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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31336 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Do you live in NYC? One common scam are gangs that either:

switch stickers on bikes so that when someone unlocks a bike via the QR code sticker it unlocks another bike they’re conveniently sitting on

straight up strong arm people off the bikes

There’s no mistake - it’s simple robbery.

More on citibike scams:

https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/13kv20l/hacked_citi_bikes/

No, I don't live there. Moscow bikesharing requires you to enter the PIN on the keypad that is on the bike itself, so strong-arming someone off the bike is the only way.

That is because in Moscow, the people coming up with the system were utterly cynical bastards who could think of of all the easy ways to cheat a proposed system in about 10 seconds flat, and within 3 minutes had probably gotten down to the ones you can't get around. Whereas in New York there were at least some environmentalist-type idealists involved. But also cynical bastards who decided scams didn't matter provided the legitimate customer rather than the company was on the hook.

Yep. Hard to extend charity to this situation when there's known scams for exploiting a given system.

Hanlon's razor works here but after a certain point it's fine to conclude malice is the more likely explanation.

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