As a child I was walking down the street and kicked something by chance that sounded metallic. 150 year old coin, irrc. Just there on the asphalt next to the sidewalk.
Unfortunately bronze, with trimmed edges, common mint and worth very little. But if you tell me someone just stumbles onto and old coin in the street just lime that, I pretty much believe it.
When I was a teenager I was working at McDonalds and someone came in and paid for a meal using old US Silver Certificate bills. Some people just are careless and don't notice old or unusual things.
I've had that happen a couple times, too. The first time I was super excited, and looked up the collectable price, and it was like $8 for a (pristine) $5 bill. I think I kept it for a few days to show to people, and then spent it. I inherited a couple from my dad last year, and the collectors' price hadn't changed, so I did the same thing. Still cool, though. I hope whatever cashier received them from me got a similar thrill.
And they're still a pain to spend, because too many people refuse to believe they're real money. Or else don't want to take them because there isn't a slot in their cash drawer. I inherited a couple of bundles from my dad last year (he made $2 bills his "thing", much like Woz, because he enjoyed arguing with cashiers), and exchanged them all at the bank for "real money".
Many years ago a friend of mine used to tip bartenders and servers with dollar coins (a dollar tip on a drink was good at the time). They remembered him for that and he got better service even though it was probably a bit of a PITA for them to deal with the coins. $2 bills could probaby be used in a similar fashion.
They're socially awkward to spend, because people don't want to take them. That was true each of the four or five times I used bills from my father's stash, though I was outright refused only once. Unlike my father, I don't enjoy needlessly provoking minor hostility, so I turned them into the bank. We're all just gabbing on the internet, my dude. You might find $2 bills a fun investment.
It’s probably been that since I used cash. Kids pocket money is the last frontier in our house. We even managed travel between 3/4 countries without any. Wise is great.
I worked as a part-time bank teller from age 1999-2007 (not continuously). Over that time the volume of silver certificates and other special currency coming in dropped DRAMATICALLY. From 1999-2003 I'd say I would see those bills come in about every other month; I don't think I saw a single one in the final two years I worked the job.
I "purchased" (i.e., exchanged my own money for) every bill and coin that came in. And before anyone makes any assumptions, I had permission from the bank manager.
I have a similar story, but I was playing on the beach. There was a mound right next to it and I would love to play there, and the mound had some funny stones.
One of them was square with something painted on it, I was fascinated by romans so I annoyed my parents with "I found a mosaic!" and took it with me.
Turns out, years later, they excavated a roman villa there.
Funnily enough, the same beach has roman villas, dinosaur prints, austro-hungarian tunnels and yugoslavian bunkers. Quite a lot of history in one pretty beach.
I took my kids to one of those gaming centers (skee ball, claw machines, etc.) and stumbled across a 19th century 50-cent piece in the change machine. It apparently is worth about $150 last time I checked.
The oldest coin in my collection is an 1838 large cent, which my dad says he found as a kid in a crack in the sidewalk. He was born more than 100 years after that date.
It must be great to live in a country where you can change your company address without any paper trail whatsoever: no rental contract, no utilities, no entry in the business registry, no acknowledgement from the tax office and nothing you can provide as proof or anything.
I guess the downside is, well, this, specially having thought it is a good idea to rely on Wise as first and only option for business banking, with their reputation...
Wise sometimes also suck. In my opinion, I have different addresses
- my hometown(i can provide the electricity bill, Also the address on my ID card)
- my rental house(address on my residence card, also my actual address.)
- Express Station (Packages are only delivered here.)
- post office (receive letters or international delivery)
Ok, now Wise ask me for my address, I give my rental address, but the electricity bill is in the landlord's name. Scanned copy of handwritten rental agreements are not valid.
I give my hometown address. Now I need to offer my bank account details. Sucks. The card was on my rental address.
The same thing sucked out Wise's customer service.
When I have ended the anti-money laundering investigation and get my money back, several months passed. And now I lose access to the account. I cannot delete the account and then create a new one.
I'd picked up a contract in the UK and relocated to the client and created a company for the contract.
I then tried to get a business bank account with a normal bank, and failed.
Metro bank took forever and tons of info and then said no.
(I issued a GDPR data access to see if I could find out anything. After a while, they sent me the same letter twice, arriving on the same day, telling me they had performed the data deletion I had requested.)
HSBC seemed to lose the application - it disappeared. It had been challenging to make in the first place, the application process was confused and confusing (and that was in the bank with help). I didn't try again (and there wasn't really time to try again - the client was already having to hold off paying me, which is awkward for them).
I looked at some others, Lloyds and Barclays, and it's been a while so I can't remember why but they didn't pan out.
TransferWise was my final choice.
When the contract was done, I left the UK, so no opportunity to open further bank accounts in UK for the business.
Use Molly but be concious about relying on an unofficial fork controlled by one guy that can update itself anytime and has access to everything Signal does.
Also, don't talk about Molly. It's the best you can do for Molly.
Then I discovered that "encryption" for them was using Luks with the numeric unlock pin as encryption key (which most people sets to 4 digits). They marketed themselves as a secure OS.
No passphrase option. I brought up that it was trivially brute-forceable in the forums and they vehemently fought the idea. My post eventually disappeared.
They were doing government contracts in Russia etc. Iirc. I put some dots together and phone rests in a drawer ever since. I have no idea how things are now though.
I have Valetudo on a Dreame X40 Ultra and very happy.
My recommendation is to flash and GTFO forever. Never upgrade, never ask anything, never read anything other than the install docs. Disregard pointers to join Telegram. Do not read release notes. And donate some money for the trouble if things work. That's your path to maximum happiness with Valetudo, blissful ignorance.
One day perhaps there will be a fork and things can be normal.
See other comments. The amount of drama and behavior of some people means is just best to stay away.
Also, upgrades can bring issues and asking for help is super tricky as you may get banned for asking the wrong way. So better to not upgrade if it works.
> The American-European disparity along this latter dimension could hardly be greater: nearly 90 percent of U.S. households have air conditioning, whereas less than 10 percent of European homes do. The productivity gap between the U.S. and Europe helps explain this disparity.
Yeah, it must be that since US and EU are identical otherwise.
The main use of Pixel phones is that you can put GrapheneOS on them and regain full ownership of your hardware in a completely painless way. Plus adding a huge device security bonus on top.
You can have a profile completely de-googled and another one with Google Services for apps that need compatibility but remains off most of the time. You can uninstall Google too.
Owning your devices is a superpower that 99.9% of people don't have, but you can have it. The irony is that it's thanks to Google devices. Let's see how long it lasts.
Unfortunately bronze, with trimmed edges, common mint and worth very little. But if you tell me someone just stumbles onto and old coin in the street just lime that, I pretty much believe it.