Adafruit requires 2FA to prevent bots buying out Raspberry Pi(blog.adafruit.com)
blog.adafruit.com
Adafruit requires 2FA to prevent bots buying out Raspberry Pi
https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/03/17/verified-accounts-secured-with-2fa-for-some-high-demand-products/
276 comments
Yeah, this has been really frustrating for me, too. I've been trying to buy a Compute Module 4, and everyone is sold out of that as well. I'd be perfectly happy to even pay the full price to place a backorder, and just wait for them to ship it to me whenever my order hits the top of the list. I don't want to keep checking daily to see if anyone has something, and then click through to each of 5 different retailers to only find out that they've sold out again in the time it's taken me to click through. It's such a waste of time.
As far as I know, you can place a backorder with Newark or Allied.
Just put an order with a 70 week wait with Newark
They even confirmed manually via email if I really really really wanted to place the backorder
They even confirmed manually via email if I really really really wanted to place the backorder
Ah, thanks! For some reason I'd missed that last time I looked. The other 4 retailers listed on raspberrypi.com for the US don't appear to accept preorders, but you're right about Newark.
Now I just need to wait until October for my CM4 to ship... :(
Now I just need to wait until October for my CM4 to ship... :(
Or increase the price for the bots detected to a few thousand dollars
Hah, I love the idea of doing this. Detect a bot, change the price and put a big banner up that says “hey, human, click here to pay $40 instead of $4000”. Only works once or twice before bots would catch on and check the price, but I bet a ton of auto-order bots don’t currently.
Then write it up and get that sweet HN karma for defending the Pi supply.
Then write it up and get that sweet HN karma for defending the Pi supply.
I mean, the text could be changed, also if KNOWN bots are detected, it won't matter. Assuming you KNOW they are bots, give them the new price with no hints at all. :D
Retailer gets paid whether it’s you or someone else buying. Why invest in system upgrades?
Why not sell them directly on the secondary market and pocket the markup?
Why even bother selling them yourself and cultivate a community of scalper to maximize profit and take a cut.
Then buy the suppliers and only make enough to keep them scarce and expensive.
Don't stop there, buy competitor wares and put them in the landfill since they aren't running any schemes.
I think it boils down to: profit isn't the only motivation for doing a thing.
Why even bother selling them yourself and cultivate a community of scalper to maximize profit and take a cut.
Then buy the suppliers and only make enough to keep them scarce and expensive.
Don't stop there, buy competitor wares and put them in the landfill since they aren't running any schemes.
I think it boils down to: profit isn't the only motivation for doing a thing.
Hey, do you work for ticketmaster?
Ticketmaster was definitely my inspiration.
Network Solutions is my guess
Because unlike in your head, the real world has costs for erecting a logistics pipeline.
Diverting from the pipeline that works for them is in your interest not theirs.
First world whiners; this graphics card QQing is approaching “I can’t get a haircut.” levels of cringe. HN thinks it’s so much more respectable and mature than Reddit, though. Still a bunch of first worlders moaning about reality not serving them just so.
This is how your culture has always worked; any one of us is not especially important to it. You want to roll that way? Put up a website to do so, work a deal with nVidia or AMD to be that pipeline.
Diverting from the pipeline that works for them is in your interest not theirs.
First world whiners; this graphics card QQing is approaching “I can’t get a haircut.” levels of cringe. HN thinks it’s so much more respectable and mature than Reddit, though. Still a bunch of first worlders moaning about reality not serving them just so.
This is how your culture has always worked; any one of us is not especially important to it. You want to roll that way? Put up a website to do so, work a deal with nVidia or AMD to be that pipeline.
Are you on HN? Are you making a point? It appears you should check the mirror for whiners.
Not sure what this is in reply to, my post answers why a person may do something with no profit. Not everyone is an asshole.
Not sure what this is in reply to, my post answers why a person may do something with no profit. Not everyone is an asshole.
Not sure what this is in reply to, but the graphics card companies operate on profit. The retailers operate on profit. Hosting services requires paying for them.
You want someone else to do what you aren’t. That’s not how it works. Prove its worth on the market.
I’m not saying that’s ideal, I’m saying that’s how it’s done, not through hoping and dreaming in the nooks and crannies of social media
You want someone else to do what you aren’t. That’s not how it works. Prove its worth on the market.
I’m not saying that’s ideal, I’m saying that’s how it’s done, not through hoping and dreaming in the nooks and crannies of social media
The only thing I want in this context is for you to understand people have motivations that are not solely based on profits.
You having continuity for two posts in a row would be a nice-to-have though.
You having continuity for two posts in a row would be a nice-to-have though.
Ticket scalpers use pools of credit cards to make purchases. What's to stop botters from using pools of CCs+phone numbers?
Unique shipping addresses are typically harder to circumvent (but not impossible)
I think you could just make up unit/apartment numbers to make your address look different? I know USPS provides an address validation service[0], but it apparently only understands street addresses and not whether there is a single family home there, or a 10,000 unit megacondo
[0] https://www.ups.com/address_validator/search?loc=en_US
[0] https://www.ups.com/address_validator/search?loc=en_US
I actually worked on a service for a company in the past that could identify these types of scenarios and determine if they are fake.
There were a number of scenarios to consider (there was a "probability score" involved), but the biggest one is: "How big is the plot of land at address XYZ. Is it in an urban, suburban, or rural area? Is the existing building a house, commercial building, or skyscraper? Does this unit buy products of this type in bulk?"
Easier than you think. Note that the score had hundreds of factors. These were the easiest to consider.
(In most states, you could pull public info and tell right away if an address has multiple legitimate units or not FYI)
There were a number of scenarios to consider (there was a "probability score" involved), but the biggest one is: "How big is the plot of land at address XYZ. Is it in an urban, suburban, or rural area? Is the existing building a house, commercial building, or skyscraper? Does this unit buy products of this type in bulk?"
Easier than you think. Note that the score had hundreds of factors. These were the easiest to consider.
(In most states, you could pull public info and tell right away if an address has multiple legitimate units or not FYI)
I'm curious how you handled addresses that couldn't be validated. From my perspective, that's a big blind spot of real-world implementations of this sort of stuff, and thus the condition under which most of it happens. Not quite "make up a unit number" (freight forwarder red flag, anyway) but pretty close.
If you use the USPS API, it gives you a specific message if it's a multi-unit address:
Default address: The address you entered was found but more information is needed (such as an apartment, suite, or box number) to match to a specific address.
Verify API, page 11
https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/general-api-dev...
Default address: The address you entered was found but more information is needed (such as an apartment, suite, or box number) to match to a specific address.
Verify API, page 11
https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/general-api-dev...
How many people in the same mega-condo are trying to order Raspberry Pis though? Ignoring unit numbers would still probably be worth the small amount of collateral damage.
CPC are a major supplier and accept backorders - https://cpc.farnell.com/raspberry-pi/rpi4-modbp-4gb/raspberr...
I ordered a RPi CM4 about 5 months ago. They charged me the full price and I’m still waiting for the delivery.
Bots then buy them up?? Back ordering has the same problem as everything else that is first come first serve.
My fav thing is combining “purchase intent” with “has bought at store before” and just allowing people with purchase histories at the store to buy, and 1 per person.
Also just lotteries work alright, if only cuz you add enough weird friction to make it rough.
My fav thing is combining “purchase intent” with “has bought at store before” and just allowing people with purchase histories at the store to buy, and 1 per person.
Also just lotteries work alright, if only cuz you add enough weird friction to make it rough.
Glad they took this step to slow down the bots. The situation has been rough since rpilocator.com came along. I haven’t been able to complete a purchase since the week it hit HN.
I use the pi for teaching, and could previously pick one up every couple weeks just by signing up for stock notifications. I was in the middle of a purchase in February when rpilocator updated to show stock and Adafruit went offline due to the traffic surge. The disruption lasted about half an hour.
I use the pi for teaching, and could previously pick one up every couple weeks just by signing up for stock notifications. I was in the middle of a purchase in February when rpilocator updated to show stock and Adafruit went offline due to the traffic surge. The disruption lasted about half an hour.
Will this slow down the bots? It's just an extra (simple) hoop to jump through, TOTP is easy to implement.
It was rough before rpilocator came along. It just highlighted how difficult it is to find any Pis in stock.
Good. Supply is so limited right now, but everyone should be able to get one at MSRP if they want one. The whole goal of the Pi project is to make computers affordable to enable learning and prototyping. I pre-ordered a Pi 4 about 3 months ago, and I should receive it this week if I'm lucky.
> The whole goal of the Pi project is to make computers affordable to enable learning and prototyping
Is it still though? They have been pushing into various industrial and commercial markets. There was talk about Raspberry Pi Trading planning an IPO this year [1].
There are companies now that are basing their entire product lines around Raspberry Pi's Compute Modules. This then drives demand for other Raspberry Pi products as well. When you're deeply invested into that ecosystem you also need Pis 3s and 4s for builds, testing, development, etc.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392649
Is it still though? They have been pushing into various industrial and commercial markets. There was talk about Raspberry Pi Trading planning an IPO this year [1].
There are companies now that are basing their entire product lines around Raspberry Pi's Compute Modules. This then drives demand for other Raspberry Pi products as well. When you're deeply invested into that ecosystem you also need Pis 3s and 4s for builds, testing, development, etc.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392649
Indeed, RP 4 with 8 GB is a very powerful versatile product, needed for all kinds of industrial and commercial uses, where it would in turn build more value for the rest of society, generating wealth. Attempting to restrict this product to only some specific privileged group will not only be futile, but harmful to the whole society, including that privileged group, as the wealth that could be generated will not be.
The current big problem is that 2 years of Coronavirus pandemic and the active Russian beligerance have created unprecedented economic disruption, effectively ending the prosperous times following WWII. We are no longer living in the same world, and expecting things to be cheap and plentiful is no longer a practical frame of mind.
The best known way to allocate meager resources for best possible use is not to interfere with the free market. And anybody who disagrees and tries to do otherwise will learn this fundamental the hard way.
It is too bad that there is really no viable alternative to RP. The current competitors do not provide good ongoing support and are only compatible with specific versions of the Linux kernel, or modified versions of the Linux kernel. I suppose eventually a credible competitor will rise up maintaining good support, without any fair price manipulation BS, and with less weird hardware quirks, and everybody will just switch over to that platform.
The current big problem is that 2 years of Coronavirus pandemic and the active Russian beligerance have created unprecedented economic disruption, effectively ending the prosperous times following WWII. We are no longer living in the same world, and expecting things to be cheap and plentiful is no longer a practical frame of mind.
The best known way to allocate meager resources for best possible use is not to interfere with the free market. And anybody who disagrees and tries to do otherwise will learn this fundamental the hard way.
It is too bad that there is really no viable alternative to RP. The current competitors do not provide good ongoing support and are only compatible with specific versions of the Linux kernel, or modified versions of the Linux kernel. I suppose eventually a credible competitor will rise up maintaining good support, without any fair price manipulation BS, and with less weird hardware quirks, and everybody will just switch over to that platform.
> The best known way to allocate meager resources for best possible use is not to interfere with the free market. And anybody who disagrees and tries to do otherwise will learn this fundamental the hard way.
The "free market" is a bad idea in scarcity times, as the only ones able to pay the profiteering prices will be the rich and wasteful, and ordinary society is left behind. Just look at the PC market where shitcoin miners have completely ruined the supply chain - it's still almost impossible to get decent GPUs at a decent price point after years, and there have been serious though temporary impacts on deliverability of RAM and HDDs with other shitcoins. Or with rental markets where entire city quarters are either taken over by AirBnB-style operations (because ultra-short-term "hotel" rental yields sometimes up to 4x a month what regular renting would allow) or left idle as "speculative" assets (e.g. Londongrad).
To make it worse, when scalpers buy up the remains of the available inventory, that inventory gets locked away from being used productively by anyone as scalpers have an incentive to keep their inventory off the market to drive up the price even more!
In times of resource scarcity - no matter if food or anything else that's critical for society - a good government steps in and limits the free market (e.g. by banning cryptocurrencies or scalpers, by introducing quotas or by introducing vacancy taxes) so that at least some movement of goods happens.
The "free market" is a bad idea in scarcity times, as the only ones able to pay the profiteering prices will be the rich and wasteful, and ordinary society is left behind. Just look at the PC market where shitcoin miners have completely ruined the supply chain - it's still almost impossible to get decent GPUs at a decent price point after years, and there have been serious though temporary impacts on deliverability of RAM and HDDs with other shitcoins. Or with rental markets where entire city quarters are either taken over by AirBnB-style operations (because ultra-short-term "hotel" rental yields sometimes up to 4x a month what regular renting would allow) or left idle as "speculative" assets (e.g. Londongrad).
To make it worse, when scalpers buy up the remains of the available inventory, that inventory gets locked away from being used productively by anyone as scalpers have an incentive to keep their inventory off the market to drive up the price even more!
In times of resource scarcity - no matter if food or anything else that's critical for society - a good government steps in and limits the free market (e.g. by banning cryptocurrencies or scalpers, by introducing quotas or by introducing vacancy taxes) so that at least some movement of goods happens.
Attempting to restrict it to just education would be a problem, it's much better to make it the cheap universal standard linux thingy anyone can learn on, and then apply that knowledge in real life.
But scalping is a totally separate issue. They provide fairly minimal value if any, to anyone but themselves, while raising prices for everyone.
I don't really see why a non profit organization should have to support a use case that is detrimental to many people.
But scalping is a totally separate issue. They provide fairly minimal value if any, to anyone but themselves, while raising prices for everyone.
I don't really see why a non profit organization should have to support a use case that is detrimental to many people.
Whenever someone says "free market" i always have to think of situations like Enron, Theranos or child labor. People can not be trusted to behave decently in a free market. In theory free market sounds nice, in practice it will only show you how much people value money over other people...
An IPO of Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd would unlock a lot of funds for the Raspberry Pi Foundation which could be reinvested into further educational activities. It’s probably a good move for the original mission of the foundation.
> An IPO of Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd would unlock a lot of funds
It would also make every decision that the company makes from here going forward one of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. For a project rooted in affordable open-source hardware/software that's a major conflict of interest.
I get that "Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd" is not the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but it is wholly owned by the foundation as a subsidiary. IMO, it'd be of major concern if any RPI business entities went public.
It would also make every decision that the company makes from here going forward one of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. For a project rooted in affordable open-source hardware/software that's a major conflict of interest.
I get that "Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd" is not the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but it is wholly owned by the foundation as a subsidiary. IMO, it'd be of major concern if any RPI business entities went public.
As long as the company can make a reasonable argument that it's in the long term interest of shareholders, they can do all sorts of things. It just has to be a reasonable business expense.
Except it might not be in shareholders' best interests to sell at the current prices, especially in the middle of a chip shortage. The presence of a scalping secondary market is at least partial evidence that the market will support higher prices.
Either way, your "as long as..." conditional statement may be logically consistent, but the condition is by no means guaranteed to be met.
Either way, your "as long as..." conditional statement may be logically consistent, but the condition is by no means guaranteed to be met.
Has there ever been a shareholder lawsuit because a company set its prices too low? I don’t believe this is a thing.
Who said lawsuit? It doesn't have to be a lawsuit. Shareholders can put pressure on the company in a few ways. And in any case, I'm talking about shareholders' interests, not the (sometimes ineffective) steps they can take to remedy conflicts with corporate leadership.
Nonetheless, a lawsuit is possible as well. Foregoing profits in favor of ideology could conceivably be a breach of fiduciary responsibility, a primary cause of shareholder lawsuits. You may be right that there has never been a lawsuit like this about too-low prices, but I simply don't know. And unless you're a corporate lawyer with extensive shareholder lawsuit experience-- or happen to have some legal experience and a subscription to something like Westlaw-- then you are making an unfounded guess.
I have a friend w/ Westlaw access, among other databases, but I'm not willing to ask them to spend a few hours researching the issue to see if there's every been such a case, or try to find one myself. But in the history of corporate lawsuits it certainly wouldn't surprise me. There is a body of caselaw that could encompass it, predatory pricing (https://www.justice.gov/atr/predatory-pricing-strategic-theo...). Selling significantly below the market-clearing rate demonstrated by scalper prices might provide some ammunition for this claim, but IANAL so I won't speculate further on its actual applicability.
If you have more direct expertise or knowledge of the caselaw there I'm happy to hear it. I think, absent completely recalcitrant corporate leadership on the issue, shareholders would force the issue outside of the courtroom.
Nonetheless, a lawsuit is possible as well. Foregoing profits in favor of ideology could conceivably be a breach of fiduciary responsibility, a primary cause of shareholder lawsuits. You may be right that there has never been a lawsuit like this about too-low prices, but I simply don't know. And unless you're a corporate lawyer with extensive shareholder lawsuit experience-- or happen to have some legal experience and a subscription to something like Westlaw-- then you are making an unfounded guess.
I have a friend w/ Westlaw access, among other databases, but I'm not willing to ask them to spend a few hours researching the issue to see if there's every been such a case, or try to find one myself. But in the history of corporate lawsuits it certainly wouldn't surprise me. There is a body of caselaw that could encompass it, predatory pricing (https://www.justice.gov/atr/predatory-pricing-strategic-theo...). Selling significantly below the market-clearing rate demonstrated by scalper prices might provide some ammunition for this claim, but IANAL so I won't speculate further on its actual applicability.
If you have more direct expertise or knowledge of the caselaw there I'm happy to hear it. I think, absent completely recalcitrant corporate leadership on the issue, shareholders would force the issue outside of the courtroom.
Isn't this how we end up with another Mozilla? No way to support the nonprofit and the company keeps doing stupid shit.
Good. Supply is so limited now, prices should go up
Looks like you can use OATH TOTP, which can be easily automated. I don't understand how this is an effective countermeasure against bots.
A lot of bots are written by really unsophisticated people though, often just following online guides. Raising the bar lowers the number of adversaries.
You can never eliminate the risk, but it's just one more point of friction which is also a not-so-unreasonable speed bump to enable for real users.
You can never eliminate the risk, but it's just one more point of friction which is also a not-so-unreasonable speed bump to enable for real users.
Most people do not write bots. One person writes a bot, thousands use it. The user just enters a few values.
And even if someone can do it, it may raise the cost enough to make it not worth it.
Maybe, but, no one gets my mobile number, not my bank, no one.
It's not in my name, I pay cash for it, I share my contacts with no one, etc.
I won't have it linked to me, and with how you can so readily be location tracked when someone knows your number, I am astonished so many people give it out.
So there goes the easiest 2fa....
It's not in my name, I pay cash for it, I share my contacts with no one, etc.
I won't have it linked to me, and with how you can so readily be location tracked when someone knows your number, I am astonished so many people give it out.
So there goes the easiest 2fa....
Other people share your contact though, unless you exclusively associate with people equally paranoid. You simply can’t have an anonymous phone number these days unless you actively switch numbers all the time which if you get accused of something will be used as evidence against you.
I have a voip number forwarded for incoming. I have no caller id for outgoing.
Thus, even with google having my name linked to a number, it does not link to my cell phone.
Reply to comment below:
No one gets my real mobile number, so that is solved.
Why would I care if my VOIP number is in address books. That's the point of it, and why I have it
I'm not trying to hide from the government, I am preventing Google, FB, etc from linking my mobile to me, and preventing random people from tracking my location, which is trivial when they know your mobile number.
Thus, even with google having my name linked to a number, it does not link to my cell phone.
Reply to comment below:
No one gets my real mobile number, so that is solved.
Why would I care if my VOIP number is in address books. That's the point of it, and why I have it
I'm not trying to hide from the government, I am preventing Google, FB, etc from linking my mobile to me, and preventing random people from tracking my location, which is trivial when they know your mobile number.
Your VOIP number can be resolved to your mobile number. Your cell provider has the link.
You withholding your caller ID only hides it from the receiving handset, it doesn't disguise it from the network.
You withholding your caller ID only hides it from the receiving handset, it doesn't disguise it from the network.
If you host your own pbx, you can consider it as a proxy to your cell phone, and even do it over vpn. You cant track that further than the pbx server ip
It only takes one contact to have your real number in your name, or even better also associated with your VoIP number in their address book, to lose your "anonymity".
That was my thought. The value of a piece of metadata is inherent in its context as a node within a network. You might have disparate pieces of information about a group of people, but weighing their connections by similarity/proximity/etc. allows you to develop assumptions about individuals, even if all you know is their phone number and who had that phone number in their contact list.
Specifically, from the point of view of network analysis, a missing or unknown node becomes suspect when various connections point to it. In the era of high connectedness, that seems like kicking a goal on your own team if you're playing the "be anonymous" game.
Specifically, from the point of view of network analysis, a missing or unknown node becomes suspect when various connections point to it. In the era of high connectedness, that seems like kicking a goal on your own team if you're playing the "be anonymous" game.
This level of automatic tracking would require all players (VOIP company, network providers (eg, via wifi), cell phone companies, Google + Facebook + Apple, along with significant tracking effort...
Just to find out that phone #5 is Pete.
Whilst it could be done, things aren't quite that far along yet. Further, I believe you are presuming I intend to remain unknown from all parties.
I believe you, and a few other commenters here are jumping to an extreme interpretation. My goal is to cut automated tracking.
A key example may be photo radar, and those license plate covers which make plates illegible (presumably). In this case, should a police officer, or the government in general want to track you, yup, they could.
For example they could go through video looking for you again. Your exact car. Including, the covered plate! It really wouldn't be that hard to do, but it would take time. Effort.
However, plate readers are networked, and databases are being kept of car movements. Having that plate cover breaks this automatic tracking, even if a dedicated person may want to track.
So you raise the bar. You remove automation.
And that's the guts of it. Because profitability in this business is won by doing a few simple things, and then collecting massive amounts of data. Remove any degree of automation, and it is no longer profitable to track someone.
I bought my phone with cash, my sim card, my minutes with cash, used a fake address and name, signed up to Google with a different fake name, bought a play card with cash, which was basically zero effort for me.
I do this whenever I buy a new phone. A new, clean slate.
I then, using my already existing infrastructure, only allow people to reach my mobile via a voip number. Done.
Yet everyone here thinks this is loads of work, with zero benefit. Welp, I disagree.
Just to find out that phone #5 is Pete.
Whilst it could be done, things aren't quite that far along yet. Further, I believe you are presuming I intend to remain unknown from all parties.
I believe you, and a few other commenters here are jumping to an extreme interpretation. My goal is to cut automated tracking.
A key example may be photo radar, and those license plate covers which make plates illegible (presumably). In this case, should a police officer, or the government in general want to track you, yup, they could.
For example they could go through video looking for you again. Your exact car. Including, the covered plate! It really wouldn't be that hard to do, but it would take time. Effort.
However, plate readers are networked, and databases are being kept of car movements. Having that plate cover breaks this automatic tracking, even if a dedicated person may want to track.
So you raise the bar. You remove automation.
And that's the guts of it. Because profitability in this business is won by doing a few simple things, and then collecting massive amounts of data. Remove any degree of automation, and it is no longer profitable to track someone.
I bought my phone with cash, my sim card, my minutes with cash, used a fake address and name, signed up to Google with a different fake name, bought a play card with cash, which was basically zero effort for me.
I do this whenever I buy a new phone. A new, clean slate.
I then, using my already existing infrastructure, only allow people to reach my mobile via a voip number. Done.
Yet everyone here thinks this is loads of work, with zero benefit. Welp, I disagree.
Fair enough! The conversation evoked screenshots of Palantir software from a decade or so ago. I imagine it's next level now.
Sadly, it likely is.
How does my VOIP number being in my friend's address book, enable Google to see that address book, and learn my mobile number?
My goal is not to ensure no one is capable of tracking me ; that's literally impossible. However, I do not want:
* Google to get my name, contact info, etc via my phone itself
* Google to link to me, by seeing my mobile phone in another person's contacts
This is why I give no one my mobile number.
If the Government, or if someone was suing me, or I was up to "no good", an exhaustive search would likely bear fruit. So? That's an entirely different animal.
My goal is not to ensure no one is capable of tracking me ; that's literally impossible. However, I do not want:
* Google to get my name, contact info, etc via my phone itself
* Google to link to me, by seeing my mobile phone in another person's contacts
This is why I give no one my mobile number.
If the Government, or if someone was suing me, or I was up to "no good", an exhaustive search would likely bear fruit. So? That's an entirely different animal.
> * Google to link to me, by seeing my mobile phone in another person's contacts
I'm pointing out that it takes only one of your friends or acquaintances to add your real mobile number to their address book alongside your VoIP number to ruin your system. People don't think twice about giving apps access to their address book. They're also regularly scooped up by malware.
Your scheme requires you to have perfect OpSec 100% of the time. Just human nature says you've probably goofed and given out your mobile number once or twice. There are enough huge database leaks that your info has probably been leaked by someone you don't even know.
I'm pointing out that it takes only one of your friends or acquaintances to add your real mobile number to their address book alongside your VoIP number to ruin your system. People don't think twice about giving apps access to their address book. They're also regularly scooped up by malware.
Your scheme requires you to have perfect OpSec 100% of the time. Just human nature says you've probably goofed and given out your mobile number once or twice. There are enough huge database leaks that your info has probably been leaked by someone you don't even know.
I'm pointing out that it takes only one of your friends or acquaintances to add your real mobile number to their address book alongside
I said I don't give my mobile number out. Do you believe my friends work diligently to find this number out? And how would they get it? And why do you believe they would get it so easily.
I don't even know my number without looking in 'about phone'.
Your scheme requires you to have perfect OpSec 100% of the time. Just human nature says you've probably goofed and given out your mobile number once or twice.
I don't understand why you think I would do that? Or how it would happen by accident.
When someone asks my number, why would I give a number I never do, instead of the number I always do. Why would I even memorize my real number? I really don't understand why you think this is hard, tricky.
Or think it is a "scheme".
I use cash almost everywhere too. I have a friend who thinks this is strange, and sketchy. Cash. Sketchy. I just get bewildered when I encounter these types of thought processes...
I said I don't give my mobile number out. Do you believe my friends work diligently to find this number out? And how would they get it? And why do you believe they would get it so easily.
I don't even know my number without looking in 'about phone'.
Your scheme requires you to have perfect OpSec 100% of the time. Just human nature says you've probably goofed and given out your mobile number once or twice.
I don't understand why you think I would do that? Or how it would happen by accident.
When someone asks my number, why would I give a number I never do, instead of the number I always do. Why would I even memorize my real number? I really don't understand why you think this is hard, tricky.
Or think it is a "scheme".
I use cash almost everywhere too. I have a friend who thinks this is strange, and sketchy. Cash. Sketchy. I just get bewildered when I encounter these types of thought processes...
Then why do you care? Get another forwarded number for giving out.
Any toll-free number you call - at least within the +1 country code - can see your outbound number even if you hide it.
So if you’re in the USA and you have ever called your bank’s toll-free from your mobile they already have your cell phone number. you can try to sell yourself by googling for toll-free ANACs which will read your number back to you
So if you’re in the USA and you have ever called your bank’s toll-free from your mobile they already have your cell phone number. you can try to sell yourself by googling for toll-free ANACs which will read your number back to you
This is helpful info, but I use voice on my mobile sparingly, and use my voip line most of the time. (I have a cordless + desktop voip phone at home and work).
And how might voice recognition play into this too? If you're not easily identified then you may draw more attention and more effort spent to determine who you are.
How is that related to this?
OATH/TOTP does not need your mobile number. It only needs the current time, a secret, and an SHA/HMAC function.
There's no phone number involved.
OATH/TOTP does not need your mobile number. It only needs the current time, a secret, and an SHA/HMAC function.
There's no phone number involved.
Do you mean SMS? I don't see a requirement that you use that. Yeah, that would be a pain. My SMS goes to a voip number that emails me the message, and that works most of the time, but a few jerky sites reject it. I just figured that the 2fa slows down requests to 2 per minute or whatever, the speed of TOTP codes changing.
I also don't know what a verified account is. If it's just email-confirmed then yeah, that is trivial. If it is a payment card that worked, or even further a shipping address that worked, that can be more annoying to game.
I had thought that it was only the Pi Zero series that had strict quantity limits, and that people were supposed to be able to buy lots of 4's if they wanted to.
Also, for most users (not all) there isn't really a pressing need for a 4, since the 400 has been plentiful and is basically a 4 in a different form factor, with an attached keyboard. I figured if I wanted a 4 before they became available again, I'd just get a 400. What I really want is some more Zeros and Zero W's, but I think those are both being replaced by the more power hungry and expensive Zero W2.
I also don't know what a verified account is. If it's just email-confirmed then yeah, that is trivial. If it is a payment card that worked, or even further a shipping address that worked, that can be more annoying to game.
I had thought that it was only the Pi Zero series that had strict quantity limits, and that people were supposed to be able to buy lots of 4's if they wanted to.
Also, for most users (not all) there isn't really a pressing need for a 4, since the 400 has been plentiful and is basically a 4 in a different form factor, with an attached keyboard. I figured if I wanted a 4 before they became available again, I'd just get a 400. What I really want is some more Zeros and Zero W's, but I think those are both being replaced by the more power hungry and expensive Zero W2.
You dont need to hand over your mobile number, just get a raspberrypi, install freeswitch and sign up to a free voip number which happens to be in the range of numbers used by mobile phone operators.
https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/
I really dont know how they think they can use 2FA to stop all but the most basic of bots from buying up rpi's.
I really dont know how they think they can use 2FA to stop all but the most basic of bots from buying up rpi's.
I have SMS capable voip numbers, and also ones ported from old phones. Many 2fa services have a db of these, and refused to send.
> >Makes you think, do Linux, Windows and Mac handle this properly? Honestly, I doubt it!
Thats quite a lot of surveillance.
Thats quite a lot of surveillance.
>> You dont need to hand over your mobile number, just get a raspberrypi, ...
You DO realize you're posting on an article about restrictions for purchasing Pis right?
You DO realize you're posting on an article about restrictions for purchasing Pis right?
Kind of pointless to have a phone if you don’t give the number to anyone. It’s whole purpose is for people to be able to contact you.
Get another phone number, get a phone with dual sim, disable this sim card and only enable to answer 2FA queries
Unless you cycle across town every time you swap SIMs, I don't think this will help much. Just the fact that those two SIMs ping the same cell towers is enough for a bunch of data aggregators to correlate the numbers back to the same person.
Plus, IMEIs are often sequential, and can be queried (like a mac address) in a DB. This helps prevent theft.
So they have one IMEI, they have all for that phone.
So they have one IMEI, they have all for that phone.
2FA is not even remotely secure via sms, as shown 100 times over. The only reason google loves it so much, is it links your real life name to your accounts.
You'll probably be interested by this other article[1] on the front page of HN today, but you're not going to like it.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30765223
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30765223
Use a seperate mobile number for all your 2fa, that way if one of your mates has say Truecaller - your number/name/email is not going to be out there with association.
Actually, they don't allow new use of SMS verification.
how do you buy anything on the internet? Is the addition of 2FA even an issue for you, or an opportunity to humble brag?
Easiest to pwn 2FA
[deleted]
This ads friction to the process of automating the buying process. Preventing bots is an endless cat and mouse game, every protection you put in place will be circumvented eventually. You just have to keep changing tactics and adding new layers. That’s what they are doing here.
Realistically the best protection that they could put in place is a rate/qty limit on the credit card being used. It can still be automated by using stolen cards, or one of the services that instantly creates new card numbers for you. But again it adds friction.
Also limiting the number of orders to delivery addresses would be a easy mitigation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they are doing both of those already though.
Realistically the best protection that they could put in place is a rate/qty limit on the credit card being used. It can still be automated by using stolen cards, or one of the services that instantly creates new card numbers for you. But again it adds friction.
Also limiting the number of orders to delivery addresses would be a easy mitigation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they are doing both of those already though.
[deleted]
This seems like an especially trivial-to-bypass mitigation.
Like the poster said, it’s whack-a-mole.
These trivial mitigations at least filter out low-effort script kiddies. People gaming the system “for real” will put incredible effort into getting around your countermeasures. You always have to be one step ahead of them.
These trivial mitigations at least filter out low-effort script kiddies. People gaming the system “for real” will put incredible effort into getting around your countermeasures. You always have to be one step ahead of them.
It may be “trivial” to someone with a high level of expertise. But the number of moving parts required in that automation does add a significant barrier to most the of “script kiddies” that are using bots.
You still need to automate account creation and setting up of a TOTP token, that’s not “easy” for a lot of people.
You still need to automate account creation and setting up of a TOTP token, that’s not “easy” for a lot of people.
You'd be surprised at how big of an effect "trivial" mitigations like this have when you're defending against what amounts to a sea of script kiddies.
With a problem like this eliminating 80% of attackers gives you 80% of the benefit, it's not an all or nothing thing.
With a problem like this eliminating 80% of attackers gives you 80% of the benefit, it's not an all or nothing thing.
What would you suggest?
Low device limit per phone number/payment card, with the standard checks for VOIP would probably make things painful enough for most. Heck, outsource the bot checking and require a Facebook/Gmail/Apple/Twitter/whatever login. Intrusive as heck, but it works relatively well since those companies have already whacked a million moles.
Limits per shipping address?
Maybe, but it's also just a good idea to do anyway, so might as well.
You're misreading, you have to "verify" your account first as well as set up MFA.
Verifying just consists of confirming your email via a one-time token. Setting up MFA presumably just makes sure there's no impetus to hack a bunch of old accounts.
Verifying just consists of confirming your email via a one-time token. Setting up MFA presumably just makes sure there's no impetus to hack a bunch of old accounts.
Perhaps for buying a ras-pi specifically, they'll require SMS verification.
SMS is hard to create large numbers of fake accounts because getting access to large numbers of phone numbers that aren't all in the same block is pretty hard.
SMS is hard to create large numbers of fake accounts because getting access to large numbers of phone numbers that aren't all in the same block is pretty hard.
There are several services that offer exactly this for 6-20 cents per verification, with a wide variety of numbers and geos, VOIP or Real ATT/Verizon Mobile etc, and easy to use API's.
I agree, 2FA seems unrelated to stopping bots. It really seems like some form of rate limiting and captcha should have been used instead.
> $0.50 for 1-2 hours, depending on service load.
Where in the world do they plan to hire people for these rates?
In India, the country with lowest the Big Mac Index as in [1], it would take 6.48h for the human-bot to pay for a Big Mac. And this excludes energy and internet bills and money transfer fees. The numbers just don't work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index#Figures
Where in the world do they plan to hire people for these rates?
In India, the country with lowest the Big Mac Index as in [1], it would take 6.48h for the human-bot to pay for a Big Mac. And this excludes energy and internet bills and money transfer fees. The numbers just don't work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index#Figures
That isn't the labor rate, that is the solve rate most captha are easy to automate. You are buying the image recognition and their random click like a human algorithm. Probably even have some intentional wrong clicks like someone who misses... they have a few humans (who make more than that rate) but only for the new ones that they haven't seen before, once they know that one it is automated.
I post the above in hopes that you realize captca isn't useful for anything and stop annoying me with them.
I post the above in hopes that you realize captca isn't useful for anything and stop annoying me with them.
>The process of solving reCAPTCHA V2 Invisible is similar to the recognition of reCAPTCHA V2: we take the captcha parameters from the page in the form of the data-sitekey parameter and the page URL and transfer it to the 2Captcha service, where the employee solves it, after which the response is returned to us in the form of a token, which we need enter in the appropriate field to solve the captcha
I was under the impression these invisible "captcha" were much more difficult since a bunch of metadata just gets scooped off the device and sent in to some proprietary Google algorithm. I'd think it'd be hard for the service to generate enough unique fingerprints to prevent Google from detecting it's the same service solving them but maybe recaptcha just sucks
I was under the impression these invisible "captcha" were much more difficult since a bunch of metadata just gets scooped off the device and sent in to some proprietary Google algorithm. I'd think it'd be hard for the service to generate enough unique fingerprints to prevent Google from detecting it's the same service solving them but maybe recaptcha just sucks
And yet they're effective, so I wonder what the disconnect is.
I'm guessing that most scammers haven't figured these exist yet. Or maybe the hit rate on scams is so low it isn't profitable anymore even at these rates?
I love the "workers banned" stat. It's bots all the way down.
What's the background here? Why is this model so popular? Are previous models a viable alternative for some? How long until production can catch up?
It seems like online scalping in general has skyrocketed since the pandemic started in 2020, the most famous probably being GPU cards.
Scalping happens when the list price is lower than the market price.
Nobody scalps shares of Alphabet, because the price floats. Merchants don't want to increase list prices, because they'll get yelled at, so instead they run out of stock and middlemen collect the arbitrage price. If you don't like it, tell stores to increase prices, and tell CNN to stop running stories about how awful greedy businessmen are causing inflation purely out of spite.
Nobody scalps shares of Alphabet, because the price floats. Merchants don't want to increase list prices, because they'll get yelled at, so instead they run out of stock and middlemen collect the arbitrage price. If you don't like it, tell stores to increase prices, and tell CNN to stop running stories about how awful greedy businessmen are causing inflation purely out of spite.
A short squeeze, like happened with gamestop, is basically scalping on stock markets. the market really, really needs those shares, but not enough are available, so price shoots up.
It's across the board, with GPUs, things like these pis, retro games and accessories even, it's pretty annoying.
Thankfully necessities like TP and masks are no longer being scalped but it's still happening in electronics.
Thankfully necessities like TP and masks are no longer being scalped but it's still happening in electronics.
I was interested to hear more about why this model is so exciting. Any thoughts, or just faster/better?
I think it's just because it's the newest model and for many newest == best. Also, they're cheap, so the difference between a pi4 and a pi2b isn't that much $$$.
And the ubiquitous ticket scalper bots.
This is the first Pi with 4 or 8 gigabytes of memory, and the ability to boot off a USB drive natively (like a SSD). It can easily replace a big desktop computer with a tiny ~$50 board. It is not a slow and semi-unreliable little computer like the previous models (Raspberry Pi 3 and below).
The Pi 3 only has 1GB of memory and is pretty much unusable for modern desktop use (especially browsing the web today). In addition with only a micro SD card as primary storage it's super slow and prone to brick itself if you aren't careful about powering it up and down cleanly.
The Pi 3 only has 1GB of memory and is pretty much unusable for modern desktop use (especially browsing the web today). In addition with only a micro SD card as primary storage it's super slow and prone to brick itself if you aren't careful about powering it up and down cleanly.
[deleted]
Just raise the price already. The market price of a Pi Zero 2W is about $70 right now. For my application, I'm happy to pay it, because the alternative would be spending a month of skilled developer time designing a daughterboard and porting software to a different SBC. If Adafruit actually succeeded in preventing scalpers from buying up the supply, this would mean misallocating boards to projects where a dozen other boards would have worked just as well.
What were you doing building a product(?) around a 02W anyway? They are supposed to be 1 per person, like the old 0 series. They have never been offered in quantity even when there wasn't a shortage.
Indeed, if the demand exceeds the supply then the prices have to go up. This way more money will be available for the manufacturer to increase the supply. This is the basic law of economics, and anybody trying to play games around it will only make things worse and end up in poverty.
What's this about?
Are the bots operated to manipulate the market, by buying up the whole supply to then sell at a higher price?
Are the bots operated to manipulate the market, by buying up the whole supply to then sell at a higher price?
I guess you could call it market manipulation but it's more just resellers/scalpers trying to take advantage of the chip shortage. RPis have always been in high demand and often were backordered even when things were fine; now they're supply constrained enough that scalpers can buy up in bulk and resell at high markup, similar to the GPU aftermarket going on right now.
All official RPi resellers are required to sell them without forced add-ons, at the list price. The scalper bots are trying to arbitrage that.
I think a CAPTCHA in the ordering process would make more sense.
I think a CAPTCHA in the ordering process would make more sense.
>I think a CAPTCHA in the ordering process would make more sense.
There was another thread here a while back where someone shared their experience writing sneaker scalping bots. Apparently, CAPTCHA tokens are valid for a minute or so, so this guy would solve heaps of them just before the form went live and cache the validation tokens.
Then, when the form went live, the real humans who didn't have cached CAPTCHA tokens would be slowed down even more.
Net result is that the botters ended up getting an even greater share of the supply than without CAPTCHAs.
There was another thread here a while back where someone shared their experience writing sneaker scalping bots. Apparently, CAPTCHA tokens are valid for a minute or so, so this guy would solve heaps of them just before the form went live and cache the validation tokens.
Then, when the form went live, the real humans who didn't have cached CAPTCHA tokens would be slowed down even more.
Net result is that the botters ended up getting an even greater share of the supply than without CAPTCHAs.
> Apparently, CAPTCHA tokens are valid for a minute or so, so this guy would solve heaps of them just before the form went live and cache the validation tokens.
I mean there's whole services like 2captcha that give you a 24/7 on-demand API for this, and for some of their offerings/solvers there are specifically real human robots on the other end doing the CAPTCHA.
2captcha works very very well to the point that CAPTCHA is a very much solved problem especially for the popular services like Google's reCAPTCHA.
I mean there's whole services like 2captcha that give you a 24/7 on-demand API for this, and for some of their offerings/solvers there are specifically real human robots on the other end doing the CAPTCHA.
2captcha works very very well to the point that CAPTCHA is a very much solved problem especially for the popular services like Google's reCAPTCHA.
FWIW I missed reservations to a national park because I use Firefox and Google made me click traffic lights and buses for thirty seconds before being able to continue.
I wonder how much retail arbitrage is just leaks by the resellers themselves.
But always better to blame scalpers. They can’t defend themselves if they don’t even exist.
But always better to blame scalpers. They can’t defend themselves if they don’t even exist.
> retail arbitrage is just leaks by the resellers themselves
Anecdotal, but IMO lots... just depends on the industry.
It's a good situation for someone to come along and buy up some or all of your risk - especially for stuff like ticket sales. Many corporations like Ticketmaster design around this, and bake this part of the supply chain into their pricing/experience.
Anecdotal, but IMO lots... just depends on the industry.
It's a good situation for someone to come along and buy up some or all of your risk - especially for stuff like ticket sales. Many corporations like Ticketmaster design around this, and bake this part of the supply chain into their pricing/experience.
The bots are middlemen that ensure proper pricing of scarce goods. Their commission is the difference between the retail price and the actual market price.
This is true. However, it is not the whole story.
0. Adafruit cannot raise prices of rpis due to contract.
1. Adafruit makes the same amount of money regardless of who buys the product.
2. It is in the incentive of Adafruit to increase it's customers good will. It is considered an asset for Adafruit (Companies account for this via 'Good Will').
3. People generally don't like scalpers, "Scalpers bad"
4. By providing means to avoid scalpers, they are capturing some of the profit that scalpers would be making and converting it to a 'Good Will' asset, "Adafruit Good"
5. 'Good Will' + money > money
Thank you for participating in economic analysis.
0. Adafruit cannot raise prices of rpis due to contract.
1. Adafruit makes the same amount of money regardless of who buys the product.
2. It is in the incentive of Adafruit to increase it's customers good will. It is considered an asset for Adafruit (Companies account for this via 'Good Will').
3. People generally don't like scalpers, "Scalpers bad"
4. By providing means to avoid scalpers, they are capturing some of the profit that scalpers would be making and converting it to a 'Good Will' asset, "Adafruit Good"
5. 'Good Will' + money > money
Thank you for participating in economic analysis.
Point of order on 2:
Companies do not account for this as "good will".
Accounting "goodwill" is the price an acquiring company pays above the accounting value of the business being bought, which is a notional number usually (much) lower than the economic value of a successful business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)
Companies do not account for this as "good will".
Accounting "goodwill" is the price an acquiring company pays above the accounting value of the business being bought, which is a notional number usually (much) lower than the economic value of a successful business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)
Correct. Aatsmyles was mistaken in relating the goodwill he/she described to accounting goodwill. In other words, aatsmyles shouldn't have used the phrase "account for" goodwill.
Interestingly (at least to a weird human like me), there is something of a relationship between accounting goodwill and goodwill like the value of a brand. The reason why goodwill only shows up on a balance sheet after an acquisition is, I imagine, to follow the accounting principal of conservatism.
Let's spice things up with a hypothetical. I'm going to make up some numbers here so don't go around telling people I revealed some privileged information on HN.
Say you're Mr. McIlhenny, the() owner of a major private company called the McIlhenny Company. The McIlhenny Company's primary endeavor is selling a beloved hot sauce called Tabasco. On the income statement side, McIlhenny has revenues of $200 million and profits of $30 million. On the balance sheet, Tabasco has no liabilities (no long term debt, no payables, etc) and its only asset is cash, of which it has $1 million. Since (equity) = (assets) - (liabilities), this company has a "book value" of $1 million. You might notice that the book value seems absurd - a company that makes tens of millions of dollars a year and has a product with a major following would be a total steal of a purchase at $1 million!
A few purchasers attempt to woo you, and they each make offers for about $100 million. You go with Carl Icahn's offer. Now, the company's book value is $100 million (the balance sheet has $1 million in cash and $99 million in goodwill on it).
Clearly, the day before the acquisition, the company had roughly $99 million in "real" or "intrinsic" goodwill, but that didn't show up in the balance sheet. Why's that? One reason is conservatism. For many intangible assets, there's an art to choosing a number. If you let CEOs put in a goodwill number, many would probably throw in huge numbers as they vastly hype up the value of their brand and reputation. So, instead, we have a market approach to calculating goodwill by using transactions.
However, accounting principals allow companies downwards. So the CEO of Nikola isn't allowed to turn his bogus claims into dollars on the goodwill line item, but he is allowed to reduce goodwill if he buys a battery manufacturer that turns out to be a fraud too.
() It's owned by the McIlhenny family, but no need to complicate things
Interestingly (at least to a weird human like me), there is something of a relationship between accounting goodwill and goodwill like the value of a brand. The reason why goodwill only shows up on a balance sheet after an acquisition is, I imagine, to follow the accounting principal of conservatism.
Let's spice things up with a hypothetical. I'm going to make up some numbers here so don't go around telling people I revealed some privileged information on HN.
Say you're Mr. McIlhenny, the() owner of a major private company called the McIlhenny Company. The McIlhenny Company's primary endeavor is selling a beloved hot sauce called Tabasco. On the income statement side, McIlhenny has revenues of $200 million and profits of $30 million. On the balance sheet, Tabasco has no liabilities (no long term debt, no payables, etc) and its only asset is cash, of which it has $1 million. Since (equity) = (assets) - (liabilities), this company has a "book value" of $1 million. You might notice that the book value seems absurd - a company that makes tens of millions of dollars a year and has a product with a major following would be a total steal of a purchase at $1 million!
A few purchasers attempt to woo you, and they each make offers for about $100 million. You go with Carl Icahn's offer. Now, the company's book value is $100 million (the balance sheet has $1 million in cash and $99 million in goodwill on it).
Clearly, the day before the acquisition, the company had roughly $99 million in "real" or "intrinsic" goodwill, but that didn't show up in the balance sheet. Why's that? One reason is conservatism. For many intangible assets, there's an art to choosing a number. If you let CEOs put in a goodwill number, many would probably throw in huge numbers as they vastly hype up the value of their brand and reputation. So, instead, we have a market approach to calculating goodwill by using transactions.
However, accounting principals allow companies downwards. So the CEO of Nikola isn't allowed to turn his bogus claims into dollars on the goodwill line item, but he is allowed to reduce goodwill if he buys a battery manufacturer that turns out to be a fraud too.
() It's owned by the McIlhenny family, but no need to complicate things
Not sure why you're getting DV'ed. If a product is priced such that it is actually profitable to have bots buy it (and presumably re-sell), then it's priced incorrectly and the bots are a corrective market force.
If a gas station started selling gasoline at half price, it would be instantly overrun with everyone from Harry with his pickup truck full of jerry cans to empty tanker trucks.
If a gas station started selling gasoline at half price, it would be instantly overrun with everyone from Harry with his pickup truck full of jerry cans to empty tanker trucks.
With enough money you can corner any market and turn an abundant product into a rare one.
Tends to make a lot of money for a few people until the market inevitably crashes which often puts many of the suppliers out of business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
Tends to make a lot of money for a few people until the market inevitably crashes which often puts many of the suppliers out of business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
Attempts to corner markets have always almost resulted in disastrous losses for the conspirators. Not that cornering the raspberry pi market would even be possible or make sense.
This doesn’t always work out, and can destroy the speculator too. Imagine how many piles of hand sanitizer and toilet paper are out there, bought to resell for profit.
Wasn’t that long ago that somebody tried to corner the cacao market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/business/global/25chocola...
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/business/global/25chocola...
Raspberry Pis are developed by a literal charity that has making computing and computing education affordable as its mission. That's why he's getting downvoted. This attitude is effectively saying charity should be punished and profit is the only worthy goal any organization should ever have.
Nope. That's entirely untrue when the bots are buying all the remaining product. That is where it becomes harmful to both consumers and producers and is no longer "free market" because consumers are now being harmed by being forced to pay more for the same product and the seller is also being harmed because they are getting not even one penny more. When the price of these things are being fixed by contract (as is the case with quite a number of retail goods), then an alteration of the price caused by botters really isn't particularly different from front-running.
If something is merely priced incorrectly, then someone else can also produce that same good and charge more for it. As a reminder, snatching up everything through automation is not "producing a good", it's market interference.
If something is merely priced incorrectly, then someone else can also produce that same good and charge more for it. As a reminder, snatching up everything through automation is not "producing a good", it's market interference.
If you want to take the pure economics argument -- you have failed to account for the present value of future business that Adafruit will generate by keeping their repeat customers happy.
The demand for the Pi has always been about the low price coupled with capability. The Pi is impressively capable for $35. It's far less impressive at $50. It's downright shit for $100.
Scalpers are going to slit their own throats by price gouging Pis. Demand for Pis will dry up if the price stays at $100.
Scalpers are going to slit their own throats by price gouging Pis. Demand for Pis will dry up if the price stays at $100.
I think you're ignoring that there now entire classes of wealth where value for money is entirely secondary to instant gratification.
Anti-scalping measures are going to be necessary more and more often as the super-rich diverge from the merely rich and the rich diverge from the poor etc.
Anti-scalping measures are going to be necessary more and more often as the super-rich diverge from the merely rich and the rich diverge from the poor etc.
If bots are corrective then what would you call adafruit avoiding selling to bots?
> then it's priced incorrectly
There's no such thing as a "correct price". There is a "highest price" that enough people will still pay such that all inventory is sold, but that's not the same thing as being "correct". It depends on what the seller is optimizing for.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation wants their hardware to be sold at particular price points, and they've worked hard to keep costs down so it can be sold at those price points. They've chosen to forego extra profit, with the goal of getting this hardware into as many hands as possible, especially the hands of people who want to learn and may not be able to afford a higher price.
Sure, this isn't consistent with our profit-at-all-costs capitalist culture, but that doesn't make it wrong. And retailers are free to do their best to ensure that these products get into the hands of actual end-users, rather than parasitic, speculative, profiteering scalpers who provide no added value.
In the case of Adafruit, they would much rather have a bunch of satisfied end customers who are able to buy their products and get use out of them, than a bunch of satisfied scalpers. That's their choice (and frankly, I think much better for their business), and it's their right to impose technical measures to try to deny bots from their platform. (They may not always succeed, but that's another matter.)
> If a gas station started selling gasoline at half price, it would be instantly overrun with everyone from Harry with his pickup truck full of jerry cans to empty tanker trucks.
Just like Adafruit is trying to do with bots, that gas station would be well within its rights to refuse to serve tanker trucks or pickup trucks full of gas cans, if their goal in slashing prices was to sell gasoline cheaply to end customers.
There's no such thing as a "correct price". There is a "highest price" that enough people will still pay such that all inventory is sold, but that's not the same thing as being "correct". It depends on what the seller is optimizing for.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation wants their hardware to be sold at particular price points, and they've worked hard to keep costs down so it can be sold at those price points. They've chosen to forego extra profit, with the goal of getting this hardware into as many hands as possible, especially the hands of people who want to learn and may not be able to afford a higher price.
Sure, this isn't consistent with our profit-at-all-costs capitalist culture, but that doesn't make it wrong. And retailers are free to do their best to ensure that these products get into the hands of actual end-users, rather than parasitic, speculative, profiteering scalpers who provide no added value.
In the case of Adafruit, they would much rather have a bunch of satisfied end customers who are able to buy their products and get use out of them, than a bunch of satisfied scalpers. That's their choice (and frankly, I think much better for their business), and it's their right to impose technical measures to try to deny bots from their platform. (They may not always succeed, but that's another matter.)
> If a gas station started selling gasoline at half price, it would be instantly overrun with everyone from Harry with his pickup truck full of jerry cans to empty tanker trucks.
Just like Adafruit is trying to do with bots, that gas station would be well within its rights to refuse to serve tanker trucks or pickup trucks full of gas cans, if their goal in slashing prices was to sell gasoline cheaply to end customers.
"bots" are just strawbuyers. How do you distinguish a strawbuyer and a "bot" (that also buys)?
Don't these "bots" all have unique payment details?
Don't these "bots" all have unique payment details?
The bots ensure that steps are taken such that scares goods are distributed in a manner better than "whoever can pay the most".
RPis have, and will continue to be, aimed at education and enrichment, and the makers/retailers will take steps to ensure that as many people as possible can get ahold of them at a low price.
RPis have, and will continue to be, aimed at education and enrichment, and the makers/retailers will take steps to ensure that as many people as possible can get ahold of them at a low price.
If you want to start making value judgements about who is worthy to purchase your product, wouldn't it be better to enforce that by directly verifying the identity/worthiness of each individual customer rather than relying on crude proxies like "didn't use a bot to make the purchase"?
It's not a crude proxy.
In this case it is a vendor deciding not to sell to a customer who is acting in a way they perceive to be bad faith. This is their right as a vendor.
In this case it happens that the bad faith is at comfortably odds with the objectives of the vendor and product manufacturer.
As high incomes diverge even further from low (and even median) incomes, we're doing to see this happen a lot more.
And I think until this chip shortage is over in particular, we will see a lot more measures like this.
I fully applaud this -- I love my Pi 4 and I want more people to experience what these little things can do, without paying over the odds to cynical manipulative stains.
In this case it is a vendor deciding not to sell to a customer who is acting in a way they perceive to be bad faith. This is their right as a vendor.
In this case it happens that the bad faith is at comfortably odds with the objectives of the vendor and product manufacturer.
As high incomes diverge even further from low (and even median) incomes, we're doing to see this happen a lot more.
And I think until this chip shortage is over in particular, we will see a lot more measures like this.
I fully applaud this -- I love my Pi 4 and I want more people to experience what these little things can do, without paying over the odds to cynical manipulative stains.
Sorry, bro, if I'm selling a product, and part of my goal is to see "regular people" get a chance to buy it and get a decent price it's well within my rights to try methods to limit scalping, just like governments prevent gas/food overcharging during emergencies. Not everything is a "pure" market.
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No, the bots are the reason the goods are scarce. They are not a genuine indicator of scarcity, nor are they a part of genuine price discovery. That they still exists just shows that the bot operators are too small to attract the interest of regulatory agencies. ...yet.
> No, the bots are the reason the goods are scarce.
It is possible that bots are creating artificial scarcity, but that would require either one bot to corner the market or collusion among enough bots to control prices. It seems equally plausible to me that RPIs would be scarce regardless.
It is possible that bots are creating artificial scarcity, but that would require either one bot to corner the market or collusion among enough bots to control prices. It seems equally plausible to me that RPIs would be scarce regardless.
The world isn't a stock market simulation.
Vultures, parasites, vampires.
It's a roundabout way of stating the 55th rule of acquisition, but I'll allow it.
Or is it the 110th?
(The 140th and 144th also seem relevant here.)
Or is it the 110th?
(The 140th and 144th also seem relevant here.)
MereInterest(2)
Sometimes the bots are just because people want the items for themselves. I know of some companies that bought 1000s of disk drives for their data centers that way from retailers, back when there was a drive shortage a few years ago.
Except they were buying them for their own use and protecting against supply chain interruptions, not buying them to sell them to other consumers at artificially-inflated rates.
Yes, in many industries.
Given one of the goals of the project is to allow young people to have an affordable PC to learn linux and programming, it would make sense to reserve a part of the stock for verified students (or teachers) at MSRP.
I don't understand what's so hard about this problem - if you have a platform that's impacted by bots and scalpers, and if you want to do the right thing, or give the appearance of doing the right thing with almost no cost to yourself or your business, you should release your product in a fair lottery with reasonable purchase limits.
You have plenty of time before the product is released to register and verify everyone. You completely avoid traffic issues. Accounting is easy - you'll sell out when you run the lottery. You'll build a reputation for releasing inventory fairly and without causing undue stress on your customers, and avoid the suspicion that you're in cahoots with the scalpers (looking at you, Ticketmaster).
I'm accustomed to stressing out over concert tickets and struggling to get gaming consoles, and have a deep hatred of scalpers and the platforms that enable them, but I had no idea that scalpers were ruining the educational/hobby markets too. That seems really low.
You have plenty of time before the product is released to register and verify everyone. You completely avoid traffic issues. Accounting is easy - you'll sell out when you run the lottery. You'll build a reputation for releasing inventory fairly and without causing undue stress on your customers, and avoid the suspicion that you're in cahoots with the scalpers (looking at you, Ticketmaster).
I'm accustomed to stressing out over concert tickets and struggling to get gaming consoles, and have a deep hatred of scalpers and the platforms that enable them, but I had no idea that scalpers were ruining the educational/hobby markets too. That seems really low.
What about stuffing the lottery box with countless bot-created accounts entering the lottery?
You'd have a lot more time to find and boot them prior to running the lottery. Assuming you didn't/couldn't detect them, at least you spare your users the anxiety and inconvenience of the on-sale while they get screwed.
Fixed pricing with scarce goods tends to lead to this result, just let supply and demand sort it out and this problem wouldn't exist. Trying to fix this by using 2FA won't change much, it's just an arms race where each side keeps investing more and more money into fixing a problem that doesn't have to exist in the first place.
> just let supply and demand sort it out and this problem wouldn't exist
That would go against the mission of the Raspberry Pi Foundation which is to promote computer science education. Accessibility though low prices is an important aspect of that.
Not all problems are solved with free markets.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation
That would go against the mission of the Raspberry Pi Foundation which is to promote computer science education. Accessibility though low prices is an important aspect of that.
Not all problems are solved with free markets.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation
Lowering prices doesn't make the product more "accessible" if you can't supply enough to keep up with demand at that price. It just turns the purchasing process into a lottery rather than a bidding war. I can't say I find the former process any more in line with the Pi foundation's stated goals than the latter.
If the goal is 'get it into the hands of students to further computer science education', then the lottery might end up getting more into student hands than an auction. Remember students are pretty poor compared to VC backed startups trying to deploy their latest IoT blender with Blockchain technology.
so let's say that you target people who can only afford $30 computers
if it's a lottery, then some of those people would be able to buy it at $30
if it's a bidding war, then none of them would be able to buy it at $30
if it's a lottery, then some of those people would be able to buy it at $30
if it's a bidding war, then none of them would be able to buy it at $30
>so let's say that you target people who can only afford $30 computers
I cannot name a single person who has bought a RPi that isn't either a generously-compensated STEM worker or a member of their immediate family.
I also cannot name a single person who has bought an RPi that doesn't already own a mid-to-high-end desktop or laptop.
Poor people buy used smartphones or refurbed ex-office PCs.
EDIT: This probably explains why there's a strong scalper's market for this, thinking about it. Raspberry Pi's typical customers are wealthy enough to not care about paying an extra few bucks.
I cannot name a single person who has bought a RPi that isn't either a generously-compensated STEM worker or a member of their immediate family.
I also cannot name a single person who has bought an RPi that doesn't already own a mid-to-high-end desktop or laptop.
Poor people buy used smartphones or refurbed ex-office PCs.
EDIT: This probably explains why there's a strong scalper's market for this, thinking about it. Raspberry Pi's typical customers are wealthy enough to not care about paying an extra few bucks.
> I cannot name a single person who has bought a RPi that isn't either a generously-compensated STEM worker or a member of their immediate family.
Teachers and students. The Pi has tons of uses in education
Teachers and students. The Pi has tons of uses in education
Fair point. Perhaps a better way to distribute them then would be to prioritise deliveries to schools/universities.
That makes sense, assuming "people who can only afford $30 computers" are your sole priority. If you also care about, for example, "people who can only afford $40 computers", then a better approach would be to raise prices to match market value and use the resulting profits to increase supply.
As another poster noted, a lot of businesses are basing their product lines on the Pi and Pi Compute Module. To those businesses, the market price can rise well past $40 and completely out of the "hobbyist price range" before it becomes worth it to them to find alternatives. With the difficulty of finding components these days, that "increase in supply" that the increased revenue brings to the Pi Foundation may not come for a very long time.
I developed a pi-based system for a well-known company that now has a few hundred deployed at various sites. I can assure you that they wouldn't blink at $200 each. There are businesses out there redesigning their products because they can't find any at all.
I developed a pi-based system for a well-known company that now has a few hundred deployed at various sites. I can assure you that they wouldn't blink at $200 each. There are businesses out there redesigning their products because they can't find any at all.
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There's just no way to look into this and not think they are doing an absolute shit job. A raspberry pi 4 costs the equivalent of 200 US Dollars in Brazil, more than some brand new laptops. Most of our population do not have computers, RPi avaliability would be awesome for us.
Allowing some people in some countries to get it for $35 is just the lazy solution. I'd be glad to pay $50, because I'm able to. Put in some effort so the ones who really need it can get it cheap. Sell it at real market value for the rest of us. Doing good things require effort.
Allowing some people in some countries to get it for $35 is just the lazy solution. I'd be glad to pay $50, because I'm able to. Put in some effort so the ones who really need it can get it cheap. Sell it at real market value for the rest of us. Doing good things require effort.
Yes the free market can't solve everything, but we still have to wait for the free market to solve the supply chain issues before this situation will improve. They could temporarily let go of their fixed pricing rule in the meantime.
Are they selling them at a loss? If not then the market would work fine, they just need to increase production. Maybe they'll make enough money to give some to students that way.
There are a lot of people who want to play arbitrage with rare goods, if you have enough money you can do it with just about anything. It is perfectly fair to want your market segment to be to deliver cheap rare goods to people without many resources.
Sometimes arbitrage helps make efficient markets, other times it is just a drag on the economy. It is perfectly fair for a provider to not want to only provide goods to people with many resources or scalpers.
RPi is also just not a good deal if it is significantly more expensive, there are lots of more expensive options out there for small computers which have better specs and are more readily available.
Sometimes arbitrage helps make efficient markets, other times it is just a drag on the economy. It is perfectly fair for a provider to not want to only provide goods to people with many resources or scalpers.
RPi is also just not a good deal if it is significantly more expensive, there are lots of more expensive options out there for small computers which have better specs and are more readily available.
> It is perfectly fair for a provider to not want to only provide goods to people with many resources or scalpers.
Yes but I doubt this will achieve that goal, at most it'll work for a couple of weeks. Also I very much doubt that RPis are being bought by financially disadvantaged people to learn valuable computing skills. These things are bought by people wanting to automate something at home, they're usually well off. Schools and training centres don't buy via the Adafruit retail channel.
Yes but I doubt this will achieve that goal, at most it'll work for a couple of weeks. Also I very much doubt that RPis are being bought by financially disadvantaged people to learn valuable computing skills. These things are bought by people wanting to automate something at home, they're usually well off. Schools and training centres don't buy via the Adafruit retail channel.
> RPi is also just not a good deal if it is significantly more expensive
Then the price will fall to the point where it’s a good deal, but still more expensive than what it is now.
Maybe it’s not the $5 Pi Zero anymore, but $50 might not be too bad.
Then the price will fall to the point where it’s a good deal, but still more expensive than what it is now.
Maybe it’s not the $5 Pi Zero anymore, but $50 might not be too bad.
As others have pointed out, AdaFruit likely cannot raise their selling price for these Pi's due to prior contractual arrangements. They're essentially forced to ration their supply, and all they can do is make the best of a pretty bad situation by at least trying to act fair (i.e. limited buys only) and rewarding their existing customers with preferential access.
If you have an RPi that you're not using then be a hero and offer it to your maker friends.
I have 2 or 3 RPi 2 models and an RPi 3. Any thoughts on how I could get it into good hands not looking to scalp them? The local schools don't need them.
For anyone confused in setting this up, the App is Twilio Authy in the Apple App Store. The logo in the app store has little contrast and the Adafruit blog post just calls it "Authy" which returns dozens of 2FA apps.
> and the Adafruit blog post just calls it "Authy"
Twilio acquired Authy in 2015, but didn't put their brand on it until a year or two ago, so a lot of people just call it "Authy" out of habit/without knowing Twilio owns it.
Twilio acquired Authy in 2015, but didn't put their brand on it until a year or two ago, so a lot of people just call it "Authy" out of habit/without knowing Twilio owns it.
It's just oauth totp. You can use whatever 2fa authenticator you want. I like the one built into BitWarden personally.
Authy works fine too (there is a good authenticator app that is actually called Authy)
Authy works fine too (there is a good authenticator app that is actually called Authy)
You can use any 2FA app such as 1Password
If you want to prevent scalpers just sell the new units that come into stock in a reverse auction. Start the price at $500 and lower the price by a dollar every minute. Once all of the stock is sold out you charge everyone the price the last unit was sold for.
In this system bots don't have an advantage over humans. Humans can preinput what they are willing to pay and there will be no race against bots like what you see here.
In this system bots don't have an advantage over humans. Humans can preinput what they are willing to pay and there will be no race against bots like what you see here.
Selling above MSRP without legitimate expenses to justify it still means the retailer is willing to sacrifice the RPi mission. Your proposal is not bad as a "price discovery" methodology but it does run counter to the RPi mission if it sells above their desired price.
If supply is plentiful the price goes to the floor (MSRP). If there is not enough supply it is sold at a price that is as small as possible while allowing people who want it the most to get it (using the money they are willing to spend on it as a proxy for how badly they want it). If you are still worried about the mission the extra revenue could go towards a fund that helps people in need in regards to buying one.
Isn't a reverse auction just another price discovery mechanism? Why is it superior?
I didn't make a judgement on that method of price discovery. My comment was that it may still result in a price higher than the one desired by the RPi creators. Price discovery is not their goal, their goal is to make devices with educational applications cheap enough to be extremely affordable. If a retailer like Adafruit agrees with that goal, then a reverse auction or any other form of price discovery will run counter to that goal if it results in a higher price.
Or maybe some dynamic / demand based pricing. When bots start competing againt each other, price shoots up.
If I'm not mistaken, the Raspberry Pi was meant to be an affordable device for educational purposes. Now bots are buying them, making them scarce, making them less affordable.
Could licensing help here? What if the Raspberry Pi Foundation would sell devices with a license that says you can't sell it for more than a certain price, and you can only sell it / give it away under the same license?
Could licensing help here? What if the Raspberry Pi Foundation would sell devices with a license that says you can't sell it for more than a certain price, and you can only sell it / give it away under the same license?
What would that license do? How would it be enforced? Not at all, in which case such rules are bad.
This is incredibly stupid, it's really easy to handle 2FA with a bot.(as easy as making the bot in the first place, or even easier...)
I thought they adopt SMS 2FA that is somewhat reasonable. But they chose TOTP, lol. Just copy pasta TOTP generator on bot. It gives bots advantage.
Maybe these are just some pitiful injured robots, trying to get hold of some spare parts for self repair. :'(
I'm surprised they didn't require Phone # verification given the issue they are having.
Adafruit does have stock of Pi Zero WH in the form of Google AIY vision kit. Kinda spendy for what it is tho.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3780
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3780
As an aside, used thin clients and industrial PCs are a good x86 alternative to the Pi if you require similar performance and don't need GPIO. They are quite plentiful on ebay, include a housing, and consume little power.
Clever way to become the site of first resort for makers and engineers.
*OTP isn't much of a barrier. SMS would've increased the cost a little more. Both easily automated. I know retailers are trying to fight the tide, but they're going to need more than teacups.
Maybe I'm being naive here, but why is it so hard to just make more?
We're in the middle of a huge chip shortage. All kinds of semiconductor materials are very expensive nowadays due to low supply. Companies like Pi simply can't find enough material.
A reasonable question, but also a simple answer: we're in a global chip shortage.
Better let the bots through, let them pay, then say that the items are on backorder.
>:)
>:)
ESP8266s can be used for a lot of things that people use RPi for... and they are a lot cheaper.
I just sold 2 used RPi that I bought ~10 years ago for more then what I paid for them brand new...
I just sold 2 used RPi that I bought ~10 years ago for more then what I paid for them brand new...
I've been wondering about that myself, but then it's occured to me that there are very poor countries where kids simply don't have access to no computers at all. The appeal of Pi in this situation is that you can program and prototype on the thing, and it's relatively affordable (well, at least it is supposed to be). For ESPs you'd need a separate device to write and upload the code.
yeah, ESPs aren't general purpose computers but they are still very capable (I used one as a "router" before to create a network in my car: https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater)
I’ve got like 3 pi4s lying around mostly idle that I bought before supply/demand went insane. Maybe I should list them somewhere if there is so much demand
Is there a particular use case making the Pi 4 so in demand?
Sorry for an obvious question.
What is the current situation that requires anyone to use a bot to buy a Pi? Why is a Pi so important today?
What is the current situation that requires anyone to use a bot to buy a Pi? Why is a Pi so important today?
What might be in the pi 4 that it is being bought out? Is there just a limited supply at the moment?
Wouldn't a recaptcha be a much more robust way to prevent bots from ordering?
Confused how 2FA prevents bots from ordering.
What’s stopping someone from setting up a verified account and automating a 2FA order process? Unless there is an additional purchase limit?
What’s stopping someone from setting up a verified account and automating a 2FA order process? Unless there is an additional purchase limit?
It doesn't outright prevent it, but it does make it more complicated, puting it out of the skill range for a decent chunk of the bot operators.
Pretty easy to automate this
They can have my old ones
How does 2FA stop bots?
What Adidas did was release 30,000 NFTs and require proof of current possession of one of the NFTs (colloquially called 'ownership', just hoping to avoid a semantics discussion) to gain access to the purchase of some new merchandise.
If bots were not in the sale then they will not be able to purchase the merchandise. Bots can purchase one of the NFTs from someone else usually at a premium, to participate. The bot developer needs to do some additional coding.
In any case, the merchandise buyers now get to feel like its more fair, even with the presence of potential bots buyers, since a stake was placed. The market has priced the NFTs based on how much they think the subsequent merchandise will resale for. Currently these are worth $4,300 and Adidas initially sold them for $800 and at least $84,000,000 in volume over 4 months.
Adidas gets the proceeds of the initial NFT sale, a commission from the NFT resales ("royalties"), as well as the proceeds from selling the merchandise.
It's a form of an additional factor.
If bots were not in the sale then they will not be able to purchase the merchandise. Bots can purchase one of the NFTs from someone else usually at a premium, to participate. The bot developer needs to do some additional coding.
In any case, the merchandise buyers now get to feel like its more fair, even with the presence of potential bots buyers, since a stake was placed. The market has priced the NFTs based on how much they think the subsequent merchandise will resale for. Currently these are worth $4,300 and Adidas initially sold them for $800 and at least $84,000,000 in volume over 4 months.
Adidas gets the proceeds of the initial NFT sale, a commission from the NFT resales ("royalties"), as well as the proceeds from selling the merchandise.
It's a form of an additional factor.
I don't think it's ever "fair" when bots buy scarce things that humans want. (Assuming, here, that the bot owners are buying for speculation, and not for personal use. I think it's a little more grey, but more or less ok, when an individual writes a bot so they can snag a single unit of something that they want.) Putting the sale behind NFT possession (where a bot could purchase the NFT in the first place) doesn't really change anything.
Adidas' NFT scheme just acts to inflate the price, which is probably fine for a limited luxury good; certainly Adidas would rather capture more value per sale than leave that value to speculators/resellers. But for something like a Raspberry Pi, an end-user being able to acquire one for $35 is a key part of its appeal. If they're "bid" up to several hundred dollars through this auction-like NFT scheme, that defeats the purpose.
While I'm not sure 2FA is the most effective way to weed out bots (maybe it is, I don't know), I think it's perfectly reasonable to try to set up a marketplace where all buyers are individuals who are buying the product for their own use, and aren't scaplers/speculators. These latter sorts of people are just parasites and usually provide no real value.
Adidas' NFT scheme just acts to inflate the price, which is probably fine for a limited luxury good; certainly Adidas would rather capture more value per sale than leave that value to speculators/resellers. But for something like a Raspberry Pi, an end-user being able to acquire one for $35 is a key part of its appeal. If they're "bid" up to several hundred dollars through this auction-like NFT scheme, that defeats the purpose.
While I'm not sure 2FA is the most effective way to weed out bots (maybe it is, I don't know), I think it's perfectly reasonable to try to set up a marketplace where all buyers are individuals who are buying the product for their own use, and aren't scaplers/speculators. These latter sorts of people are just parasites and usually provide no real value.
I sure hope more companies don't adopt this sort of gatekeeping, that sounds awful for the people who actually want to wear the shoes and great for the speculators who are abusing that demand to make money.
If you have limited runs that you want to sell fairly and maximize profit on, why not just do a regular auction?
If you have limited runs that you want to sell fairly and maximize profit on, why not just do a regular auction?
I think what you're missing is that Adidas and many streetware companies have already gone decades without acknowledging that their purchasers for certain merchandise are scalpers and speculators.
Its a massive scene that has grown by orders of magnitude over the last decade like many other scenes.
The only thing new here is that adidas finally acknowledged it.
Its a massive scene that has grown by orders of magnitude over the last decade like many other scenes.
The only thing new here is that adidas finally acknowledged it.
I'm not missing that fact. I think that NFTs are a bad, customer hostile solution to that problem.
Its more of a byproduct of a marketing push than an attempt at a solution.
I didn't say Adidas did this because of a problem, they did this for fun. The problem is also distorted due to it.
In the context of Adafruit's issue, the same model would have a result a bit more different than a one-time-password implementation.
I didn't say Adidas did this because of a problem, they did this for fun. The problem is also distorted due to it.
In the context of Adafruit's issue, the same model would have a result a bit more different than a one-time-password implementation.
> Its more of a byproduct of a marketing push than an attempt at a solution.
> I didn't say Adidas did this because of a problem, they did this for fun.
This, I absolutely agree with.
> In the context of Adafruit's issue, the same model would have a result a bit more different than a one-time-password implementation.
Adafruit is trying to keep access affordable, so the Adidas model isn't appropriate to their goals.
> I didn't say Adidas did this because of a problem, they did this for fun.
This, I absolutely agree with.
> In the context of Adafruit's issue, the same model would have a result a bit more different than a one-time-password implementation.
Adafruit is trying to keep access affordable, so the Adidas model isn't appropriate to their goals.
mmm yeah forgot that was one of the purposes of the Raspberri Pi, I just noticed that the 4's are too good
and they noticed it too apparently
and they noticed it too apparently
What you call gatekeeping, Adidas would probably call price discovery.
An auction seems like a much simpler way to do price discovery without excluding that part of your customer base that doesn't know how to use an NFT (or doesn't want to.)
Edit: The market is for the NFTs, not for the shoes themselves. It isn't clear to me how Adidas is able to separate demand for the shoes themselves from speculative interest in making money off of the NFT. Markets can indeed be great price discovery mechanisms, but rampant speculation can significantly tarnish the effectiveness of that mechanism because the pricing can become more dependent of the market's understanding of demand rather than on the demand itself.
Edit: The market is for the NFTs, not for the shoes themselves. It isn't clear to me how Adidas is able to separate demand for the shoes themselves from speculative interest in making money off of the NFT. Markets can indeed be great price discovery mechanisms, but rampant speculation can significantly tarnish the effectiveness of that mechanism because the pricing can become more dependent of the market's understanding of demand rather than on the demand itself.
> The market is for the NFTs, not for the shoes themselves. It isn't clear to me how Adidas is able to separate demand for the shoes themselves from speculative interest in making money off of the NFT.
The real question is why assume that was a goal?
Adidas and many companies don't raise the MSRP specifically because they know they have a price sensitive audience and reputation. This gives them plausible deniability, the ability to sell an additional product and financial exposure to the volume in the secondary market anyway.
The real question is why assume that was a goal?
Adidas and many companies don't raise the MSRP specifically because they know they have a price sensitive audience and reputation. This gives them plausible deniability, the ability to sell an additional product and financial exposure to the volume in the secondary market anyway.
> The real question is why assume that was a goal?
I didn't assume that. I was disputing as assertion that "price discovery" was the goal and that somehow made this not "gatekeeping".
I didn't assume that. I was disputing as assertion that "price discovery" was the goal and that somehow made this not "gatekeeping".
and so do I
Glad to see mechanisms for the primary seller to accrue value from the secondary market.
Glad to see mechanisms for the primary seller to accrue value from the secondary market.
How does it change anything other than Adidas getting the profit of inflated price?
And if Adidas has an idea of how the resale price would look like to price their NFT, why don't they just price that into the shoes themselves?
Adidas and many companies don't raise the MSRP specifically because they know they have a price sensitive audience and reputation. This gives them plausible deniability about the real demand and more accurate market based pricing, the ability to sell an additional product and financial exposure to the volume in the secondary market anyway.
Correct, they get to profit off the inflated price, and they finally get to acknowledge their speculator purchasers who they've been ignoring for decades. The speculator purchasers feel like they have a more even playing field.
Correct, they get to profit off the inflated price, and they finally get to acknowledge their speculator purchasers who they've been ignoring for decades. The speculator purchasers feel like they have a more even playing field.
What stops automation of grabbing the initial NFT release?
Nothing and that wasn't the goal, current owners of the NFT can also develop bots for when the merchandise is released for purchase. It just limits the size of the participant pool, how many bots are being competed against and shows what those bot owners would be willing to pay for access because of what they think they can resell the merchandise for.
Adidas previously never had exposure to the secondary market of its goods, now it does and it also discovers the price at which people want to buy and sell at. Individuals can attempt to buy NFTs from the bot owner, the bot owner might have a price. If they do, the individual gets the NFT and can buy the merch. In all scenarios, Adidas makes some commission.
Adidas previously never had exposure to the secondary market of its goods, now it does and it also discovers the price at which people want to buy and sell at. Individuals can attempt to buy NFTs from the bot owner, the bot owner might have a price. If they do, the individual gets the NFT and can buy the merch. In all scenarios, Adidas makes some commission.
There was two stages for that sale (possession requirement + public). And someone was still able to automate and purchase 1% of the entire supply.
It's like all these retailers forgot backordering was a thing.
They could even store the address and limit to one order per x period of time.