And the crazy "Clintons get a free pass" meme, which I can't even wrap my head around. Republicans have spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail the Clintons, and have had 0 success. Either the Clintons actually haven't done much, or the Republicans are comically bad at using government to take someone down. Regardless of which is true, it doesn't speak all that highly of the Republican machine.
Like the AC here noted, I haven't picked up a call that I didn't want to for about 25 years either. Most everyone is smart enough to email me, because that's what I tell my contacts, friends, and relatives. The few people who insist on a phone number generally get a fake one, unless there's a damn good reason for them to be calling me.
Barber shop wants my phone number, mall stores want my phone number, online forms want my phone number, everyone wants that shit.
The flip side is that since I don't give it to anybody for the most part, the few calls I get are generally pretty important. Anyone who abuses access is blacklisted immediately. And unless I'm expecting a call, any number I don't recognize or any one that I do and which doesn't have pressing business with me gets sent directly to voicemail.
I'm not a slave to synchronous communication. Life is too short for that shit. I bought a house, furniture, had service calls, traveled extensively, and I've never felt the need to be on call for my own phone. It blows my mind that people like yourself still allow themselves to be tied down like that.
That was my instant thought. Amazon sets up warehouse voting areas where employees can vote under supervision "if they want to". Those that don't want to might not have jobs after the election. Every at-will state could work like this if the option to choose not to vote in secret existed.
I'm even in favor of getting rid of absentee voting for this reason. Lets have the polls open for 2-3 weeks, and offer rides a few of the days instead of mailing ballots back and forth. If you can't make it to an authorized polling place*, you don't get to vote.
*And I think we could come up with a system to authorize embassies and military bases to hold elections. A little trickier, but doable.
You actually believe the bank is giving you free money?
Credit union.
The cash "back" actually comes from you....they can charge you as many fees as they like...
Yeah, but no. I pay $0 a year to have my accounts with my local credit union. $0 in fees. $0 in interest on the credit card because I pay it off monthly. $0 for them to print and mail a check to anyone for any amount I specify, and $0 to even schedule reoccurring payments this way. $0 to transfer money to anyone else in the credit union. $0 for a credit report. The only money I have ever given this credit union is $5 to open each account I have with them. And $10 for a cashier's check once. They cover their costs with their piddly interest rates, which aren't any better than any other banks in the area due to the federal rate being so low.
I just don't get how the world is happy with predatory banks who do the sort of crap you're ranting about. You don't even seem to understand that other types of financial organizations exist.
You see the thing is that the merchant pays 2-6% for accepting the card which, by the terms of his agreement with the banks, he has to build into his prices. So you're getting 1% back of the up to 6% you're spending to use the card.
And here is where you turn out to be a fucking dumbass. Because unless the merchant is giving a 2%-6% discount for using cash, which none are that I run into with any frequency, it doesn't matter what form of payment I use.
When I ran a business, accepting credit cards dwarfed my staffing costs.
Your clear lack of Econ 101 might be the reason you no longer run a business, if you ever did. No business takes their operating costs, pads a percent for profit, and then adjusts that price when things like merchant fees change. You charge what the market will bear. That's absolutely basic, day one, economy and statistics stuff. Is the merchant fee a negative hit on your profit for goods and services? Sure as hell is. Might it make the cost of what you're offering more than the market will bear? It might, in a competitive market. But to claim that it's somehow something that drives the final price is a basic misunderstanding of economics. And that's ignoring the fact that a sizable percentage of people don't carry cash, so if you don't accept cards, you aren't selling your goods and services to a percent of the population.
Half the companies decided that PINs are too hard, so they went with signature instead. So instead of swiping and then signing, you insert, wait, wait, it beeps. You push a button. You sign. It asks if you want cash back. You say fuck off. You pull the card out, it beeps saying that you ruined the transaction and that you need to do all that shit again.
You see, we largely didn't implement chip-and-pin. We replaced the quick swipe and sign with an insert of the chip card, and then layered a bunch of other mandatory, slow, stupid shit on top of it, any step of which could cancel the transaction and require you to start over. And different merchants and different card vendors do it differently. So you might have multiple ways it now needs to be done depending on what's in your wallet and where you're shopping.
We also weren't smart enough to design a system where you can insert and PIN first, then wait for the transaction to finish, like you could with swipe&sign. Most of the places I've seen with pin&chip now force you to wait until you're done until you do the payment process.
It's seriously like we wanted this to be a failure.
Yeah, you're a paranoid fuckwit. Bank with a non-abusive company and don't be a dumbass.
If you're using a bank, you're using an institution that is probably trying to fuck you. Don't do that. Pick a local credit union instead. Better service, better rates, less ass-fucking. My wife and I both push a monthly amount to a joint account which is tied to our bills and debit cards. I noticed fraud on that account recently. Went to the credit union at lunch, told them that I didn't know what card it was on, they figured it out, (mine) put the money back, shredded the card, printed me a new one, and I walked out of there 15 minutes later.
Their online banking is the shit. We do our banking through their portal most of the time. And that includes their free, scheduled, repeating if necessary bill payments where they format a check with your account number on it and mail it out. And do electronic transfers with some companies. "Only use checks" lol, how quaint. We have our payees set up in the web portal. Log in, click "Utilities", enter the amount, click send. Done. Check is in the mail the next morning. Same with mortgage, student loans, cell phone, etc.
I used to use big banks, but they spammed me, fucked me, and generally treated me like shit. I moved to a local friendly place, and they treat me like a king. It's amazing that you recommend using fucking Walmart and pre-paid cards and cash. Those can be lost and stolen. And if they are, you're SOL. And pre-paid cards have overhead.
If you have any questions, let me know
If anyone does, it's going to be why you aren't taking your meds. The fuck is wrong with you? How did your world get so broken?
For me, yes. Local credit union. 1% cash back on everything, no annual fee, low interest on the card. I make $50-$100 a year from using my credit card. The wedding year we broke $200. My cards have been compromised a number of times in the last year or two, and it seems to be a mixture of local skimmers plus Russian gangs brute-forcing card numbers. I had a brand new card used to buy $35 of McDonalds in St. Petersburg before I had used it more than 2-3 times locally, which leads me to believe that there's some brute-forcing going on.
They print on demand, so I walk down at lunch, fill out the fraud form, they shred my card, print a new one, and I'm on my way 15 minutes later. That night their website notes that my card number changed and some reoccurring charges are possibly tied to it, and nudges me to update my card anywhere it's used.
I haven't used a bank in almost two decades, and I don't see myself using one anytime in the near future. Until they offer service and rates that beat my credit union, no reason to bother with them.
That's the way I secure it, with one addition: I have a local credit union that prints cards on demand. I see a fraudulent charge, wander down on my lunch break, sign a form, they print a new card, shred my old one, and their website even notes things that look like reoccurring charges and nudges me to update my card for those places whenever the number changes. Hard pressed to beat service like that!
The benefit of CO is that it's big, heavy, and we have good detectors for it. And I don't think it has the issues with metals that H2 does either. All things considered, I think CO is a better gas to have to work with.
Revealing that was Treason, Germany is not a military or political enemy..
Good to see that you have no idea what treason is. Go read your constitution. It's the only crime explicitly spelled out in there, because too many yahoos like yourself threw around that term loosely at the start of the country.
You talk about farming like it's difficult. It's really not. You take some baby things and stick them into the ground. Water, sun, and when they aren't babies any more you hack some hunks off them and sell those bits to someone. I'm in the process of combining this with my innovative child care business, because when you boil both of them down to the essentials, they're pretty much the same business.
It's not that my free time is worth more to me, it's that I NEED that free time to ensure that I stay very good at and thus keep my first job. I get 5 hours of R&R every evening, double that on the weekend, and about 8 hrs of sleep daily. If I didn't have both the R&R and sleep, I'd suck a lot more at my job. It's not a dream job, but it's a good paying, stable job, that doesn't suck too much.
Good on everyone who shoots for more, but don't come bitching when it bites you in the ass.
My crazy catholic aunt did this. Harry Potter = Witchcraft and is bad. Narnia = good because christian allegory. Lord of the Rings = good because childhood memories of reading the books. D&D = Super Bad Witchcraft Evil. It still makes my head hurt to this day.
Is there any reason they can't make it fatty and on the bone?
I assume if it's lab-grown, it sill needs nutrients. Still needs a circulatory system of a sorts, nervous system to twitch and build muscle, etc. Might as well grow a tube of muscle on a bone with marrow in it, and hook all that shit up. You can control the texture, the fat content, marbling, etc. That's where I see this being amazing.
If every cut was essentially the "perfect cut", how awesome would that be? I've had good meat, and I've had plenty of bad meat. All the marbling on one end, nothing on the other. Bits of gristle in it. If I could get a perfect cut every time for the same or less than I pay now, I'd happily take that. If they can pull that off, they change the world.
No antibiotics, no inhumane treatment, the exact texture, fat content, and taste that I want? Sign me the fuck up.
No more gristle, no more lopsided fat deposits, no more oddly shaped cuts of meat that cook too fast on one end and too slow on the other. Is it going to be weird and artificial at the start? Yep. But imagine if every cut was the exact same cut. Same cooking method, same timing, and you're done. And fucking eat it ultra-rare if you want, because it won't have pathogens in it!
And it WILL BE FRESH!!! Grow it as you need it. Ramp up in the summer, around holidays, and ramp down after that. No long train of animals ready for slaughter > slaughter > delivery > not enough sold > put on sale > reprint the expiration date and put on super-sale, etc. Hell, if done right you could even slow down or halt growth. You can't really do that with live animals in factory farms, but you might be able to do that with meat in a lab.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm I bet there's more paperwork for permanent structures than temporary balloons. There wouldn't be any rent to pay, for one. And servicing something that is only off the ground temporarily might be easier than having to climb a tower. I could see them using this a few times per year, then once a month, then applying for a yearly pass on "whenever we need to" which the powers that be would happily stamp that because they're getting sick of approving the repeating paperwork for a "temporary" cell structure.
It seems to me to be a way to get permission to stick a "cell tower" up anytime they want, anywhere they want, with less regulation and paperwork, and maybe less cost.
I have a "phone account" for google. It's tied to nothing but my phone. When google needs an account for most services, that's what it gets. I also have several gmail accounts. I have one tied to the mail app on the phone, so I can access my personal email on my phone, without directly tying that account to the rest of google's services.
The problem comes when google decides that since there are two google accounts available to two different apps on the phone that it can pick whichever one it wants to send and receive email via. So I try to send an email, and my mail app is suddenly sending on the empty phone google account. If someone replies to that, it goes only to my phone, not to any of the other devices I use to access gmail.
Google does not respect having multiple accounts on the same device. That's the problem.
Brother color laser, under $300 now. Deep sleep draws a couple of watts. Wireless. The only issue is that we end up piling shit on it and when we go to print it jams because the paper can't come out.
Had it for more than a year now. Use it maybe once a month, if that. Every time, as long as we haven't piled shit on it, it wakes up, warms up, spits out awesome color or B&W sheets, and then goes back to sleep. It's a fucking appliance and works like one. I fully expect it to be kicking ass like this 5 years from now, if the ancient brother B&W USB laser I had is any indication. I put more than 10k sheets through that over almost a decade. Rock solid the entire time. Sure, toner is expensive. But when you only buy it every couple of years, it's way cheeper than ink. And it doesn't go bad.
I would assume this new position would be given to an existing executive with no option to turn the position down. And if that person asked for time to think about it, they'd come in the next day to find their new title on all their business cards.
And fewer people tailgating, which causes chains of emergency braking because we're still relying on what I feel is a stupid binary system of "brakes on/brakes off" despite brakes being analogue devices. For a long time I really hoped that we could move to brakes with a better indicator of how strongly the person was braking. Intensity based on % brake applied, strobe on ABS, e.g. However, radar is even better, and works no matter if we don't have that, the lights are broken, etc.
With proper following distances between a larger percent of vehicles on the highway, even if some percentage of people are still driving like jerks we should see a reduction in traffic jams. There will be just that much more buffer between vehicles, and far less chain-braking due to seeing red ahead. When vehicles can reduce speed when they are closing in on traffic ahead without braking, highways are going to be much more pleasant for everyone. While human drivers can do this, most don't, thus traffic jams in clear weather on only semi-busy roads.
Slashdot Mirror
And the crazy "Clintons get a free pass" meme, which I can't even wrap my head around. Republicans have spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail the Clintons, and have had 0 success. Either the Clintons actually haven't done much, or the Republicans are comically bad at using government to take someone down. Regardless of which is true, it doesn't speak all that highly of the Republican machine.
Like the AC here noted, I haven't picked up a call that I didn't want to for about 25 years either. Most everyone is smart enough to email me, because that's what I tell my contacts, friends, and relatives. The few people who insist on a phone number generally get a fake one, unless there's a damn good reason for them to be calling me.
Barber shop wants my phone number, mall stores want my phone number, online forms want my phone number, everyone wants that shit.
The flip side is that since I don't give it to anybody for the most part, the few calls I get are generally pretty important. Anyone who abuses access is blacklisted immediately. And unless I'm expecting a call, any number I don't recognize or any one that I do and which doesn't have pressing business with me gets sent directly to voicemail.
I'm not a slave to synchronous communication. Life is too short for that shit. I bought a house, furniture, had service calls, traveled extensively, and I've never felt the need to be on call for my own phone. It blows my mind that people like yourself still allow themselves to be tied down like that.
That was my instant thought. Amazon sets up warehouse voting areas where employees can vote under supervision "if they want to". Those that don't want to might not have jobs after the election. Every at-will state could work like this if the option to choose not to vote in secret existed.
I'm even in favor of getting rid of absentee voting for this reason. Lets have the polls open for 2-3 weeks, and offer rides a few of the days instead of mailing ballots back and forth. If you can't make it to an authorized polling place*, you don't get to vote.
*And I think we could come up with a system to authorize embassies and military bases to hold elections. A little trickier, but doable.
WTF are you talking about, AC? "It is widely claimed" is some of the best evidence I've seen in years!
You actually believe the bank is giving you free money?
Credit union.
The cash "back" actually comes from you....they can charge you as many fees as they like...
Yeah, but no. I pay $0 a year to have my accounts with my local credit union. $0 in fees. $0 in interest on the credit card because I pay it off monthly. $0 for them to print and mail a check to anyone for any amount I specify, and $0 to even schedule reoccurring payments this way. $0 to transfer money to anyone else in the credit union. $0 for a credit report. The only money I have ever given this credit union is $5 to open each account I have with them. And $10 for a cashier's check once. They cover their costs with their piddly interest rates, which aren't any better than any other banks in the area due to the federal rate being so low.
I just don't get how the world is happy with predatory banks who do the sort of crap you're ranting about. You don't even seem to understand that other types of financial organizations exist.
You see the thing is that the merchant pays 2-6% for accepting the card which, by the terms of his agreement with the banks, he has to build into his prices. So you're getting 1% back of the up to 6% you're spending to use the card.
And here is where you turn out to be a fucking dumbass. Because unless the merchant is giving a 2%-6% discount for using cash, which none are that I run into with any frequency, it doesn't matter what form of payment I use.
When I ran a business, accepting credit cards dwarfed my staffing costs.
Your clear lack of Econ 101 might be the reason you no longer run a business, if you ever did. No business takes their operating costs, pads a percent for profit, and then adjusts that price when things like merchant fees change. You charge what the market will bear. That's absolutely basic, day one, economy and statistics stuff. Is the merchant fee a negative hit on your profit for goods and services? Sure as hell is. Might it make the cost of what you're offering more than the market will bear? It might, in a competitive market. But to claim that it's somehow something that drives the final price is a basic misunderstanding of economics. And that's ignoring the fact that a sizable percentage of people don't carry cash, so if you don't accept cards, you aren't selling your goods and services to a percent of the population.
In summary, I think you're a hater.
Half the companies decided that PINs are too hard, so they went with signature instead. So instead of swiping and then signing, you insert, wait, wait, it beeps. You push a button. You sign. It asks if you want cash back. You say fuck off. You pull the card out, it beeps saying that you ruined the transaction and that you need to do all that shit again.
You see, we largely didn't implement chip-and-pin. We replaced the quick swipe and sign with an insert of the chip card, and then layered a bunch of other mandatory, slow, stupid shit on top of it, any step of which could cancel the transaction and require you to start over. And different merchants and different card vendors do it differently. So you might have multiple ways it now needs to be done depending on what's in your wallet and where you're shopping.
We also weren't smart enough to design a system where you can insert and PIN first, then wait for the transaction to finish, like you could with swipe&sign. Most of the places I've seen with pin&chip now force you to wait until you're done until you do the payment process.
It's seriously like we wanted this to be a failure.
Yeah, you're a paranoid fuckwit. Bank with a non-abusive company and don't be a dumbass.
If you're using a bank, you're using an institution that is probably trying to fuck you. Don't do that. Pick a local credit union instead. Better service, better rates, less ass-fucking. My wife and I both push a monthly amount to a joint account which is tied to our bills and debit cards. I noticed fraud on that account recently. Went to the credit union at lunch, told them that I didn't know what card it was on, they figured it out, (mine) put the money back, shredded the card, printed me a new one, and I walked out of there 15 minutes later.
Their online banking is the shit. We do our banking through their portal most of the time. And that includes their free, scheduled, repeating if necessary bill payments where they format a check with your account number on it and mail it out. And do electronic transfers with some companies. "Only use checks" lol, how quaint. We have our payees set up in the web portal. Log in, click "Utilities", enter the amount, click send. Done. Check is in the mail the next morning. Same with mortgage, student loans, cell phone, etc.
I used to use big banks, but they spammed me, fucked me, and generally treated me like shit. I moved to a local friendly place, and they treat me like a king. It's amazing that you recommend using fucking Walmart and pre-paid cards and cash. Those can be lost and stolen. And if they are, you're SOL. And pre-paid cards have overhead.
If you have any questions, let me know
If anyone does, it's going to be why you aren't taking your meds. The fuck is wrong with you? How did your world get so broken?
For me, yes. Local credit union. 1% cash back on everything, no annual fee, low interest on the card. I make $50-$100 a year from using my credit card. The wedding year we broke $200. My cards have been compromised a number of times in the last year or two, and it seems to be a mixture of local skimmers plus Russian gangs brute-forcing card numbers. I had a brand new card used to buy $35 of McDonalds in St. Petersburg before I had used it more than 2-3 times locally, which leads me to believe that there's some brute-forcing going on.
They print on demand, so I walk down at lunch, fill out the fraud form, they shred my card, print a new one, and I'm on my way 15 minutes later. That night their website notes that my card number changed and some reoccurring charges are possibly tied to it, and nudges me to update my card anywhere it's used.
I haven't used a bank in almost two decades, and I don't see myself using one anytime in the near future. Until they offer service and rates that beat my credit union, no reason to bother with them.
That's the way I secure it, with one addition: I have a local credit union that prints cards on demand. I see a fraudulent charge, wander down on my lunch break, sign a form, they print a new card, shred my old one, and their website even notes things that look like reoccurring charges and nudges me to update my card for those places whenever the number changes. Hard pressed to beat service like that!
The benefit of CO is that it's big, heavy, and we have good detectors for it. And I don't think it has the issues with metals that H2 does either. All things considered, I think CO is a better gas to have to work with.
Revealing that was Treason, Germany is not a military or political enemy..
Good to see that you have no idea what treason is. Go read your constitution. It's the only crime explicitly spelled out in there, because too many yahoos like yourself threw around that term loosely at the start of the country.
Who's emergency? TLA's or LEA's "emergency", or my own?
You talk about farming like it's difficult. It's really not. You take some baby things and stick them into the ground. Water, sun, and when they aren't babies any more you hack some hunks off them and sell those bits to someone. I'm in the process of combining this with my innovative child care business, because when you boil both of them down to the essentials, they're pretty much the same business.
It's not that my free time is worth more to me, it's that I NEED that free time to ensure that I stay very good at and thus keep my first job. I get 5 hours of R&R every evening, double that on the weekend, and about 8 hrs of sleep daily. If I didn't have both the R&R and sleep, I'd suck a lot more at my job. It's not a dream job, but it's a good paying, stable job, that doesn't suck too much.
Good on everyone who shoots for more, but don't come bitching when it bites you in the ass.
My crazy catholic aunt did this. Harry Potter = Witchcraft and is bad. Narnia = good because christian allegory. Lord of the Rings = good because childhood memories of reading the books. D&D = Super Bad Witchcraft Evil. It still makes my head hurt to this day.
No, you need like 25 wrong candy to evolve a wrong into a right.
Is there any reason they can't make it fatty and on the bone?
I assume if it's lab-grown, it sill needs nutrients. Still needs a circulatory system of a sorts, nervous system to twitch and build muscle, etc. Might as well grow a tube of muscle on a bone with marrow in it, and hook all that shit up. You can control the texture, the fat content, marbling, etc. That's where I see this being amazing.
If every cut was essentially the "perfect cut", how awesome would that be? I've had good meat, and I've had plenty of bad meat. All the marbling on one end, nothing on the other. Bits of gristle in it. If I could get a perfect cut every time for the same or less than I pay now, I'd happily take that. If they can pull that off, they change the world.
No antibiotics, no inhumane treatment, the exact texture, fat content, and taste that I want? Sign me the fuck up.
No more gristle, no more lopsided fat deposits, no more oddly shaped cuts of meat that cook too fast on one end and too slow on the other. Is it going to be weird and artificial at the start? Yep. But imagine if every cut was the exact same cut. Same cooking method, same timing, and you're done. And fucking eat it ultra-rare if you want, because it won't have pathogens in it!
And it WILL BE FRESH!!! Grow it as you need it. Ramp up in the summer, around holidays, and ramp down after that. No long train of animals ready for slaughter > slaughter > delivery > not enough sold > put on sale > reprint the expiration date and put on super-sale, etc. Hell, if done right you could even slow down or halt growth. You can't really do that with live animals in factory farms, but you might be able to do that with meat in a lab.
Millenials, I think.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm I bet there's more paperwork for permanent structures than temporary balloons. There wouldn't be any rent to pay, for one. And servicing something that is only off the ground temporarily might be easier than having to climb a tower. I could see them using this a few times per year, then once a month, then applying for a yearly pass on "whenever we need to" which the powers that be would happily stamp that because they're getting sick of approving the repeating paperwork for a "temporary" cell structure.
It seems to me to be a way to get permission to stick a "cell tower" up anytime they want, anywhere they want, with less regulation and paperwork, and maybe less cost.
But 1+9 = 10, which is disgusting. Loss in my book. But 1+0 =1, and I'm torn about that.
I have a "phone account" for google. It's tied to nothing but my phone. When google needs an account for most services, that's what it gets. I also have several gmail accounts. I have one tied to the mail app on the phone, so I can access my personal email on my phone, without directly tying that account to the rest of google's services.
The problem comes when google decides that since there are two google accounts available to two different apps on the phone that it can pick whichever one it wants to send and receive email via. So I try to send an email, and my mail app is suddenly sending on the empty phone google account. If someone replies to that, it goes only to my phone, not to any of the other devices I use to access gmail.
Google does not respect having multiple accounts on the same device. That's the problem.
Brother color laser, under $300 now. Deep sleep draws a couple of watts. Wireless. The only issue is that we end up piling shit on it and when we go to print it jams because the paper can't come out.
Had it for more than a year now. Use it maybe once a month, if that. Every time, as long as we haven't piled shit on it, it wakes up, warms up, spits out awesome color or B&W sheets, and then goes back to sleep. It's a fucking appliance and works like one. I fully expect it to be kicking ass like this 5 years from now, if the ancient brother B&W USB laser I had is any indication. I put more than 10k sheets through that over almost a decade. Rock solid the entire time. Sure, toner is expensive. But when you only buy it every couple of years, it's way cheeper than ink. And it doesn't go bad.
Forced Windows Update Committee Leader
I would assume this new position would be given to an existing executive with no option to turn the position down. And if that person asked for time to think about it, they'd come in the next day to find their new title on all their business cards.
And fewer people tailgating, which causes chains of emergency braking because we're still relying on what I feel is a stupid binary system of "brakes on/brakes off" despite brakes being analogue devices. For a long time I really hoped that we could move to brakes with a better indicator of how strongly the person was braking. Intensity based on % brake applied, strobe on ABS, e.g. However, radar is even better, and works no matter if we don't have that, the lights are broken, etc.
With proper following distances between a larger percent of vehicles on the highway, even if some percentage of people are still driving like jerks we should see a reduction in traffic jams. There will be just that much more buffer between vehicles, and far less chain-braking due to seeing red ahead. When vehicles can reduce speed when they are closing in on traffic ahead without braking, highways are going to be much more pleasant for everyone. While human drivers can do this, most don't, thus traffic jams in clear weather on only semi-busy roads.