English vs English

[Mr. GOH!]

I have a chipped debit card that my pharmacy's card readers force me to swipe

[TheMightyEthan]

Android Pay and Samsung Pay both say they work anywhere you can swipe your card, not just places with chip readers.  Does anyone have any idea how that works?  I get that the phone can imitate the signal from a chip for the chip readers, but how does it work for the swiping?

[TheFlyingGerbil]

The chip in a chip and pin card has to be physically read by the machine (I.e. Slotted in) and then you enter the PIN number. Android pay and Apple Pay work on nfc, they don't work on all chip machines (at least not in the UK) they only work on the ones that are enabled for contactless payment*, which is when you tap your credit/debit card on top of the machine without actually putting it in and also don't require you to enter you pin. I think the rfid part of that is sandwiched between the layers of the card, separate the the chip and pin chip which sits on top. These contactless payments are limited to a maximum of £30 per transaction, as anyone that finds/steals you card can use it without any security checks. Since the apple/android pay use your fingerprint to verify your identity they can be used for higher amounts but as my bank isn't signed up for that yet I haven't tried it.

 

*most aren't compatible yet. As I get 5% cash back on any contactless payment purchase I make with my debit card I look out for them and I would say it is around half the places I go have them.

Edited August 30, 2016 by TheFlyingGerbil

[TheMightyEthan]

Okay, but what I'm asking is they specifically say they can be used anywhere you can swipe or tap (sorry for conflating chip and tapping, both of those rolled out around here at approximately the same time so typically if you can do one you can do the other too).  So I'm wondering how they work in a place you can only swipe, since I've never actually tried it.

 

*Edit - Looking into it, apparently it's only Samsung pay that works with swiping, Android pay requires the NFC setup.

 

Also, about the £30 limit, just an interesting side note is we don't have that because we don't have the pins anyway except on debit cards.

 

*Edit 2 - Apparently Samsung phones actually have a magnetic thing inside the phone that projects a field that tricks the reader into thinking you actually swiped a physical card.  That's neat.

 

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/13/9146965/samsung-pay-mobile-payment-credit-card-readers-date

Edited August 30, 2016 by TheMightyEthan

[Mr. GOH!]

I cannot tell you how pissed I was when all the taxis in Brooklyn changed their readers from ones that worked with Apple Pay, Android pay, and Samsung to ones that only accept Samsung Pay.

 

The millenial "whoop" is really the millenial "wooaaaOOOayyyooOOO." Whoa is what Keanu Reeves says. Whoop is what Zoidberg says.

[deanb]

TIL that in the US lemonade, or pretty much anything ending in "ade", isn't fizzy and just lemon juice, sugar and water. Which does raise the question of what you call sprite & co.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't think we have a generic term for Sprite and other comparable drinks.

[Mr. GOH!]

I think the generic term is something unwieldy, like "citrus-flavored soft drink." 

[deanb]

Just to clarify:

Brits don't drink "warm beer" in that it's say a temperature you'd be happy to bath a child in, just "warm" in a sense that it's not actively chilled like american beers. Casks are stored underground in a cellar, which I'd wager is similar with most american bar set-ups. Cellars are usually quite cool compared to above ground due to the cooling nature of being under all the earth(soil). This property was used for ice houses n such for centuries before fridges and freezers became a thing. So most beer is actually quite cool, probably comparable to water fresh from a cold tap. Just not super chilled and dripping condensation all over the place.

 

This is where I learn you call fridges refrigerators, freezers chill boxes and the nature of your water taps/faucets against ours means you don't necessarily have a "cold" or at least it's non-drinkable or something.

[TheMightyEthan]

This is where I learn you call fridges refrigerators, freezers chill boxes and the nature of your water taps/faucets against ours means you don't necessarily have a "cold" or at least it's non-drinkable or something.

Refrigerator is the full term but fridge is what people say a lot of the time (why is there a d in fridge but not refrigerator?), freezers are just freezers, and we have cold water coming out of our faucets that and it's potable unless you live in Flint, Michigan.

 

Actually, I learned recently that in Britland apparently your hot water is considered kind of not potable?  Because of something about the way your old timey water heaters worked.  And that as a result you often have completely separate hot and cold taps instead of mixer ones like we have.  That all completely blew my mind.

 

Informative video on the subject:

 

[deanb]

Yeah it's "kind of not" drinking water but as noted in the video these days the vast majority houses no longer have a hot water tank in the attic(loft) and use combi boilers n the such instead. You'd still sort of not drink the hot water, partly cos drinking hot water is weird n also cos of the left over "hot water isn't drinking water" thoughts.

[Mr. GOH!]

A lot of US tap water is not very potable, especially where Ethan is from. Country folk best not drink well water any more unless they like carcinogenic runoff. It's potable in most larger towns and cities, more or less.

 

Also, everybody calls it a fridge here.

[TheMightyEthan]

Well yeah, there's contamination in some places (hence my comment about Flint), but it's at least intended to be potable.

[Mr. GOH!]

My stipulation was more about rural well systems not being safely potable any longer in most of the US and it being accepted by the affected people.

[deanb]

iirc when we went to Orlando we were suggested to drink bottled water, we ended up buying like big gallon jugs of the stuff. I guess it makes sense given recent weather would have likely affected some infrastructure.

We're just generally taught to not drink colonies water from the tap.

[Mr. GOH!]

Yeah, in the Southern coastal areas there may be cities with funny tap water from constant floods and proximity to the sea, or a lot of old buildings whose pipes are bad and made from lead or other toxic materials even when the municipal water supply is good. Generally, Florida and California, IIRC, have some of the worst tap water systems in the U.S. I mean, of course Florida's water sucks; *everything* sucks in Florida.

 

But if you ever come to NYC or surrounding areas, we have some of the cleanest, best tap water in the world, thanks to our enormous aqueducts and reservoirs upstate. It's very clean, cool, and plentiful. 

[TheMightyEthan]

We're just generally taught to not drink colonies water from the tap.

So US tap water is to you what Mexican tap water is to us.

 

Joke's on you though, cause most bottled water is just tap water from wherever the bottling plant happens to be, with no extra treatment applied.

[deanb]

But if you ever come to NYC or surrounding areas, we have some of the cleanest, best tap water in the world, thanks to our enormous aqueducts and reservoirs upstate. It's very clean, cool, and plentiful. 

 

You sound like some other New Yorker I know

[TheFlyingGerbil]

 

We're just generally taught to not drink colonies water from the tap.

So US tap water is to you what Mexican tap water is to us.

 

Joke's on you though, cause most bottled water is just tap water from wherever the bottling plant happens to be, with no extra treatment applied.

 

 

 

 

Why are people happy with that? If it's just tap water, why wouldn't you just fill a bottle at home yourself, for (practically) free. At least if you're paying for spring water, you can tell yourself its something different. Nearly all the bottled water in the UK is spring water, but I've noticed prices for most (not the premium brands) have plummeted They tried tap water in the UK with Dasani, which they actually did process further  (something to do with osmosis?). It was blown into a national outrage, in all the papers etc. and put pay to that becoming a trend.

 

edit: i don't know why i quoted that about half a dozen times?

Edited September 29, 2016 by TheFlyingGerbil

[TheMightyEthan]

Most don't realize it's just tap water. Also, people are really, really stupid.

[Mal]

California tap water is fine for the most part. I haven't had problems with it in the Bay Area, SLO and LA. Then again I don't live in the poorer areas and my water always was sourced from the CA Aqueduct and the like. I bet the water is pretty bad in say the San Joaquin Valley in say Bakersfield. Any groundwater is completely fucked by agriculture. 

 

NYC for sure have good water but of course the building could be an issue like some of my childhood homes. Bad to the point of gagging. It had a smell and taste to go along with it. Then again I may have been a kid that just hated the "taste" of water. Now I drink almost always from the tap. If I tried to drink from bottled water, it would get expensive really quickly.

[deanb]

So you're wanting to come to the UK and piss off as many bloody sons of bitches as you can? Well do OFCOM have a fucking list for you!

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/tv-research/Offensive-language/Offensive-Language-2016-QRG.pdf

You ginger.

[Mr. GOH!]

On a related topic, do you Brits use "muppet" as an insult? I have an Irish colleague who uses it as his go-to insult.

 

Edit: Also, that document you linked to uses "pre-" and "post-watershed" a bunch. What does that mean?

Edited October 4, 2016 by The Ghost of Mr. GOH!

[TheFlyingGerbil]

The watershed is 9pm, before that it's assumed children may watch a programme and sex/violence/language should be suitable. After 9 things can get more adult oriented. The reason it's called the watershed is it's the dividing line between child and adult content, as the watershed is the line between two water basins.

 

I would use the word muppet, and wouldn't be surprised to hear it, but it's not that common up here, I think of it more as an east end of london type of thing and can be quite aggressive to me

[deanb]

Watershed is iirc ~9pm, which I guess is assumed at that point kids are in bed so the more adult focused programs and films can be on. Stuff like sex/violence/swearing etc. Some adverts are limited too (heck some adverts that are "kid friendly" are limited too for the sake of not encouraging kids to want shit). You'd know that if you weren't a muppet (yeah we use it as an insult too, though it's fairly lighthearted). It seems the US equivalent is "safe harbour" though in that case it seems a bit more legal-orientated.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watershed_(broadcasting)#United_Kingdom