rob74 (u/rob74) - Readit News

rob74 commented on Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts petapixel.com/2025/08/20/... · Posted by u/mikece

bee_rider · 6 days ago

Plus, like everybody in retail, LP’s measured performance indicator is how busy they look when management is around. The best way to do that without getting in a fight is to annoy people who don’t actually have anything to hide.

rob74 · 6 days ago

That can be seen at many levels of society. ICE also prefers to round up harmless immigrants that show up for court hearings, work in fields, wait at bus stations or deliver their children to day care rather than the "dangerous criminals" that they keep on boasting about. And since every illegal immigrant is already a criminal in their view anyway, why bother?

rob74 commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve

nailer · 6 days ago

Likewise EU to US import rules were based on a World War II recovery concept. Europe is no longer recovering from World War II so asking them to pay a reciprocal tariff seems entirely reasonable whether you think Trump is a jackass or not.

rob74 · 6 days ago

Er, words mean things, you know? If Trump pulls a tariff out of thin air because he doesn't like it that the US has a trade deficit with a certain country (or because he doesn't like that that country is prosecuting one of his allies, as in Brazil's case), that maybe makes the tariff "retaliatory", but not "reciprocal". Last time I checked, the EU wasn't charging a 15% tax on imports from the US, but the US was.

rob74 commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve

mschuster91 · 6 days ago

> As such, strict QC is a must for any brand there that wants to survive and have a presence in the West, of which there are quite a few.

The thing is, there are three ways to survive as a company. The one way is establishing a brand like Ecoflow, DJI, Anker, and do what you suggest. The second one is to produce directly for some large Western brand (either as contract manufacturer or ODM). The final way is to just flood the Western markets with cheap garbage and alphabet-soup brands, and make up the lower margins in sales volume. There can't be that many companies making and selling PL259 adapters as there are "brands" on Amazon selling them, after all.

rob74 · 6 days ago

> The final way is to just flood the Western markets with cheap garbage and alphabet-soup brands, and make up the lower margins in sales volume.

...and because they don't have a presence in the West and don't care about their brand(s), if the shit really were to hit the fan in such a big way that they can't just sit it out, they can simply drop that particular brand, while the remaining heads of the Hydra will be just fine.

rob74 commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve

sschueller · 6 days ago

Did you know Switzerland has a free trade agreement with China? We have the same strict/very similar strict rules as the EU does.

In Switzerland if you import dangerous junk and sell it in your store, you are liable. Of course the end consumer can also directly purchase from China as well but then it is their responsibility (Eigenverantwortung).

Customs will also confiscate fake brands and for example radios that violate frequencies rules (unless you can provide documents that you are allowed to operate such a device, ham radio license etc.)

rob74 · 6 days ago

And if my neighbor purchases a cheap battery-powered product that violates all electrical regulations from TEMU and the fire started by it burns down my apartment too, who's responsible then? I guess my neighbor, and the insurance will probably cover the costs, but I will still have lost the apartment and all the stuff that was in it. And customs will maybe look at big shipments, but can't hope to check even a tiny fraction of the millions of small packages.

rob74 commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve

rob74 · 6 days ago

I don't agree with >99% of what Trump does, but closing this loophole that allowed Chinese companies to flood Western markets with cheap (and partly dangerous) junk is one of the exceptions - and also one of the few things where he is in agreement with the EU (https://marketing4ecommerce.net/en/europe-packages-under-val...).

rob74 commented on How we exploited CodeRabbit: From simple PR to RCE and write access on 1M repos research.kudelskisecurity... · Posted by u/spiridow

oasisbob · 8 days ago

Wow, you hit a nerve with that one. There have been some quick edits on the page.

Another:

> Security isn't just a checkbox for us; it's fundamental to our mission.

rob74 · 7 days ago

A few years ago such phrases would have been candidates for a game of bullshit bingo, now all the BS has been ingested by LLMs and is being regurgitated upon us in purified form...

rob74 commented on Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner simpleflying.com/airbus-a... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

pxndxx · 9 days ago

Vueling, the largest airline in Spain is actually shifting from the 320 to an all Boeing 737 MAX fleet in the coming years. I was really sad to hear that given it's size and presence in Europe.

rob74 · 9 days ago

Eurowings (Lufthansa's low cost carrier) has also ordered 40 737 MAX (or rather has been "allocated" a probably pre-existing order): https://newscloud.eurowings.com/en/eurowings-sets-sights-on-... Notwithstanding the marketing BS, I wonder what the real reason behind this decision is - probably a combination between the length of Airbus's delivery backlog, a "sweet" deal with Boeing, cozying up to Trump, and some other considerations that I can't think of right now?

EDIT: after researching a bit more, it looks like the initial order was from 2023 (https://simpleflying.com/lufthansa-40-boeing-737-max-40-airb...), so "cozying up to Trump" was probably not a factor at the time. Also, I imagine that order being passed around like the proverbial hot potato between all the airlines in Lufthansa group, until it finally landed in Eurowings' lap: "Interested in some brand new state of the art 737 MAXes? No? Why? What do you mean, `You take them if you're so fond of them`? We would, gladly, but we have an all-A320 fleet and would like to keep it that way. Oh, you too, really?".

rob74 commented on Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner simpleflying.com/airbus-a... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

Tuna-Fish · 9 days ago

A320 and the 737 were designed in entirely different worlds.

The 737 was designed using light tables and slide rules, to use low-bypass turbofans and direct controls with avionics only on board to optionally aid the pilots.

The A320 was designed in CAD and using CFD, with full digital fly-by-wire, and designed from the start for high-bypass turbofans.

Both designs have been updated plenty since, but because the basic design is much more modern, the A320 is much more amenable to being updated. There are elements of the 737 design that still exist on every new MAX coming off the line that would completely doom the certification chances of any new design, but are still there because they got grandfathered in for 737.

The wonder is not that the A320 finally caught up in sales, it's that the 737 can still be legally sold.

rob74 · 9 days ago

> There are elements of the 737 design that still exist on every new MAX coming off the line that would completely doom the certification chances of any new design, but are still there because they got grandfathered in for 737.

Not only that, but Boeing is actually limited in how much they can "modernize" the 737, because doing too much might exceed the limits of the 737's type certificate. This is the reason behind the current engine inlet overheating worries, which has led to an airworthiness directive for the 737 MAX (https://aerospacenews.com/faa-airworthiness-directive_boeing...) and is also one of the reasons for the delay certifying the MAX 7 and MAX 10. This would be a complete non-issue for other planes, because all modern designs have a switch position that only turns on the engine anti-ice system when it's needed, but the 737 MAX can't have that because the 1967 737 didn't.

rob74 commented on Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner simpleflying.com/airbus-a... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

duke_sam · 9 days ago

It’s impressive that Airbus caught up with Boeing after a 20 year head start. It sounds like Airbus’s bet on the future paid off but the article reads more like a PR piece than a case for why the A320 out competed the 737.

rob74 · 9 days ago

Yeah, that was exactly my feeling too when I read that Airbus has "finally" caught up to Boeing. With that head start, catching up was not something that could have been expected (unless Boeing would have replaced the 737, which they arguably should have done years ago already, but that's a different story). Of course, if you look into the details, things get more complicated, since the 737 had an in-house narrowbody competitor with the 757 for some time - but Airbus now has the same, with the A220 competing with the smaller A320 family models (A318 and A319).

rob74 commented on So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork? lostpixels.io/writings/th... · Posted by u/cosiiine

rob74 · 13 days ago

The difference is that (almost) everyone has a printer, and a printer is only any good if it reproduces the image it prints exactly - and where's the fun in that? With plotters, you can do all the cool things described in the article, plus they have the advantage of being much more exotic, kind of like the LCD monitor sitting on your desk vs. the vector display used for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)