GeekNights Monday- Paying for Stuff

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk very, very generally about paying for things with technology. We also talk a bit about Jewish weddings, Facebook's continued decline, and the Amazon Cloud Player.

• Three Years of Homestuck in Five Minutes
• A send-off in style

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open_sketchbook

Oh shit did not see this Thing of the Day coming.

EDIT : I think ponies is sort of a bad comparison for fandom popularity, yo. Ponies is a super-anomaly in terms of how this shit works. There is a truly insane amount of Homestuck fan-work out there, but it's all confined to Tumblr, the MSPA forums, and DeviantArt. Ponies blew up on 4chan, so it got all over the internet.

MATATAT

Reggie Watts is awesome

GeorgeC.

If you've got tons coins laying around you can cash them in at a Coinstar machine. Don't know if they're in the east coast but you can exchange coins for Amazon or iTunes credit.

jmerm

Having been to only kosher weddings in my life I always thought that wedding cake was for looking nice, not for eating. Also kosher margarine isn't that hard to find. It is often used as a butter substitute in kosher baking when making baked goods to be eaten with meat.

Matt

If you've got tons coins laying around you can cash them in at a Coinstar machine. Don't know if they're in the east coast but you can exchange coins for Amazon or iTunes credit.

You can find tons of TD Bank branches along the east coast, and they've got their own coin counting machines that don't even take a cut.

And yeah we do have Coinstar but typically they take a small percentage. It's not all bad though. When I was in high school, I worked at a supermarket and it was one of my responsibilities to maintain the Coinstar machine. I would empty out the buckets and traps once a week, and people would pour all manner of shit into those machines. Anything that wasn't US currency was mine to keep, so I built up quite a foreign coin collection and had a stash of arcade tokens.

Banta

Fuck Coinstar. Just go to a bank. Either they'll have a similar machine that wont take a cut, or you can just force the teller to do it.

Unless you're bringing lots of pennies, because nobody likes pennies. Just save those to pay any towing tickets you might get, like this man.

Apreche

TD Bank now charges a fee. They stopped their awesome ways.

Coinstar does take a cut, but not if you get Amazon gift cards.

Apsup

Actually Homestuck has quite a bit on music in it and I was kinda surprised/sad that the video didn't use any of it.
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/soundcredits.html

Oh shit did not see this Thing of the Day coming.

I did, but that's because I happened to look at Rym's youtube likes yesterday (don't ask how I found my way there) and it seems that it's a good place to find things of the day before they come things of the day. Although I would have expected this to be Wednesday thing.

Coldguy

A note on the Amazon cloud player, it does one thing that no other service (see google, iTunes, and Ubuntu) does, custom tagging. For the majority of people here this is not a big deal since you all listen to popular music, but for someone like me who buys CDs from artists and shops on Bandcamp this is pivotal.

I make sure the tags that are in each track are correct prior to uploading to ensure that the search works. It would be awesome to go and have it done on amazon's end but its a flaw I have to deal with. The best part about it? When you download the song on the other person's computer all those tags you customized come with it.

Matt

TD Bank now charges a fee. They stopped their awesome ways.

Coinstar does take a cut, but not if you get Amazon gift cards.

Wow, even if you have an account there? Commerce Bank has really gone down the shitter since TD took them over. Banks in general went through a "no fees for anything" phase that they've been quickly retreating from since the financial sector got hit.

Other complaints with TD as of late: used to have a very generous "no ATM fees anywhere" policy that was amazing. $6 fee at the ballpark or a casino? No worries, TD will refund it to me at the end of the month. Literally never worry about having cash because all ATMs are free. Now you need to keep $2,500 for the entire month or all refunds are forfeit. I haven't dipped below yet but it's an annoyance.

Also, if you do more than like 6 transactions with a savings account now it's a $9 fee.

muppet

Banks in general went through a "no fees for anything" phase that they've been quickly retreating from since the financial sector got hit.

Bank fees/no fees have always been a cyclical thing.

Matt

Banks in general went through a "no fees for anything" phase that they've been quickly retreating from since the financial sector got hit.

Bank fees/no fees have always been a cyclical thing.

Good point! As someone who has only been using banks for 10 or so years, I eagerly await the next no-fee craze.

Neito

TD Bank now charges a fee. They stopped their awesome ways.

Coinstar does take a cut, but not if you get Amazon gift cards.

Wow, even if you have an account there?

Around here, it's free if you have an account. Not sure anywhere else. I just turn my change into magic Amazon money and then turn that in to ebooks and games.

HMTKSteve

Banks used to give you appliances for opening accounts.

Churba

Some banks used to give you firearms for the same. 'MURICA.

Neito

Banks used to give you appliances for opening accounts.

I could get a free waterbottle and car emergency kit if I signed up for the bank down the street.

Unfortunately, I already have a good waterbottle, and I don't own a car.

no fun girl

Banks in general went through a "no fees for anything" phase that they've been quickly retreating from since the financial sector got hit.

Bank fees/no fees have always been a cyclical thing.

Good point! As someone who has only been using banks for 10 or so years, I eagerly await the next no-fee craze.

I'm super happy with ally bank. no fees, deposit checks via scanner, send checks online, 24hour customer service online, automatic cash back thingies.

George Patches

I use PNC and they are similarly awesome. Maybe it's just that I'm not a broke college student and have enough money in and churning through my account every month.

Andrew

I use BoA, but I've never got charged a fee because I'm not fucking stupid about my money. It's not hard to not get charged stupid fees.

Apreche

I use Chase, and I also did what I had to do to avoid fees. The benefit is ATMs everywhere.

Rym

I also use Chase. No fees (for me), ATMs every 10 feet in New York, and a pretty good credit card.

Apreche

I also use Chase. No fees (for me), ATMs every 10 feet in New York, and a pretty good credit card.

It is very convenient that the Amazon credit card happens to be a Chase card. I only have to go to one web site.

no fun girl

I use BoA, but I've never got charged a fee because I'm not fucking stupid about my money. It's not hard to not get charged stupid fees.

When I was at RISD, I often had to buy supplies from their store (stuff like sheet metal, sheet plastics etc). They ring you up manually -- so once, instead of charging me 8.99, they charged me 89.99. Even though I caught it immediately and had them refund the transaction, the process had already been debited & overdrew me. Citizen's bank charged me 33$ for that, and 33$ each for two /previous/ transactions, refusing to refund the fees. So once that law passed, I opted out of overdraft "protection". And then later on, changed banks to Ally, because this wasn't the first time Citizens screwed me over. (The other time, they changed my checkings package & charged me $20/mo without notification.)

muppet

I use BoA, but I've never got charged a fee because I'm not fucking stupid about my money. It's not hard to not get charged stupid fees.

...

I think maybe you haven't been banking very long. Bank fees are not/were not fully avoidable at all times/historically unless you simply did not have a bank account. Not every fee is a result of a mistake by the account holder.

Right now, things are that way, but not always.

Sail

On using Coinstar: Count and roll the change yourself, you baby.

Rochelle

I look forward to the iOS app that will let me be able to store all those card numbers on it and be able to be scanned and read to all the places I go to so I don't have to keep them in my wallet.

As for listening devices. I've been using my old 120gb iPod classic less and less. The scroll wheel is wonky and the interface on my iPhone is so much nicer.

I've also been using paid Spotify for a while now. It's pretty nice. I just need to put more playlists on there. Too bad my iPhone is only 16gb right now. I'm tempted to get an iPod touch, but I'm going to hold out to see what sort of storage capacity the iPhone 5 will have.

MATATAT

Why is everyone hating on Coinstar? Get the Amazon giftcard since you're going to spend the change on some bullshit anyway.

muppet

Why is everyone hating on Coinstar? Get the Amazon giftcard since you're going to spend the change on some bullshit anyway.

My bank has a coin counter in the lobby with no fee. The only caveat is that a fucking pink haired cartoon girl talks to you with megaphone volume, and addresses you as if you're 7 years old, throughout the experience.

Dave

DON'T HATE ON PENNY.

Sail

Why is everyone hating on Coinstar? Get the Amazon giftcard since you're going to spend the change on some bullshit anyway.

My bank has a coin counter in the lobby with no fee. The only caveat is that a fucking pink haired cartoon girl talks to you with megaphone volume, and addresses you as if you're 7 years old, throughout the experience.

You should be used to that cuz you watch anime.