Agree, also there are quite a number of robocall and voice bot scams that originate within the domestic US. FCC doesn't seem to have an interest in forcing carriers to do anything about this other than develop products in which they charge you for providing some layer of security which should have been there in the first place.
That only works for remote support type calls, you'll get opposite results if you try those tactics with free cruise or fake credit rate adjustment calls.
I finally got one of the credit rate adjustment calls to not immediately hang up on me, kept them on for about 15 minutes.
They incorrectly claimed that I only gave them 15 digits for my credit card number-- I think to make sure I read them the same digits back. Next time I'll make sure to have a fake credit card number handy that passes the checksum.
Next time you get a call, waste their time a little pretending to be slow and then do something to make them angry such as explain that you've been wasting their time and don't approve of their business methods. They'll put you on some uber-mark list as retaliation, and you'll get a couple of dozen calls over the next few days.
>get a couple of dozen calls over the next few days.
For me, it's been years. I've irritated a lot of scammers. I've also a fake bd of 01/23/45 for most of my online life so I fit right into their target group.
> Next time you get a call, waste their time a little pretending to be slow and then do something to make them angry such as explain that you've been wasting their time and don't approve of their business methods. They'll put you on some uber-mark list as retaliation, and you'll get a couple of dozen calls over the next few days.
Iunno, I do this every time and they usually hang up on me quickly.
If they uber-marked me, they'll just waste even more time. But alas it hasn't happened.
It is very low effort to just put the phone down and waste their time until they realise. They are usually so deep into their script that they will talk for minutes.
I was on my way out the door one morning, taking my dog to the vet to have a lump removed.
I was in a bad place.
The phone rang. I knew I shouldn't pick it up, but I was in a bad place.
It was "microsoft", and they needed immediate payment to avoid legal action.
I am a little ashamed of what happened next but I dumped every curse word I could think upon that indian guy. It had nothing to do with him really, but I really let him have it.
Honestly, I feel bad looking back at it.
He may have been wrong, but I was wronger.
He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge?
Nothing to be ashamed of. The person on the other end of the phone was a criminal attempting to defraud you. You could have done much worse than just cursing them out.
> He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge?
This line of reasoning ultimately leads to the conclusion that morals only apply in situations where it’s comfortable and convenient to apply them. Perhaps any particular scammer has been the victim of their own set of injustices (or just as likely, perhaps not), but that in no way excuses their victimisation of others. They’re adults too. Not some poor lowly Indians who had no choice but to defraud the vulnerable.
> He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge?
He doesn't know you from a senile person living in poverty. They'll steal your money regardless of who you are. There's no moral justification for that. They are evil.
Ever time you manually click edit → undo, you'll see the shortcut. It’s not invasive—it’s not some big popup that takes over the screen, or even a neon-colored tooltip that commands your attention—it’s just there, in the background, in case you happen to notice it. Maybe you’re not sure what it means at first, but if you keep seeing it every day, you just might try hitting the sequence of keys at some point...
The best UIs naturally help you progress from a basic user to an advanced user, without you even noticing it. I'm not saying the traditional desktop UI paradigm is the best that can ever possibly be done, but it has had 30 years of evolution at this point, and it's pretty darn strong.
I really miss the consistency of CUA and its derivatives (the original Mac and Windows desktop UX). It may have not been the most ergonomic, but it was extremely discoverable thanks to the menus, and it was very consistent: you only had to learn a few simple principles, and then apply them everywhere - and it scaled nicely from Notepad to Excel.
