Geekly Update - 17 December 2020

Glitter bombs are too good for porch pirates. Something strong enough to blow off their hand would be preferred. (And yes I am being facetious because I am aware that there might be innocent children hurt if you actually did this.)

The first SolarWinds/FireEye mystery book/movie should be named "To Kill a KillSwitch"!

The most surprising thing about the 3D printers- this wasn't thought of before! The smell of these things can be terrible, and worse- things pointed out in the article. All you need is an industrial hood and fan to protect yourself and pollute the environment instead.

I really wonder why Americans put up with their delivery services.

We live in Wales but all our family are in the USA, so we experience USA delays and efficiency every birthday and holiday.

Here supermarkets deliver in one hour time slots and even in lockdown it isn't really difficult to book a delivery. With a lot of courier services we can watch the driver's progress online knowing an estimate of delivery time by email and when 'out for delivery' following the van's progress with a countdown of deliveries until 'next delivery' shows.

Amazon and Sainsburys are doing same day deliveries if ordered before 12 noon for groceries.

With most suppliers deliveries are free as long as the order is over £40 ($54) and with the prices that's easily met.

Amazon Prime is becoming a joke importing USA delivery practices to the UK using Covid as an excuse. Other suppliers are keeping things at standard speeds (or quicker.

The last bit is to our postman - overworked and underpaid he knows we are shielding and vulnerable and rings our bell with every delivery and waits at the bottom of the garden to make sure we are still OK.

My message to the USA is to complain. complain and use only services that deliver on time. Sooner or later your suppliers will change and develop sensible and customer friendly services.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly with Jon, you American people should revolt against those practices. Over here in the Netherlands package delivery is separated from other mail. When you order something you get a choice of when and where the package can be delivered. You can also choose to have it delivered to a pick-up point close to your home or work. Then, later, you get an e-mail with a link for the time slot and you can follow the status of your delivery. If you miss the delivery, they either take it with them to try again later or deliver it to one of your neighbours if they’re home and leave a message where your package is waiting for you. I’ve put a notice on my front door for delivery people saying which neighbours can be used to drop off deliveries if I’m not home.

Amazon has started to expand in our country recently and I was already weary, but hearing they use flimsy excuses to try and introduce their American delivery practices in Europe makes me determined to never use them if I can help it.

Cal67 - I liked your response, facetious or not, you thought of everything (that people would be upset by). As for Jon and Chris - talking about non US delivery expectations - hopefully people will follow your advice and complain until the (Amazon) service improves.

Partial reason for the Solarwinds hack ... their admin password was solarwinds123. Of course no one could have ever guessed that!

What a great Christmas present from you Bob!! Always appreciate your Geekly Updates with 2 or 3 interesting tidbits but this one was over flowing with tidbits.

To Jon and Chris, there are people here in the USA who believe it's their right to have terrible delivery service and crappy internet service. We're a mess...