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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Haha don’t get me started with US coins, I also have a fun story there: we arrived fresh off JFK Airport in NYC and headed to our rental apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn. It was pretty far from the a subway station so we got a connecting bus to get us closer.

    The next day, we thought of taking the same bus line to head to Manhattan, except our party of four ended up being expected to pay 4x $2.75 in a machine inside the bus… in coins. That’s 44 quarters. Yup, don’t have that on day 2 of my stay. So we walked 6 blocks.


  • I visited the UK back in 2022 and I was pretty baffled at how you can universally “tap to pay”. We visited a pub on the coast of Dorset where they wouldn’t even accept cash as a mean of payment. All in all it was nice, because it meant not having to deal with a foreign currency at all, we spent 10 days just using electronic payment, so as a tourist I think it was a good experience.

    In Germany, where I live, you’re basically getting nowhere without cash, it’s still very difficult to eat out or buy small food items like bread or a sandwich. There’s also a culture of paying cash for many things, including pricier items like a second hand car! Shop cashiers usually don’t even blink if you try to pay with a 100€ bill (except if you’re coming super early and they don’t have change available yet). It’s not unusual for me to end up drawing a quarter to half my monthly salary in cash.

    I first disliked it when I moved from France, but now I think it’s actually good for the society. You always have some change to tip a waiter or give to a beggar, a coin for the cart at the supermarket, get something from a vending machine… Also I live in a very quiet area so getting mugged is very unlikely, making it not so scary to carry cash around.





  • This is a provision of the article 6 of the GDPR, which describes very broadly that you have to justify your legitimate interest with a fair reason to process user data. It is mostly there to allow for IT security, fraud prevention, but also marketing.

    Unfortunately, the way the regulation is written is quite imprecise and subject to interpretation. You can read this page, it will give you an insight on the possible interpretations:

    https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/legitimate-interest/

    My understanding is that you have the choice between the following modes :

    • Consent = you allow for personalized data collection and ads integration can make use of any tracking information saved in your browser and on the servers of the third party provides
    • Legitimate interest = you allow for data collection without personalization, but the provider might still be context aware and provide for example ads based on broad information like your country, language etc
    • Nothing = you refuse any processing and connection to a third party server


  • They’re also in Germany now, as mandated in every EU country, but I don’t have to deal with them because there’s also a heavy culture of reusable glass bottles (Mehrweg Flaschen) distributed in standard reusable crates. Everything has a deposit so you always bring them back when refilling.

    I don’t mind them either but get yourself cheap cable pliers and cut the tether when you need to, or pour into a cup instead of drinking from the bottle.