Having worked for a similar firm in the past, we also were not allowed to use Google Translate, and when I discussed it with the people who made the decision, they said the concern was about accidental leakage of confidential information more than anything else. I presume the concern is similar here. Since GPT learns from submitted data, it would be possible to upload client data and then have it spit back out to someone else, which could expose the firm to financial liability.

I think there's also some funniness regarding what Zelle considers fraud. My bank sent me an email one day saying Zelle was being made unavailable for certain customers, and it is still unavailable about 6 weeks later. I asked that bank to un-enroll me from Zelle, which they said they did. I opened a new checking account at another bank and tried to enroll in Zelle, but I can't because my phone number and email address are still tied to the other account.

From what I have gathered on Reddit and conversations with the banks I was placed on some sort of restricted list by either the first bank or Zelle, but they won't tell me why and there doesn't seem to be a way to get off of the list. I'm not aware of any fraud on my account or any unauthorized transactions, but some algorithm seems to think there's an issue.

Am I counted as one of the "fraud" cases? Probably.

This is the first time I've seen an announcement and thought, yeah that might be a good idea. It's been 20 years or so since I interacted with SWIFT but it was a pretty simple messaging platform at the time (I'm sure it's different now).

I'm also waiting for a county recorder (or other similar entity) to do this for real estate ownership. Many of them already have a custom platform for the "transaction ledger" so perhaps this could save money over time.

It would be a centralized / controlled blockchain, which I get breaks the spirit of the thing, but perhaps it's a better alternative to a central DBMS.

The number of Java keystores I've come across with changeit as the password is surprisingly high.

I'm still deciding if I like Face ID more than Touch ID. I'm sure my experience is affected by starting to use an iPhone 12 mini while wearing masks in most POS situations, but I am considering going for the iPhone SE 3rd generation to get Touch ID back. From a security perspective I feel less good about Face ID than Touch ID.

I agree that the USPS is a good use case for more electric vehicles. I'm not on board with the "most USPS vehicles should be electric" crowd until it's studied. I think there's an amount of them that should, and amount that shouldn't. Either way the switch over will have a high up-front cost, which should be paid back over time with savings on fuel. Given that the USPS has significant lack of control over its finances, that's a point of consideration.

I think it's more complex than a lot of commenters will contemplate, and is worth actual study with real-world use cases for the USPS in particular. Do I think it will work out that a large percentage of the USPS fleet should be electric? Yes.

My experience in talking to folks who have EVs tells me that the posted ranges don't hold up in real-world conditions (especially in cold or hot months) and that charging is a challenge when not at a "base". That "somewhere with a good charger" is likely to be an issue in many rural areas.

Your point about moving the existing ICE vehicles to the rural routes as the new EVs come into service is a good one.

That is currently the case, but they are apparently trialing using USPS vehicles as a cost-savings.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uspsoig.gov%2Fblog%2Fd...

This is the part I'm not sure about. It's not "a few rural routes", but I don't know what percentage of the routes and vehicles on those routes are rural. The only documentation I've found has said there are 80,000 rural routes and 133,000 rural carriers. What percentage of the vehicles will be used on rural routes where an electric vehicle probably doesn't make sense?

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uspsoig.gov%2Fblog%2Fd....

I found this which says the USPS has "over 200,000" vehicles.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.usps.com%2Fnews%2Fst...

I agree that all the urban vehicles could be electric, and probably many of the suburban vehicles. But I haven't been able to find documentation about what the percentages are.

Back-of-the-envelope, each rural route might need its own vehicle, so 40% of the vehicles might not be a good fit for electric. So figure with some of the suburban routes also not being a good fit, maybe 50% of the fleet should be electric.

I welcome comments from anyone who has better data.

I believe that âoeother wayâ is what will soon no longer be allowed.

My wife tried to sign up and was unable to pass the photo verification, as it kept saying there was glare on the photo of her driver's license. She contacted support and received a canned response that said she should try again, though the support request indicated she'd tried from a mobile phone, tablet, and laptop.

Maybe they're better at it now?

I think segmentation is part of it. I used to get podcasts via RSS and pretty much all of them were available that way. Now there are Pandora podcasts, Spotify podcasts, etc. I use Apple Podcasts and so if I can't listen to it there I'm not going to listen to it. I started listening to a great podcast in the summer of 2020 that moved to Spotify and I don't listen to it any more.

I am a dedicated Pandora Premium member, and still I won't listen to podcasts on that platform.

Also, I don't necessarily want the Postal Service to be in a position to directly benefit from selling misdirected mail. Somewhere along the line this could very well lead to more mail being "misdirected", or the lost mail resolution folks not trying so hard to resolve delivery because of a profit motive.

To me, this is the logical next step of "right to repair" laws. If everyone has a right to repair the equipment they buy, why wouldn't the original manufacturer want to sell the parts directly rather than relying on the secondary market? There's money in it.

I do my own electrical repairs (within reason) and my own appliance repairs. I'll also do basic automotive repairs if it's just swapping out a part that isn't hard to remove. With enough preparation, I can probably repair my cell phone, given the availability of an appropriate manual telling me where all the clips and glue are (which is often the hard part to figure out).

It was interesting watching my middle-school child do this for a year while schooling from home. I think it would drive me mad, but it seemed to work pretty well for the classes using a Google doc to write up notes.

Amazon refunded me twice last year for the same product return, and when I chatted with customer support to let them know, they said I was wrong. So I'd say that the complexity of their operation leads to edge cases, and sometimes it's more expensive to fix the 'overpayments' than it is to just let them happen. It is common in operations to make that sort of assessment and note it for the auditors.

I also have an order from 2018 that says it was never delivered, so they refunded me the cost of that order as well. I contacted me, and they said they would fix it, but never did.