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Not surprising. I remember being an undergrad when my BA was ending. I was out-of-state, my nearest relative was several hours away, and I basically only had enough space to pack up from my room whatever could fit in my car. I don't think I threw out much, but there were definitely some things that were resigned to the bin because I simply didn't have anywhere else to put them. For example, I'm pretty sure I threw out a cheap but perfectly functional blender (maybe in the $40 range). The reason being: what was I going to do with it? My parents had a blender; whoever I was staying with in the short-term had a blender; if I wanted to mail it back home I'd probably pay more in shipping costs than the cost of the blender; so what purpose was there to hang onto it?

It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress. Most places (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc) didn't want it, which I can understand. I know several of my roommates ended up just dumping theirs. I called around some churches and they finally put me in touch with a family that lived in a trailer park nearby who were happy to come and collect it. I let them survey pretty much everything else in my room that I hadn't already packed up at that point as well and take what they wanted--the bed frame, some lamps, etc.


> It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress.

Is it really that surprising? Places don't take a used mattress for the same reason they don't take used underwear - you may say it's "lightly used", but once it's out of the box, that guarantee is gone, and a used mattress is something that hardly anyone would be willing to buy. That is especially true since you can now buy a brand new mattress incredibly cheaply.

I used to do a lot of volunteering at a thrift store, and it was really eye opening to see which things had residual value. Some examples:

1. Unless it was a desirable higher-end piece (think something like a known midcentury modern company), we usually hated getting furniture. It's big, bulky, and unless it's like a showpiece, most people go to Ikea to buy cheap furniture.

2. You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.

3. Most fast fashion is worthless (though I don't know, maybe the demise of Temu and Shein will change this). Nobody is going to pay even like $6 for a piece of clothing (which is essentially like the cost just to store/sort/sell stuff) when new it's like $10.

4. Electronics/small home appliances also depreciate especially quickly.

Our biggest money makers were mid-to-high end clothes, jewelry and bags, quality shoes, and artwork/home decorations.

It was also eye opening to see how many people donated plain garbage to assuage their guilt. Like I used the "people don't take used underwear" as an example, but yes, people would still donate it (which sucks - all that does is add to the costs of the charity you're donating to).


> You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.

Chinaware sucks to actually use: it can't go in the dishwasher, it's smaller and less convenient than normal-sized dishes, and so on. Even if you want to spend lots of money on dishes, you're much better served buying nice stoneware at Crate and Barrel or something, it looks as good or better and is actually useful. Chinaware generally just sits there and takes up space; I wouldn't take any even if it was free.

And the thing is, it's not really a tragedy that nobody bothers with chinaware anymore. Chinaware was only ever a "keeping up with the Joneses" status-signalling purchase to show you'd made it as a middle-class household, and it's been replaced by other goods for that purpose. We're not losing out on some kind of heritage tradition here, it's just one set of shallow luxury goods getting replaced with another.


We got china for our wedding and at some point we just decided to use it regularly like our other dishes. So far it’s been more durable than our crate and barrel stuff that we also got for our wedding, and we put it in the dishwasher too!

That said we also have some china that’s been in my wife’s family for generations and we’re afraid to put that in the dishwasher. That effectively makes it decorative in our case.


Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

> You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.

Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?

> Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]

Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?

Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.

Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?


Thrift store pricing is pretty good IMO. At least real thrift stores - those more curated vintage stores are, obviously, going to be higher priced.

But if you know how to check for quality materials and craftsmanship you can find really, really good clothes and furniture for unbelievably cheap.

The thing about fast fashion is, well, the clothes suck. They're more plastic than fabric, they fall apart, they look awful, they're not breathable, and on. You don't actually want to thrift those, because their lifespan is approximately 5 washes. Yes, it's that bad with some brands.

But if you can find nice cotton trousers or a great trench coat for 8-10 bucks you're golden. Just have them dry cleaned, press them, and you're going to be getting a piece of clothing that's higher quality than anything you can find in stores.

I found a great 3 piece brown tweed suit a bit ago. Miraculous all three pieces are there, dated somewhere in the 1970s. The construction was sturdy, the material was thick and rough, but everything was lined with viscose. The buttons were actually wooden, shaped like little hot buns. Multiple sets of them too, large ones for the pants and suit jacket and little tiny ones for the waistcoat. A suit like that made today would be at least 800 dollars. I got it for less than 50.

Point is, old stuff isn't low quality. Over the past 50 years, clothes have progressively gotten poorer in just about every metric. Yes, buying new cheap junk is sometimes cheaper than old stuff. That's because the new stuff is just so incredibly bad.

The stuff you're buying on Temu, Shein, H&M, whatever - is not competing with quality garments from decades past. They're not just not in the same category, there's many categories between them.


Oh, there are still good finds to be found, no doubt. Some people have fun searching for designer pieces - and they can still do that. My objection is more to crude pricing - which ends up alienating plenty of people it doesn't need to.

The thrift store has never been about getting cheap junk, it's about getting second hand clothing. They're not competing with the likes of Shein because they can't. Ultimately, those consumers who do want cheap junk should be alienated, because that don't offer what they're searching for.

> Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

When I read things like this, I laugh when people think that it's possible to bring much manufacturing back to the US.

The thrift store I volunteered at was for an animal charity. After paying rent and some salaries, the general rule of thumb was that we were able to convert volunteer hours to profit at about minimum wage rates (and I mean ~$8/hr rates, not "living wage" rates).

So, to be honest, your post made me unreasonably angry. No, thrift stores are not a front, they're not stupid, and they have certainly noticed the cheap crap from Shein and Temu. The issue is that crap is produced incredibly cheaply - literal peasant wages and zero pesky things like environmental regulations.

So where I volunteered, we originally had standard prices for all non-designer clothes, e.g. $5 for short sleeve shirts and shorts, $7 for pants, etc. It would simply take much too much time to try to price everything individually. And, for most clothes, these were great deals. But when cheap fast fashion came along, we had a rule we would just throw away any of that shit. But every now and then something would make it onto the floor, and we'd have an irate customer basically say what you are saying, "How can you charge $7 for this pair of pants when they're like $10 new." So then we'd apologize, and explain that we usually threw that stuff away. People just couldn't understand that we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.


> People just couldn't understand that we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.

Let's also watch out how we think about enterprises. (1) The customer - most anyway - isn't concerned with the purpose of the thrift store, with whether it's making a profit, or even really with how the store gets the product. They are looking for the things they need, at a better price than otherwise. Some costumers are exceptions, sure. (2) The thrift store needs to make money to pay a few employees, the lease, and its sponsor if there is one (like this animal charity). Running a thrift store does not garantee that it will make this much money. (3) Even the people providing the stuff have a choice of places where they can do that, including putting it in the trash or listing for free on Craigslist & Co. They may want to favor the thrift store but if the thrift store makes itself sufficiently difficult or irrelevant, they will choose another way. (4) Even you volunteering for the thrift store as a way to donate to the animal charity have choices: You evaluate that volunteering your time provides about minimal wage to the animal charity. This may or may not be your best deal on how to convey money to that charity.

More generally these are fundamental points of economics: (a) wishing for things doesn't make them so. (b) The economy is the result of a lot of independent people thinking for themselves.


> The issue is that crap is produced incredibly cheaply

Not all of this is crap, far from it. I am selective - and get good results buying online (no choice - brick-and-mortar stock is sad and too uniform.)

But thing is, "incredibly cheaply" is the reality of the world. We can ignore it or we can live with it.

To reconcile with you: more freedom in pricing by whoever does that task might make sense. And some sections here do have a more interesting strategy where clothes are priced higher initially, then come down in price systematically week after week. Which the tableware departments never seem to use.

> we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.

And then you do have a problem also, because the result is no-sale, less-traffic and sending people to fast fashion, and Ikea.


>> "incredibly cheaply" is the reality of the world

We, via our government, could also insist on trading partners having and enforcing environmental standards and fair trade practices. But that means higher prices for which people will vote against, environment be damned.


The reason you can't give away a mattress is bedbugs. If you know what to look for, a bedbug-ridden mattress can easily be avoided. And you can also buy protective breathable covers that keep the bedbugs either in or out. But most people don't know what to look for, or don't want the liability of being wrong.

We gave away our mattress to a non profit. They sent some people out to inspect it ahead of time. They said needed it ASAP for someone who was moving away from an abusive relationship - it was supposedly going directly from our house to the place she was being put up.

maybe the Uni could arrange with thrift stores to come in around the end of the Spring semester and collect used items they think they can sell to the incoming students in the fall?

Some universities (or student groups) run stores or donation centers just to pass furniture from one class to the next.

I started buying Kikkoman's "whole bean" soy sauce (I don't remember what it's called in Japanese: maroyaka?), because I found a local Asian mart carried it, and it was reasonably priced. Seems you can find it on Amazon these days, even:

https://www.amazon.com/Kikkoman-Maroyaka-Sauce-33-8-Ounce-Pa...

Haven't compared it side-by-side with the normal stuff, but anecdotally it tasted a little more mellow to my palette, and I will probably continue using it moving forward when my 1L bottle runs out.


Well, crap. I've had a Pocket account for more than ten years. It's a key feature on my Kobo devices, to boot.

I hope Kobo manages to find some alternative provider for similar functionality, rather than just dropping it altogether.

EDIT: Oh, and worth noting that this product will officially die before Mozilla fulfills its promise to open source it, back when they acquired Pocket. Thanks, guys.


I use KOReader [1] on my Kobo. It supports Wallabag [2]. Wallabag offers both hosted [3] and self-hosted options. There's also a standalone kobo client for Wallabag [4]. In addition, Wallabag also supports direct import from Pocket.

[1] https://koreader.rocks/

[2] https://wallabag.org/

[3] https://www.wallabag.it/en

[4] https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako


Thanks, just set it up via koreader that I already had installed.

Any opinion on using wallabako vs koreader? koreader might involve some more steps to sync it looks like?


It has been a while since I used Wallabag on KOReader and I have no experience using wallabako (that project wasn't around when I tried Wallabag). But seeing that you're already using KOReader, I don't expect either of them to present a challenge to you. As far as I remember, using Wallabag on KOReader, including sync was simple enough.

The only issue I have with Wallabag is that it reduces the battery supported time significantly. This isn't a big issue in my case, but a longer backup would be nice. However, others have reported that they don't suffer the problem to the same magnitude. Perhaps wallabako can reduce that power usage when KOReader can be exited.


This is amazing. Thank you!

Pocket has pretty much exclusively been a, “send article to Kobo” button for me thanks to the integration.

I doubt my now-ancient Aura One will be getting a firmware update to replace Pocket, unfortunately. Might be time to either look at alternative firmwares or see if Rakuten does trade-ins on newer models.



Dang, I thought he had built his own hardware.

I'd still love to get a proper successor to the Sandisk Sansa Fuze, just with USB-C charging instead of its proprietary charging cable.

There's plenty of "luxury" /audiophile MP3 players out there which cost in the hundreds of dollars, but that one was in the sweet spot of bang-for-your-buck music player that I could just use for listening to music on long plane rides etc. without draining my smartphone battery.


I get what you're thinking of with having a separate device, but I've found it better to just have a decent extra battery pack to travel with. You get a lot more flexibility with use. Maybe you just wanted to listen to music. Maybe you later decided you actually wanted to read instead, or play a game, or watch a video. Maybe you forgot to sync those podcasts until you got to the airport waiting on the plane and only just downloaded it and now it's a hassle to bust out a cable and sync it to your offline only MP3 player.

Essentially, you could carry a small battery attached to an extra sigle-task dedicated device, or a slightly larger battery in about the same-ish form factor that will let you use that energy to do anything you want with your other device you're probably already carrying.

If your phone is in whatever airplane mode, battery saver mode, etc. it's not going to use that much power just to play local music.


I had been wanting something similar recently and ended up buying a Hifi Walker H2 and loading rockbox on it. Works great, and it’s a total nostalgia trip to be using rockbox again after so many years!

Wheels will always be the best way to navigate music libraries.


Oh, nice! That undercuts the price of the FiiO JM21 by about half, which was the other entry-level audiophile music player I was looking at if I ever decided to splurge on one:

https://www.amazon.com/JadeAudio-JM21-Snapdragon-Bluetooth-P...


The Tangara from cooltech.zone fits most of ur requirements, except the price one maybe

You have many options for DAP, unfortunately they are often android based. In some rare cases, they are either pure custom OS, or stripped down android device. I have a Cayin N3U, I hesitated a lot with some Hobby device as it's a small brick and Android, while the android interface is still too present for my taste, and a bit too large, I have no regret, I really wanted something dedicated, no Bluetooth, tube, portable, no streaming, no extra app.

There was a merge into Rockbox [0] last month with someone making their own hardware [1] primarily to run rockbox.

[0] https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/6510 [1] https://github.com/amachronic/echoplayer


I wonder if you could get an iPod Classic and upgrade the storage/replace the battery...

There is a whole modding community around the iPod video/classic.

You can replace the hard drive with MicroSD/SD or compact flash cards.

https://www.iflash.xyz

You can buy different color faceplates/backplates, upgrade the batteries, etc.

https://www.idemigods.com/iPod_5th_5_5_Generation_Video_Part...


I have an iPod 5th gen sitting on a drawer, I definitely need to check this out, thanks for the resources

Yes that is possible, I got gifted one such iPod once.

I've considered building a device with the Teensy.

I don't even need it to be portable. In fact, I'm happy with a "component stereo" look with a VFD display. ;-)


Except of course this other dig at Biden elsewhere in the article:

> “I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than he’s admitted having it,” Adams said.

The use of the word "admitted" implies that Biden is either lying about how far it has progressed, or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.


I’m no doctor but I know PSA test would have identified its existence long before this stated progression. It’s a blood test that would be routine for any male his age, he’s probably had them at least annually for decades of his life at this point

The implied timelines don’t match.


Not routine at age 82: "most organizations recommend stopping the screening around age 70" https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/psa-test/in-dept...

I sincerely hope our presidents' care isn't limited common practice.

I don't think being a current or former president materially changes the rationale for that recommendation.

Sure it does. The death or major illness of a sitting president is impactful in a way that the death of an average retiree is not. The cost of performing the test is inconvenience (admittedly of a man whose time is very valuable), but the cost of missing a major health problem has geopolitical consequences. The health recommendations are definitely going to shift toward "better safe than sorry."

> Sure it does. The death or major illness of a sitting president is impactful in a way that the death of an average retiree is not.

The recommendation is not based around the public impact of the patient's death, but around the expected utility of the test in improving the length and/or quality of the patient's life, which is fairly low in the best of times for PSA screening.


A president and their team is absolutely going to take a "better safe than sorry" approach. The doctor is not the only person who decides what treatment should be, the patient does too.

PSA is not fool proof test, and is susceptible to false positives. A substantial fraction of men, in the 40+% range have prostate cancer at death. The treatments for it can be painful and have long recoveries, so there's not obvious solutions.

I think it does. For one, there are major 3rd party consequences of illness that are unparalleled.

Second, many recommendations are based on resource limitations that simply don't exist for a POTUS.

Last, and similarly, standard of care is based on standard doctors, treatment, and hospitals. They go out the window when these aren't true.


> Second, many recommendations are based on resource limitations that simply don't exist for a POTUS.

AFAIK, the PSA one isn't based on resource limitations, though.

It's based on the specificity being low enough and the risks, especially with advancing age, of the follow up tests being high enough that at a certain point the test is perceived as having zero-to-negative value in terms of QALY for the patient.


Indeed: "Mr. Biden’s last-known prostate-specific antigen test, the most common way to screen for prostate cancer, was in 2014. Mr. Biden would have been 71 or 72 years old at the time." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/biden-prostat...

[flagged]


The guideline to stop screening at 70 has nothing to do with financial cost. It’s that detecting it at that point is useless because you’ll generally be dead of other causes by the time it catches you.

Compounding the issue, the rate of false positives rises as you get older which then 1) freaks people out and 2) encourages them to get more invasive tests done which are themselves increasingly hazardous (and less valuable) with each passing day.

There are a lot of good reasons not to speculate about others' health decisions on the Internet, and avoiding a spotlight on your own basic ignorance is one of 'em!


Yes, because most men won't live to be 82, so on average it's not worth it. But presidents are not "most men." They're also attended by personal physicians who can keep them from freaking out when informed accurately of their health.

I would appreciate less condescension about my supposed ignorance, but I guess that's unrealistic.


Doctors don't adjust how long they're trying to keep you alive based on your job title.

Doctors also don't believe that rich people are somehow immune to the psychological trauma of "you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good."


> Doctors don't adjust how long they're trying to keep you alive based on your job title.

Of course they do


Hmm, must’ve just slipped past me when reviewing the medical guidelines that inform almost all of a doctor’s decision-making.

Doctors are, unfortunately so far, people. And they're also gatekeepers to care.

It's naive to think they don't discriminate on all sorts of factors outside the guidelines, for instance when treating fellow doctors. Not that they'll admit to it. I know doctors who won't even admit to it to themselves. But they still do it: they'll just call it by a different name or make up an outside reason.


Uh huh… and how exactly does this demonstrate that Biden would’ve gotten PSA screening after 70 against the guidelines?

That might be true in a triage/ER context.

Doesn't track when we are talking about a slow, years long chronic illness and someone who over the last 4 years has had personalized healthcare to the tune of 8 figures.


As mentioned, it is not access to healthcare that determines PSA screening guidelines.

PSA is only one of several diagnostics that would have caught it at the level of care POTUS gets.

It would be cool if you would stop purposefully taking the stupidest possible interpretations of my posts.

Okay, then you tell me how having a personal physician means you certainly are getting PSA checked beyond 70 y/o.

Lay out the logic step by step.


[flagged]


You can't comment like this on Hacker News, not matter what you're replying to.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


There is a NYT article up right now pondering the same question: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/us/politics/biden-cancer-...

>The use of the word "admitted" implies that Biden is either lying about how far it has progressed, or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.

Adams doesn't need to imply it when medical SOP implies it.

I understand why Biden would not want to share that info and think that he made the right call for the situation he was in at the time (even before you consider domestic politics it's generally unwise for heads of state to talk about medical problems unless they're imminently stepping down because of them) but every man in this country over 40 knows that this cancer is screened for and someone getting "head of state" level care doesn't just get surprised by this kind of cancer at this stage unless many people were negligent.


"admitting" could also be in the sense of "disclosing". I wouldn't expect anyone, even an elected leader, to immediately disclose a health issue that requires some amount of understanding and decision-making.

There's a segment of the population that thinks he knew while he was running for president but didn't disclose or "admit" the issue to the public. Given that this is an aggressively metastatic cancer, and Biden's campaign ended nearly 10 months ago, I think that's implausible to the point of being ludicrous.


> or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.

Which is probably true. And it's fine, he has no obligation to disclose this until he wants to. In contrast his dementia though ....... that's something he should have disclosed earlier.

Edit: "Several doctors told Reuters that cancers like this are typically diagnosed before they reach such an advanced stage." from https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-cancer-diagnosis-pro...


That’s not a dig at Biden. It’s just [almost certainly] true.

> That math is why many book apps like those from Bookshop, Kobo and Barnes & Noble’s Nook haven’t typically let you buy e-books and audiobooks from their iPhone or Android apps. Instead, you must leave the app, buy from the bookstore’s website and hop back into the app to read or listen to it.

Not accurate, at least for Kobo. They accepted Google's billing system, so buying from the Kobo app on Android hooks into your Google Wallet billing method and works without an issue.

It does mean you can't use Kobo gift cards towards purchases made on your phone, but you can always pop onto the website to do that.

I'm actually really glad that Kobo just did that, even if Google is taking a ridiculous cut. Anecdotally I'm buying way more impulse books on Kobo (i.e. a book on sale for $2.99 or less) since they got the app working with Google Wallet.


Why not add your payment method to Kobo's app?

It's very little effort for doing your part in fighting the oligopoly.


Google Play billing is the only option in the Kobo Android app.

Oh, I misunderstood. I thought Kobo added the Google Pay (Wallet Pay? Google Wallet? God knows with the constant name changes) button / system to the app in addition to their own payment flow. Damn.

That does seem odd given that Google is liable to take a 30% cut of each purchase.

It isn't "odd" it's the only way they are permitted by Google to sell their product. Yes, it's farcical and should be illegal.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...


Most of the big companies probably have better prices negotiated and are not paying 30%

It sucks because it means users can't buy books from Kobo on the app unless they give Google their payment info. I don't want Google to have my payment info, least of all so I can buy something from a completely different company.

If Google insisted on being an option in the app it would be relatively fine. Users who prefer Googles payment system could chose it, but Google doesn't want users to have that choice.


> It sucks because it means users can't buy books from Kobo on the app unless they give Google their payment info.

Google having my payment info is no worry at all to me. Google is on a very short list of companies whose defense against hacking and social engineering attacks I trust.

Google seeing every one of my purchases? Not a fan. I don't think that's the argument you're making here, though.


It is a problem for me. Google is reasonable enough, but I do not want it to be too easy to make a mistake. I want those extra seconds it takes to type in my payment information to think again do I really need this thing. More than once I've realized the "toy" I was interested in wasn't really in my current budget and abandoned the purchase. I never turned on amazon one-click shopping for similar reasons. I want buying things I need easy, but not too easy.

No need to give Google your CC info to see your purchases.

They get it directly from at least Mastercard.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...


I'm not buying anything from Google so there is NO reason for them to have my payment info. Fuck them.

Yes. Fraud protection for online purchases is fine. I have certain cards set up in a way that I will basically hand them out to anyone. Data protection is not a solved problem in that way.

I already gave Google my payment info, though, because I use Google Wallet. And I actually find that more secure, because IIRC the credit card number that is stored in Google Wallet is a virtual credit card number, not the real number that is printed on the physical card (which Rakuten Kobo would store).

Even when I buy books from Kobo, I never stored my credit card with them. I always bought gift cards and loaded the balance onto my account. That would occasionally get cumbersome, since the only vendor for those cards in the US used to be Wal-Mart, until they discontinued their relationship. Now I think Kobo might sell them directly out of Amazon.com--but either way, for the odd $2 and $3 purchases that I do on impulse buys (because a book may be on sale), just having it go through Google Wallet is much easier.


> not the real number that is printed on the physical card (which Rakuten Kobo would store).

Citation needed!

In 2014 I worked for a small, unimportant ecommerce retailer. We migrated at around that time to storing only a token, using our payment processor (Braintree at the time) - and no longer kept any card numbers in our database whatsoever. If someone had dumped our 'credit_cards' table after that migration, they'd have nothing but useless garbage (the token could only be used by our own merchant account). I think even Braintree didn't need to store the card number itself either, but I'm not so sure of their internals.

Storing a payment card number in your database is considered an incredibly bad practice, is not PCI compliant, and probably violates other important "compliance" things you have to regularly certify as well.


My bank gives me virtual credit cards. Google is just unnecessary expensive middle man. But I live in Europe so US situation might be different.

Why would I want a virtual credit card - US law gives me strong fraud protection and so if my number is compromised I just call my bank and dispute the charges and then I get a new number.

Though I've never had the above happen. I've had a few times where my number was compromised but the bank found out and gave me a new card before whoever got the number was able to use it.


I agree. In 20 years I've only had a single fraudulent charge on my card. I called my credit union and it was taken care of immediately. I don't need more, I don't want more. Google is trying to make me afraid to get my personal information.

It's great and I'd say essential to have those protections, but a virtual card makes that whole thing much more efficient plus doesn't cause you to have to update your card on file with all the "good" vendors where you have it stored.

You can proactively decide when a card will expire and how much it can be billed ("Sure, NY Times, I'll take a subscription for the trial offer of $4 a month, so let's make sure this card only allows a charge of $4 every month and/or expires when that offer expires.")


It's not a full laptop replacement, but at least for me it's good enough at what it does that I can just take my phone or tablet with me on short vacations and not be paranoid that I'm gonna have to do something complicated like log into my bank or write some verbose emails that I'm normally afraid to do from my phone. In those instances, plugging one of them into a KVM and Dex mode is sufficient to get over the hump.


> (but why did they think the Gimp character was called that in Pulp Fiction?

Pleading ignorance here... When I saw Pulp Fiction as a teenager, and they refer to the BDSM guy as "the gimp", I thought that's what they called that outfit. I feel like it was a not-uncommon understanding in the US (even if an erroneous one)... All my friends and I at school referred the the character Voldo from Soul Calibur as "that creepy guy in the gimp suit":

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/ssb-tourney/images/f/fb...

We didn't mean it in the sense that he was crippled (he's actually quite agile), we meant it in the sense that he was wearing tight leather with bindings and zippers.


Fine. All that will happen is we'll see more sites switching to requiring a login to do anything on their website, so that they can track you with first-party cookies, and sell your information that way. Nothing will meaningfully change.

The only distinction is that I can do a decent job of blocking third-party cookies today with my existing solutions like uBlock Origin, but I will probably have a much more difficult time getting around login/paywalls.


First party cookies can't build a profile on you across multiple origins.


They absolutely can. They have, at minimum, your account information and your IP address. Maybe you use a burner email address and/or phone number, and maybe a VPN, but chances are you’re not cycling your VPN IP constantly so there’s going to be some overlap there. And if you do cycle your IP, 99%+ of users probably aren’t clearing session cookies when doing so, which means you’re now tracked across IP/VPN sessions. Same deal if you ever connect without a VPN - that IP is tracked too. There’s tons of ways to fingerprint without third party cookies, they just make it easier (and also easier to opt out of if they exist, just disable third party cookies; if no one has third party cookies, sites are going to start relying on more intrusive tracking methods).

You can also easily redirect from your site to some third party tracking site that returns back to your successful login page - and fail the login if the user is blocking the tracking domain. The user then has to choose whether to enable tracking (by not blocking the tracking domain) or not seeing your website at all. Yes the site might lose viewers, but if they weren’t making the site any money, that might be a valid trade off if there’s no alternative.

Not saying I agree with any of this, btw, I hate ads and tracking with a passion - I run various DNS blocking solutions, have ad blockers everywhere possible, etc. Just stating what I believe these sort of sites would and can do.


All they need to do is redirect you through a central hub after login.


On first visit:

* "Please wait while we verify that you're not a bot, for which we'll need to associate a unique identifier with your browsing session." (logged in or not)

* The validation needs to do a quick redirection to an external centralized service, because if they can already identify that you're not a bot, you save CPU cycles, and you care a lot about carbon footprint after all.

* Redirect back to the original website, passing the "proof of not-a-bot" somewhere in the URL. This is just a string.

* The website absolutely needs to load the external script `https://proof-validation.example.com/that-unique-string.js` for totally legit purposes obviously related to detecting bot behavior, "somehow".

Half-joking because I don't think this would fly. Or maybe it would, since it's currently trendy to have that PoW on first visit, and users are already used to multiple quick redirections[1] (I don't think they even pay attention to what happens in the URL bar).

But I'm sure we'd get some creative workarounds anyway.

[1]: Easy example: A post on Xitter (original domain) -> Shortened link (different domain) -> Final domain (another different domain). If the person who posted the original link also used a link shortener for tracking clicks, then that's one more redirection.


Can't you just work around all of this by proxying to the third party site(s) with a subdomain?


I think you're right. I imagine if third party cookies were ever banned, we'd quickly see googleads.whatever.com become a common sight.


There's no need for a login to track you with "first-party cookies", looking at the IP is perfectly adequate, at most adding some fingerprinting if you really want.

The only problem is that then the tracking companies have to place more trust on the first party that they're giving them real data.

But they're doing it, actually, see confection.io for example


I've not changed anything on my home setup yet, but I've been experimenting with vertical tabs and tabs groups for the past week or so. I'm not sure if vertical tabs are doing me any good, but I think Tab Groups have really been aiding my productivity.

I have so many tasks I'm working on in a given day, constantly jumping between specific instances of the same site over and over. For example, on any given ticket I'm working on, I've probably got tabs open for: the JIRA ticket, Bitbucket code, Sharepoint documentation, an AWS console, DataDog logs, etc. And I'm probably jumping between at least five tickets a day, depending on if I hit a roadblock with one or a different one is suddenly getting escalated. Being able to GROUP all of those five tabs into one little block that I can label with the ticket number, and then hide/re-expand them when I'm ready to come back to it...that's pretty awesome.

The only part about Tab Groups that has confused me so far is that there's a right-click option when clicking on a group that says "Save and Close Group". I've closed it, but have not figured out how to bring it back once closed...so I'm not sure what the point of "saving" it is.


The Panorama View extension can also help with organization. A whole set of tabs for a different context, for instance.


Saved groups are shown in the List all Tabs menu (the button on the right of tab bar)


that button is NOT there


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