Old man stuck in his ways vent

paul · #1 07-25-2024, 11:48 AM

I sympathize with Gary. But you should know, it could be much worse. I recently visited China, and they are completely cashless. You have to buy EVERYTHING (groceries, restaurant meals, bus tickets, cabs), with a special app on a smart phone. To make matters worse, you can only download the app if you have a local Chinese smart phone. And you must link the app to a Chinese bank account. This obviously works out real great for tourists. As far as I can tell, there are only two work-arounds for tourists. You can either travel with a tour group where the tour company pays for everything, or you borrow the phone of a local (and figure out a way to reimburse them).

bnorth · #2 07-25-2024, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul

I sympathize with Gary. But you should know, it could be much worse. I recently visited China, and they are completely cashless. You have to buy EVERYTHING (groceries, restaurant meals, bus tickets, cabs), with a special app on a smart phone. To make matters worse, you can only download the app if you have a local Chinese smart phone. And you must link the app to a Chinese bank account. This obviously works out real great for tourists. As far as I can tell, there are only two work-arounds for tourists. You can either travel with a tour group where the tour company pays for everything, or you borrow the phone of a local (and figure out a way to reimburse them).

OMG is it a PIA. Especially being here and trying to take care of family in China. That and they pretty much all still believe is psychics and have other beyond silly beliefs. We can't even find a home health company that will take care of one parent because the ashes of the other is in the house. Sorry for the rant but venting some frustrations helps. Lets get back to complaining about old man issues here.

pawpawdiv9 · #3 07-25-2024, 12:15 PM

47 this year--- i bought my 1st phone about a yr ago. Had to because of work & doctors.
Dont use it much as for calls, but i get to look at my emails, and websites like this anytime. I get tons of spam and Trump text.
Note, a few yrs ago i went to a resturant in Florida, had to have a phone in to place a order...so we walked out.
And i see some have 'kiosk' screens at fast-food places to order.
SHEEZ, i am old school too!!! I PAY CASH!!!

Mike D. · #4 07-25-2024, 12:30 PM

On the "cashless" at the ballpark....I went to Fenway Park a few weeks back, which also says it's "cashless" - which it is...at the concession stands, team store, etc.

The vendors walking around all took (and appeared to prefer) cash, though.

The cashless thing at the concession stands was to a fault...at the game, my son wanted a fried dough, so I handed him $20 and he headed off. He came back a little while later with a fried dough...and my $20. Apparently the concession stand had no ability to take cash, and as a 12 year old he didn't have a credit card on him. So, they just gave him the fried dough and told him next time bring dad.

So, with literally no way to accept money, they ended up just giving the product away. Crazy!

Mike D. · #5 07-25-2024, 12:37 PM

I must be a "backwards curmudgeon" - I had zero interest in a cell phone UNTIL it became a computer in my pocket. I carry my iPhone everywhere, but I can't think of the last time I used it as a phone other than to call the doctor's office for an appointment.

BEFORE it was a computer, the selling point was "it's great, it's a phone you carry in your pocket and people can call you no matter where you are". To me, that sounded awful. Now, being able to keep tabs on work emails and check baseball reference from the bar...THAT is handy.

The whole "app for everything" is lame, though...for most things, a web page will do just fine...don't need to download a million things you use 1-2 times a year.

BobbyStrawberry · #6 07-25-2024, 04:20 PM

I always prefer paper options for these things as well. What these companies won't tell you is the reason they are doing it: they make money by harvesting your personal data and selling it. They want this data and so make it inconvenient to impossible to get around.

And much respect to OP for having only a flip phone - I would do this myself if I wasn't so addicted to my smartphone!

Hankphenom · #7 07-25-2024, 04:53 PM

People will adapt, especially youngsters who will take it all in stride just like we did hooking up stereo stuff and other things that baffled our parents. But is it better? That I can't answer, all I know is that instead of playing pickup football or basketball or reading on the couch like we did, kids nowadays are doing whatever on their phones. Doesn't seem like an improvement to me, and I'm very happy to have lived when I did without these things. Nobody had an answering machine until I was 40--how in the world did THAT work? You left a note or called back later, that's how. Logically, some important messages went unrecorded, no doubt, but I'd be surprised if a single person in the world ever said, "f**k, this is intolerable!" Its just the way it was, and the world went on. Much less complicated, that's for sure. Better? I have no idea.

HercDriver · #8 07-28-2024, 09:19 PM

It's not only the phones...it's these horseless carriages that go whizzing by my horse every day on my way to the market to pick up a zucchini and a lamb shank for my dinner. Scares the sh*t out of my horse, these Harley Davidsons and Teslas. Tonight, I barely made it home in time to work my Rubik's Cube before dinner prep. Luckily, I was able to chill out with my vinyl, which I got thirteen albums for a penny, from Columbia House, way back when. I'm a little tired of The Best of Bread, but I never get tired of my Best of Hot Tuna album. Where was I going with all of this? I don't remember. I think I'll have a Hamm's and try to think it through. It's from the Land of Sky Blue Water, after all.

perezfan · #9 07-29-2024, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul

I sympathize with Gary. But you should know, it could be much worse. I recently visited China, and they are completely cashless. You have to buy EVERYTHING (groceries, restaurant meals, bus tickets, cabs), with a special app on a smart phone. To make matters worse, you can only download the app if you have a local Chinese smart phone. And you must link the app to a Chinese bank account. This obviously works out real great for tourists. As far as I can tell, there are only two work-arounds for tourists. You can either travel with a tour group where the tour company pays for everything, or you borrow the phone of a local (and figure out a way to reimburse them).

Unfortunately there's a growing push to move to a Digital Dollar here in the USA. Fight it with everything you have, as it's basically a financial surveillance tool monitored by the federal govt. It would cripple our hobby, in addition to many more serious evils...

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/inves...igital-dollar/

bnorth · #10 07-29-2024, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perezfan

Unfortunately there's a growing push to move to a Digital Dollar here in the USA. Fight it with everything you have, as it's basically a financial surveillance tool monitored by the federal govt. It would cripple our hobby, in addition to many more serious evils...

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/inves...igital-dollar/

I have mixed feeling about a cashless world. I am way more for it because it will greatly cut down on all the POS side hustles people do without paying taxes. I owned a small business and they are killing them because you can't compete price wise with some adult loser not paying taxes, insurance, and all the other things real businesses pay. It will greatly reduce the criminal aspect of our society.

I also have no delusions of grandeur so if someone wants to waste time spying on me good for them.

The real bad is having access to be able to use it. Going through this now.

I weirdly have and use all this new "cool" technology now and was one of the first in my area to have a cell phone. I also had internet before it was openly available to the public here. I just like the option of not having to use it.

End of my old man rant.

chalupacollects · #11 07-29-2024, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perezfan

Unfortunately there's a growing push to move to a Digital Dollar here in the USA. Fight it with everything you have, as it's basically a financial surveillance tool monitored by the federal govt. It would cripple our hobby, in addition to many more serious evils...

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/inves...igital-dollar/

Exactly, this is why several communist countries have embraced digital currency. So you can be at their mercy. Nothing altruistic about it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mark17 · #12 07-29-2024, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chalupacollects

Exactly, this is why several communist countries have embraced digital currency. So you can be at their mercy. Nothing altruistic about it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just as I don't want all these online companies to collect my personal information, I don't want government to know exactly how much money I have, where I have it, how I spend it, and etc.

BioCRN · #13 07-29-2024, 11:54 AM

I'm starting to see a new front in the connection between advancing technology and resistance to it being wrapped up in grand control conspiracies with this whole "cashless" thing.

This is a free market business thing, not a government thing. This is the free market telling you that they don't want to deal with hours of sorting/transporting/storing dirty paper and heavy coins. This is businesses telling you to tap your card and move on, not hold up lines with making change or writing checks.

This is literally businesses telling you what to do.

This is literally businesses tapping your purchases to your name/card.

This isn't a government control scheme. It's pure capitalism. 100% capitalism.

In a previous life I worked for a data harvesting and mining operation. They knew a LOT about anyone, whether they had a "rewards card" or not. Many would be surprised how easy it is to gather information and how much of it has already been gathered.

They use it to sell you things, not to elevate your importance to being a focus of a world-wide conspiracy.

They use it to save themselves money on postage and time not sending you offers that aren't targeted, not to find some secret information to take your family down and enslave you.

They notice you bought lumber, certain types of joists, and deck nails. Then they send you coupon for deck furniture a week later... We worked with Home Depot and Lowes maintaining their customer database. We worked with a crapton of other major corps.

So yeah, resist if you feel like it, but the strong arm of capitalism wants your data to flow easier so they can get ahead of the curve to market to you. The US government doesn't give a flip that you're buying coffee at Starbucks.

Mark17 · #14 07-29-2024, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BioCRN

They use it to save themselves money on postage and time not sending you offers that aren't targeted, not to find some secret information to take your family down and enslave you.

And then they get hacked and all that info ends up in the hands of people who use it to exploit.

I have 3 rental homes. A year ago, within about 4 months of each other, two of them informed me the company they were using to service those mortgages had been hacked, and my data were exposed. When I applied for those mortgages, I had to submit much more than just my address, contact info, SSN, employer, but also my assets. In two ionstances, the companies I got my original mortgaghes with sold my loan to another mortgage company. In both cases, those new mortgaghe companies then farmed out the servicing of those mortgages to yet another party. Not to mention, my homestead mortgage. So, I figure at least 5 mortgage companies have very sensitive information on me, and at least twice, a vendor they did business with fumbled it into the hands of thieves.

I have a master's degree in software engineering. I worked for years in the data warehouse dept. at Express Scripts, where we had, at one time, over a billion prescription claims records, along with referential data on the members, prescribers, pharmacies, drugs prescribed, and so on. I know something about data security, and I can tell you, between contractors working for us who had access, and older claim data we archived off our platforms to be stored with an outside vendor, it is nearly impossible to keep data completely secure.

It isn't a boogy-man argument to say that the less personal and financial data we are forced to reveal, the better.

BioCRN · #15 07-29-2024, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark17

And then they get hacked and all that info ends up in the hands of people who use it to exploit.

I can personally say there was no safeguard to keep me from harvesting already-harvested data given the level of access I had.

Yes, I was a trusted employee, but I had direct access to client database(s) because we made the tools that mined that data. I could do anything and "cover" my tracks if needed. We've downloaded entire databases from clients (with permission) in order to locally sandbox huge rollouts. They trusted us to delete/destroy it afterwards. Though some back-end was universal, a chunk of it was custom to each client.

Anyone's desire to not be tracked, data harvested, etc...that's fine. It's very hard, but it's a very logical thing to want, from personal privacy to the point that your data is actually valuable (to a point) and if you want to monetize it rather than strangers that's legit.

I'm not saying not to worry about it or there's no risk, I'm just saying a lot of it is out there and it's businesses that badly want your data for themselves and to sell to others.

Besides that aspect, so much of this is being pushed by businesses so employees don't have to have cash registers coming up short, keeping cash on hand, having people who need to count/store/transport cash...etc...it's a business decision to streamline. This kind of stuff works hand-in-hand with kiosks replacing humans when ordering stuff at fast food places, etc etc...

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