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Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

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Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#101

Post by michaelt »

ndiddy wrote: post #100
michaelt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. [...] What's going on here? Basically a lot of global logistics runs on trust. If a driver is delivering a pallet to the FooCorp warehouse, he doesn't get given a copy of the FooCorp org chart, or get an example signature to compare against the signature they're given, or get given a map or a secret password or anything…

The article you're commenting on mentions that FedEx didn't deliver the pallets of handhelds to the warehouse, but instead left them at an unrelated construction site next door. This is clearly FedEx's fault, they didn't even deliver to the correct address.

Sure, FedEx shouldn't have delivered to the wrong address.

I'm just saying it's totally normal for the names and signatures to go unchecked when the goods are handed over.

The driver can't validate someone is a real employee before handing over the delivery. There's no mechanism for that.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#102

Post by treesknees »

romanhn wrote: post #53

Interesting choice to go with a PI who's focused on recovery rather than criminal convinctions. Given the lack of sophistication in this operation, I suspect recovery would have happened either way, and the thieves might have faced some actual consequences. As is, they didn't lose anything other than the stolen items and will likely continue to capitalize on similar opportunities in the future.

Playdate likely took the initial interactions with the police as a sign of how that would play out. It was already slower and a lot more work, including flying to Las Vegas in-person, to involve law enforcement.

Maybe those construction workers will steal again. But also maybe they realized how easily they were found out, how hard it actually is to offload stolen goods, and decide it’s not worth the hassle to steal again.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#103

Post by philistine »

kruador wrote: post #97
michaelt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better controlled delivery services presumably exist for things like delivering cash to banks, drugs to pharmacies and suchlike. Hell, there are food delivery companies where the customer gets a secret code they have to give to the driver. As far as FedEx is concerned, though? They were not contracted to get any specific name or signature. They were contracted to deliver to a certain address. The GPS says the driver…

If you look at the map, Shipfusion is 4350 North 5th Street, North Las Vegas. The Circle K is literally next door, on the intersection of North 5th Street and East Craig Road. See https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wz6iNaViGf3ToM1U6 . I think what happened here is that the FedEx driver was in such a hurry to drop off that he saw a bunch of people apparently outside Shipfusion, stopped and said 'Hey, delivery for you', rather th…

If you had listened to the podcast, you could have learned through the grapevines that FedEx fired the driver.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#104

Post by forrestthewoods »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #43
forrestthewoods wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting downvoted but I actually quite appreciated it. Story is interesting enough I'll listen to the whole podcast! I can't do that for every single podcast link that I come across. There's not enough time in the year much less the day.

It's AI generated, how do I know if it's accurate? It could be making up the whole thing.

AI summary tools are probably more accurate than the average HN comment!

It’s useful not because it lets you skip the podcast and get all the info. But because it gives a glimpse and lets you decide whether to listen for 60 minutes or not.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#105

Post by jna_sh »

piqufoh wrote: post #58
saagarjha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing the AI hallucinated it.

Yeah - I don't have an hour to listen to the podcast or read the transcript. I got an AI to summarise the article and it saved me the time, I thought someone else might appreciate the summary (and it appears they did). Perhaps next time I'll add TL;got-an-llm-to-do-it or something

“I don’t have time to know what really happened so I had something hallucinate a series of events that didn’t happen and that was good actually” is such a fascinating take

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#106

Post by piqufoh »

jna_sh wrote: post #105
piqufoh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - I don't have an hour to listen to the podcast or read the transcript. I got an AI to summarise the article and it saved me the time, I thought someone else might appreciate the summary (and it appears they did). Perhaps next time I'll add TL;got-an-llm-to-do-it or something

“I don’t have time to know what really happened so I had something hallucinate a series of events that didn’t happen and that was good actually” is such a fascinating take

thanks
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