• mech@feddit.org
    120·
    6 days ago

    I joined a union and organized the election of a workers council at my workplace.
    Union dues are 1% of my salary.

    In the past 5 years, we managed to enforce:

    • the right to work from home
    • 20% pay for the time spent on call after hours, plus 1 day paid vacation for each week you’re on call (so I now have 42 days + unlimited sick days)
    • a company car for on call duty, which you’re allowed to use privately, too
    • work phones for every employee (instead of having to install the company MDM on your private phone)
    • convertible desks for everyone
    • and a substantial pay raise
      • mech@feddit.org
        45·
        6 days ago

        Sorry for the misunderstanding.
        It began with a little thing, simply writing an e-mail to the union, and kind of grew from there.

        • Caveman@lemmy.world
          39·
          6 days ago

          All good man, I just wanted to point out how impressive what you did was. You didn’t just stick it to the man, you went Vlad the Impaler on his ass.

  • MutantTailThing@lemmy.world
    213·
    6 days ago

    Don’t know if it counts as sticking it to the man, but I adblock everything. Seriously, Ive got adblockers on my adblockers. Ive been adblocking for so long I don’t know what to buy anymore.

    I’m sitting here in my empty house surrounded by my bags of money I don’t know what to spend on. Send help.

    • Clanket@lemmy.world
      53·
      6 days ago

      Same. I also treat cookies like a virus…no, no, and no again. Though I think my days are limited with that, a lot of websites now saying accept cookies or pay. I’ll give up the interwebs before I accept trackers.

      • daed@sh.itjust.works
        19·
        6 days ago

        For articles which won’t let you disable cookies there’s usually an archived version somewhere. Or you use some current alternative to 12ft. Or you ask an LLM to summarize the URL.

      • asmoranomar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        6 days ago

        Instead of manually denying cookies, you can deny all cookies and whitelist the sites you trust.

        Edit: also note - websites that give you the ‘option’ to opt in or out may not have the same opinion on what cookies are ‘optional’ or ‘mandatory’. Several don’t even do anything and are just there to look compliant.

        • 200ok@lemmy.world
          8·
          6 days ago

          Absolutely agree. Site owners only get fined if someone reports them. The regulators aren’t actively scanning sites to ensure compliance.

          • asmoranomar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            4 days ago

            To be blunt (but not to be mean), RTFM or google it. There are lots of ways to do it, and it all depends on the capabilities of your devices, OS, browsers and whether or not you want to use apps to manage it. And again, I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just that the question has the same effort as “how do I make food?”. I could give you the most gourmet answer and it may not help.

            But to answer as simply as possible: Most browsers can do cookie whitelisting out of the box. Just be aware that it doesn’t prevent cookies outside the browser or outside the device - so if you have (for instance) a smart tv, you’ll need other solutions. And the solutions snowball from there, so I will leave it at that.

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
      25·
      6 days ago

      I don’t know what to buy anymore.

      I have a problem where because I’m so hard to advertise to between adblock and premium subscriptions, that I am usually very out of the loop on what movies and TV shows are coming out

      The biggest ones usually make their way into the news or Lemmy somehow, but there’s definitely a lot I’m clueless about until I see them pop up streaming somewhere a couple years later

      • Lazylazycat@lemmy.world
        1·
        4 days ago

        I have this same problem! Friends will mention a film they’re about to see and I’ve literally never heard of it, and they very much act like I should have 😂 I do feel like I’m missing out on important information, but I’m still not turning ad blockers off.

    • insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      After pushback, I switched over to ad nauseam (which still blocks via UBO). Not sure how effective it actually is for the click part (considering it also catches related things, some YT recommends, share buttons, definite non-ad things in search etc) but it says $1.8K (I have it set between ‘sometimes’ and ‘always’).

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
    27·
    5 days ago

    When watching over-the-air television, I mute the TV and look away when ads come on.
    You can show me all the ads in the world but you sure as fuck can’t force me to engage.

    Tap for spoiler

    God help those fuckers when I finally fall down the TV Tuner + Jellyfin + TVHeadend rabbithole. I’m gonna “Live Pause” that shit or I’m gonna straight up DVR everything I wanna watch and skip the ads.
    And my parents watch much more OTA TV than me so you bet your ass I’m setting up every TV in their house with a cheap trustable Android TV stick and teaching them how to Pause, Rewind and Fast Forward. Fuck ads foreverrrrrr.

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      Start saving for a small pc and some large hard drives. It’s worth it. Or pay for a VPN and use stremio and just stream torrents.

      You can also buy access to other people’s Plex servers, watch anything

      Fuck advertisements. I’ve got pihole setup as my local DNS, ublock origin on all computers. Being bombarded every minute of every day to buy shit is getting real old really fast.

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        Oh I got a home server setup with Jellyfin and a bunch of media already, just need to figure out the Live TV stuff (for live news, some soap operas, stuff that doesn’t get torrented much) for it to be 100% complete :)

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 days ago

      I get this and I also don’t engage with ads but at the end of the day they are what pays for the stuff you want to watch.

      It’s a shitty system and it’s become amazingly predatory. Needless to say I used revanced on my phone.

      • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        4 days ago

        It would be ok if we didn’t have 5 ads on a 4 min video. They fucked their system and treated us like the bad guy. Fuck them for shooting themselves in the foot. There is a reason Google makes all their money from selling your personal data and advertising. Of course we’re going to work around it.

      • planish@sh.itjust.works
        31·
        4 days ago

        Ads can’t be permitted to pay for things, though. One has a moral obligation to make sure that that strategy does not work, because it degrades both whatever the advertisements are inserted around (which becomes optimized to get attention at the expense of anything actually useful, like entertaining or conveying information) and the people who perceive it (because it creates capital inside their minds, in the form of brands, artificially alters their culture, and deliberately creates fear, mistrust of loved ones, and feelings of inadequacy).

        • mechoman444@lemmy.world
          1·
          4 days ago

          While I agree that ads are often necessary, I disagree with the predatory way they are presented. Google, and by extension YouTube, are the most egregious examples.

          But there is no moral obligation to either engage with ads or avoid them. That notion is nonsensical

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.netEnglish
      6·
      4 days ago

      There was this one time during a sprint retrospective that our PM said we were gonna do an ice breaker. This was a year and a half into my employment, and nobody else on the team had been there for less than 2 years.

      I fucked off for a good 20 minutes on my phone while they were talking about each other’s spirit animals.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
    611·
    6 days ago

    I don’t remember the last time I saw an advert.

    Like, genuinely, I get politely confused when people talk about them. What do you MEAN you’re not adblocking everything? What do you MEAN you still use a service if you can’t adblock it? WHAT DO YOU MEAN you paid for YouTube?

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        101·
        5 days ago

        I used to travel a lot in eastern Oklahoma, and left a lot of stickers at gas stations in the middle of bumble fuck nowhere towns. Probably less smiles and more anger honestly, but fuck them. Also did some on a trip to Missouri, where I’m pretty sure it was illegal for me to piss.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
    741·
    6 days ago

    Push Nestle and Goya products way back in the shelf / turn them around / grab non- Nestle/Goya equivalents and put them in front of the Nestle/Goya shit.

    Goal is to make their products less visible to other customers.

  • NateNate60@lemmy.world
    89·
    6 days ago

    When I buy from a small business that I want to support, I will use cash. When I’m buying anything from a large company, I will always use the fanciest credit cards in my wallet.

    In the United States, credit card processing fees are more expensive for fancy rewards credit cards and obviously there’s no fee for cash.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          4·
          6 days ago

          It’s the most-commonly rejected card. It has high fees without the clout of Amex. Amex customers are typically pretty wealthy and places will accept them because of their high-roller status. But Discover doesn’t have that going for them, so there’s less reason to accept the card.

          Where you’ll find it rejected most often is small shops and government agencies.

          For instance, my career has been in government, and no organization I’ve worked for has ever accepted Discover. We aren’t allowed to “profit” from our fees, so we have to include credit card processing in the adopted fee schedule. But since we can’t profit, we have to set the fee at whatever Visa and Mastercard charge. That extra 1 or 2 percent Discover charges can be millions for a large government (large city, statewide agency, etc). So, agencies simply don’t take Discover (and frequently AmEx, though they’ll sometimes negotiate).

          Large retailers are able to negotiate better deals with Amex and Discover, but for smaller shops it just isn’t gonna happen. And that 1-2% (of the total charge) extra taken by the card processor is huge when your margins are small.

          Heck - even the Visa and Mastercard fees are a huge deal. When I worked in retail management, those fees were secretly the big reason we pushed our store-brand credit cards. It wasn’t the 80 dollar commission for the account the store got - it was that if someone used our card in our store, we didn’t pay the processing fee.

          We’d give 2% in points back for using the card in the store, which was a great deal for us since we didn’t have to pay the 3-4% fee to the processor.

          • NateNate60@lemmy.world
            9·
            6 days ago

            It is definitely not true that Discover interchange rates are significantly higher than Visa or Mastercard.

            I’ve put below a list of the actual interchange rates for various personal Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards types.

            Debit:

            • Visa Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
            • Discover Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
            • Mastercard Debit Regulated: 0.05% + 22¢
            • Visa Debit: 0.8% + 15¢
            • Mastercard Debit: 1.05% + 15¢
            • Discover Debit: 1.1% + 16¢
            • Visa Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢
            • Mastercard Debit Prepaid: 1.15% + 15¢

            Base credit tiers:

            • Visa CPS Retail: 1.51% + 10¢
            • Discover Consumer: 1.56% +10¢
            • Mastercard Consumer: 1.65% + 10¢
            • Mastercard Enhanced: 1.8% + 10¢

            Rewards cards:

            • Visa Rewards Traditional: 1.65% + 10¢
            • Visa Rewards Signature: 1.65% + 10¢
            • Discover Rewards: 1.71% + 10¢
            • Discover Rewards Premium: 1.71% + 10¢
            • Mastercard World: 1.9% + 10¢

            Premium cards:

            • Visa Rewards Signature Preferred: 2.1% + 10¢
            • Discover Rewards Premium Plus: 2.15% + 10¢
            • Mastercard World Elite: 2.3% + 10¢

            You can plainly see that Discover tends to be more expensive than Visa but is cheaper than Mastercard. The only reason I could see that someone might refuse Discover is because Discover cards are all rewards credit cards that go into the higher tiers, whereas many Visa and Mastercard cards are debit cards which go into the lowest tier.

              • NateNate60@lemmy.world
                3·
                6 days ago

                A card which is subject to central bank regulations regarding the interchange fees which they are allowed to charge. According to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act 2011, the Federal Reserve has the power to limit debit card interchange fees for debit cards issued by large banks with over $10 billion in assets. A “regulated debit card” issued by a bank subject to the regulation is therefore tariffed at the maximum rate allowed by the regulation, which is 0.05% plus 22 cents.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          6 days ago

          The small retailer I worked for didn’t take Discover. We took Amex though, because it was high-end and wealthy people love their Amex.

          Editing to clarify, had to dash off before: wealthy people love their extra-thick Amex Black Card made of titanium or whatever, that we used to have to type in by hand because it would damage the old slide readers. So as long as we were taking those we took regular Amex cards too.

          • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            It costs more for the merchant and cardholder. That’s why rich people flex with it. Because they can afford to pay more and cost others more for no reason.

            • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
              5·
              6 days ago

              Maybe more for the seller, I don’t know but the cost to me is… Nothing. Well the benefit to me is about 3% back on anything I buy. No fees. Just another cheap card.

                • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  1·
                  4 days ago

                  You both are so very close to the real selling point those fucknuts are frothy over their Amex black card: they get to cosplay as royalty, oppressing the poors with a simple gesture. 🤌🏼

                  There’s a queue at the guillotine for these people. It’s not as popular as the ones for “elected officials”, warmongers, fascists, or even longtime tyrants, to be sure —but it’s there. 🖕🏼

          • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
            11·
            6 days ago

            The Amex Black Card is the one I was starting to refer to, I got interrupted and decided to hit the button rather than elucidate further. Sorry. You can look up the requirements and benefits, it wouldn’t be good for me but for someone who travels a lot and throws big expensive parties it might. Or if they’re basically a corporation

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
          6·
          6 days ago

          anyone can get an amex. unless you’re talking about a platinum or black card? those have minimum spending requirements per year to keep them.

      • OldGrayDog@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        I use discover everywhere, pay 90% of my bills with it. No one uses amex anymore. Pay off all of my cc at end of month, that’s how I stick it to the man. Use their money for a month or so and get money for it.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          2·
          4 days ago

          What you get out of it is generally less than the processing fees. That’s how reward cards work. The seller has to pay the processor to process the payment, and you get a portion of that as a reward.

          It may feel like free money to you, but that processing fee is built into the price of anything you purchase.

          You aren’t sticking it to anybody.

          • OldGrayDog@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            The things or services I pay with my cc don’t have cash discounts, so no reason to use cash, if you pay them off every month and never carry a balance the cc company doesn’t make money off of my use and pay me to use their money. I’m sticking it to the cc company. Also as you have pointed out that all sellers build the processing fee into their prices I wouldn’t save anything by paying cash.

            • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
              2·
              4 days ago

              The CC company makes a killing off your purchases. They charge a fee to the merchant for every transaction. Between that fee and a separate fee for processing the fee, they end up charging between 3.5 and 6 percent more on the transaction, while handing out 2-3 percent in rewards if you’re lucky.

              The reason there isn’t a cash discount most places is because it’s actually against the terms of service with the CC company/processors for the merchant to charge more for their customers. The CC company essentially requires that everything be more expensive for everyone whether or not they actually use the cards.

              The card companies make absolutely stupid money off those fees.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
      11·
      6 days ago

      over here, the extra cost that comes from handling cash is enough that small businesses don’t want to take it. counting till every day adds up.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
        131·
        6 days ago

        Surprisingly not in the US. If you make 100 sales a day of $20 each, then over a six-day week, you’d pay roughly $360 in credit card transaction fees (assuming 2.5% + 10¢ per transaction which is average). If you instead spent half an hour a day counting cash in the till and then half an hour at the end of the week to go to the bank, that’s about $98 in labour cost (assuming a labour cost of $28 per hour, which is roughly $25 per hour in wages and $3 per hour in tax), so the savings are $262 per week, which is not insignificant.

        • deffard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          Banks also charge for cash services, many business accounts may just include it in the price, but someone has to physically count, collate and move around the cash, often with security. There are costs for running a computer system, and costs for using cash that businesses have always paid. Some small businesses definitely do not understand that, but cashless can be cheaper and safer depending on your country and quality of banking services.

          • NateNate60@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 days ago

            I can’t comment on the situation in other countries, but in the US, in the majority of cases, it’s cheaper for businesses to take cash. In the US, the first few thousand dollars of cash deposits are typically free every month. Beyond that, pricing varies. My bank charges 0.35% on cash deposits, which is considered quite high, though it works out to only $42 per week in my example above. The credit union I have my personal accounts with charges 0.15%, which would be $18 a week.

            The cost of labour has already been factored in and it still results in savings. The cost of security is comparatively negligible. A $300 safe is a one-off purchase that pays for itself in a fortnight.

    • postnataldrip@lemmy.world
      8·
      6 days ago

      I used to do that, but here (Australia) passing on surcharges has sadly been normalised, and during covid heaps of businesses went cashless.

      The salt in the wound is that there’s not really any reason for businesses to push payment gateways for a better deal. They don’t give a shit any more as they just pass it into the customer.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
        7·
        6 days ago

        Some American states (not mine) have banned surcharging for credit cards in response to consumer backlash. But what’s not banned is marking up everything by 3% and then offering a 3% cash discount.

  • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
    30·
    5 days ago

    I have never paid rent or utilities or electricity.

    Currently live off grid on land I own using solar power. We have all electric appliances. Generator uses propane but only use it 1-2 times a year so it’s rare to refill the tank.

    The dump is only a few dollar when we take our trash (under $10) every few months.

    Self host on a NAS, have home assistant that helps a ton with power monitoring and control.

    My goal in a few years is to provide almost all my needs from my own land. Food, water, shelter, power, etc.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
        8·
        5 days ago

        Land can be bought everywhere in all price ranges. The real hurdle is whether you can legally live there or what requirements there are, due to zoning and building codes.

        I think the easiest way to get a self sustaining home with as little legal issues as possible is to buy an already legal home with the grid connection, but then just don’t use it.

        If I were young and single again, I would look into auctions of derelict farms. Tear down the old building and instead build a small totally legal connected up to code cabin with water, waste and electricity connection. Then use the rest of land to do whatever actually interest me, while complying to the bare minimum of legal requirements for that land.

      • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 days ago

        There are a few counties around the US that have zoning laws that let you live in an RV or build alternative houses such as adobe, earth bags, shipping container homes, earth ships, or even shed to homes.

        I did tons of research and picked a county. Then I drove around and talked with realtors until I found the right one that understood what I plan To do. this guy was awesome and directly took my to my dream land. It was 6 times more land than I expected to buy, and the price was amazing. We bought it immediately.

        After buying the land, I bought a $3,000 RV (needed a ton of work) but it’s home until I build my adobe home. Spent the last year collecting supplies for the house, even found 5 new windows for just over $100. Always looking for deals. Also found solar panels super cheap $45 each for 250W panels. Bought a ton of those for the house later.

        It takes a lot of determination to push yourself to go outside and work for yourself, but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere. We do ok. But I know things will only get better as we settle more here.

        • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          …but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere.

          Wait. What? Did I miss where you described said “way”?

          • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
            11·
            4 days ago

            There’s many ways, I have multiple income streams from several places.

            Here are a few examples of income ideas:

            Sell online

            YouTube or twitch, only fans?

            Do odd jobs for neighbors and the community

            Sell at local swap meets, fairs, art shows

            Air BNB

            Sell eggs, meat, animals

            Sell homestead tutorials, courses, online or in person

            Remote teaching

            Remote work, telemarketing

            There’s tons of ways to make money from a homestead in the middle of nowhere.

              • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
                11·
                3 days ago

                I do half of these and my neighbors do several of these too. What do you want? Want me to explain every dollar I make? Thats too personal.

                • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  1·
                  3 days ago

                  Nope, thanks. I was paying attention, and excited to see that efforts similar to those in my own life were seemingly yielding fruit for others, but the summary statement of “the way” caught me off-guard as there had been none defined. Just a minor curiosity, sorry to ruffle feathers. 🤷🏼‍♂️

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    23·
    5 days ago

    Run every reasonable possible method of ad-blocking. From whole-house PiHole with uBlock, Privacy Badger, anti-tracking, VPN, and more. F/OSS software when possible.

  • Aeao@lemmy.world
    9·
    4 days ago

    This a more “a man” than “the man” but I had a boss I hated who was really into horoscopes.

    So I learned all about them so I could memorize every one else’s sign and continue to forget his.

    Good luck writing me up for that Rob. Oh wait you couldn’t anyway because I outlasted you!

    He also insisted I write “inspirational quotes” on the weekly sales paper for my team to feal inspired . nietzsche it is.

      • Aeao@lemmy.world
        41·
        4 days ago

        To the Esteemed Corrector of My Spelling, and to the Entire Divine Assembly—He, She, They, It, and the One Made of Pure Bureaucratic Light:

        Let all realms fall silent as I reveal my transgression:

        I, humble fumbler of keyboards and repeat offender of vowel placement, did commit the unspeakable sin of typing feal instead of feel.

        This error is not merely a human fault.

        It is a violation of God’s sacred decrees, scribed on the Celestial Tablets of Spelling Accuracy—tablets which, I must add, are heavy enough that even angels don’t like moving them.

        For this disgrace, I accept the age-old punishments:

        Ten Lashes of Linguistic Shame,

        Seven Thunders of Divine Spellcheck,

        and the cold, judgmental stare of every librarian within a 500-mile radius.

        Yet still, the weight of my error demands more.

        Thus, I shall ascend a distant, storm-crowned mountain to train under an impossibly old master, one whose wisdom predates fonts themselves.

        Possibly a dragon.

        Almost certainly a dragon, given the scheduling.

        This master will instruct me in the ancient arts:

        the Flame of Proper Grammar,

        the Wingbeats of Syntax,

        and the Tail-Swipe of Unquestionable Verb Conjugation.

        Only then shall I be purified.

        Signed with Reverence, Regret, and Unavoidable Scheduling Conflicts:

        Michael, Pilgrim of the Celestial Grammar Order,

        Temporarily Unavailable Next Tuesday

        (Because the Ancient Dragon Master said that was the only day they could fit me in),

        and Kevin, I Am So Sorry—

        Please Rent a U-Haul as I’ll need my truck for travel

        For I Must Honor This Sacred Quest.

        • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          Is this a copypasta I’m not aware of? 🤣

          edit: my new tech metal band name is Wings of Syntax

          • Aeao@lemmy.world
            1·
            3 days ago

            No it’s just alot of free time while drunk lol

            I can’t stress enough tho I will not help Kevin move.