funkycarrot @ funkycarrot @discuss.tchncs.de

Posts

2

Comments

39

Joined

2 yr. ago

Unfortunately the reviews on Trustpilot and posts on Reddit make it painfully obvious that their customer service is basically nonexistent. Combined with the typical random account-closing most fintechs are known for, this is not a reliable option.

Looking at this comparison, iCard might be an option if you desperately need a way to use NFC payments on your phone. Reviews are good, but it appears to be a prepaid system. Lots of fees to get lost in, too.

But old school might be just fine, too. I just realized my card does fit into my phone case!

Love that you have to specify it's a joke because someone here would legitimately try to help otherwise

I too want to domesticate a Firefox

Hold up aren't you the person who ditched the U.S. for Britain like a month ago?

Hope you get a job soon, keep on searching! Miracles happen when you least expect them :)

Have a later model, the Pocketbook Verse (not the pro edition). Flashed KOReader on it which was much easier than anticipated. Have a couple extra features in the reader that way.

It does as promised. I just plug it into my devices to get epubs onto it. You don't even need a book management software like Calibre, you can use it similarly to how you'd use a thumb drive.

Thanks for taking the time to share, this was very helpful :D

Thank you for the thoughtful reply! One more question: Can you really manage everything using the website? Just sounds too good to be true!

Checked out the support pages. It does get a bit complex trying to figure out if they charge for adding money via bank transfers. But I got to it! For other people wondering (only valid for EU folks):

Turns out they take the customary 1.75% on using the card to get cash from ATMs (and even take 0.50€ on top after the second time). That makes them slightly worse than established banks for this purpose.

However they offer pretty low fees on transactions with the card. While established banks still take 1.75% on every transaction, Wise currently takes 0.46% on exchanges from EUR to JPY. They don't seem to skew the exchange rate like PayPal does either. The only drawback is they're free to change their fee any time, while most normal banks haven't deviated from 1,75% in forever.

To my great relief adding EUR to your Wise balance is free with a standard SEPA (EU zone) bank transfer. And they automatically convert money to other currencies as needed. Though I wonder whether you can convert in advance to make use of favorable exchange rates.

This makes it seem like Wise is a solid option. Only one data breach so far, too ;)

Planning a trip to Japan soon and would like a credit card to pay for accommodation (I don't have a credit card yet). Wise seems to be what I want but I'm not sure:

1. Can you top up your Wise balance from your local bank account for free?
2. Are conversion fees and ATM withdrawal fees abroad reasonable?
3. Is their human support any good?
4. How intrusive was the sign up and KYC?

The President of the Signal Foundation (Meredith Whittaker) has commented on this in this podcast episode. Skip to 1:05:45.

Having uBlock Origin everywhere has spoiled me I guess

People that don't have quark are simply uncultured barbarians.

Sorry.

This article lacks a lot of nuance. I got suspicious of the lack of statistics.. Here's a much better read with more info.

From now on whenever I talk about Android with Google Play Services I'll refer to it as the "shit sandwich OS"

Finally a good, nuanced article on this topic, thanks for sharing. Only drawback is that the author doesn't seem to be aware that degoogling your phone is a viable alternative, especially with manufactures like Fairphone offering this out of the box.

Lots of people (including myself, previously) fall for the narrative that Apple can financially justify not spying on their users because their hardware is expensive. Versus Google, who have always been about ads and data mining.

This logic unfortunately fails to consider that a publicly trading company will always use all methods at their disposal to keep up profit so shareholders are happy. Expensive hardware was probably enough a decade ago, but the golden rule is: as long as a company can fuck you over in a way that increases profits, they absolutely will, given enough time.

We need federal privacy law in the U.S. and we need it fast.

Wow, you just... described the problem we had on our Windows PCs that I never managed to describe

I use Gramophone from F-Droid for playing MP3 files which are in folders. One of the tabs in Gramophone allows you to navigate your main music folder and it'll treat your folders as playlists!

Best comment I've read for a long time

Yeah wouldn't suggest using your real phone number

This is the correct answer. If you don't need notifications:

Make sure you enable the auto frost service in Shelter's settings, enable auto frost for WhatsApp in Shelter and replace the icon on your home screen with a Shelter shortcut.

You can also use a trustworthy VPN to route traffic from the entire work profile or only from WhatsApp.

Damn, Astrill is expensive though. Friend in China is currently happy with Mullvad + Shadowsocks. A few hiccups here and there, but it works pretty well and is fast enough for streaming, too.

They also have guides to a few more involved methods in case Shadowsocks is blocked.