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Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

podcast.play.date

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Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#71

Post by johnnyanmac »

Toorkit wrote: post #46
supermatt wrote: post #22

I wanted to buy a playdate when they first came out, but unfortunately they weren't shipping to my country. Now they do, so I just placed an order 15 mins ago and my partner just received a call from the bank to verify that it wasn't a fraudulent transaction. She just asked me - what is this "play date" you just sent $300 to? Oh dear. :D

Then you say "it's a handheld gaming device" and the matter is settled.

Then she asks why you spend $300 for a Gameboy when you already have a PS5 and Switch, and at this point you just get the guest room ready for yourself tonight.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#72

Post by anymouse123456 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #52
jatins wrote: post #29

wait FedEx just delivers 400k worth of stuff without any KYC or OTP verification??

UPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not. I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.

FedEx employees in our region are consistently grumpy, unhelpful, and extremely abusive with packages.

We got video of one FedEx guy kicking retail Apple Computer boxes off the back of his big rig (destroyed 2x iMacs).

Our UPS drivers are consistently cheerful, helpful and considerate with the packages they carry.

The contrast grows dramatically if you ever suffer some misfortune that requires a phone call into corporate. FedEx is reliably crabby, unhelpful and actively belligerent.

These two companies are a perfect illustration of what happens when you make it obvious to your staff how you feel about them.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#73

Post by sakjur »

gambiting wrote: post #54
whazor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipment insurance is normally an optional add-on. IMO, if the shipper doesn’t get it, it is on them. It is nicer for the shipper to decide the value and pay the corresponding price for that. Because you need to know the replacement value of that lost item. This is dependent on all kinds of factors.

Is there any scenario where someone would knowingly decide not to take insurance on a 400k shipment? What would be the reason for doing so? In this case the shipper is the company behind the Playdate, so it seems weird to me they wouldn't insure their own stock. But maybe there's a good reason why this isn't done?

I’m not sure about Playdate, but for a larger company, it’ll be beneficial to stop paying fpr the insurance after a while — the insurance companies bank on the difference between risk tolerance for individuals and in groups. Your liquidity might not be able to survive an event that is fairly insignificant in the context of a larger group (say your house burning down — devastating for you, but zooming out to a city-level it happens occasionally).

Larger companies can develop a higher risk tolerance in-house and eliminate the middle hand, and that’ll let them siphon the excess to their shareholders rather than the insurance company.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#74

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwaind29k wrote: post #66
beAbU wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment fells too reddit esque for me, as if it's crafted to solicit upvotes or "facebook up, hit your lawyer and delete the gym" style comments. - Why is your partner getting the call from the bank when you placed the order? - If it's a shared account, why would you not forewarn your partner about this transaction? If I'm about to buy pay for something big from our joint account, I sure as hell let my partner k…

It does feel very reddit-esque the comment, because it seems a tad like an interesting yarn to farm attention without having content of substance.

HN tells personal stories all the time. I think they just wanted to tell a little joke about how suspicious the word "PlayDate" sounds out of context. I don't think it's so egregious to warrant the 3rd degree.

If anything, the overscrutinizing on an innocent story feels more reddit-esque to me.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#75

Post by johnnyanmac »

Spooky23 wrote: post #52
jatins wrote: post #29

wait FedEx just delivers 400k worth of stuff without any KYC or OTP verification??

UPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not. I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.

I supposed this begs the obvious question I'll ask: why? It seems like this is an easy way to make sure any and all Fedex employess are looking to jump ship to UPS or any other competitor.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#76

Post by michaelt »

gambiting wrote: post #61
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…

>>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 like that. Obviously. But if there is 400 grand on the line, you'd think someone would actually check(when the claim is made). The receiver would say "you have a signature fro…

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 went to the right address, to within the accuracy of a GPS trace. The driver got a name and signature at that time. The driver marked the delivery as successful in their computer.

Maybe they call up the driver and say "Did you deliver to the wrong address?" and the driver says "I don't think so, but I make a lot of deliveries so I can't say for sure."

Sure, in reality the pallet was dropped off in the parking lot across the road from Ship Fusion, instead of at Ship Fusion. But FedEx's records say everything is in order.

To be clear I'm not saying this is good, I'm just saying it's normal.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#77

Post by gus_massa »

gambiting wrote: post #61
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…

>>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 like that. Obviously. But if there is 400 grand on the line, you'd think someone would actually check(when the claim is made). The receiver would say "you have a signature fro…

When I get a package from Mercado Libre here in Argentina they ask for my national ID number [1], take a photo of the number in the door and when it's expensive enough (USD$100?) they ask for a secret word that they send the previous day bay email. For USD$400,000 I'd expect them to do a DNA analysis :) .

[1] I'm not sure how they check the number, because they accept the ID number of anyone in the family and even the full time cleaner of the building. They type it and the app takes a second to show a green check. I guess it's a fuzzy list to prevent obvious scams.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#78

Post by kuschku »

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.

That's why you should combine AI and manual work. AI is great to get a rough template for a story, or to rephrase sentences.

Take a look at the revision history of my summary (linked elsewhere in this thread). In the end I had to replace all the quotes and rewrite half of the paragraphs to make sure everything's factually correct, but the end result still has much better tone and phrasing than anything I could've written without AI.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#79

Post by gambiting »

gus_massa wrote: post #77
gambiting wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 like that. Obviously. But if there is 400 grand on the line, you'd think someone would actually check(when the claim is made). The receiver would say "you have a signature fro…

When I get a package from Mercado Libre here in Argentina they ask for my national ID number [1], take a photo of the number in the door and when it's expensive enough (USD$100?) they ask for a secret word that they send the previous day bay email. For USD$400,000 I'd expect them to do a DNA analysis :) . [1] I'm not sure how they check the number, because they accept the ID number of anyone in the family and even th…

Here in the UK Amazon gives you a code that you have to give to the driver for more expensive parcels specifically for this reason. Again doesn't seem like an outrageous thing to implement for a 400k delivery.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#80

Post by RateMyPE »

michaelt wrote: post #60
gambiting wrote: post #13

The thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?

> 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…

Everything in the world runs on trust. It's human nature.

It's kind of overwhelming when you stop and really think about it.

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