No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, credit cards were originally similar to checks in how they were handled by stores and restaurants. I loved those old clunky sliding machines that you put the cards into and KACHUNKed it onto a carbon copy receipt!
I've only seen those in movies, and I haven't even had an embossed card in years. but most people (rightfully so) would refuse having their card info written anywhere these days. Things have really changed
I mean, if it was at the Greek place I'm a regular at, I wouldn't mind leaving them my card. I know the owner well enough to trust her and I'd be giving it to her directly (she lives next door to the restaurant). If it was taco bell? Hell no, they can eat the loss today I'll be back tomorrow to pay.
People type their credit cards into online stores all the time. In the US, most restaurants still take your card out of eyesight to be processed, although processing devices at the table is becoming more popular.
I don't think most people even think about it most of the time in the US because the credit card companies take care of disputes. Europe is definitely way ahead of us on secure payments!
Sure, under the assumption that it's not being stored without permission, or securely with permission. People are and should be very cautious about what sites you directly submit your card info to, and for less popular sites people are more and more opting to use a third party payment processor like apple, amazon, PayPal, etc.
One of the most common ways cards get skimmed in person. You should absolutely be wary of this especially if it takes an unusually long time. I've been at group dinners where this was commented on. Seems pretty common sense.
I disagree. This is a common point of concern in my experience with customer facing roles, and anecdotally in my social life. When I worked for a major cell provider, for example, we sent a digital form to the customer so that we didn't have to collect card info over the phone at all. In the event that we did as a fallback, customers were very wary of this across the board.
FYI, this is one of the major reasons to use digital wallets. Like Apple Pay and Google Wallet. They don't use your actual card info when paying, but a generated virtual card instead.
Likewise one of my accounts provides both a physical card and a separate virtual card, so that's what I enter whenever making online purchases. Easier to cancel and reissue a virtual card if there is fraud.
The remarkable thing is that modern chip-and-pin cards do support that sort of "offline" transaction, although fortunately without the carbon copy paper. Specifically, a non-networked credit card terminal can present a transaction to the chip, the chip will cryptographically sign this transaction in a unique way, and the terminal will store it for later submittal to the credit card company, when an online connection is possible.
For a typical "online" transaction when there are no connectivity issues, the third step would send the transaction immediately to the credit card company, so they can have the option of declining the charge. The cryptography is otherwise the same, and it's why offline transactions are possible.
Some vendors, I think, like SNCF (the national rail operator) in France use offline transactions for their ticket vending machines at rural stations, where there's no guarantee of being within mobile phone service. The card issuer also usually programs some safeguards to prevent abuse, such as X number of offline and then an online transaction is mandatory, or a limit on the value of purchases (eg $50 max for offline). After all, there cannot be a check against one's credit limit when offline.
In the USA, it is exceedingly rare for credit cards to be issued as chip-and-pin (but it can be found), and while offline transactions can be performed with chip-and-signature cards, it's rarely enabled since most/all terminals in the USA have been online since the introduction of electronic credit card processing.
Contactless chip cards might have changed the calculus though, since there is no PIN at all for these transactions. So perhaps issuers might allow a few offline transactions when contactless.
The odds of the power being out are more likely than a lack of network connection in the US, we tend to have generators or other power backups for cell towers and landlines even when the power goes out.
In the US, telephone land lines actually carry their own DC electrical charge which is provided by the telephone central office and travels through copper wires to each phone.
This is why, during a power outage in the US, a land line phone will typically continue to work. The exception being if the outage is large enough to also take out the central phone office.
The central phone office frequently has its own backup generators or independent power supplies which is what I was referring to.
Gotcha. That makes sense why the phones always seemed to work in every power outage. I wanted to mention the 48 volts DC setup because I’m not sure if that’s common or standard outside of the US.
Oh yeah, your comment was a great addition!
Last time I saw one of those and the only time I can recall having one used on my own card was during a power outage at a restaurant circa 2000 on a roadtrip.
It seemed like a relic even at the time.