671–680 of 811 posts
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Nah, BLIK from Poland was there earlier and is in many ways better, Wero was unfairly lobbied for by the old European guard, so most of Eastern Europe walked away. They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.
> BLIK from Poland was there earlier BLIK was launched in 2015 according to Wikipedia; iDeal is from 2005.
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I strongly disagree. Substitute with 'the Chinese mind can't comprehend' or 'the Palestinian mind can't comprehend' or 'the Muslim mind can't comprehend' or 'the African American mind can't comprehend' or 'the immigrant mind can't comprehend'. Obviously that would be a slur and not an acceptable way to phrase a point. HN rightly didn't allow these type of generalization comments against Russians after it invaded Ukra…
America was literally founded on this premise, and it should come as no surprise that our government has (d)evolved into what the founders felt was inevitable. America is fairly exceptional in that it's not racist to say "Americans are ____" given it's a melting pot of so many different races and cultures. That's a beautiful thing, but something that the white supremecists in control of the US are working to erode. E…
India is made up of an incredible mix of ethnic peoples. Yet saying 'the Indian mind can't comprehend' would be considered a slur.
Your thinly veiled attempt to align me with white supremacists is EXTREMELY out of line.
As is calling me a bot out of line. Ad hominems that I am a bot because I push back on topics HN SPECIFICALLY chose to make an exception for (look at my comments prior to that since you are digging through looking for character assisnations) is unreasonable on your part. Either discussion is open on the topic, or it should not be allowed. Not some weird space when only one sides perspective on the topic is tolerated and having challenging views makes one a bot. Again during discussion on Russia's invasion, it was not allowed to call people defending Russia/Russians bots. There seems to be erosion/strain of standards here since then.
Nothing I have said is islamaphobic. One can challenge ideas/religions. Bringing up their history/failings is not phobic but is needed to push for productive/healthy change.
As was recently pointed out to me, you might want to look to PGs thoughts on discussion and adjust how you respond to thoughts you disagree with. https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
I will admit I'm old so I don't have a lot relevant to ad to a lot of current tech discussions here but I will try to add more.
(In French.) That could be a massive hassle for American tourists, who will still mostly have Visa and Mastercard. I'm sure that there will be some kind of solution -- I suspect Google Pay and Apple Pay will support the new network. But I'll have to keep an eye out. I might even have to start bringing cash. I used to make that the very first thing I did on landing. The last few times I didn't get any cash at all.
This is already an issue for tourists in many countries that have their own payment system (e.g. Brazil, India, Singapore, Thailand). In some of them you have companies that came up with products for tourists that allow them to pay but they usually come with fees. From what I know the majority of tourists in these countries just travel with cash.
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It's the other way around. You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad. You have very, very coarse-grained control with the government every few years.
> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly Oh yeah? Please enlihhten me, how exactly can I switch providers from the Visa/Mastercard duopoly?
If it requires (or will require) Google/Apple authentication then it's of course not sovereign payment. It looks like Wero works on GrapheneOS, at least for now. Will that always be possible? Will it always be smartphone only, or will there be other options? I've read about the problems kids (eg, 10 year olds) are having in the countries which have gone mostly cash-free when they don't have a smartphone or debit card…
Norway passed a law quite recently forbidding permanent card only shops, cafes, etc. As far as I can tell this was done for two reasons, firstly card only is discriminatory and secondly to improve the countries resilience in the face of cyber attacks. You can only be electronic payments only if you are a temporary sales location such as a flea market, ice cream van, etc.
The point of budgeting via "cash stuffing" instead of the invisible shuffling of money through a bank card, is something that in retrospect is something similar to what I did when I was younger - the cash in my wallet is getting low, so I should hold back on expenditures.
It lists some issues, like "The number of automated teller machines (called a minibank in Norwegian) has also declined, and most of them recently started charging a fee of NOK 10 (USD 1) to withdraw cash. If more people start using cash again, that may change."
Can you perhaps tell me how things have changed in the last couple of years?
Love to see it. When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1]. It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it…
So now that 8 years have passed since that article was written, do you have any idea how many Canadians have been banned from the US for life because they used marijuana in the past? > credit card data can be stored in the United States, where it’s an open book to U.S. authorities, who don’t need a warrant to access it if it belongs to non-Americans > A U.S. border guard could quickly put a Canadian in an impossible…
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The system is unique to Switzerland. But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality. All European countries have been practically 100% white until not long ago with vastly different outcomes.
Liechtenstein is probably the closest second in direct democracy nature in Europe and I'd argue the outcome was close, maybe even better. They do also have some quasi-monarchist elements too though -- they have a monarch but also right of secession (unique in europe I think) to check the monarch so they have basically a direct democracy clamp on any monarchist tyranny on direct democracy outputs. I think the results…
Swiss culture of democracy in unique in the world and is unique among 100% white countries. It's bread among others from its unique geography and history.
Swiss are genetically indistinguishable from French, German, Italian or Austrian neighbors.
When did culture developed, other 100% white countries (which many didn't exist in their modern shape) like Slavic states, Nordic states, Germanic states, French, Spanish, Portugal, Italian, Greek, Balkan etc. All of them have not developed anything like Switzerland.
Credit goes to very specific swiss culture, and the claim that it is what you get of you put white people together... just doesn't hold.
And the swiss neutrality was just a pragmatic decision at a time and today the concept of neutrality is often being questioned in Switzerland while the democratic system is not.
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PIX is also better because it gives control back to the central bank (as it was with cash) and not private industry although they are providing the service. The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.
> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you. That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) mi…
Being worse is debatable: the main difference is the government being able to execute blocking on their own, vs having to convince all banking institutions to do it for them - doesn't sound hard as the govt will always have all the leverage.
Also important to note that BCB (the central bank in Brazil) is autonomous, and technically protected from political influence, thought that ground has been proven shaky.
Protecting Rule of International Law against Rule of Trump Ukazi has become necessary.