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.

That skill proved useful in his later career.

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?

We MUST be able to inspect and age verify every AI slop porn image to protect the fictional children!

-

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.

That's my opinion too.

Unfortunately, after a certain amount of actual progress we are now regressing again.

Yeah, we have a long history of not practicing what we preach.

Remember when the USA took pride in being a melting pot?

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.