I will intentionally avoid asking for 5 star reviews.
I hate those things!
Don’t know if it counts as sticking it to the man, but I adblock everything. Seriously, Ive got adblockers on my adblockers. Ive been adblocking for so long I don’t know what to buy anymore.
I’m sitting here in my empty house surrounded by my bags of money I don’t know what to spend on. Send help.
After pushback, I switched over to ad nauseam (which still blocks via UBO). Not sure how effective it actually is for the click part (considering it also catches related things, some YT recommends, share buttons, definite non-ad things in search etc) but it says $1.8K (I have it set between ‘sometimes’ and ‘always’).
Send money to me. I will dispose of.
Same. I also treat cookies like a virus…no, no, and no again. Though I think my days are limited with that, a lot of websites now saying accept cookies or pay. I’ll give up the interwebs before I accept trackers.
For articles which won’t let you disable cookies there’s usually an archived version somewhere. Or you use some current alternative to 12ft. Or you ask an LLM to summarize the URL.
12ft ladder has never worked for me, unfortunately. :/
Check the Firefox plug-in called Web archives. It helps you archive web pages and it helps you find access to archive web pages. It’s pretty useful.
Instead of manually denying cookies, you can deny all cookies and whitelist the sites you trust.
Edit: also note - websites that give you the ‘option’ to opt in or out may not have the same opinion on what cookies are ‘optional’ or ‘mandatory’. Several don’t even do anything and are just there to look compliant.
Absolutely agree. Site owners only get fined if someone reports them. The regulators aren’t actively scanning sites to ensure compliance.
And how do I do that?
To be blunt (but not to be mean), RTFM or google it. There are lots of ways to do it, and it all depends on the capabilities of your devices, OS, browsers and whether or not you want to use apps to manage it. And again, I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just that the question has the same effort as “how do I make food?”. I could give you the most gourmet answer and it may not help.
But to answer as simply as possible: Most browsers can do cookie whitelisting out of the box. Just be aware that it doesn’t prevent cookies outside the browser or outside the device - so if you have (for instance) a smart tv, you’ll need other solutions. And the solutions snowball from there, so I will leave it at that.
In addition to this every device I use has an always on vpn
You should try picking up some
I don’t know what to buy anymore.
I have a problem where because I’m so hard to advertise through between adblock and premium subscriptions, that I am usually very out of the loop on what movies and TV shows are coming out
The biggest ones usually make their way into the news or Lemmy somehow, but there’s definitely a lot I’m clueless about until I see them pop up streaming somewhere a couple years later
Just visit Rotten Tomatoes once a week or so
At least, by then, you know how many seasons you’re getting into, eh?
cries in Firefly
When I buy from a small business that I want to support, I will use cash. When I’m buying anything from a large company, I will always use the fanciest credit cards in my wallet.
In the United States, credit card processing fees are more expensive for fancy rewards credit cards and obviously there’s no fee for cash.
over here, the extra cost that comes from handling cash is enough that small businesses don’t want to take it. counting till every day adds up.
Surprisingly not in the US. If you make 100 sales a day of $20 each, then over a six-day week, you’d pay roughly $360 in credit card transaction fees (assuming 2.5% + 10¢ per transaction which is average). If you instead spent half an hour a day counting cash in the till and then half an hour at the end of the week to go to the bank, that’s about $98 in labour cost (assuming a labour cost of $28 per hour, which is roughly $25 per hour in wages and $3 per hour in tax), so the savings are $262 per week, which is not insignificant.
yeah that 10¢ is 10x our transaction cost.
Banks also charge for cash services, many business accounts may just include it in the price, but someone has to physically count, collate and move around the cash, often with security. There are costs for running a computer system, and costs for using cash that businesses have always paid. Some small businesses definitely do not understand that, but cashless can be cheaper and safer depending on your country and quality of banking services.
I used to do that, but here (Australia) passing on surcharges has sadly been normalised, and during covid heaps of businesses went cashless.
The salt in the wound is that there’s not really any reason for businesses to push payment gateways for a better deal. They don’t give a shit any more as they just pass it into the customer.
Some American states (not mine) have banned surcharging for credit cards in response to consumer backlash. But what’s not banned is marking up everything by 3% and then offering a 3% cash discount.
That’s why nobody takes Discover or Amex. Their fees are higher than Visa and Mastercard.
I literally cannot think of any places that don’t take Discover.
It’s the most-commonly rejected card. It has high fees without the clout of Amex. Amex customers are typically pretty wealthy and places will accept them because of their high-roller status. But Discover doesn’t have that going for them, so there’s less reason to accept the card.
Where you’ll find it rejected most often is small shops and government agencies.
For instance, my career has been in government, and no organization I’ve worked for has ever accepted Discover. We aren’t allowed to “profit” from our fees, so we have to include credit card processing in the adopted fee schedule. But since we can’t profit, we have to set the fee at whatever Visa and Mastercard charge. That extra 1 or 2 percent Discover charges can be millions for a large government (large city, statewide agency, etc). So, agencies simply don’t take Discover (and frequently AmEx, though they’ll sometimes negotiate).
Large retailers are able to negotiate better deals with Amex and Discover, but for smaller shops it just isn’t gonna happen. And that 1-2% (of the total charge) extra taken by the card processor is huge when your margins are small.
Heck - even the Visa and Mastercard fees are a huge deal. When I worked in retail management, those fees were secretly the big reason we pushed our store-brand credit cards. It wasn’t the 80 dollar commission for the account the store got - it was that if someone used our card in our store, we didn’t pay the processing fee.
We’d give 2% in points back for using the card in the store, which was a great deal for us since we didn’t have to pay the 3-4% fee to the processor.
It is definitely not true that Discover interchange rates are significantly higher than Visa or Mastercard.
I’ve put below a list of the actual interchange rates for various personal Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards types.
Debit:
- Visa Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Discover Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Mastercard Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
- Visa Debit: 0.8% + 15¢
- Mastercard Debit: 1.05% + 15¢
- Discover Debit: 1.1% + 16¢
- Visa Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢
- Mastercard Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢
Base credit tiers:
- Visa CPS Retail: 1.51% + 10¢
- Discover Consumer: 1.56% +10¢
- Mastercard Consumer: 1.65% + 10¢
- Mastercard Enhanced: 1.8% + 10¢
Rewards cards:
- Visa Rewards Traditional: 1.65% + 10¢
- Visa Rewards Signature: 1.65% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards: 1.71% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards Premium: 1.71% + 10¢
- Mastercard World: 1.9% + 10¢
Premium cards:
- Visa Rewards Signature Preferred: 2.1% + 10¢
- Discover Rewards Premium Plus: 2.15% + 10¢
- Mastercard World Elite: 2.3% + 10¢
You can plainly see that Discover tends to be more expensive than Visa but is cheaper than Mastercard. The only reason I could see that someone might refuse Discover is because Discover cards are all rewards credit cards that go into the higher tiers, whereas many Visa and Mastercard cards are debit cards which go into the lowest tier.
What is a regulated debit card?
A card which is subject to central bank regulations regarding the interchange fees which they are allowed to charge. According to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act 2011, the Federal Reserve has the power to limit debit card interchange fees for debit cards issued by large banks with over $10 billion in assets. A “regulated debit card” issued by a bank subject to the regulation is therefore tariffed at the maximum rate allowed by the regulation, which is 0.05% plus 22 cents.
Hmm go figure your mom gives me a hard time about it every time.
The small retailer I worked for didn’t take Discover. We took Amex though, because it was high-end and wealthy people love their Amex
I use discover everywhere, pay 90% of my bills with it. No one uses amex anymore. Pay off all of my cc at end of month, that’s how I stick it to the man. Use their money for a month or so and get money for it.
What you get out of it is generally less than the processing fees. That’s how reward cards work. The seller has to pay the processor to process the payment, and you get a portion of that as a reward.
It may feel like free money to you, but that processing fee is built into the price of anything you purchase.
You aren’t sticking it to anybody.
The things or services I pay with my cc don’t have cash discounts, so no reason to use cash, if you pay them off every month and never carry a balance the cc company doesn’t make money off of my use and pay me to use their money. I’m sticking it to the cc company. Also as you have pointed out that all sellers build the processing fee into their prices I wouldn’t save anything by paying cash.
The CC company makes a killing off your purchases. They charge a fee to the merchant for every transaction. Between that fee and a separate fee for processing the fee, they end up charging between 3.5 and 6 percent more on the transaction, while handing out 2-3 percent in rewards if you’re lucky.
The reason there isn’t a cash discount most places is because it’s actually against the terms of service with the CC company/processors for the merchant to charge more for their customers. The CC company essentially requires that everything be more expensive for everyone whether or not they actually use the cards.
The card companies make absolutely stupid money off those fees.
Amex is such a douchebag rich person flex. The credit card equivalent of a Laboubou collection.
Got mine when I when I was living in a trailer park. What are you on about?
Lol what? It’s just another generic credit card.
It’s actually a charge card. You’re expected to pay it off every month.
No, mine is a credit card, not a charge card. They would love for me not to pay it off every month.
Amex isn’t exclusive at all. Anyone can go apply for one and get one. It’s not special at all
The Amex Black Card is the one I was starting to refer to, I got interrupted and decided to hit the button rather than elucidate further. Sorry. You can look up the requirements and benefits, it wouldn’t be good for me but for someone who travels a lot and throws big expensive parties it might. Or if they’re basically a corporation
It costs more for the merchant and cardholder. That’s why rich people flex with it. Because they can afford to pay more and cost others more for no reason.
Maybe more for the seller, I don’t know but the cost to me is… Nothing. Well the benefit to me is about 3% back on anything I buy. No fees. Just another cheap card.
The seller isn’t eating the loss. It’s all passed to us poors.
anyone can get an amex. unless you’re talking about a platinum or black card? those have minimum spending requirements per year to keep them.
amex is taken in 9 out of 10 places when I use it. it’s usually small places that don’t take it
I’m nice to others.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” - Elon Musk
That’s how you know empathy is important. It apparently affects the rich’s bottom line. Plus, you know, if you have a brain, empathy is just a given…
I geneally just whine a lot about code quality and post shit like this in the company slack for everyone else to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B8vPXPjzA0
Sail the high seas
Ahoy mate!
AAAARRRRRRRR!!
Reject cookies.
Embrace biscuits.
I say anti-CCP stuff to trigger my parents lol.
They aren’t even involved in the CCP in any way, like they’re just originary people never been involed with the party in any way, but they have like some weird nationalistic glass heart that gets mad when I say anything anti-CCP.
Like… lmao what, are they afraid of the China’s secret police? Why do we have to continue pretending to love CCP? We don’t live in China anymore lol.
Like if they piss me off, I’m just gonna say anti-CCP shit to piss them off. I really wanna like make a WeChat account, add my parents, then spam their accounts and get them banned.
I remember a few years ago, my mom yelled at me so much and made me cry, so I just used a permanent marker and wrote (graffitied) “消滅中共，世界和平” on a wall inside our/their house [in the US], it’s still there, I didn’t know how to write the characters, so I just typed it in pinyinyin and used traditional characters for emphasis, they couldn’t wipe it off the wall. That is a permanent mark of our relationship. That writing on the wall represents the scars of my traumatic childhood memories.
Like wtf, CCP literally tried to kill me (long story short: One Child Policy, I was the 2nd child), and they still like defend CCP as if there’s a CCP secret police here in the US watching us. Fuck them, who cares.
(I just had an argument with parents so this comment might seem very angry and like a rant, whoops, I trauma dumped on the internet again)
Just noticed your name is a reference to Stein’s Gate, nice one
On the topic of China’s secret police, what are your thoughts on the Chinese government attempting to repatriate Chinese Americans and Europeans through covert operations, such as Operation Fox Hunt? I remember hearing about operations like this a few years ago, and it always seemed really freaky to me.
I haven’t personally witnessed a “Chinese Overseas Secret Police” agent yet being in the US for like… about 15 years, so idk how serious the supposed “threat” really is. I never got any threats from PRC, yet. Then again, I don’t have much followers and I don’t really show my face and I never mentioned my real name. It would take a bit of effort to deanonymise me (not impossible, just takes effort)
I think Russia probably has a worse M.O. like… they just poison their dissidents, like Alexy Navalny
Not sure if there are any recorded instances of Chinese dissidents being poisoned like Russia does to their dissidents, so like…
if I get coerced to “go back” I’d just refuse…
what what are they gonna do, drive a van and grab me and then somehow get me across the ocean? (do they even have the logistics?)
Idk, I’m probably a bit more worried about ICE at the moment.
I mean I say anti-CCP shit and I don’t really feel fear as long as I never step foot in China again. But when it comes to… anti-trump speech, that’s when I sort of self-censor a bit to make sure it isn’t legally considered “threatening violence”.
Kinda like Snowden, you know. He can criticize his former country, but isn’t really in much of a position to criticize his current country.
I’m sort of in a Snowden-type of situation, I mean I do criticize the US, but I have to “tone-down” a lot of what I say about the US.
So, TLDR is: 没办法, I can’t do anything about it, I’m not in a position of power to help other Chinese dissidents.
It sounds terrifying if they do decide to target you, that is; but there are a lot of dissidents around the world, they can’t possible go after everyone, especially those outside the country.
rip a fart in the elevator as I walk out
I mute commercials.
My kids an I make farting noises over them.
Also fuck liberty mutual for their vast ad campaign
Living Spaces is the one that drives me nuts with the woman singing at the end. Plenty others are horrible, but that one in particular just hits a nerve for me.
I see, you must not have heard the Kars 4 Kids commercials before. 10x more annoying than the little Living Spaces jingle. :)
I love doing this.
Y’all are seeing commercials? 🏴☠️
this just takes more active attention though…why not just watch stuff without ads?
I mute live sports, mainly American football.
I’ll pay the extra football package price, but you couldn’t pay me to listen to the play by play.
And I might pay a bit more to hear the crowd noises isolated, with ref announcements.
I distinctly remember that the NFL tried that out once, where they broadcast a game with no announcers. My Dad and I thought it was amazing, but evidently we were far and few between as I recall they only did it the one time.
What I really don’t understand is how they end a football game and then have to sit around for 20 mins rehashing the game they JUST SAW…
“Remember that time the guy caught the ball and then ran?”
“Oh yeah, that was like 10 whole mins ago.”
“That was so good.”
“Yeah.”Now, imagine that last bit but in attention-span-segments of random “highlights” during the game …with several different instances of this bullshit grouped every 10ft or so within a ~500sq ft area, along with several TVs pointed inward at largely arbitrary angles and each set to combative volumes…
I fucking hate “sports” bars. 🤬🤮🤬
I’ve been saying this forever! I HATE the pointless idiotic commentary. I would gladly pay a premium to nuke that shit.
I investigated writing a plugin (maybe for plex or jelly fin?) that would filter out the commentary audio, did a little proof of concept on a recorded clip that worked, but then realized that fleshing it out and doing it for a live stream would be a ton of work. Which means I wouldn’t have time to watch football on mute.
My wife and I have recently started muting the tv and streaming local radio announcers for the team. SOOO much more enjoyable.
I pirate my media. The way I see it, I will pull one over on any company I can get away with that would absolutely swindle me given the chance.
You mean you don’t want to give the fascist David Ellison any money?!? Me either :)
Where do you start?
Is that community blocked on .world? Can’t find any certain info on that, only the list of blocked instances — but Voyager doesn’t show anything in that community.
Oh lmao, I forgot about the fact that they blocked it. Should’ve mentioned it.
About 5 years ago our town centre introduced parking charges, so now one of us goes shopping while the other sits in the car looking out for parking enforcement so we can drive a loop around the carpark. We probably pay less than once per year, but we park there at least once per week. Saves us ~£100 a year.
Buy four clamps and clamp yourself. Then just come back whenever and take them off and drive away
Sadly they just put a ticket on the car and post you a fine if you don’t pay it… I could however just swap number plates with for example a blue Reliant Regal nearby and truly embrace my inner Mr Bean.
Call me dull but unless spaces are egregiously hard to come by, I’d pay ~£2 to not babysit a car looking over my shoulder and instead have a few extra minutes with my better half.
We spend a lot of time together, this gives us 30ish minutes of alone time to browse Lemmy for me and Facebook for her, there are almost never parking wardens, but it makes it a bit exciting. Finally if we shop together we end up getting lots of things we shouldn’t buy, alone we tend to get what is on the list and get out.
I suppose there is something to be said for solitary moments. The clandestine excitement is funny.
It brings to mind Daniel Craig in a DB5, nonchalantly scrolling the web, catching a peripheral glimpse of a uniform and peeling out down a staircase.
In my imagination I’m Jonny English in a V8 Vantage, ducking into a space whenever the warden turns around…. In reality it’s more Mr Bean in an Austin Mini.
Torrenting and seeding, if i had more storage i would seed for the Anna’s Archive
I work in ads and I use ad blockers.
You literally couldn’t pay me enough money to do what you do, and you should feel bad for doing it.
I literally hate ads. I have a adguad at my house that blocks everything and I use a VPN. Because I’m in the industry, I know what they do. Its awful what they are capable of.
I do the same as @jaschen306.
Probably not the same life story, but I started as a Neuroscience PhD escapee (I was pressed by my supervisor to p-hack our results) and at the time, around 2012, this was an easy career to shift to from a scientific background.
I work more specifically in tracking implementation, and you should all become aware that for one year the ToS for the Google Marketing Platform have now allowed the use of browser/device fingerprinting for user identification aimed at remarketing, etc.
I am trying hard to go in-house at a company to work in BI, which is something I would be able to do, but not at the level of other people, since the marketing industry has accepted rejects like me setting the bar very low in order to have an army of people feeding Google and the others people’s data.
But the alternative for me is to be jobless AND careerless.
I suggest companies to evaluate Plausible and Piwik Pro as a solution, but the people they are as marketers have stopped being marketers more than a decade ago, they are just inside jobs planted by Google et al., and they regularly disregard the alternatives.
What’s “BI”?
Business Intelligence
Gross…
I couldn’t stomach working in marketing. Hats off to you. I took a marketing class in college, just felt icky.
I do my best to only promote to keywords with high intent. So people who search for words with the sole purpose to purchase. I avoid doing ads to people who wasn’t looking for someone.
This help me sleep at night.
I refuse to separate out my compost.
