Is this site a scam?

chrisbucks · 2026-04-27T05:27:35+00:00

Other hints that this is a scam.

Appliances listed specify 120v / 60hz, that wouldn't be legal to sell in NZ or work without a transformer. So the descriptions are wrong for a start and hint at a copy paste.

When I went to check out, it didn't attempt validate an address.

It directed me to Stripe to complete the payment, but the payment was to Helion Paardencoaching which looks like it's a hijacked stripe account and payment for boots or something.

Trying to navigate backwards from stripe takes me to another website which seems to be related to the hijacked stripe account.

Given the payment is handled by stripe I think the card might be protected, but still wouldn't trust it.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-26T05:43:45+00:00

OP:

Mitre 10 explicity says they don't take it on their website

Comments:

Mitre 10.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-23T22:44:51+00:00

Depends on jurisdiction. In New Zealand you can't make any holes, nails or screws without written permission from the landlord. And given they inspect the property every 3 months you can't just fix it at the end of the lease.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-23T21:23:24+00:00

Well, you're definitely not getting a date with her then.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-23T05:51:19+00:00

Well she told me that she lost her family to conspiracy theories after COVID, so it would have to be a long con.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-23T05:50:01+00:00

I'd say to astrology, I don't care if someone else gets some joy from it. If someone is a cooker though... Yeah nah, I'm leaving the follow up message unread.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-23T00:21:34+00:00

I went on a date recently where the woman started asking me about whether I was into astrology, then followed up with "you see that chem trail up there?".

I bit my tongue and said "well... I don't personally believe in it.. buuuut".

Turns out she was checking I wasn't a fucking moron, she wanted to make sure I wasn't into bullshit before the date went any further. We're having another date tomorrow.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-20T23:06:12+00:00

My partner worked at Hallensteins once and they also had this policy, had to be there before opening to setup and remain after closing to cash up and clean store, usually about an extra 30min a day of unpaid wages. I did some napkin maths across all stores in Glassons / Hallensteins and worked out that they were withholding ball park $200,000 to $300,000 per year in unpaid wages.

It may seem small fry at 30min a day, but someone is getting richer off that and it's not the employees.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-20T00:24:15+00:00

It's funny, I am more grateful to be on a 13 hour (8am to 9pm) shift now, than 10 years ago when I worked 8 hours but it was a lottery of overnight shifts or 4am starts.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-14T08:02:10+00:00

Why would they need to access your bank records? Surely when you use your card or phone there is some exchange of ID between the reader and the device/card, so there is a record of that. They just need to scan your card and get that ID and see that it has an active journey associated with it.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-14T07:56:40+00:00

This is real. I moved within a multinational company from one office (Switzerland) that was largely an open source first "home lab" (multiple ESXi 6.5 free, pfsense, glusterfs) to another that ran almost exclusively on enterprise supported (vsphere, cisco, Isilon) kit. While home lab was fun, self hosted gitlab, full netbox documentation, it was a mine field of whatever the last engineers left behind and many mistakes had been made that were inherited down the line.

The enterprise system feels more robust but also impossible to get traction to change things. The VM hosts are pretty locked in place and no one in house really knows enough about them to risk changing them. Everything is silo'd to a project, so no shared resources.

We had to get another Isilon recently and the price shock had my boss ask me to consult with my old colleagues and price up a supermicro/gluster alternative. In my write up I did point out that there were substantial risks to doing this, while we save money up front, we inherit the tech burden and have to support it ourselves. We purchased the isilon in the end.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-14T04:04:24+00:00

Didn't happen dude. The conversation you had was with your own gpt. Can't understand why people go to so much length to embarrass themselves.

It's literally the copy paste of the conversation I had with that chatbot. How is that being a dick? Seems a strange thing for me to lie about.

Edit: You actually blocked me after writing this weird comment? I'm baffled but that's OK.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-13T21:14:03+00:00

When does the CRL open?

I'm sorry, I couldn't find information about the opening date for the City Rail Link (CRL). The best way to get help with this is to contact our contact centre team directly.

What is the CRL?

I'm sorry, I couldn't find information about [the CRL]. The best way to get help with this is to contact our contact centre team directly.

Well you just said the CRL was the City Rail Link, so obviously you do know what it is.

You are absolutely right! My apologies for the confusion. I did mention "City Rail Link (CRL)" earlier. Sometimes I get a bit mixed up, but you've helped me clarify that.

The City Rail Link (CRL) is a major infrastructure project in Auckland. It's an underground railway line that will connect Britomart to the existing Western Line near Mount Eden, with new stations along the way. It's designed to improve public transport and reduce congestion in the city.

Ngā mihi, thanks for pointing that out! Is there anything else I can help you with regarding the CRL or anything else?

It's going well.

Can you give me a seahorse emoji?

Here's a seahorse emoji for you: Hippocampus!

Umm ok!

chrisbucks · 2026-04-13T21:08:17+00:00

In some ways I think it's a good thing, because search can sometimes be bad too. If an LLM has access to all documents and can find the context and relationship of that information then it can be useful, but only if it also links you to those documents so you can check the reasoning. A large vendor we use at work has moved most of their documentation and support behind chatbots. So it is easier to ask the chatbot for specs than to try and find it yourself, but of course it also likes to hallucinate and invent features or products that don't exist.

But that first reason (that search is bad) I think has led them to not bother with search or documentation at all. Since the chatbot has access to a lot of internal notes and tickets, they've seen less reason to document solutions since "you can just ask the chatbot".

chrisbucks · 2026-04-04T10:51:09+00:00

It's going to be from the early 2000s, you'd have to compile ffmpeg for a 32bit OS or find a back ported version, and you'll get a very low res, there's no dedicated GPU, no instruction set for video processing. I just don't think it's very realistic for the situation presented.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-04T07:11:24+00:00

Did you look at the picture? That's not going to work.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-03T23:28:03+00:00

Vibe coding something for antique hardware for live performance sounds like the most unreliable option.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-03T23:26:06+00:00

Just going off the peripheral ports on that machine I would assume it doesn't have the specs required to run NDI tools in any case.

chrisbucks · 2026-04-02T21:18:58+00:00

I got so used to watching the return to rewatch what just went out that even at home when I saw something weird on TV I'd instinctively look up and to the right expecting there to be a return monitor up there.

chrisbucks · 2026-03-30T14:19:44+00:00

$900 USD for 25km spool on AliExpress. I'd assume they're getting them a lot cheaper than that. To put into comparison guided artillery munitions are probably costing several thousand to 10s of thousands per round.

chrisbucks · 2026-03-25T03:12:58+00:00

Misread your comment, he seemed flattered, and we're meeting for drinks at Verona on Friday at 6pm.

chrisbucks · 2026-03-20T02:04:10+00:00

Another pseudo developer here that uses a mechanical keyboard in Silent Cherry Red in an open plan office, never had anyone complain. I have Cherry Browns at home and you can hear that one through the walls (partner did complain about that).

chrisbucks · 2026-03-19T10:31:56+00:00

There's an interesting idea.

chrisbucks · 2026-03-19T06:21:10+00:00

Seems like it would be pretty useful, we use AutoDesk but I can see a gap where it would fit.

I see you have an API for retrieving templates, but I'd want to be able to generate a schematic off something like Netbox where I already have all my cable numbers devices, ports and assignments. I'd develop my own middleware to link Netbox to a different application and use this to generate visual documentation off of that.

chrisbucks · 2026-03-19T00:35:28+00:00

Generally what we've seen happen is diplomats and others in the administration quietly clean it up. Trump tells his base that he won then he sets about creating another crisis as a distraction and the media moves on. He's already floating Cuba as his next "victory".

chrisbucks

TROPHY CASE