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Cake day: November 13th, 2023

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  • **For some reason Lemmy is adding a ‘25’ between the % and s. Those numbers shouldn’t be there, just fyi.

    The URL as shown is actually valid. No worries there.

    The value 25 happens to be hexidecimal for a percent sign. The percent symbol is reserved in URLs for encoding special characters (e.g. %20 is a space), so a bare percent sign must be represented by %25. Lemmy must be parsing your URL and normalizing it for the rest of us.









  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    7 months ago

    The key phrase to remember here is: Price Discrimination.

    Stores already possess the technology to track anyone’s shopping experience through loyalty cards. The “discounts” you get are really just a tax on everyone that doesn’t participate, and the benefits to the company for having your data are worth potentially losing business from un-tracked customers. That’s how valuable your data is.

    So why aren’t we seeing per-customer targeting? This is not to suggest that businesses are benign here, but rather, just cautious about outright per-customer discounts and other price manipulation. Custom coupons are kinda/sorta a part of this. IMO, the door is still wide-open to find ways palatable to the customer (and courts) while dialing everyone in.

    In that context, all cameras do is make the system practically impossible to dodge. Considering how much stores value that kind of information, it makes sense they’d invest to capture 100% of their retail activity.


  • I’m inclined to agree. I think the best path through would be to focus on laws that benefit multiple minor players that have a seat at the table.

    Antitrust laws in general are a good example. These function at the direct expense of big monopolies, but are exactly what companies need if they want in on what was monopolized. And in the case of breaking a monopoly down, the resulting “baby” companies given more power, growth opportunity, hiring opportunities (job growth) and money making potential than the parent. This can also spur economic growth for all the fat cats out there by creating many new investment and hiring potentials. Overall, if you can get past the monopoly itself (read: take the ball away from your billionaire of choice), everyone else involved stands to benefit.

    There may be other strategies, but I can’t think of any right now. I think the key is to tip the scale in favor of more favorable outcomes, then repeat that a few more times, achieving incremental progress along the way. Doctorow outlines the ideal end state for all this, but it’s up to everyone else to figure out how to get there.

    While I don’t like the idea of embracing capital to improve things, the whole system is currently run this way. Standing with other monied interests that are aligned with the same goal might be the only way to go.


  • Just yesterday, Mrs. Warp Core was trying to enroll with an online service. The self-service email confirmation link refused to function correctly in Firefox on a desktop operating system (Windows in this case). It worked flawlessly on Firefox+iOS. Said link also shuttled the user straight off to the phone app.

    I’ll add that nearly ever other aspect of their public facing web, including the online chat support, worked flawlessly everywhere I tried it. This all just reeked of hostile design.

    When asked about why this is, I simply said:

    The browser provides good security and choice for the user. Apps provide good security and control for the vendor.