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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byPowercntrl ( 458442 ) writes:
Is there really any reason we can't just make pennies out of plastic instead? Personally, I haven't used cash in ages anyway so I'm really neither here nor there on running out of pennies, but it seems like if the problem is just that they cost too much to manufacture, make them out of something cheaper.
byserviscope_minor ( 664417 ) writes:
Or just scrap them as a denomination. I'm in the UK where pennies are worth fractionally more. It is now worth considerably less in real terms than the 1/2 p coin when that was scrapped. I, personally in favour of scrapping copper coinage completely. Round the tally to the closest 5 and be done with it.
byAmiMoJo ( 196126 ) writes:
I don't even regularly carry cash anymore. Phone generates a random credit card number for anonymity when shopping, that's good enough.
byViol8 ( 599362 ) writes:
"Phone generates a random credit card number for anonymity when shopping"
Huh? How can you pay with some random card number? And no payment method is anonymous , you simply move who knows from the shop to apple/google and your bank still knows you spent money either way.
Also I don't understand people who pay with a phone when contactless bank cards are simpler to use and faster. Just smacks of showing off.
bypsmears ( 629712 ) writes:
Also I don't understand people who pay with a phone when contactless bank cards are simpler to use and faster. Just smacks of showing off.
For most people I know that do this, it's just one less thing to carry - they'll have the phone with them anyway, so why carry cards/cash as well?
byViol8 ( 599362 ) writes:
Because not everywhere accepts apple or google for payments and if you're phone is lost or stoken you're screwed. Also it means giving apple or google your bank details in the first place.
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byjonbryce ( 703250 ) writes:
In the UK, everyone, and I mean everyone accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay. I never carry cash when I go outside now.
byAnonymous Coward writes:
Big Brother is watching you shop. I hope you like it.
byKisai ( 213879 ) writes:
Big Brother was watching you shop with Cash too. Those serial numbers are not just for anti-counterfeiting.
byklui ( 457783 ) writes:
This claim is just silly. I've never seen a clerk record serial numbers with purchases before. What serial number would they write from coins? Oh, of course, the date of mint.
●our current threshold.
bypostbigbang ( 761081 ) writes:
And you've surrendered your soul and privacy to tracking. You've become a loyal tool of the state, your history laid bare to the government or the next hacker looking to forever phish you with bad emails, snarf your wallets, and find out about those tawdry condoms you're buying. Welcome to The Hive. You've succumbed.
byiAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) writes:
You're online, posting at slashdot with a 6 digit uid.
Your computer has an IP, you pay for that access with a credit card associated with your name, address and bank account. Your email is hosted somewhere that also knows who you are. Your every search, purchase, post, article read, hooker hired, porn viewed and everything else you do is logged in a government database somewhere.
What privacy are you talking about? No normal person has any privacy on the net. 99% of privacy nuts fool themselves into thinking they do running a government owned vpn.
It is possible to be anonymous on the net but so restrictive almost no one would do what's required.
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bypostbigbang ( 761081 ) writes:
Or I'm on Tor, the email on an obscured host.
Privacy is fleeting, we'll agree. And some of us try, because it's the right thing to do, rather than give it up to the man.
And we do so diligently, stay out of the system, whatever system that might be. And we don't leave tracks, and leave no trace. Yes, there are sniffers everywhere. The good news is that most of them are stupid, and have only hazy ideas of how to harvest the petabytes of info they already have.
But we're not "nuts". We're entirely deliberate. And often, we're successful. Conversely, sometimes we're not. You can profile my /. entries, sift me, but you don't know who I am, not that I care if you do. Rather, I fight the invasion, a matter of dignity and the right to be as anon as I please, not how you please. You can call this a fantasy or obsession, I prefer: Diligence.
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byiAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) writes:
Tor was broken years ago. There are white papers floating around about how easy it is when you have effectively unlimited government resources. Go ahead and Tor if it makes you feel better. It's better than nothing but if you have something to hide and privacy is more than a policy concept to you you're not safe with Tor.
Like you I do put in some basic effort to limit the privacy damage but I don't delude myself into thinking there's some magic bullet technology that will actually work and not just make
bypostbigbang ( 761081 ) writes:
You're a bully.
You move the cheese, breast-thumping about "unlimited government resources". Your delusion is believing your own BS.
Tor exit nodes are known. Your data, where stored, is for sale somewhere; we know this. If you are stored in fewer places, there is less to rob, the benefit of thinking about actual liberty and what privacy adds to it.
That you don't care anymore is your problem and sad demise. My data, what little there is, is tough to join together by purpose, not sloth. Your paranoia is not my
byiAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) writes:
I'm a bully? Lol, ok, because, uh, I 99% agreed with you?
You're weird, dude. Totally mental.
bypostbigbang ( 761081 ) writes:
Maybe too many testosterone patches? You should really pull them off when they're expired.
byThumpBzztZoom ( 6976422 ) writes:
He's an idiot. Look at his username. Actual smart people don't need to tell you they are smart. You have to get really, really far down the intelligence curve to get to the point you make a user name like IAmWaySmarterThanYou. He's basically the prototype example of Dunning Kruger. And he reinforces his own ego by changing the goal posts, ignoring logic, ignoring every time you prove him wrong even when it's his own information that does so, until you realize that he's too stupid to ever accept being wrong,
bypostbigbang ( 761081 ) writes:
Thanks for your kindness in revealing this.
byBig Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) writes:
He may not actually be smarter than you but he's right. Data and systems are becoming monolithic, data from one system can be correlated to data from another system often by using public domain information. Data can be scraped from Facebook and other places, where people seem to reveal all manner of (what should be) private information. So... there really no way to avoid, no where to hide. If you are using a public VPN, like Nord, you just shift who gets to capture your info.
(the only way to do it is by set
byiAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) writes:
You can stop with the non sequitur ad hominem.
I was agreeing with you and twice you go off on me with weird stuff about bullying and testosterone.
byWarlockD ( 623872 ) writes:
I have to agree here. Tor or FreeNet get bad raps but they undoubtedly have this goal. True internet privacy is such a high bridge to get to nowadays. You practically have to air gap a separate computer though a firewall just to make sure that computer isn't spiting out things you don't want. People say "sure use Linux" and I do, just you cannot trust even Linux browsers not to have some JavaScript backdoor or some flaw, etc.
I just wish this wasn't some weird contentious issue. "Bad people" who reall
byViol8 ( 599362 ) writes:
I'm in the UK and no, they don't. Go into plenty of small cafes and you'll be lucky if you can even pay by card. There's one in Romford that still only takes cash.
byUn-Thesis ( 700342 ) writes:
I've lived in the UK for about a year on and off since 2015. I've lived several months each in Bristol, Bath, Manchester, Glasgow, Stockton-on-tees, Teeside, Middlesbury and about 6 months in London.
I have never once found a store that was cash only. I've never found a single store since 2021 that didn't accept Google Pay via tap.
byskam240 ( 789197 ) writes:
I hear people say what you're saying here about where I live and yet the places I go to that are cash only havent disappeared yet.
Can't say which of you is correct but I'd put my money on the real local as opposed to the person with a few months experience in a few places. I don't know why you'd think you'd know more than a real local on something like this.
byViol8 ( 599362 ) writes:
Wow, a whole year - in bits. I bow down to your comprehensive knowledge of retail in my country.
●r current threshold.
byserviscope_minor ( 664417 ) writes:
Once you get out of London, say as far as sunny Ramsgate, some places only accept cash. That caught me by suprise.
byRockDoctor ( 15477 ) writes:
In the UK, everyone, and I mean everyone accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Loosey Lucy down the docks?
Joe "no bleach" Drugdealer?
I think you mean "everyone who I deal with". Definitely not everyone.
Since I'm likely to head to rural Englandshire in the near future, I might remember to eyeball the traders at the farmers market. Since the car park the stalls are laid out on doesn't have power points and gas lanterns are used on the stalls that don't pack up and leave at dusk (so 4pm the last couple of months
byjonbryce ( 703250 ) writes:
Certainly at my local farmers market, which is within walking distance of an Elizabeth Line station, so not particularly rural, they all take Apple Pay / Google Pay.
bypsmears ( 629712 ) writes:
Because not everywhere accepts apple or google for payments and if you're phone is lost or stoken you're screwed. Also it means giving apple or google your bank details in the first place.
Well maybe - just maybe - for the people that dojust carry the phone - all the places where they need to make payments do take payments by phone! And maybe (rightly or wrongly) those people don't have your misgivings about giving their credit card details to Apple/Google. And let's face it, if your cash/cards are lost/stolen, you are equally screwed.
You don't have to agree with their reasons. But they're fairly easy to understand, and there's no element of showing off (I'm not even sure how that would work - hey everyone, I'm doing this thing that loads of other people can also do!) involved.
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bydfghjk ( 711126 ) writes:
" And let's face it, if your cash/cards are lost/stolen, you are equally screwed."
It's not about theft, that is only one problem. Are you suggesting if you can't solve every problem, don't bother solving any? I mean, "let's face it", why bother paying for anything at all?
bypsmears ( 629712 ) writes:
" And let's face it, if your cash/cards are lost/stolen, you are equally screwed."
It's not about theft, that is only one problem. Are you suggesting if you can't solve every problem, don't bother solving any?
No, I'm suggesting that some people feel that for them, carrying extra cards is—on balance—not likely to solve enough problems for them to be worth the extra inconvenience.
I mean, "let's face it", why bother paying for anything at all?
You're right! Some people don't carry any means of payment at all. Sounds pretty inconvenient to me, but, if it works for them *shrug*...
byDayze!Confused ( 717774 ) writes:
And potentially less screwed. Someone finds your wallet with cash and credit cards, they can use those. Straight out take the cash, and attempt to use CC's. At least with a phone the wireless payment doesn't work without unlocking it.
●r current threshold.
byMalc ( 1751 ) writes:
That's an American problem. Funny given that the tech is American. But then the US has always lagged behind with contactless payments.
Apple Pay isn't about showing off. It's faster, more convenient and more secure.
All of my credit cards are secured at home. I just have cash and my debit card in my wallet in case my phone dies.
byLetterRip ( 30937 ) writes:
That's an American problem. Funny given that the tech is American. But then the US has always lagged behind with contactless payments.
Most of the world has widely used public transport that use contactless payment, so it is a fairly obvious transition in most countries. The US lacks decent public transport for most people, and thus they have no experience with contactless payment for public transit, hence the slow adoption.
byMalc ( 1751 ) writes:
New York City has a decent public transport system. I couldn't believe when I was there in 2016 that it was still using physical tickets so many years after London, Hong Kong and many others had gone contactless. I hear it's improved recently with OMNY, maybe with a bit of help from Andy Byford.
byomnichad ( 1198475 ) writes:
Funny given that the tech is American. But then the US has always lagged behind with contactless payments.
The "E" in EMV is Europay. Apple just forced any credit card issuing bank to give them a cut in order to enable their NFC chip for EMV payments. They could have just acted as a secure enclave for issuers to directly link an account. Their innovation is marketing and skimming off the top.
●your current threshold.
byMalc ( 1751 ) writes:
IÃ(TM)ve had countless time where I seen people fucking around with their phone in front of the POS terminal.
Amateurs ;)
Admittedly there is more that can go wrong. But, is it just that they weren't prepared and didn't choose their card in advance?
byXenx ( 2211586 ) writes:
Iâ(TM)ve had countless time where I seen people fucking around with their phone in front of the POS terminal.
That specific experience may be unique to phones, but similar types of slowdowns occur with cash/coin, cards, checks, etc. It's called being unprepared, or bad luck. For example, there is a gas station near work that for whatever reason started to decline my default card. Just that card, and just there, so I get to play around with multiple cards whenever I need to stop off there.
In my experience, when things go well, phones are near the top for expedience. When things go poorly, they're not much worse th
●th your current threshold.
● your current threshold.
byUnknowingFool ( 672806 ) writes:
Because not everywhere accepts apple or google for payments in the US.
Fixed that for you. Some European countries have been ahead of the US regarding payment systems. For example, chip credit cards were everywhere long before US banks shifted towards them. Phone payment has been a thing in some European countries for years. In Asia, they have been the majority of payment types in countries like Singapore, China, India and Japan for years now.
byUn-Thesis ( 700342 ) writes:
I live in Colombia, Panama, Egypt, and the UAE almost all year.
I have never once found an actual store that doesn't have tap-to-pay that supports both Google Wallet and Apple Pay. Only street vendors in Colombia and Egypt want cash.
Most street vendors in Colombia accept digital wallet Neqi now, too. It's like Paypal via Bancolombia.
bythegarbz ( 1787294 ) writes:
Because not everywhere accepts apple or google for payments and if you're phone is lost or stoken you're screwed. Also it means giving apple or google your bank details in the first place.
Everywhere where you can tap a card you can typically tap your phone. Also what do you do if your wallet is stolen? And all Google gets details wise is my card information. They can't see the balance though they can see how much I'm spending at a shop. That's not a big risk.
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