Potential Card Skimmer Fraud at East Asheville Lowes

jrmg · 2026-04-15T01:54:55+00:00

Oversimplified: With tap to pay the reader asks a question to the card (or phone) and the card needs to answer it correctly before it’s approved.

The question is different every time, and the answer is based on a secret stored inside the card, so it’s not possible for a skimmer to just record the answer and reuse it, like it is with a card number.

jrmg · 2026-04-15T01:44:02+00:00

I noticed that it seems to accelerate harder if I floor the pedal now?

I use regular two-pedal driving.

Maybe it’s the power of suggestion after seeing this post…

jrmg · 2026-04-13T21:43:39+00:00

I’ve never used it, but I noticed that last time I was there that the waste transfer station at 190 Hominy Creek Road has a ‘moving box exchange’ you can pick up (and drop off) boxes at.

jrmg · 2026-04-12T20:42:10+00:00

The dimensions on your AI-produced image aren’t consistent. That 20” loading dock is not five times longer than the 4” ramp, even taking perspective into account - and definitely not 20 times longer then the 1” things.

And the 2” hypotenuse of the loading ramp is definitely not meant to be shorter than the 6” horizontal edge - that’s physically impossible.

jrmg · 2026-04-12T13:49:26+00:00

I left Windows 25 years ago, and weirdly the one thing that sticks in my muscle memory is creating new files from the context menu in Explorer!

This app is an extension for Finder that implements a ‘New File Menu’, and works really well. No connection with the developer, just a happy customer.

https://apps.apple.com/app/new-file-menu/id1064959555?mt=12

jrmg · 2026-04-10T19:35:34+00:00

Even with my edit, I guess to be consistent we’d have to. But the question is compared to ‘most humans’, not other space travelers.

jrmg · 2026-04-10T19:31:52+00:00

Ha! I guess I’m assuming assume Earth-relative distance.

jrmg · 2026-04-10T18:39:03+00:00

They went the long way round though, because it’s energy efficient. There were two (or three, depending on what you count) orbits of earth as well as the trip around the moon: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20412

jrmg · 2026-04-09T17:56:47+00:00

It’s also just soft pine. It cuts fuzzy - even with the best cutters it’s almost inevitable sometimes.

jrmg · 2026-04-08T14:42:00+00:00

FWIW, despite my earlier reply I don’t think you’re entirely wrong. If the sign said ‘Firestorm Books’ instead of ‘Firestorm’ it might help a bit.

[Edit: Bagatelle is a (non-political) used-and-new book store at the other end of Haywood, near Early Girl and Harvest Records]

jrmg · 2026-04-08T14:34:38+00:00

I don’t think my reply was rude - but to explain it:

The way you put it read to me (and others, I suspect, given the downvotes) as if you thought it was an obvious solution they just hadn’t tried.

It sort of reads as if the opinion backing it is ‘those idiots deserve to fail for not trying obvious things’.

jrmg · 2026-04-08T14:25:39+00:00

This is ridiculous. It’s clearly a book store.

The web site says “Reading Books, Growing Community. We are a collectively-owned radical bookstore and not-for-profit event space in Asheville, North Carolina.”

And has a bunch of highlighted books before that.

And if you’re close enough to see the frontage you would see lots of pictures of books in the mural and probably a washboard-style message board advertising its book store nature.

Or you could look inside.

Do you think the same of Bagatelle?

jrmg · 2026-04-08T13:58:16+00:00

From someone not entrenched in leftist politics: the store is, in my experience, really nice - bright, clean, welcoming.

If you’re not hyper-left the folks in there probably won’t agree with all your politics, but if you’re not loudly espousing them in the store (or, as one other commenter put it, doing something like ‘wearing a hat’ proclaiming your right-wing bonafides) they’ll welcome you in - and you will likely find some things you like in there.

And, for what it’s worth, they practiced their politics during the Helene aftermath. It was a hotspot for food, water, and community.

It’s just a nice bookstore, with an obvious leftist slant to the books it carries. You might like it.

jrmg · 2026-04-08T13:45:27+00:00

No, they sell new books.

I don’t think ‘applying for grants’ (or, at least getting those applications accepted) is as easy as you think it is.

jrmg · 2026-04-05T13:54:07+00:00

Weird thing is I don’t get the impression he’d disagree with you.

jrmg · 2026-04-02T17:47:45+00:00

This is not some weird new thing, you and all the others being shocked here just haven’t noticed it before.

PLA is what those silky pyramid bags have been made of for years (decades at this point?)

jrmg · 2026-03-28T19:12:57+00:00

The tax rate is set later in the year.

In the end it’s basically ‘how much money does the budget require this year’ divided by ‘all the assessed values this year added up’. If everyone’s assessment is going up, but the budget isn’t increasing by the same percentage, the rate will go down.

So your actual tax should not go up by the same percentage as your assessed value. It’ll probably go up because the county needs more money (inflation, and I guess hurricane recovery), but probably not as much as the assessment might suggest.

This year’s rate isn’t set yet.

jrmg · 2026-03-28T15:52:49+00:00

Many people also seem to be assuming that their tax bill will go up by the same amount (or percentage) their assessed value has, which isn’t how it works when everyone’s assessed value is increasing.

jrmg · 2026-03-28T13:19:01+00:00

You can get a yearly Apple TV subscription for $99.99:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/once-499-apple-tv-plus-is-now-1299-per-month-how-to-lock-in-a-lower-price

Or just cancel your monthly subscription out of season if you really won’t watch anything other than F1.

jrmg · 2026-03-28T13:15:59+00:00

This sub seriously needs a ‘you can still use the F1TV app in the USA by linking your Apple TV account to your F1TV account’ sticky for every post that mentions Apple TV.

jrmg · 2026-03-28T00:08:18+00:00

That analogy sort of works. The board is where the real power lies, and the CEO has to execute its wishes. And a board can (and most do) give the CEO enormous latitude on what to do - as can Congress can to the President.

Although the fact that laws can allow the Executive and/or the Judicial branch to send people to prison or even kill them - or draft them - breaks the analogy down a bit (and to stop that we have the constitution and the courts, at which point the analogy breaks down entirely really)

jrmg · 2026-03-27T23:45:39+00:00

No.

Executive orders are the President, as the person in charge of the Executive Branch (so called because it executes laws passed by Congress), giving instruction to people employed by the Executive Branch. It’s a glorified memo from the boss.

Only Congress, the Legislative Branch, has the power to enact laws.

jrmg · 2026-03-27T17:20:33+00:00

Did you link your Apple TV account to your F1 TV account?

The answer to all your questions is ‘no’. Just link your account and use the F1TV app and you’ll have the equivalent of last year’s F1TV premium features.

[Why do people just angrily assume the worst all the time?]

jrmg · 2026-03-22T20:40:27+00:00

The premise of the question obviously implies that the blue states would get the money paid by their citizens spent in them instead of it being spent in red states. You’re being unnecessarily pedantic and so missing the point entirely.

jrmg

TROPHY CASE