Or maybe just add a script in package.json to run whatever patch-package does (eg, "install:patch": "npm install && patch-package") instead of whitelisting every package to have that power.
Corporate is also claiming that they don't allow stores to take on consignment deals, contrary to their franchise agreement explicitly allowing franchise owners to take on consignment deals.
I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract. So the corporation trying to reach into the franchise to grab these goods without honoring the contract is absolute BS and they should be dragged through the mud over it.
The unfortunate loophole here is that, potentially, by shutting down that franchise in a bankruptcy the corporation may end up being preferred for being made whole on debts relative to the consigner. Bankruptcy is complicated so while I am pretty sure any remaining goods from the consignment would be returned to the original owner the proceeds from sales that were successfully made might end up in the pocket of the corporation.
Personally, I absolutely loathe consignment. It is an incredibly complex agreement with a lot of weird edge cases about deprecation of goods and the duty to seek a good price that get complex quick. If you have goods like this and can find a store that will buy your goods in bulk you should be very careful in considering how much you care about the price difference between that bulk price and the percentage they list for consignment. A single transaction is usually much cleaner and easier for both sides and in this case (trying to pay for medical costs) having the money immediately can be quite attractive.
If you look at the latest stuff from the previous owner where they recorded multiple conversations / pulled security footage... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedmOopRTm0 1, they were allowed to do consignment deals, 2, when corporate took control, they said they'd take on the consignment liability, 3, BAM outright threatens them with making the legal process too expensive for them.
All of which contradicts the current corporate response
yeah, it’s plain as day they say blatantly they’ll take on the consignment.
the reckless ben youtube videos are pretty clearly laid out with contracts, video evidence, etc..
the crazy part to me is how blatant the executives of bricks and minifigs are in saying go ahead and try to sue us, we’ll drag this out until you’re broke from lawyers fees. we’re a lawyer rich corp and you’re not. they don’t even try to hide it.
bricks and minifigs are just crazy dickens movie tier evil it’s crazy.
Unfortunately this makes every Bricks and Minifigs store a risk to do business with, selling or buying. You're either supporting a criminal enterprise or risking being a victim of one.
"the crazy part to me is how blatant the executives of bricks and minifigs are in saying go ahead and try to sue us, we’ll drag this out "
To my experience this is a common strategy in disputes when the corporate party has people who operate as uncivilized brutes. I think it's part of the McKinseyfication of companies - profits at all cost - and here's the playbook.
My personal experience is from private parking control. Rather than be professional about my reclamation, their first response was "only criminals dispute these and we win all the court cases".
So I think trying to be imposing and villanous to scare the other non-corporate party to back off is a common global corporate playbook in situations in matters where companies enter contractual complex space with individuals.
Very rarely do corporations act like this once there’s any sort of spotlight on them. Especially over such a relatively small number. This is nothing to do with any standard corporate tactics and everything to do with the guys in charge being complete dick heads.
That has always been the goal. There is, has, and always will be a powerful caste system to ensure that they are gods and we are trash. "Stay in your lane" / "Know your place" / etc. have been watchwords for thousands of years.
yeah you cant just unilaterally cancel the contract in which you agreed to hold the goods for sale, and then take possession without any reimbursement.
You either need to pay the sales price of the consigned items, or just give them back.
If you do neither, its the same exact thing as theft. Which is what they did. They took possession of the 200k lego set with no reimbursement. Just plain ol' theft.
The police are under no obligation to provide service to specific people or businesses, only the public in general. They don’t even have to say “This is a civil matter”, they could just say “Eh, this doesn’t interest us, good luck with that.”
I’m late in responding, but yeah… No particular duty on the part of the police, including in the middle of someone killing you, and all (see the book “Dial 911 and Die”).
This is a dispute about who is the rightful owner of the Lego. That is a civil matter to be decided by the courts. Doesn't matter how clear the evidence, such disputes are for the courtroom.
Absolutely - and there are bad actors here that we should be mad at since they are abusing the law enforcement system but the default goal in situations should always be to de-escalate to prevent violence. I think the cops could have done a better job at explaining next steps and routes to approach a civil resolution but anyone objecting to the police officer removing Ben from the store property after a trespassing complaint doesn't understand how abusive it can be on the receiving end of stalking or harassment.
Separating parties in a civil dispute is always a good idea.
> I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract.
Reminds me of the whole "disney must pay" debacle.
No, they came up with some legal theory in which they’d bought the assets of some company, including the company’s ownership of some art, but not obligations like paying royalties.
That’s like when I got my shower sealed and then it started leaking within the warranty period. The company claimed that they were the new owners and had purchased the business but not the warranty obligations (!) and I’d have to find the original owner and try to make him honour the warranty. Which was complete BS, obviously, but it wasn’t worth taking to court. :/
There actually are legal ways to do that… instead of buying the company, you start a new company, and just buy assets of the old company (e.g. phone numbers, web sites, trademarks, customer lists). Seems shady but apparently it’s pretty common.
Common doesn’t mean not shady. In Australia there are measures in place (eg. national registry for company directors, personal liability for directors) to combat this kind of ‘phoenixing’.
The problem with consignment is that the consignor wants the maximum price but the consignee wants a quick sale because 10% of a few bucks more means very little and they have to hold the inventory.
Selling on consignment can be an absolutely great deal for shops, under the right conditions.
If I'm a lego trader and I buy your set for $900 hoping to sell it later for $1000, in the meantime that's $900 I can't invest in anything else. And maybe I guessed the set's value wrong and I end up unloading it for $800, taking a loss.
On the other hand, if I agree to sell that same set on consignment? Zero capital outlay, zero risk of me taking a loss - just some shelf space and admin work.
Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".
This is definitely not uniform. I worked on inventory management at Target, and stores had quite a lot of shelf space—to the point where we'd hold large amounts of cheap, non-perishable stuff like cat litter because, well, we had the space for it.
Stores also wanted to look full. We actually had parameters in our inventory management logic to increase inventory just for presentation reasons. If inventory is expensive, having some free, quality inventory can be valuable in and of itself even if it moves slowly.
Bricks and Minifigs stores are like 2000 square feet, much different than a Target. Their overhead per square foot is almost certainly far higher than Target.
If you have no shelf space, of course you can refuse the consignment. And this was a really big one, but the shop was initially very happy with it. Advertised widely with it. Brought in more shelves to display it all. From what I understand, it was a very large part of what was for sale in that shop.
I run a niche retail store and there are two sides to this.
Most of our business is selling low-price, entry-level products. There's a 80-20 distribution of people getting into the hobby versus people upgrading after a couple years. Consequently most of our floor space and inventory is devoted to high margin, quick turnover, entry-level products.
In my experience the floor space is less of an issue for high end products than the capital expenditure to bring in the inventory. On the consignment side we only take products aimed at the remaining 20%. These are specialty items we wouldn't have in regular stock. It's a win-win because we don't have to deploy capital to bring the product in-store, but we do have space to showcase some higher end used product.
Also, from the customer side, people ask at the higher end, don't they? Beyond a certain level, it's more of a search and a quest than just browsing. So you mainly have to show that you have connections for certain things. Why does this sound like drugs now?
I know this from a few friends who are deep into tabletop and boardgames, and they would regularly work with the one or two small stores around to get some special, expensive item (to help keep the shop afloat).
Yeah, in my experience the people who want niche stuff are willing to work with you and have a "high touch" experience. Where the people who want entry-level stuff want turn-key, sane defaults.
The annoying thing is people with lots of money and no experience who want the special expensive thing but they want it now and they don't know what options they want. I'm sure other fields are good at separating fools and their money but niche hobby retail isn't the Audi dealership, we're not just trying to upsell you for fun.
> In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".
However, in this particular case, the legos were initially displayed as a customer attraction, and then kept in storage. Presumably there's still some inventory cost in storage, but the shelves are clear.
>> The collection will be on display in the store's party room from 10am till 6pm on Saturday, November 11th, and 11am till 6pm on Sunday. The collection will be available for sale immediately, so the best time for pictures will be Saturday morning. The collection will not be stored on-site after hours for security reasons, and after Sunday the sets will be available for purchase but stored elsewhere.
My wife owns a retail business where some part of their sales is consignment. Taking anything in with only a 10% consignment fee would be laughable, there’s no way that’s a money making deal when you account for all the overhead of a small retail store. My suspicion is the original store owner made a bad consignment deal to sell the Star Wars stuff with only a 10% commission and the new owner didn’t want to live up to it. Of course, at that point they should have just given it all back, but it turns out they’d rather be evil.
It isn't - deprecation of held goods is always a risk and if you're working on consignment then that comes with weird financial liabilities. If there's a flood and you lose your inventory it sucks - if there's a flood and you lose an inventory of consigned values then suddenly you're potentially exposed to paying market value for a number of items in addition to all the site damage you'll need to address. Capacity is one aspect of the costs of holding inventory - but breakage is the much more expensive consideration and consignment just makes it even more expensive.
a large part of the value of secondhand stuff is in the box and packaging, assuming those nice boxes in the image were from his collection - those are a little more fragile than the Lego pieces themselves.
Edit: wait, the whole collection was sealed and new in box. Yea, just water damage to those boxes would cut the value by at least 10%. Collectors are picky as shit.
They were sealed in box? Yeah you'd be right that damage would be easy and could significantly reduce the value.
I didn't realize people bought Lego to leave in the box. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised because it's a common thing for collectors to do in other hobbies.
Even without the box I think you're underestimating how damaging water is. If you're experience a flood it's never distilled H20, sometimes it's sewage and that's just awful, but even if it's storm water or a broken water main the water isn't the difficult portion (though that alone can lead to all sorts of mold issues) it's the sediment. If that sediment is from brown water there are obvious biological hazards which may lead to destruction being the only economical resolution, but even if it's just mud and sand that forces a huge expenditure to actually clean the products and if there's a signficantly misaligned pH it may damage products that you otherwise think of as water resistant.
Given this was a set of full star wars legos with decades of age a lot of those bricks are already going to have degraded somewhat and technix style components are likely to be significantly damaged from internal sediment accumulation. If you drop your water proofed water in a stagnant pond for three weeks it's likely that the internal seal will hold up and protect the delicate components but you'll probably need someone to pull the glue or other sealant out and replace it as well as going over the exterior surface with cleaning solutions to get it back to the quality it was in before being submerged - and flooding is rarely an instantaneous affair.
I wouldn't underestimate just how damaging to goods storage can be - and if you're doing it at scale you're going to be paying that cost constantly just as a percentage of value stored.
Lego survives being eaten by babies and poop back out again (source: my younger brother). They also survive being left out at theme parks (ie the various Legolands) and primary schools under all weather conditions for months and years.
So I don't think I'm underestimating the resilience of Lego bricks to flooding.
There was an article a on HN a while back about the plastics chosen by Lego. They put an exceptional amount of time and effort into choosing durable materials for their bricks.
Only tangentially related, there was a "500-year" flood in my region a couple of years ago and a manager in my department who would shortly become the company president had his house flood. I volunteered to help with cleanup and ended up at his house tearing his basement, at one point 8' under water, down to the studs. His near-adult kids had small Lego collections that were basically in untouched condition except they had been under water. He told us to throw them out with everything else - it was not worth the complicated effort to do them and sort them out. But out of all the stuff it took us the most convincing to do so, the bricks weren't damaged at all.
That said, I'm surprised Lego survive outdoors. My understanding is that ABS is not UV-resistant.
I believe in this case the consignment contract requires the store to hold insurance on the consigned merchandise, which I assume is intended to address this concern.
Yup, if I worked in a field where consignment was an option I'd refuse to do it - it's a huge headache. So I'd absolutely believe that the corporation has a policy against accepting consignment offers and might have a case to recover damages or something against the original franchisee. But the way they've handled this situation still appears to be atrocious. Lets say you consigned 200k at a 10% commission, 50k sold under the original franchisee and you were paid 30k already. If the franchise transferred and the company wanted out there should be an exit[1] in the contract to pay the additional 15k and then return the goods to the original owner. I think it's important to remember this sort of an option was always on the table.
1. Even if the original consignment contract was poorly drawn up without a clear exit clause I think it'd be reasonable to expect a resolution somewhere close to this in mediation.
I have read that article and a few other sources since the first few ways I heard about this story were heavily biased. I have not yet seen B&M confirm that the contract that was leaked is genuine - it is incredibly unlikely that they would, of course, but it still remains one the facts in this case that I tenatively believe but have some reservations around.
I thought it was interesting to, from the assumption that the corporation actually banned consignments, still work through how it doesn't free them from wrong doing. Even in the best light B&M has acted in bad faith.
Your alternative is that the contract was forged. Something easily falsifiable in court and absolutely devastating to any case brought, not to mention any follow-on charges that may result. Is that what you're putting forward?
I thought I was very clear above - my alternative is that even under the best light there were still clearly bad actions carried out by bricks and minifigs. When there is a grey zone I find it helpful to work out what the most charitable interpretation if it is still negative. Even when given the biggest benefit of the doubt Bricks and Minifigs is clearly acting in bad faith here.
They can seize assets that belong to the entity. They can’t seize assets that belong to other people just because it happens to be on their premises, in the same way that they can’t seize and sell the cars that happen to be in a bankrupt store’s parking lot.
There are a lot of reasons why you should never sell things through consignment - but one of those reasons is that the goods cease to be yours in several significant ways. If a company is able to sell a good they could sell that good to fulfill debts - if it is a route to liquidate goods to cover debts then it's in the scope of the liquidator (though I think in most cases a sane liquidator would return the goods whole to avoid creating more debt than already exists and destroying non-fungible goods). If we assume the consignment sale was advantageous for the seller it's unlikely there's a way for the liquidator to quickly sell the goods in bulk for a better margin than the consignment contract offered so any sale they executed would likely add more debt than it cured.
"Can't" is a really bad word to use and I am not certain if "they" here are the corporation or the liquidator.
If you're talking about the corporation I think that any sensible neutral party would probably come down on the side that the corporation has no entitlement to those goods.
If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be under consideration by the steward - I think they'd usually find that the original owner should be entitled to the goods since they're relatively non-fungible. The proceeds from sold goods are likely a more complicated answer since money is fungible and divisible. I could accept that there would be scenarios where a steward would think that the corporation should recover a portion of the proceeds.
> If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be under consideration by the steward - I think they'd usually find that the original owner should be entitled to the goods since they're relatively non-fungible.
IANAA, but I'd say the situation is that while the goods are possessed by the franchise, but they are not owned by the franchise. Ownership title doesn't change until they're sold by the franchise to a buyer.
I could see a scenario in which the franchise contract says that BAM can automatically liquidate the franchise (and how else did BAM get immediate control of the store?), and BAM then says they've executed on that consignment contract (at perhaps not reasonable prices). But without a very well-documented paper trail that this is what they did, including actually paying the consignor the (low) proceeds of the sales, it would seem that the only other possibility here is some kind of criminal conversion.
Which points back to all of the discussion about consignment dynamics really being a red herring. The problem is a criminal conspiracy including by the police themselves, for whatever reasons that might be.
I think if the consignor has not taken the correct steps then there is a risk the receiver would be able to pay other secured creditors using the consignors assets. For example if there are other creditors with liens on the inventory then you are meant to take steps to notify them of your claims on the consigned goods because otherwise the consigned goods could look like inventory to the secured creditor (https://www.lowenstein.com/news-insights/publications/articl...)
bricks and minifigs is going to lose a hell of a lot more than this 10% in business
regardless of the law, it’s a very stupid move on the company’s part.
if they had half a brain they’d pay double the commission and pretend it aas internal miscommunication. $40k is cheap versus the pr hit they’re taking right now
I’ll make sure if I’m ever listing anything through a store via consignment that I remember to ask if the contract with their their franchiser allows consignment in the event that the franchisees folds. You know, typical stuff.
Corporate is lying a lot, and is pretty clearly guilty of theft at the very least.
The bigger problems I see here are:
1. You can't really sure large corporations like Bricks & Minifigs. They've got deeper pockets and can drag it out until you go bankrupt. There's no good legal recourse for this, meaning larger corporations can basically do whatever they want and ignore the law, as long as they only hurt people smaller than them.
2. The police refuses to treat this as the theft it is. There have been several confrontations with police that give a very strong impression that the police is corrupt and protecting the Bricks & Minifigs and its crimes.
3. Reckless Ben's questionable shenanigans seem to be the only way to fight for justice in unequal situations like this. The offending franchise is now closed. The victim still doesn't have his lego or money back, but thanks to Ben, Bricks & Minifigs is now also feeling the pain. Without that, they would have simply gotten away with it. Chance are they've done stuff like this before.
Also interesting are some of the stunts Ben has pulled:
1. Confronted with the claim that it's a civil matter, he tried turning it into a crime, by holding a raffle for one of the stolen sets that's still legally owned by the victim. The winner of the raffle went to pick it up, and was refused, making it theft from a lottery, which is a crime that the police is supposedly required to investigate (they didn't).
2. Several people buy $10k worth of lego from the victim and claim it from the shop. When they're refused, they go to small claims court, which is now possible because it's only $10k. Bricks & Minifigs ignored it and closed the shop instead. There are default judgements in favour of the people helping the victim, but there doesn't seem to be any way to enforce them.
3. He went out of his way to get the company to sue him, which is apparently better than him suing the company? I'm not sure why. But Bricks & Minifigs didn't bite.
The most effective thing has simply been the PR. The public attention may finally get law enforcement to investigate and punish Bricks & Minifigs. Or at least the broader public will know and avoid Bricks & Minifigs, so at least the company gets punished financially. That won't help the victim, but at least it would be some measure of justice.
#1 is a bluff. It would be really hard to drag it out and judges hate that. You are much more likely to end up paying the costs of the little guy as sanctions than bankrupting them or whatever.
This is also straightforward enough and enough evidence exists that it would be hard to drag it out.
You definitely can sue a large corporation and win or force a settlement. The “we’ll drag this out until you are bankrupt” thing is more bluff than reality. Courts do not react favorably to that. Especially when they have direct evidence of those threats.
A corporation may have a litigation cost advantage, but they’re still
going to spend more than the $180k or whatever that they owed to execute this drag it out forever strategy.
Corporate is lying all over the place. If you're following the story, you can see all the contradictions, let alone the video that came out today that literally needs a federal FBI investigation and internal affairs looking into the police department and the Church of Mormon corruption, which is shockingly overt in the video just released. Like I'm talking anti-American level of full city or state takeover corruption.
> For journalists targetted by nation states, perhaps it would be better to use Brave or Chrome inside of Qubes.
Curious why Chrome/Brave is recommended? I don't think any modern browser is better for anti-fingerprinting like the Firefox-based ones, including TOR and Mullvad Browser? Don't install random extensions outside the defaults and you're doing a lot better than a Brave/Chrome install if you want a usable internet.
I mentioned those because they are more focused on security than privacy/anonymity.
Chrome takes security a lot more seriously than Firefox, but Firefox does more for privacy. It would depend on the specific person, whether they are more worried about zero days or more worried about being identified.
Zero days for chrome will cost more than zero days for Firefox because Chrome takes security more seriously, there are more exploit preventions.
Brave is based on chromium and has a good update schedule, but it has some regressions like allowing manifest v2. Chrome is going to have the best update schedule.
Vanadium is the only browser that improves on Chrome's security.
> Zero days for chrome will cost more than zero days for Firefox because Chrome takes security more seriously
They may cost more for Chrome, but it needn’t be because Chrome takes security more seriously; Chrome’s greater market share alone would be enough to account for this.
Not that I’m denying the overall conclusion. Just this bit of reasoning.
I imagine the 5% of issues are more likely to be related to Linux itself; then they hop back to a BSOD on Windows with forced updates or a buggy "stable" OS update on Mac.
Thankfully the case was taken to the Hamilton County Municipal Court, which I imagine was a much fairer trail than he would've received at Lockland's Mayor Court. He was cleared of all charges[0].
When it comes to slow forum content, I think it's a fool's errand to try to determine if someone is using AI for their responses. Any of the tell-tale signs of AI are easily skirted by mentioning in their prompt to not do so. It goes back to how you can't sanitize human language which has been an issue with LLM's from the beginning.
Encouraging a culture of not using AI works to an extent, but I also tire of threads claiming the parent post is AI. There isn't a sure-fire way to know one way or another.
Barriers is what makes a community; by definition, if there was truly zero barriers, there would be one ambient global pot. When barriers are eliminated, communities either erect new barriers or die.
The barrier of rejecting LLM content is a basic pre-requisite of any community of humans directly engaging with other humans in good faith.
There are always ways to achieve that: long vetting process and in-person meetings, high membership price, trusted computing verification, etc. It’s an arms race, but you only have to make it not worth it to the attacker.
Therefore, communities will either die, become much less accessible, or delegate human verification arms race to a service—most likely paid solutions provided by the very industry that is providing the products killing those communities[0].
I think HN needs a refresher on responsible disclosure, and that even vulnerability scanners engage in this practice for obvious reasons in that it benefits both parties. One party gains exposure, and the other gets exposure and their bug squashed without the bug wrecking havoc while they try to squash it.
Whether or not Flock employees are child predators or not, the crux of the issue lies in the third parties Flock allows access to these cameras. For a link to their actual blog post where they make this comment: https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/understanding-flocks-testin...
I don't think third party access matters in the reason it's being scrutinized. Flock is the tip of the commercial security state offloaded by the government to it can "sanewash" it as a input into government surveillance.
I don't care who operates flock; it's being used to do government surveillance at scale to avoid privacy laws.
So, that's an interesting semantic. I think we're often dealing with the same philsophical argument about the FBI 'finding" terrorists versus 'inciting' terrorists via entrapment.
I'd argue Flock doesn't exist if the government for private surveillance didn't exist.
I'd agree with that to an extent. The USA is in a corporatocracy, so I'd argue it's the private corporate entities lobbying for the government to utilize their private surveillance. In general I try not to grant conspiratorial competency which could be better explained by the exchange of money.
