Everyone might know this, but you can set up wire transfers direct into a recipient's bank account (using the same details they'll give you if they ask you to do a conventional wire transfer) using #Wise. They'll guarantee the exchange rate for a couple of days while you pay the money in on your side (can be done after setting up the transfer) and even give you a nice tracking page you can share with your recipient. They send you the transaction reference afterwards, too. It's very smooth.
How would you deposit cash on the wise.com account? I didn’t look too closely at it but I’ve noticed in general the more modern & online a bank is, the more crippled and helpless it is. I see that the app for wise is limited to Google playstore or apple, so that’s another vector for exclusion unless their web access is fully featured. (edit: #Wise is a Cloudflare site, so I would indeed run away from that as it gives a US tech giant a clear view of all traffic, usernames, passwords, etc… i’m not that trusting)
I’m opposed to forced banking. It’s good to have a banking system in place as a convenient option, but a disaster to be wholly dependent on banks and entirely helpless when there are technical problems (which have dozens of points of failure both on your side of the transaction as well as the merchants). I was in the grocery store and a customer’s bank card failed. Long line of people had to wait through many reattempts before in the end she had no choice but to walk out empty handed and leave all her groceries at the cashier, who then had to haul them out of the way.
Banks are gradually becoming less and less competent overall… some even forcing customers to blindly trust & execute closed-source software.
I think if I arrived in a foreign country for a 90 day vacation I would be outraged if I had to spend however many days researching and fiddling with banks just to pay for running water… time that could be better spent. Refugees will likely be harmed by the loss of cash option as well. Though it’d perhaps be poetic justice if in the end such a mess were simply left without bill payment. Hopefully Vivaqua’s move leaves them with some delinquent accounts they can’t collect on.
Remember #Patreon set up new on-by-default sharing of your account information with every other Patreon user (and maybe the world)? Remember people posting how to turn it off, because they were using confusing language/dark patterns to try to #trick you into oversharing?
I got the "welcome to the new Patreon" today, and ... they've turned the "Community Profile" setting back on after I deliberately turned it off.
@cazabon More #enshittification - and #Patreon is the only channel for #donation on the #Mastodon website! It would be interesting to read views on best #payment options now for #OpenSource projects, creators & causes - & what the challenges are? What happened to #LiberaPay, website says it has just 8 patrons of Mastodon? Any issues with #Wise? Many organisations provide bank details on the web, maybe simplest? @Gargron @Liberapay
Here are some additional images of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.
The first one was taken by the NASA WISE space telescope, in infrared wavelengths from 3.4 to 22 µm. Field of view = 1.967° x 1.948°.
Several young stars are visible in infrared light in the dark L1688 region.
The bright red area is light from the star Sigma Scorpii (aka Alniyat) that is reflected off of the dust surrounding it, creating what is called a reflection nebula.
(Bruxelles) Vivaqua a cessé d'accepter des paiements en espèces (fedia.io) French
(message original en anglais)...