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justaprogressive
justaprogressive's Journal
justaprogressive's Journal
December 13, 2023
*O*S*M* Dead Combo (Portugal) : Povo Que Cais Descalo
December 13, 2023
*O*S*M* Hamza El DIn (Sudan) : MALISH INWAN
December 13, 2023
[link:https://www.foodandwine.com/diner-shares-qr-code-for-restaurant-to-social-media-8410442|
An Influencer Ended Up With $60,000 of Shrimp and Squid at Lunch, and It's Kind of Her Fault
Its probably safe to say that were all guilty of posting a mid-meal Instagram, whether its sharing a snap of the appetizers on our stories or taking a grid-worthy selfie when the bathroom has impeccable lighting. But a woman in China recently learned the downside of posting to social media before you leave the restaurant and her situation definitely ensured well double-check whats in the background before uploading anything from now on.
The woman who has only been identified by her surname, Wang was having a meal with friends at a hotpot restaurant in Kunming, a city in southwest China. When everyones selections arrived at the table, she posted a photo of the spread on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. What she didnt notice was that shed included the QR code on her table, which the restaurants customers use to place their orders.
Even though the photo was only shared with her WeChat friends list and not the entire social network, someone or a lot of someones used that QR code to add a ridiculous amount of food to her order. Wang was absolutely shocked to learn that her meal soon included 1,850 orders of duck blood, 2,580 orders of squid, and an absolutely bonkers 9,990 orders of shrimp paste. According to the South China Morning Post, Wang didnt know what shed accidentally done until a member of the restaurants staff stopped by her table to confirm her CN¥430,000 ($60,400) order.
Fortunately for Wang (and her credit card balance), the restaurant did not make her pay for all of that food; they just moved her group to another table. That didnt stop the internet from continuing to add to her original tally, well after shed deleted the WeChat post.
The woman who has only been identified by her surname, Wang was having a meal with friends at a hotpot restaurant in Kunming, a city in southwest China. When everyones selections arrived at the table, she posted a photo of the spread on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. What she didnt notice was that shed included the QR code on her table, which the restaurants customers use to place their orders.
Even though the photo was only shared with her WeChat friends list and not the entire social network, someone or a lot of someones used that QR code to add a ridiculous amount of food to her order. Wang was absolutely shocked to learn that her meal soon included 1,850 orders of duck blood, 2,580 orders of squid, and an absolutely bonkers 9,990 orders of shrimp paste. According to the South China Morning Post, Wang didnt know what shed accidentally done until a member of the restaurants staff stopped by her table to confirm her CN¥430,000 ($60,400) order.
Fortunately for Wang (and her credit card balance), the restaurant did not make her pay for all of that food; they just moved her group to another table. That didnt stop the internet from continuing to add to her original tally, well after shed deleted the WeChat post.
[link:https://www.foodandwine.com/diner-shares-qr-code-for-restaurant-to-social-media-8410442|
![](/emoticons/rofl.gif)
December 13, 2023
Read More
An Epic antitrust loss for Google - Cory Doctorow
A jury just found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic, maker of Fortnite, which brought a variety of claims related to how Google runs its app marketplace. This is huge:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/epic-games-google-antitrust-ruling.html
The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app.
This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping
Now, in theory, Epic doesn't have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple's iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google's actions like paying Activision $360m as part of "Project Hug" (no, really!) were intended to prevent new app storesfrom springing up was a big lift for Epic. But they managed it, in large part thanks to Google's own internal communications, wherein executives admitted that this was exactly why Project Hug existed. This is part of a pattern with Big Tech antitrust: many of the charges are theoretically very hard to make stick, but because the companies put their evil plans in writing (think of the fraudulent crypto exchange FTX, whose top execs all conferred in a groupchat called "Wirefraud"
, Big Tech keeps losing in court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/epic-games-google-antitrust-ruling.html
The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app.
This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping
Now, in theory, Epic doesn't have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple's iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google's actions like paying Activision $360m as part of "Project Hug" (no, really!) were intended to prevent new app storesfrom springing up was a big lift for Epic. But they managed it, in large part thanks to Google's own internal communications, wherein executives admitted that this was exactly why Project Hug existed. This is part of a pattern with Big Tech antitrust: many of the charges are theoretically very hard to make stick, but because the companies put their evil plans in writing (think of the fraudulent crypto exchange FTX, whose top execs all conferred in a groupchat called "Wirefraud"
![](/emoticons/wink.gif)
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December 12, 2023
*O*S*M* DuOud (France): Interluth
December 12, 2023
*O*S*M* Strunz and Farah USA : Heat of the Sun
So an expatriate Cuban and an expatriate Iranian guitarist
fly together and separately...
December 12, 2023
and NOW:
*O*S*M* Rodrigo y Gabriela (Mexico): Tamacun
these ex-metal guitarists stormed the world in 2007
and NOW:
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Gender: Do not displayMember since: Wed Aug 23, 2023, 12:40 PM
Number of posts: 2,317