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by 4ntiq 571 days ago
I love the narrative of a Chinese manufacturer selling electronics to the West only to one day shut everything off for no reason at all than to fuck with people and disappear and for people to find out the supposedly registered company never existed. It's like a trashy, second-rate William Gibson knock off novel but there's something awfully amusing about it.
2 comments
lazide 571 days ago
Frankly it doesn’t even require (special) maliciousness (per-se) - spinning up random ‘brands’ to sell to rubes on Amazon while obfuscating beneficial owners is essentially standard operating procedure.

The only surprising thing here is they took an action to brick something instead of just abandoning it.

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4ntiq 571 days ago
>The only surprising thing here is they took an action to brick something instead of just abandoning it.

You're right, but I wouldn't say surprising. I do wonder what would happen if the units just stopped working outright one day and they're all intended to be gridded and nothing works properly anymore and the distributors are stumped and can't get ahold of anyone.

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lazide 571 days ago
Fair point - it would be trivial frankly to embed a ‘bug’ which causes them to all brick at some arbitrary point in the future too. Considering the level the firmware works at, probably even catch on fire.
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profsummergig 571 days ago
> and for people to find out the supposedly registered company never existed

This already happened to me. Sort of.

Saw an advt for Air Jordans for $7. With a pic of actual Air Jordans. Thought to myself, "it's only $7, let's see what happens".

A very sorry looking pair of shoes arrived a couple weeks later. With "Air Jordan" printed on them. They weren't actual Air Jordans.

There was no way, absolutely no way, to get in touch with the Chinese company that did this.

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wmf 571 days ago
This is why it's worth paying a few dollars more for certified superfakes instead of the regular fakes.
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4ntiq 571 days ago
.. y-you wouldn't happen to still have them or are by any chance selling them would you? Strictly asking for a friend.

(one year later: "Auction sells rare early Air Jordan prototype for $3 million")

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