I am going to run for Congress in 2028, and my entire platform is going to be built around making it legal to Luigi corrupt people and burn down corrupt businesses.
This shit is not going to stop until we get bloody.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I am going to run for Congress in 2028, and my entire platform is going to be built around making it legal to Luigi corrupt people and burn down corrupt businesses.
This shit is not going to stop until we get bloody.
Good on that JetBlue employee for showing a level of empathy. They were probably fired for it, but at least they went out with a bang.
Why does everything have to be such a fucking scam?
For real: Because it's been too long since people rose up and killed a bunch of corrupt shitheads.
It's capitalism
again
Scams improve GDP
I'm not an economist, but this is probably technically true
GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced in a country. A legal scam can hide as a service and get counted.
This is why cars are good for GDP but mass transit isn’t, because a lot more cost goes into a car than a bus on a per rider basis.
The same goes for health insurance. Simply paying a doctor for services is far less GDP than paying an insurance company who then pays the doctor after taking a cut.
Once you realize what GDP measures a lot of what countries do makes sense.
if i burn down your house, the gdp grows, because lot of people now have work rebuilding it.
So what you are saying is that billionarie houses having to be rebuilt after a fire would great for the GDP.
well yes. but they would make the same argument on behalf of their eighth yacht..
It was a real shame the previous seven yachts sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
I remember this discussed in my economics class 20y ago.... Whether housewives work should be in GDP. One would hope economists move forward from there.
Because capitalism
Because: "fuck you!" that's why!
aka: uncontrolled late stage capitalism
Because the FTC has been regulatory-captured.
I still haven't figured out if Google's flight search forwards view data similar to checking on the actual airline's website because I've definitely seen price hikes occur in realtime, but I can't tell if that's because of constant rechecks close to the flight date, or just the static algorithm increasing the price as the flight date approaches.
Otherwise I'm kind of skeptical of how they allow Google to use such data and present it for free.
Airlines ABSOLUTELY change their prices if you repeatedly check routes to a city. I have watched them change by over $100 over a few hours a day when contemplating a trip using their flight searches.
I now do all the flight route and time checking with a browser private window, no location being served, and VPN with an exit far from where I am, then use a phone on a cellular network to do any booking or vice versa in order to prevent tracking or some sort of identifying hash they might grab.
It's such a cheapass scam to basically gouge a customer based on interest.
JetBlue is hardly the first airline to fall into the limelight for potentially changing its prices based on a user’s browser history.
The Federal Trade Commission has studied surveillance pricing methods since 2024, and found retailers often used people’s personal information to set individualized pricing information. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he “directed staff to start examining” if new disclosure rules are needed by companies during a Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month.
or, OR... We could ban the fuckery
The best I can do is give tariff refunds to companies and fuck over the lower class.
Earn $10B doing illegal stuff, settle with the FTC for a $10 million dollar fine and don't have to admit wrongdoing and/or a deferred prosecution agreement with no teeth or oversight.
Not surprised. Always book tickets in private browsing, preferably with a VPN. Expect to get upcharged otherwise.
In countries that are not the US, they just don't stand for that shit and make it illegal.
You're not wrong, but we don't all have the capability to move to another country, for both legal and financial reasons.
We're not saying Americans should move somewhere else; we're saying Americans (collectively) need to fix their broken ass country, looking at others for inspiration.
Easier said than done OFC.
Those are good tips. Be aware though that they have multiple ways of tracking you (like screen size) and if you have a unique flight (e.g. departing from Boston arriving in Gary, IN on 4/29. Return on 5/5), they can figure it out.
I have always heard of this but thought it was an urban legend. I've never seen my flights change price after I looked them up more than once. And I always check first with Skyscanner and then search those flights with my browser and find them at the same price. Does this actually happen in Europe? Or is it illegal here?
Living in Europe now and we’ve not seen it too much but while in USA yeah we needed a flight from Dallas to NYC and it went from $150 to $600 after I was clicking in to buy it. We just waited a day and bought a $200 flight from another company
I think Amazon does this shit too
Oh Uber absolutely does this! I drive for them occasionally, and sometimes I'll see price hike a little and not for very long. Then I tried to use it one time drunk at a bar ~2 miles away. Checking back and forth for about an hour or went from ~$70 to ~$30. And shocker, the driver said he was only getting a few bucks on the surge premium.
one time i saw uber was $60 bc i was in downtown so i walked into a residential area and it dropped to $30. the driver came from downtown to pick me up.
I once bought a couple copies of a book as an inside joke for a couple friends.
It was not at all a popular book, I can pretty much guarantee that you've never heard of it or it's writer, and odds are you'd probably hate it if you did ever read it.
I think when I bought them they were going for about $5 a pop.
And immediately after I ordered them the price shot up to like $15
I can only assume that the algorithm assumed that something happened that made that book popular all of a sudden, instead of just one asshole buying a couple copies to give to his asshole friends as a joke.
Took a few months before the price dropped down again.
My answer to this is always "I opened an incognito window, effectively the same thing"
That didn't matter for me recently. On a site, flights in cart, looked at rental car for <5 minutes and the outbound flights jumped ~$60/ticket in that time "due to demand" when the flight was 80%empty...
Got on my phone, on data (so new browser, new IP) still prices are higher. Hopped on my old phone over VPN to change region, checked out a different leave date, checked a couple, went back to my original date and flights were $40 cheaper (so still $20 more than before) but they gotta know based on Geo IP and time of inquiries it's probably all the same person, smh.
What a scam!!