Germany isn't ready for new tech. Here's why. 

I scrolled down just to say the same thing.

@the Game, Review and Reallife Channel Maybe a question of package size?

I knew someone would say this. 😅 Because it is true. Those modern razor blades made by companies like Gi***te or Wi****nson are just the perfect combination of small sized and ridiculously expensive so that shoppers could be tempted to put them into their pocket instead of the shopping cart or basket. Other stores don't use the card method but have them in bulky plastic boxes that would trigger an alarm once you tried leaving the store with them. When checking out, the boxes are opened (and kept in the store for re-use), an the customer can take the content. Quoting any concerns about cutting anyone's throat would be awkward given the the selection of big and sharp knives in the kitchen aisle.🤣 When it comes to self-service check-out, I am not a big fan of the most common solution you will see here - those stations where you have to scan each item and then try to fit everything on the scales that weigh your items to make sure what you scan is right. The store that I go to uses a different approach - when entering, you can grab a handheld scanner gun (you need to register for that, but since being a registered customer gibes you more benefits, you would want to do that anyway when you go there), and you scan your items while going through the store and putting them in your cart. When you are done, you only scan a "I am done" code at the pay stations, where you may be subject to a random check in which an employee will scan a number of articles in your cart, checking if you did scan them before. Then you just go ahead and pay, either by card or even some automatic cash acceptor if you so wished. Your receipt contains a bar code that opens an exit gate and you are done. In theory, you could use an app on your smartphone instead of the scanner gun, but I prefer the separate scanner, as I otherwise would have to switch back and forth between shopping list and scanner app - and the shopping carts have a holder that allows you to mount the scanner and have your hands free. Needless to say, this won't work for your phone.

I never had to exchange a card to buy my razor blades in my entire life. Neither in the village I grew up nor in the major west German city I where live now.

@@Colaholiker Similar experience with self-checkout. Works mostly well at IKEA, but not at Real, if your items do not fit nicely onto the scale, you will trigger an alarm and have to wait for staff to arrive. Kaufland has these mobile scanners, but there's a sign that they don't work yet. And honestly, it's a bit as if there is someone watching you the whole time. Which probably is true, tracking those devices would provide interesting data, and if this is connected to some app, they can easily request any permissions there.

I was more of an early adopter (computers, homepage, electronic banking when you had to dial(!) a special number with your modem(!) ). But I really think about giving any information to the public, if it is necessary or if it might become a problem in future times. I really thought about ginving Amazon my opinion on what music I like and what not. In the end I did because I'm quite sure that this information is not really dangerous and it brought my a lot of interesting suggestions.

Wir haben nichtmal flächendeckenden Informatikunterricht an allen weiterführenden Schulen in Deutschland... Das ist auch nicht gerade förderlich für unsere IT-Kompetenz.

@@111BAUER111 Ich bezweifle ein wenig, dass die Kenntnis um NP-Vollständigkeit da hilft. - Gut, dass die Leute, die Informatikuntericht fordern, zu 99% gar nicht wissen, was das ist.

@@Henning_Rech Informatikunterricht an Schulen ist kein Informatikstudium. Es werden sicher kaum Themen aus der theoretischen Informatik gelehrt. Schon gar nicht als Einstieg. Siehe: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatikunterricht#Standards_f%C3%BCr_den_Informatikunterricht_in_Deutschland

Yeah I dont want to be competent with it. I want it to disappear. I want the easier times back.

@@TheDude50447Ironic to write something like that using a computing device and the Internet. Times were never easier than now. I sure don't miss writing post cards to order stuff and wait six week for the delivery. You confuse knowing how to do something with ease of use. Things are certainly easier to use now but you may not know how(, yet). That can be solved by learning.

Remebers me soooo much of Windows 8, 10 and 11. Things got definitely worse after Windows 7. Or for Android smartphones, Google Music, which stopped letting you hear your own music, you uploaded to a micro SD card, without uploding to internet and streaming it from there.

I do a lot of translating, and being able to receive, process and return documents electronically makes it incredibly simple compared to actually having to deal with a physical document.

I don't think it's you getting old, otherwise I would be getting old while still under 30 years old... lol! Maybe I'm mixing stuff up in my head, but what you describe is what some peoople describe as "enshittification"

I also like them for speed but in the opposite direction. If there are two or more customers at every other check-out, it is just faster to do it yourself. Lots of people either don't like to pay by card or they think they are paying good money, so somebody should do the work (expressed as such by a friend).

I never use self checkout. It shifts the responsability to scan everything correctly to you. Here in the US people got arrested because something did not scan correctly. And cameras watching every step you do. Why should I do this? I go to a cashier, if they forget something it is the responsability of the store owner, not mine.

I agree to some extent, but there are technologies people have had decades to learn, and even new technologies are adapted much better in other countries. This begins with the Germans' weird obsession with cash. During the pandemic, some stores in my region introduced self-checkout machines that only accept cards. Great change, since people simply refuse to use them and I never need to wait in a queue when I go shopping now. Meanwhile, four years ago in the middle of Siberia I watched elderly people paying with they smartphones everywhere. In London, homeless people have portable card readers so you can donate them 10 pounds on the fly; my friend wanted to give someone cash and they refused. I'm in a mentorship program for exchange students at my university, and literally everyone, without exceptions - I met students from Slovenia, Lithuania, China, Japan, France, Belgium, Denmark, UK, US, Turkey, Ukraine - complain about having to do paperwork here and having to run from post office to copy shop to post office, because in their countries these processes are 100% digitalized. Hey, at least digital BAfÖG applications are possible since 2022, at least until they request further documents. The difficulty to adapt to "new" technologies is not an age problem, it's a Germany problem.

Back in the days we had carbon monoxide for lighting and heating, typewriters with no retyping or spelling hints, ... In short the technology leaps of the recent years are not exactly stressful compared to earlier technology.

That's wild. And actually not that surprising, if you know about the speed of certain tectonic plates and then think about it a bit. I'm trying to think of which other plates are moving at a fair clip, but I'm drawing a blank.

@@John_Weiss I just had a quick Google as I'm certainly no expert. It turns out that national governments release detailed coordinates to keep the GPS system up-to-date and the initial set of data was known as the "Geocentric Datum of Australia" and it was released in 1994. By 2016 it all had to be recalibrated as the whole continent was metres out of whack. The continent moves on average 7cm to the north whilst the pacific plate pushes 11cm westwards. Sometimes it moves faster though. The ABC reports that it causes havoc with navigation and defence data and longitude and latitude are set but Australia is moving all over the place. Even the distance between Hobart and Sydney has changed dramatically. They also mentioned driverless cars really depend on GPS and because our position is moving so quickly there is a lot of worry in Canberra that accidents could be caused. Additionally it causes issues with satellite farming (in driverless tractors) which are used on huge farms here, some of which are the size of Switzerland.

I mean Guy in Germany once drove off a Ferry in the Middle of the River, because his Satnav told him to do so. There also used to be a "Ghost Bridge" somewhere, where the Satnavs of one Company said there is a Bridge but that doesn't actually exist. People drove into the River too every few Months, but they just slowly drove into the Water, instead of off a Cliff or something like that, making it even more stupid.

We have more and more signs with something like "GPS is wrong - don't drive this road". But people drive their cars on ski slopes and trucks end up stuck somewhere in the woods.

You should try the ones at the Albert Heijn To Go stores in Dutch train stations. Those are very well designed.

I have that experience in a grocery shop where it checks the weight of everything which sometimes goes wrong. Or if it needs the barcode on the receipt to open the doors after the checkout. First you probably put it away at that time. Second that damn thing seems to need a millimeter exact distance to read it. Whereas the handguns at the checkout are much better.

Who said anything about being "anti-cash"? It hurts no one if a store accepts cards in addition to cash whereas the other way round is a huge inconvenience for many people. You can use digital payments for 99% of your transactions but still own and use cash whenever you want or need to.

@@oelp because debates about abolishing cash come and go frequently in Germany.

You would starve in Australia, since Covid there are an increasing number of shops that will not accept cash. Cash is too much bother for them and everyone has a card.

@@Dave_Sisson You would also starve, if your card gets broken, declined, or the system fails. A card is convenient, but cash is freedom and independence. It works without electricity.

@@LS-Moto Living in Melbourne I have not used cash in the past 3 years, i just tap my phone for everything including public transport and government healthcare. And I'm not a kid, I'm over 50, but going without cash is so much easier. When I was in Germany in 2016 and 2018, I found it very strange that most people paid for things with cash.

The sad thing is: Germans often get stuck in some middle-ground limbo. Cases in point: a) My insurer will allow me to create an account that even does automated ID verification through some nifty app. I am then able to see all my documents and certificates, BUT I can only ask for them to be sent to me via snail-mail, rather than having the option of printing them out myself, so you are still buggered if you try to get something done on a weekend. b) My wife is marking state exams for which the government introduced a marking template that she has to fill in electronically (it is basically an Excel spreadsheet), instead of doing this part by hand. HOWEVER: She then has to print this out and hand it in in hardcopy, and it cannot be used electronically; and just to add insult to injury, the template is a fraction too large to print out on a single A4 page (landscape), so you either end up with messed up printouts or have to futz around with resizing it, which is always a joy (thank you, Kultusministerium in Munich).

That's just stupidity. In Melbourne we have the low, 3 metre clearance, Montague Street Bridge that has flashing warning signs hundreds of metres ahead and bright stripey paint on the bridge itself. But trucks and even buses hit it every week and people who drive into it are widely mocked on television and social media. But at least once a week a new idiot attacks the poor bridge with their truck. My point is that nothing can be made idiot proof because idiots are constantly evolving into stupider variants.

Heartily agree that the digital user experience is often garbage. Still, I don't think Germany is an exception here. Look at the official sites of American class-action suites; they seriously look like scam sites. I think no sane person can argue that Germany was and is very slow to embrace digitalisation, but I think it's equally fair to say that many countries went in with no idea where they'd end up at. The fact that for a decade the majority of consumers didn't even recognise the troubling potential of big companies gathering and selling all of their data speaks volumes about how reality was steadily evolving but people didn't really realise where it would take them. The same can be said for governments, really; especially with how all the secret services act in concert now. And yes, it probably has something to do with the two totalitarian states being mentioned in the video, but it's also just common sense. Anyway, this scepticism isn't only limited to the older generations. I'm certainly *extremely* sceptical about some digital payment methods, credit cards, or presidents making world-changing announcements on Twitter. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's better -- and vice versa.

Still the US uses cheques and credit cards with pin are not common. The cash has the same standard since ages. All notes have (almost) the same colour and size. Not very user friendly. Also I've noticed getting a new passport is decades faster in Germany.

@@teotik8071 American credit cards adopted a chip system around 5-7 years ago (you usually used to swipe and then put in your postal code before the switch happened but this can still occur at a gas pump) while debit cards use a pin since it's attached to your personal bank account. I remember cashiers checking the IDs of credit card users in the past as well to prevent fraud.

@@teotik8071 true, but none of those really have much to do with digital user experience. I don’t think the US is uniformly on the forefront of everything, just that on average more attention is paid to making digital services pleasant. The use of checks is totally nuts, but it’s more a reflection of how antiquated the US banking system is on the backend. I work in security and you’d be amazed the kind of old technologies banks in the US use to this day. That’s not to say banks aren’t focused on security, they absolutely are and are probably the most secure industry I work with. But no individual bank can change that antiquated system and the federal reserve has been slow to force change in that respect.

@@luke_cohen1 Those systems where you have to put in your postal code are such a stupid idea, it's baffling. I've encountered a few while travelling (yes, mostly at gas stations), and they were a pain in the ass... because of course, the machines obviously accept only American postcodes. It's moronic.

Elster is a good example how digitalization didn´t work in Germany.

Agencies use it for legal reasons (written form), not because they're the last vestige of some shadowy fax conspiracy ;)

No, the driving schools really should teach students how to use the "road ahead is closed" functionality on their navigation systems. That way you can cut people who are afraid to disobey their navigation system out of the pool of people who end up in places that aren't (currently) fit for cars. Then the only people ending up in these situations will be those unable to read road signs, and those who can't tell rail tracks and port basins from roads. And the natural elimination of those from the roads will then be a universally favorable outcome. But the real-time road closures database could help drivers make larger detours, which would be a different reason to have that.

@@Pystro we definitely need that database anyway for self driving cars.

​@@huawafabe Self driving cars have to be able to read road signs anyways, so why shouldn't they be able to read a "Road closed" sign or a barrier on the street? If, for example, a tree falls onto the street, you wouldn't want your car to check some database to find out that the road is blocked. Because that would mean that all cars would just crash into the tree until someone updated the database. Btw. I had much fun with Google Maps telling me to take a specific route exactly because there was so little traffic on that route so it would have been faster than all the other routes with their traffic jams. Only when I arrived at that road, I found out that it was closed since a few days which was exactly the reason for the little (no) traffic.

@@berndbrotify Yes cars will be able to read road signs. But the problem arises in construction sites: Road signs in construction sites are always temporary, so they are not "ended" most of the time. Humans have to logically think that the construction site ended and therefore the speed limit ends there as well. I think it's really hard for an AI to notice when exactly a construction site ends. Sometimes it's just one truck mowing the roadside ditch. You know there's a speed limit of 80, see the mower and then you know you're ready to go again. Another example: Sometimes construction sites on highways have a detour through a parking space, the AI recognises it as a parking space (like defined in the map software) and slows down to walking speed, because that's the standard speed limit on a parking space. That already caused accidents because of braking too hard.

But sometimes Google maps is really bad. I had a large building site near my home with an important road closed and part of the area more or less divided for months. And that was announced long ago. People trying to find me with Google maps drove circles because it always had them drive through the blockage which was not only some fence but a big hole in the earth for hundreds of meters.

I was also thinking of a Blake's 7 reference with that, but could Zen be from Doctor Who?

Of course, in this case the lady at the self-checkout was half my age.

In Zürich where I live most supermarkets have adopted more self-checkout counters during pandemic time (with some manned counters left) and nobody seems to have much problem with that. Also here in Switzerland I only use cash a handful of times a year. I think not adopting new technology because of not being ready is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you're not used to new technology you keep fall back to older ones, and you never get used to it

I have a dumber reason :I hardly speak in German and I know these self checkout things usually break down or not working properly. so rather than asking people around I just get in the queue to save myself some time

I'm not suspicious of them at all, yet I'm notoriously avoiding them - I hope the more the self-checkouts are ignored the more jobs for cashiers are preserved

Well, at my local Rewe, they have several self-checkouts in regular use. They are usually faster than queuing if you have only a few items. That is, unless the software has hickups and takes insanely long to process your input.

Damit hat sie sich echt ein Denkmal gesetzt.

Ich find schon, dass sie Recht hatte. Das war 2013; es gab das öffentliche, kommerzielle Internet seit etwa 20 Jahren. Vor 10 Jahren noch (um 2000) hatten die meisten Europäer keinen Computer zuhause. Das sind extrem kurze Zeiträume. Das erste Auto mit Verbrennungsmotor wurde 1886 gebaut. Würde deshalb jemand sagen, 1906 war das Auto nichts neues mehr? Rückblickend hat man auch 1906 noch ziemlich stümperhaft mit dem Konzept eines KfZ experimentiert und konnte noch überhaupt nicht absehen, wie enorm das die Gesellschaft verändern würde. Wir stehen heute auch noch total am Beginn des Internetzeitalters.

​ @Nickname hier einfügen , ja und nein. Ich (Jahrgang 1971) habe als warnendes Beispiel meine Eltern (Jahrgänge 37 und 39) vor Augen. Beide haben sich, ganz im Gegensatz zu mir, nie für Technik interessiert. Ich würde sie sogar als technophob bezeichnen. In unserem ganzen Bekanntenkreis waren wir die allerletzten, die (1983) einen Farbfernseher angeschafft haben, und auch nur, weil die alte Schwarzweiß-Glotze, deren Fernbedienung *ich* war, nicht mehr wollte. Technik war nicht wichtig. Als Jugendlicher habe ich mir 1986 einen C64 zugelegt und habe eine Weile versucht, meinen Vater für die Programmierung in Basic zu begeistern. Er sagte damals, davon verstehe er nichts. Erst sehr viel später wurde mir bewußt, daß die Vorstellung, *er* würde etwas von *mir*, seinem Sohn, lernen, gar nicht in sein Weltbild paßte. Ich wollte ihm was zeigen, und er konnte sich wohl nicht in der Rolle des Schülers sehen. Ich meine, ich wußte ja, daß er davon nichts verstand, deshalb wollte ich es ihm ja zeigen. Als ich Anfang der neunziger meinen Erstkontakt mit dem Internet hatte, war mir in einem Augenblick klar, was für eine Revolution in der Kommunikation sich da anbahnt. Und auch, wenn ich vorher wußte, daß es meine Eltern nicht interessieren würde, erzählte ich davon, ich zeigte, ich schwärmte, ich predigte. Meine Eltern, damals Ende fünfzig, meinten, in ihren Alter müßten sie das nicht mehr lernen. Einen Computer besaßen sie damals eh nicht.Keine zehn Jahre später häuften sich dann die Beschwerden, daß in den Fernsehsendungen immer mehr Hinweise auf "weitere Informationen im Internet" genannt würden. Man könne als alter Mensch ja gar nicht mehr am Leben teilhaben und derlei Dinge. Problematisch war jetzt inzwischen aber, daß es nicht damit getan war, einen Computer hinzustellen und meine Eltern kurz einzuweisen. Die beiden hatten *keinerlei* Kenntnisse im Umgang mit Computern (oder mit irgendwelchen anderen digitalen Apparaten). Kurz und klein: Es war zu spät. Zu viel Zeug in der Entwicklung war verpaßt, und mit fast siebzig ist man nicht mehr so lernfähig wie als Kind. Hätten sich meine Eltern rechtzeitig darum bemüht, den Anschluß nicht zu verpassen, hätten sie vermutlich eine wesentlich höhere Lebensqualität erfahren. Und ja, natürlich hast Du Recht, das WWW kam erst 1993 als Dienst im Internet ins Leben. Computer gab es aber schon 55 Jahre vorher. Und das Internet ist lediglich ein logischer Entwicklungsschritt für die programmierbare Rechenmaschine. Wenn man sagt, 2013 sei das Internet eine 20 Jahre alte Technologie, dann ist das in etwa so, als beurteile man die Erfindung des Tempomaten losgelöst von der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Automobils. Man stelle sich also vor, jemandem, der nicht weiß, was ein Auto ist, die Funktion des Tempomaten zu erklären. Und genau das schwingt (für mich) in diesen Worten unserer Ex-Kanzlerin mit.

The close the door button is for protection of people in danger, getting mugged or worse.

Yup. Why pay banks and other financial 'service providers' a cut out of your own pocket? Basically, anyone in Germany can withdraw money for free. With all the trouble restaurants had to deal with in the last two years, I absolutely understand that they'll want to cut back on unnecessary costs wherever possible. Many people don't even *know* that companies pay for every transaction made by card -- and a lot more if it's a credit card.

@@RagingGoblin My favourite restaurant offers EC-payment since the pandemic, before this electronic cash of any type was impossible there at all. The pandemic generally decreased the use of physical money in Germany. But micro payment systems - types of electronic cash useful even for relatively small amounts of money - seem to be difficult to introduce at least in Germany. Germanys banking market is severely fragmented and people hesitate to move their giro accounts to another institute. In Sweden cash is out of use today as far as I know.

@@LarsPW I know that many restaurants introduced EC because of the pandemic. But that doesn't really address my point. Restaurants PAY for you to use your card. And the amount can be substantial over a month. You say Sweden isn't really using cash today as far as you know. I'm just not convinced that's actually a good thing or something to look up to.

@@RagingGoblin "Restaurants PAY for you to use your card" is a kind of framing. They get in return the precise amount of money without the need to handle coins and notes. This handling is as well very expensive (and dangerous) and chain stores have lots of money to keep just to be able to change cash.

@@LarsPW No, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's not framing at all. Retailers PAY banks or whoever provides the electronic payment method parts of their turnover, usually to the amount of 1% for credit style cards -- or more. Not to mention the lease for the devices, etc. Yes, cash does have its own downsides if you're handling huge sums, nobody's denying that. But to pretend it's the same is simply not true.

dont forget the Lamer Exterminator Virus.

Great. And I am still wearing the shoes of my german grandpa from WW2. 🥾🪖📯🎶😱

@@klauskruger6187 I wish I had those and my grandpa to have had the same shoe size as me of course. Those leather shoes were build to last an eternity and a good cobbler could repair them again and again. A pair of plastic sneakers won't last for more than a season and once something needs to be repaired they are only fit for the trash can.

Where is it ;-)

@@ppd3bw I don't want to reveal it, so "Privat"

There aren't many reason not to, honestly. Faxes are usually not problematic in terms of privacy laws (not even in Germany) and just convenient to use. Even for classified documents. You get a fax, sign something, send it back, put it in the shredder. Done. Or you get an encrypted email, download the file to an encrypted storage, apply a verified digital signature, upload it again, send it back encrypted, delete the file properly. It's just a lot that can go wrong if you consider that people in their 40s and 50s are supposed to do that.

Bankcards are a difficult theme. Some work well in other countries some don't. ATMs accept more than the devices at shops. Maybe the provider has a cheaper contract by not accepting "exotic" cards. Lately Austrian bankcards were switched to a more credit card type and no Maestro anymore. I had the same in Denmark. It would take the card but with a Maestro the fees would have been less.

But the small number of self-checkouts in Germany is really annoying. Even more than the lack of card payments in some stores tbh

Electronic prescriptions are another painful area.

@@ajfrostx I don't know whether to agree for health-related things. The last years have shown that doctor's offices and pharmacies are not exactly using secure infrastructure, and some of their digital service providers like doctolib are questionable at least. I do see benefits in moving things into the digital age, yet I also see many actors who come with their own interests, not necessarily aligned with mine.

@@Ph34rNoB33r I’d agree, but then I found myself ill recently and still having to drag myself to a doctor’s office to pick the prescription because nothing can be done online… and then I compare that to the U.K. and France and well… it’s not great over here. As for DoctoLib, I work in IT security field and they are pretty good in that regard.

at least some sandwich places near me use simple stamp cards as loyalty cards, when it's full, you get a free sandwich.

Technophobic tourists? I guess yes. Every time a clerk had to repeat that the protocol is different from the tourists home

A 4WD car might have fared better here, but he definitely _shouldn't_ have bought one - a situation like that shouldn't be a regular occurrence for him (I hope :D).

You have to find out how it works once. I remember my first time trying to open the gate to leave from the self-checkout area and after 30 seconds realizing you need to scan the barcode on your receipt with a barcode scanner stealthily built-into the gate column to open the gates. The scanner was really hard to spot and the process was documented nowhere - no signs at all! I only guessed that I might get out scanning my receipt. Considering that I work in IT, I was embarrassed taking that long to find out how it works, but I can only imagine how hard this must be for non techy people.

@@0xbenedikt the problem with this is every store has its own way of designing self checkout stations. Some are just straight forward. Click scan, scanning, optionally click aply member card or whatever, click pay, select payment method, pay, leave. Some are more complicated and have some terms of service like stuff. Or you have to navigate through a strange menu. Some mess up their design on the paying procedure. Sometimes they work with signing instead of typing your pin code. I just once had to scan the bar code too to open my exit gate. On the human checkout it's just taking my stuff out of the cart, wait till it's scanned, put it back in the cart, pay, leave. And what if I want to pay cache? Self checkouts are useless in that case.

@@FelanLP I see some self checkouts here in Germany adopt cash payment through an automated count and change unit.

@@0xbenedikt good to know. But I hope they will standardize these coin machines.

And you probably need to register with your email on the brands website, in order for the refrigerator to work. You can find the same sort of stuff in washing machines. My boss for instance has changed our door lock with one of those bluetooth ones. There is no other way of entering the office without your phone. If your phone fails to connect, or even worse the device on the door becomes faulty, your only way of opening the door is with a pry bar. I'm all for technology but it. needs to be used wisely, not make us dependent. Technology will also have failures. Why would I want technology that may force me someday to break into my own house? Why would I want a refrigerator that might stop working, because the last update was faulty? We need technology, not stupid stuff.

@@LS-Moto Amen to that!

@@LS-Moto A key is still the best way to open a door.

@@NicolaW72 it definitely is

@@LS-Moto 👍

Oh, i just read today in an austrian newspaper that the swedish Riksbanken (so the national bank of sweden) and the government now try to do something about it, and prevent cash from completely going away. (Maybe they have realized that in case of a blackout only cash and object trades work)

@@nirfz Where did you find that news, and why haven't I seen it? I don't remember much of how the payment landscape looked ten-15 years ago, but the G4S heist in 2009 certainly accelerated this shift away from cash. )There was an armed robbery at a cash depot in suburban Stockholm in 2009)

Cheques aren't used at all any more. Giro transfers (including those on actual paper) are _very_ common, though, so most people would probably understand how a cheque works. Although that wouldn't help _that_ much if the problem is on the side of the banking system, as the utility provider would have no way to cash in that cheque...

> Does anyone else here go through the cookie consents and pare them back to just the technically required cookies, and sometimes also functional ones? Every single time, though I know it doesn't help a lot in the time of fingerprinting. (and while giving YT comments) Cheques??? - yes, there is a big country west of us which still uses this (literally!) medieval system. I am close to retirement. I still remember to have used a cheque in my youth, but

Well my Grandmother (aged 82) doesn't even know what the Internet is, and refers to my Laptop and Smartphone as "weird TVs". The Village of just 130, where she lives, only has a 500 kbit/s Landline Internet Access only, and no Mobile Network at all (as in, you can't even make Calls on your Mobile Phone). They refused Offers to upgrade these, as they fear better Internet Access would make Life as busy and rushed as in a City. On that Note: In her Youth in the 1950ies, my Grandmother knew that Ulm, an incredibly large City far, away, exists. Ulm has about 130,000 Citisens, 70,000-80,000 in the 1950ies, and is about 40 km away from that Village. Just so you can imagine HOW remote and detached that Village used to be.

@@Genius_at_Work I guess it all depends on the person. My father lived until he was 87 and always marveled at the technological progress he'd seen and experienced in his life. He loved skype and online banking. 😀

Im german and im pretty young and everything digital i touch seems to just break because??? I swear something in the german dna isnt compatible with tech

Scandinavia is even more for card-only. The problem is, some small stores don't accept cards but a local telephone/app based checking system. Unfortunately this is only available for residents not for tourists. So I had to pay a pizza with cash and couldn't park at a beach. And if there is some Internet outage without cash everything is stopped.

I got a new credit card from a German bank last year and they let me choose between different verification methods. I chose an app which is the most convenient by far, so I guess pretty much everybody is doing it that way now. I don't really see a big difference in terms of security, the critical point is always if you can keep your TANs/PINs/SuperPINs somewhere where you can find them without giving them away to an malicious attacker.

a phaser wouldn't leave as much debris on the road. Remember you still need to use the lane so you can get to the mega brothel.

W