This isn’t about shareholders being wiped out. It’s about account holders of what they thought were bank accounts losing everything because their accounts were powered on the back end by a company they’d never heard of or directly dealt with.
Several states have rules that the mail-in ballots have to be dropped in the mail on election day, and the mail can take a few days to be received, confirmed as eligible/valid, and then counted.
Many states have rules that allow for people to submit provisional ballots to be submitted and set aside while the system verified that the voter is eligible, and they don’t actually unseal and count the ballot until they confirm the voter’s eligibility.
Some even have rules where if a ballot is going to be challenged for not meeting the criteria for voting, such as matching the voter’s signature on file, the voter is given an opportunity to cure the defect. This can take weeks.
Significantly, the largest state, California, does all of these. They do 100% absentee voting, which increases the administrative overhead of counting (each envelope must be validated before being opened, many ballots not received by election day, a long process for disqualifying or curing ballots). So they’re the slowest. And they have the most. But they also have high voter participation rates, which is the goal of these voter-friendly policies that slow down counting.
These are supposed to have AI facial recognition for matching to government issued IDs, which just sounds like a huge attack surface (or even unintentional bugs).
Cigarette vending machines used to be quite common. Even today, there are some alcohol vending machines in controlled areas (some fancy hotels have 24/7 vending machines stocked with a particular brand of champagne bottles).
According to Wikipedia, about 155.5 million people voted in 2020 and so far, there are about 150.2 votes counted this time (98% of votes counted).
These numbers exclude third parties and independents.
When those are included, 2020 included 158.4 million votes, and the current count so far in 2024 is about 153 million.
Less than 150 million voters in 2024.
It’s more than 150 million. The current count is about 153 million, and there’s still more left to count in California.
Are they working alone, or do you envision groups who can stop, collaborate, and listen?
I’ve seen it for keypads that have to send a signal to an actuator located elsewhere, but I think the typical in-door deadbolt (where the keypad is mere millimeters from the motor itself) wouldn’t have the form factor leaving the connection as exposed to a magnet inducing a current that would actually actuate the motor.
Most of LPL’s videos on smart locks just defeat the mechanical backup cylinder, anyway. I’d love to see him take on the specific Yale x Nest model I have, though.
Yup. The backup for battery failure on this model is that the bottom of the plate can accept power from the pins of a 9V battery, held there just long enough to punch in the code.
Things might be different by now, but when I was researching this I decided on the Yale x Nest.
It’s more secure than a keyed lock in the following ways:
It’s less secure than a physical traditional lock in the following ways:
It’s basically the same level of security in the following ways:
Overall, I’d say it’s more secure against real-world risk, where the weakest link tends to be the people you share your keys with.
Well it’s obvious that Musk wants X to be a bank, so this isn’t unexpected.
The “what is a bank” question is complicated, so “fintechs” have been operating in areas that are in some gray areas in between “definitely a bank” versus “definitely not a bank.”
At the most informal, you’ve got things like a roommate who collects everyone’s fair share of rent before sending one payment to the landlord, or a parent who keeps track of their kids’ virtual balances of what the kids are allowed to spend. These definitely aren’t banks.
Then you’ve got things like short term balances between people who deal with each other: an employer who keeps track of hours and pays the employee at the end of the pay period, a retail customer who has some store credit from a returned item, a contractor who periodically invoices a customer for work performed, etc. Despite the “credit” and “balances,” these aren’t bank accounts.
Some gray areas get a little bit more complicated. You have airline mileage and hotel point programs where the miles/points can be used to purchase goods and services, including sometimes those not even being offered by the business where the miles were accumulated.
Then you get into banking-like structures that might be, or might not be banks. Is it banking when you buy something on a periodic payment plan? What about when you put down a deposit to reserve a preorder for something you expect to buy when that product is released? Or give someone a gift card for a specific store? Does it matter if these programs are administered by third parties separate from the buyer or seller?
Even things like Apple Cash or PayPal or Venmo or CashApp perform functions that can be bank-like, or not really bank-like.
Fintechs have looked at the constantly updated rules of what they can or can’t do before needing to comply with certain banking regulations, and usually try to avoid accidentally triggering certain rules. And the rules don’t divide into just bank versus not bank, as many of the rules apply to non-banks that do certain things, and many of the rules don’t apply to even banks that stay out of certain product lines. So it’s not a binary yes or no, but a series of complicated areas where some are yes and some are no.
The big problem, where this Synapse bankruptcy is hurting people, is when people worked with an entity that provides certain services, who relied on the back end on a middleman that provides other services, and then the middleman fails. People operating in the gray areas are exposing themselves to systemic risks they might not fully understand.