On the other hand, if your card got refused at that grocery line - would you go back? Likely not.

I doubt many such businesses would risk the customer ire by refusing some cards.

What I DO forsee as happening is some businesses that aren't time sensitive but routinely deal in high $$$ transactions not accepting some such cards. IE, (ironically) - airlines. If you're buying several thousand dollars worth of airline tickets the rewards (and in turn, the merchant fees) can add up quite a bit.

Maybe they're in another country? Here in the US a guy selling tomatoes beside the road is likely to whip out a Square reader attached to a phone and take credit cards.

I live in a small town and I can't think of a single business that DOESN'T accept cards. The last holdout (an old diner thats been there for decades) gave in about 7 or 8 years ago and got a reader.

As a direct result, no, but as a net result, yes, they will. Large companies like Walmart have razor thin profit margins. They just make insane profits because of the volume of product that they move. Those margins will always be just a small amount above whatever their net costs require, and credit card fees are part of those net costs.

You might not like them as companies, but there's a reason why Wal-mart and Amazon are almost always the cheapest place to buy something.

Most airlines aren't even setup to make a profit from ticket sales anymore. They at best break even there, and then make their profit off of agreements with credit card companies for CC miles/points.

Its a very weird system that we've gotten ourselves into.

My local ISP switching to CG NAT was the last straw that made me actually switch to Comcast/Xfinity. Not only do you have all the aforementioned issues, you also can't connect back to your computer from the outside even by using Dynamic DNS services. I don't run websites or anything from my home network, but I do like to be able to get back in via SSH and retrieve files and such from my devices at home.

With Xfinity at least I'm back to having my own IP (and honestly the connection is more stable and faster).

If they ever switch I'm going to have to break down and just buy business internet. Hopefully though we just eventually make it to IPV6.

If Linux can achieve sufficient critical mass to get native ports, I'll start gaming on it (I already use it for day to day usage). Even if a game works on Wine though, I don't want to have that nagging question in the back of my mind that if there's a glitch or a crash, is it truly a bug in the game, or is it a Wine incompatibility issue?

Yep. "Do your own research" is the favorite slogan - which has come to mean "Form your opinion first, then make sure you can find another person on the internet that agrees with you. Once you find them your opinion is validated.".

People discussing things isn't the problem. The problem is that people don't understand the concept of professional consensus. This would still be a problem if you limited it to degree holders.

I guarantee you can still find someone with an applicable degree to agree with you. The problem isn't the credentials, its that if 97 out of 100 credentialed people DISAGREE with your opinion, the 3 that do agree are irrelevant and don't validate your opinions.

I think it really depends on the business model. It sucks when its a service you pay a recurring fee for for "buffet" content. MOST streaming works that way. Gaming has some options there but most of the content is still sold as individual purchases.

In that regard, I don't care as much. I don't want to feel like I have to subscribe to a half a dozen different services to play or watch a specific title, but if I'm paying a one time fee for it, I don't much care which one I bought it on. I mostly prefer Steam, but if I have to launch GOG to play one game it doesn't bother me.

There is no driver facing camera. It doesn't do it in response to the driver looking away from the road - it just pops the message up at random intervals.

My current vehicle is a GM - a 2017 Chevy Colorado. If this is the case I won't buy another. I have no desire to be locked into a proprietary system.

And you can't disable from the settings menu either. You can disable the warning that you might have left your kid in the backseat, but you can't disable the "Don't take your eyes off the road." message that is likely to pull your attention from the road.

Well, and even an iPhone eventually is out of date and needs to be replaced. I keep vehicles a long time. My current one is a 2017 Chevy Colorado I bought new back in early 2017. I've had it 8 years. My vehicle before that I bought new in 2006 and I kept it for 11 years.

Both have lasted much longer than any standard computing device will. All I want is a dumb screen a la Android Auto to sit there and adapt to whatever phone I happen to be connecting.

I don't want to navigate the apps using my tiny phone screen though - Android Auto gives a great car-appropriate interface to my device.

At the end of the day why someone wants to use the feature really isn't an issue. You don't explain to their customers how to avoid doing something they want to do. Its a simple feature thats already available that they're removing to try and charge more for their proprietary alternative that many don't want.

KDE has come a long ways too. I personally had been using Cinnamon for years now, after being a long time Gnome2 and MATE user. I hadn't tried KDE in probably 15-20 years. I recently installed Manjaro on an extra machine and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. I still kinda prefer Cinnamon in general, but I think that's just because I'm used to it.

This has to have some caveats. I'm sure some version of instant coffee can beat some version of drip coffee, but there's no way that instant Folgers is gonna beat a decent quality drip coffee.

I'm not even a coffee snob - I typically drink something relatively cheap (eg Cafe Bustelo) with plenty of cream and sugar, but instant just doesn't taste right.