmen…

There's a lot of jobs/markets where the physical hardware is not even remotely the main cost. Think - $2-3k/mo Bloomberg terminal, various proprietary data vendors at $25k/50k/100k per year, etc. If you are professionally managing money (like a family office or something) at a scale of say $1B then having all these soft costs add up to say $1M/year is basically nothing.. 0.1%. In that world, a $1k vs $4k MacBook is b…

These stories of justifying great expenses amuse me, because I can't help but compare them to Warren Buffet's office (which is mostly sports memorabilia, loose papers, a telephone [1]).

>That said, in most cases day trading is basically just high end gambling and a mechanism of turning a large fortune into a small one.

Poignant! There are plenty of people and businesses happy to pry off a chunk along the way. :)

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/take-a-candid-and-personal-t...

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#160

Post by jamiek88 » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #150

freedomben wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something t…

Uhm if you're fixing PCs as I did you don't end up working for meth-toothed people :P Maybe not the most attractive people no, but regular middle-class people at the very least. Especially when you were fixing macs which were even more premium priced here in Europe back then than they are now. I fixed all sorts of stuff but I would not have marginalised clients. I guess it's also why I didn't get such offers :P I did…

> he said that in the US everyone would be eager to do some work for money on the side and here he's always having issues getting IT help

Well that’s just bollocks. Perhaps young teenagers are typically okay with earning a bit or forced by their parents to help but it certainly is not the cultural norm that grown ass salaried professionals jump at the chance to earn $50 sorting their neighbors WiFi out.

He just thought he’d found another sucker and was annoyed when you turned out to have a backbone, because you are absolutely right this guy would become what is often called in the trades a ‘sinsya’.

‘Sinsya’ fixed my printer my WiFi doesn’t work as well. Did you break it?

‘Sinsya’ fixed my WiFi my washing machine doesn’t do the hot cycle properly. You were messing with the ‘wires’ weren’t you?

Etc etc fucking etc.

If he called a professional company to help he’d have no issues ‘here’ but he’d also have to pay the going rate.

What he means is back home he has a network large enough to exploit and doesn’t have to worry about learning how to do it or pay a professional.