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Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds
- bmalum 2y agoSurprised by HN again. 1st Place „Story“, wanted to read because no headphones with me, ending up reading a podcast transcript, and TL,DR out.
- cr3ative 2y agoThe transcript was a good read, I also don’t prefer audio. Admittedly I can skim read quite well though.
- nkrisc 2y agoI found it a miserable read. It’s a pain to get through all the tic words and aborted sentences, I gave up very soon after starting.
- saagarjha 2y agoI read it for lunch yesterday. It wasn’t that bad.
- voidUpdate 2y agoI read it all just now, I quite enjoyed it. Its not my preferred format to read but it wasn't bad
- Terr_ 2y agoHuh, so a half-baked crime of opportunity, as opposed to a sophisticated operation. Still unclear on how the delivery managed to get put (or taken) to the wrong side of the road at a construction site. Fedex mistake? Trickery by thief? Misdirection by thief that took them from loading-dock?
- josephg 2y agoAlmost certainly just a fedex mistake taking them to the wrong lot. Happens all the time. And, Hanlon's razor - never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Its pretty easy to imagine construction workers just signing for everything that arrives, and only afterwards figuring out that the address is wrong.
- piqufoh 2y ago[flagged]
- bmalum 2y ago[flagged]
- throawayonthe 2y agothe TLDR seems to be incorrect
- jna_sh 2y agoSource for the arrest? I listened to this the other day and I don’t recall an arrest being mentioned. The podcast in fact covers that the police weren’t very much interested, which is why they got a PI involved, who got the thieves to “return” (dump in an adjacent car park) the devices simply by asking questions.
- saagarjha 2y agoI’m guessing the AI hallucinated it.
- gambiting 2y agoYou know what, until your comment I haven't even considered that someone just copy pasted the entire transcript into ChatGPT and asked for a summary. It sucks - and I see that happening everywhere actually, especially in facebook groups, people are trying to be "helpful" by just copying output from ChatGPT or Gemini, but more often than not it's just completely wrong.
- saagarjha 2y agoI can’t say for sure but the thing I thought was suspicious was someone saying “The episode provides an in-depth look at the challenges Panic faced during this ordeal and the measures taken to resolve the situation”. People who actually read the content and offer TL;DRs typically wouldn’t include statements like these that are basically just fluff.
- RantyDave 2y agoStrange things are afoot at the circle k.
- gambiting 2y agoThe thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?
- steve918 2y agoThis isn't surprising at all if you have every had an interaction with Fedex.
- therein 2y agoEvery time I bought an electric unicycle, it got stolen at South San Francisco branch. It is totally reproducible, happened 3 times. One time I found some higher up at FedEx on LinkedIn and sent them an InMail. The regional manager really pushed this issue to highest priority for the branch. Branch managers got CC'ed in, drivers, people working at the warehouse; it was an all hands on deck situation. They reassured me that they have cameras everywhere and it couldn't be stolen. It was stolen. They don't know who did it. FedEx is terrible.
- brk 2y agoFWIW, I've had really good interactions with FedEx for the most part. Including for Apple hardware, where I had a FedEx driver pull into the end of my long driveway, wait 5 seconds and then leave. They marked the signature-required MacBook Air as "undeliverable, nobody home", while I was in fact home and waiting for the delivery. Called the local FedEx hub and they sent the driver back to me.
- gambiting 2y agoSounds like you had a pretty bad experience with FedEx then.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Hackbraten 2y agoLove this quote in particular: > Thanks so much for listening, and please don’t steal our Playdates. Because we will find you.
- LeonidasXIV 2y agoAllegedly.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI wonder where to put it though. > Thanks so much for alledgedly listening > please don’t alledgedly steal our Playdates. > please don’t steal our alledged Playdates. > Because we will alledgedly find you.
- actionfromafar 2y agoAllegedly because we will find you.
- deely3 2y agoAllegedly because we will allegedly find allegedly you.
- supermatt 2y agoI wanted to buy a playdate when they first came out, but unfortunately they weren't shipping to my country. Now they do, so I just placed an order 15 mins ago and my partner just received a call from the bank to verify that it wasn't a fraudulent transaction. She just asked me - what is this "play date" you just sent $300 to? Oh dear. :D
- Toorkit 2y agoThen you say "it's a handheld gaming device" and the matter is settled.
- aa-jv 2y agoThen you spend days on end winding the crank, endlessly ..
- johnnyanmac 2y agoThen she asks why you spend $300 for a Gameboy when you already have a PS5 and Switch, and at this point you just get the guest room ready for yourself tonight.
- beAbU 2y agoThis comment fells too reddit esque for me, as if it's crafted to solicit upvotes or "facebook up, hit your lawyer and delete the gym" style comments. - Why is your partner getting the call from the bank when you placed the order? - If it's a shared account, why would you not forewarn your partner about this transaction? If I'm about to buy pay for something big from our joint account, I sure as hell let my partner know about it ahead of time. - If none of the above applies, then a simple "it's a portable gaming console that I've been yearning after for ages that I finally ordered earlier today", and 9/10 times that should settle the matter.
- throwaind29k 2y agoIt does feel very reddit-esque the comment, because it seems a tad like an interesting yarn to farm attention without having content of substance.
- vlaaad 2y ago[flagged]
- forrestthewoods 2y agoThis is getting downvoted but I actually quite appreciated it. Story is interesting enough I'll listen to the whole podcast! I can't do that for every single podcast link that I come across. There's not enough time in the year much less the day.
- traverseda 2y agoYeah, hn will just downvote anything with the word ai-generated in it blindly.
- Wowfunhappy 2y agoIt's AI generated, how do I know if it's accurate? It could be making up the whole thing.
- nkrisc 2y agoIf that concerns you, read the actual transcript. I honestly don’t care how accurate this is because beyond casual interest right now, I’m likely never going to think about this again.
- kuschku 2y agoThat's why you should combine AI and manual work. AI is great to get a rough template for a story, or to rephrase sentences. Take a look at the revision history of my summary (linked elsewhere in this thread). In the end I had to replace all the quotes and rewrite half of the paragraphs to make sure everything's factually correct, but the end result still has much better tone and phrasing than anything I could've written without AI.
- Wowfunhappy 2y agoYour summary is fine. That's different from what the OP of this thread posted.
- Shank 2y agoI suppose the key insight is that mandatory device registration really saved them. Everyone loves the concept of an entirely open device that doesn’t require this, but if Panic didn’t have registration, it would’ve been impossible to locate the devices, and end up being a $400k write off.
- jatins 2y agowait FedEx just delivers 400k worth of stuff without any KYC or OTP verification??
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI get the impression business-to-business shipping is a lot more informal... somehow.
- Spooky23 2y agoUPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not. I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.
- anymouse123456 2y agoFedEx employees in our region are consistently grumpy, unhelpful, and extremely abusive with packages. We got video of one FedEx guy kicking retail Apple Computer boxes off the back of his big rig (destroyed 2x iMacs). Our UPS drivers are consistently cheerful, helpful and considerate with the packages they carry. The contrast grows dramatically if you ever suffer some misfortune that requires a phone call into corporate. FedEx is reliably crabby, unhelpful and actively belligerent. These two companies are a perfect illustration of what happens when you make it obvious to your staff how you feel about them.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI supposed this begs the obvious question I'll ask: why? It seems like this is an easy way to make sure any and all Fedex employess are looking to jump ship to UPS or any other competitor.
- joezydeco 2y agoUPS drivers are unionized. FedEx drivers at the local stage are a network of third party companies that contract to FedEx and put their logo on their trucks. Look at the grey fine print by the driver door.
- markovs_gun 2y agoImagine being the thief in this case and getting stuck with an entire pallet of these weird indie handhelds that you can't fence because nobody knows what they are just hanging out on your garage.
- actionfromafar 2y agoIt seemed it was a planned thing, so probably not a big surprise.
- markovs_gun 2y agoThat's not the vibe I got. For me it seemed like FedEx showed up, said they had a pallet of electronics, and the guy signed for it as a crime of opportunity. Then someone else stole some later.
- kuschku 2y agoI summarized the transcript into an article: https://gist.github.com/justjanne/1e1254bf207c4d98862e0401367c7a80 https://gist.github.com/justjanne/1e1254bf207c4d98862e040136... Not sure if it helps anyone else, but for me it made the story a lot easier to grasp. I wrote most of it by hand, using an LLM just for a rough outline which I then manually rewrote line by line, streamlined, removed hallucinations, double-checked all quotes, reordered and added images and links.
- anymouse123456 2y agoThat was amazing. I wasn't up for spending an hour listening to the podcast, but a few minute reading the article you created were well worth it. Thank you!
- deely3 2y agoHonestly original article is way more interesting and nuanced. I'm afraid LLM version is too short and while technically correct definitely feels like dry list of random facts from transcription.
- kuschku 2y ago> original article is way more interesting and nuanced Oh I don't disagree in the slightest, after all it's basically an interview full of personal experiences and anecdotes. But HN already has a problem with people commenting without reading the article, even if that article is relatively short. With an hour-long podcast episode or a transcript stuffed with filler words and partial sentences it's even worse. > I'm afraid LLM version is too short and while technically correct definitely feels like dry list of random facts from transcription Well, the LLM summary was a lot more thrilling and entertaining than my version. Sadly, it was also wrong and full of hallucinations.
- romanhn 2y agoInteresting choice to go with a PI who's focused on recovery rather than criminal convinctions. Given the lack of sophistication in this operation, I suspect recovery would have happened either way, and the thieves might have faced some actual consequences. As is, they didn't lose anything other than the stolen items and will likely continue to capitalize on similar opportunities in the future.
- treesknees 2y agoPlaydate likely took the initial interactions with the police as a sign of how that would play out. It was already slower and a lot more work, including flying to Las Vegas in-person, to involve law enforcement. Maybe those construction workers will steal again. But also maybe they realized how easily they were found out, how hard it actually is to offload stolen goods, and decide it’s not worth the hassle to steal again.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]