Here, I’m talking FinTech specifically, but this applies to most other industries, too…
There’s a (very large, publicly-owned) transaction platform and online payment provider shutting down in Australia, next month. It started in 2006, and was useful because it allowed you to avoid card surcharges and bank fees. It was particularly useful for large, instant payments like for flights.
Why is it shutting down? Not because of a security breach, or any issues within the product itself, but because the Big 4 banks here want to kill off their competition, and have forcibly removed the ability for their customers to use the service. They then followed this up with relentless paid propaganda around “security” and how the system is “outdated, so use our in-house product instead”.
I encountered something similar from my bank, recently, while looking at overseas travel cards…
Yet millennials and zoomers lap up the propaganda, just like they do against cash, and think that anyone who still uses these products is a “tech illiterate boomer”. They actively called for the banning of the service I mention, because their banks told them “It bad. Trust us instead.”
Yet these same stupid fucks will happily sign all their private info and banking over to social media companies and shitty crypto exchanges, because “tech”, and shiny new thing, so must be good…
The Kool Aid sure is strong, with my generation and younger, smh… 😑
Can’t wait until we all get de-banked for not being woke enough, and then have no alternatives because we allowed them to develop monopolies on our finances, lol…
Meanwhile I'm over here as a millenial ass deep in technology as my goddamn profession and the only reason I jettisoned my original flip phone for a stripped down flip phone that can't access the internet is because they literally took away the 3G network.
New technology is shit on a number of levels. I was discussing this with my coworker today and he was telling me how people actually seek out farm equipment that's 40 years old because it runs better and lasts longer than anything you can buy brand new on the market right now. I'm sure that problem is more widespread than we're aware of and it doesn't sit well with me.
Old farm equipment can also be repaired. Modern shit has every part with a unique identifier and if you so much as replace a belt the whole thing will refuse to fucking work because you didn't go to an approved repair shop that'll gouge you.
is that what the hoopla around John Deere is?
Basically. John Deere isn't the only company that does it, but they're the best known. They also use proprietary tools and fasteners that require specialized tools to undo.
Isn't this the primary reason to get older farm equipment? It doesn't run better, or lasts longer, it's just repairable without an IT degree. :')
Australia is currently trying to ban (the purchase of) old farm equipment (40/50+ years old), under the guise of “accidents”, so that’s an appropriate point!
When people actively choose not to buy the new, centrally-controlled, all-digital shit..? Then they just ban you from being able to buy and use the alternative, old stuff, lol…
I hear the Australia is like that, always trying to ban shit for 'your own good'. It's so interfering and condescending. Whatever happened to individuals willingly assuming risk on their own behalf? Or does the Australian government think you're its property?
(I was going to fix 'the Australia' but I decided to leave it in because it's funny)
I've said this in another post but my grandfather still uses the Farmall tractor his father bought in the 50's. There is absolutely incredible stuff to be found at farm auctions these days, mostly stuff from a, sadly, bygone age.
I'm also a millennial ass deep in technology as my goddamn profession and agree. Tech sucks. So much time and resources are spent on UI/UX (I fucking hate that "UX" is even a thing) these days hat no one really knows how to do anything other than what is explicitly presented. No one is hacking anymore, no one seems to be curious, everything just werks. Until it doesn't.
As for cell phones, you can put one together yourself with off the shelf stuff, at least in the US. It's going to be a very simple device but they do work.
I had a kid come into my work for "work placement" Got told their password didn't work. Tried myself, worked fine. Logged out, asked them to log in. They proceeded to attempt to use the shift key on a keyboard like a toggle button from a smart phone or tablet. Kid had never even used a PC in their life.
I disagree about UX design. I think it is important but can admit that it has allowed the filthy unwashed masses in which has lead to catastrophic ruin.
Git is my go-to example of why UX design is important. That tool is an abomination of interface design and I will fight anyone who tries to tell me different.
For my own tool building, I make a conscious effort to make things work in a way that will encourage users (other sysadmins in this case) to adopt the tools because they're straight forward and easy to use. There is no excuse for an interface to be as badly designed as Git. Absolutely none.
There is one, potentially unintended, benefit. Gatekeeping. In a public access platform that benefits from preemptively filtering out some of the junk, an interface that is unfriendly to novices is an easy way to ensure only the capable and motivated stick around to use your resources.
If only idiots got filtered! Then you wouldn't have the commie infestation changing the default branch name from master to main.
I've got one old tool I still occasionally use at work that's an old text-based terminal system. Love it. Once you spend the couple hours learning to use it it works flawlessly. Every time. It brings up what I need to know in seconds.
All the new stuff is a jumbled assortment of bad Javascript and 30 different backend systems that never work right. Oh crap, I have to clear my cookies because I'm getting a spinny circle instead of the info I'm looking for. Oh that one particular cloud system is having issues somehow sorry you can't get those little icons you need to click on to do work until we fix it. It's all so fucking slow too. I could never be a developer, because I just couldn't make that shit.
Older kitchen appliances as well. Pressure cookers, blenders and others were called dangerous while the designs changed to cheaper parts.
I'm a tech guy who specifically uses new tech for figuring out how to use it for stories. Quite often I deal with people who think that something existing means everything changes tomorrow. It's not as easy as they think and it's a good idea to have experience in the field already to work with it. I can get concept art from AI, but I have to know what I need and how to set it up before I get the art I want. I don't just sit down and the AI faeries print it out in perfect order that even a child could understand.
The more I look around the more I think a lot of it is a product of upbringing. Not only are they trained to consume endlessly, but they have always been able to consume endlessly. Perhaps it's financial means, perhaps the systems are just designed to give the "feeling" of consumption to those who don't have it--if that makes any sense at all (speculation).
So when it's popular to run to another product, they consume, because they have always consumed. There's no thought of what might be coming. I've had this discussion with my teenage cousin a bunch before where I've had to tell him pretty much straight up that honestly my brain is just wired to be selective and smart about where I spend money and not just boom! I want this now and if the next best thing comes out tomorrow, I'll just get that too. I'd think to be patient and wait for the best opportunity. It's a huge difference in my mindset and I'm not sure it's limited to teenagers because mindless consumption seems to be society now.
I'm pretty sure I often sound like a grouchy old boomer with things like this, maybe I am one. I'm also a product of my upbringing and a lot of things were going on with my family when I was in those coming-of-age years that even my younger brother was too young to pay attention to and it made me a bit different.
I saw this start happening with the iPhone around 2007. I was not interested in it at all. People see following trends as an easy way to get popularity and dopamine. They don't actually think about what those trends are or where they ultimately lead.
I cared at first although I've never had an iPhone. I did get a BlackBerry in 2008 and I've had a couple higher end phones. Then I got tired of it and realized that my $200 special Android phone looks the same in a case as the $1000 one and I've never missed out on any functionality I actually wanted. Everyone with those worries about insurance, payment plans, contracts, whatever. I give a couple hundred bucks to a website every couple years and don't have to worry about it.
Normies have no business touching technology more advanced than a toaster oven and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.
As feminists have been hired as DIE efforts in tech companies, they are changing well known naming conventions into non-sensical woke trash see ->
Master / Slave controllers Black list / White list etc. etc.
Noob.
Also (and this is not just a millennial thing), the number of people who say “I’m a small business owner”, to try and sound modest (at least in Australia, this happens), while blatantly actually owning vast assets and making millions of dollars while employing, say, 50+ people:.. I mean, come on…
False modesty is not that much better than bragging, IMHO…
a crab in the bucket should be our national coat of arms.
To be honest, the definition of a "small" business hasn't been well defined for decades. It has become more noticeable however in recent years since the economic disparity has gotten stretched beyond imagining.
Cashless society is coming to much of the west. The newer generations don't see the point of cash anymore and the brainwashing is nearly complete.
It will be a quaint relic in third world countries, but then it will also become a black Market for those who don't have access otherwise or illicit business.
Dark times are ahead, but probably we will be all dead before then.
Only criminals use cash.
Only criminals hide their social media profiles.
Only criminals don't post their faces online.
Government is a small percentage of the population, so they recognize it takes the masses themselves to turn on independent thinkers.
Mostly agree, except I don't think it's "the government" in the driver's seat, mostly because they are too incompetent to do so.
Imo it is driven by ideologue billionaires who fancy themselves gods...Soros, Fink, et all. They do have the intelligence and capacity for large long term projects and the resources to carry it out. The actions you see from the government originate with them, as they hold much of the debt/interest as well as stock ownership.
I think the decades of feminist indoctrination has made the younger generations very susceptible to gas lighting and suggestion by the big corporates.
You can see this with instant obedience to the Covid mandates. Whereas previous generations have always rebelled against authorithy needing something more than "because I said so" to doing things. This generation have been convinced that is "toxic masculinity".
Questioning and challenging the status quo is "right wing extremeism" because now that feminism is in power - "alternate readings" is now somehow hateful and bigotted.
And with the feminist narrative taking root in all systems of government, it comes with:
The OP is being rather disingenuous here by not telling you all how this payment method (PoLi) works. It basically acts as a man-in-the-middle website for you to make a payment through your bank's internet banking website. You provide your banking username, password and any two-factor credentials to the PoLi website, which then logs in to your bank internet banking website and makes the payment transaction using your credentials.
I have no idea how it lasted this long, to be honest.
What's the platform shutting down? I missed this.
It’s PoLi. Which is owned and run by AusPost.
You mainly see it on flight booking pages…
It’s “controversial”, because of the way it works, but nonetheless, it was fucking useful…
Not sure if you’ve used it much, but yeah, CommBank essentially killed it off, by refusing service.
It goes dead at the end of September, sadly… 😑
Windows 10 is a disaster to troubleshoot I swear. I was just helping someone with computer stuck in "Automatic Repair". Turns out it was some sort of malware protection thing failing out and the computer wouldn't boot. Finally find the right option and it boots perfectly. It doesn't have malware, just the malware protection thing got corrupted somehow. They think the solution is to just keep failing to repair a computer that still works fine. So I get a call wondering if there is something physically wrong with their computer. Windows 10 can't just give a warning and let it boot, no it just full on breaks.
The only reason I'll be leaving windows 7 is that Steam will refuse to run on it by the end of the year.
Anachrotech is impervious to exploitation by governments and saboteurs because it's incompatible with everything. That's what I do!
Sadly not true, and often the exploits are well known and ubiquitous.
Unless we are talking cars. Your pre 2000 internal combustion engine can't be remotely hacked or monitored. This is likely a big part of the push to get rid of them.
What the heck are you talking about? Are you citing anecdotal experience in Australia? Where does such a sweeping statement come from?
1)Your tech legislation is written by Gen X corporate lawyers, 2) for boomer politicians. 3) who sell it to your boomer parents.
As a rule, Younger generations are more likely to adopt new “tech” than an older generation. I’ve seen Ignorance, I’ve seen nativity, I’ve seen complacent indifference, , but I’ve never seen generational specific rally cries for banning cash apps. Seems like a real stretch.
"Just do what the government says, bro, and you can eat. Is this the hill you want to die on?"