Ah, that would definitely make a difference. A debit transaction uses some form of “password” like a PIN or the data embedded in a card chip. A credit transaction technically only relies on easily available data and sometimes a signature, much more common for fraud (it’s pretty easy to read and replicate the data from a magnetic strip–one of my classmates did a project to read magnetic strips, and they had to stop letting people swipe their own cards on it because it popped up tons of confidential data).

My CU’s website definitely looks like it’s from the early naughts, but they at least kept things up to date and security practices seemed legit, and I don’t think I ever tripped the fraud detector. I guess everyone’s mileage will vary a bit.

They’re common in Canada as well. In my experience, they’re much better than larger banks for things like fees and interest rates.

Historically the main advantage of a larger bank was having banks and ATMs everywhere, but lots of CUs have formed mutual agreements for ATM access, and internet banking being ubiquitous has rendered any advantage the big banks have had moot (in my opinion, at least).

That’s totally on them for ignoring you. Sounds like getting knocked down a peg might have been good for that guy.

Related, Settlers is one of the two games that are banned at my family gatherings.

The Monopoly house thing is a bit of a dick move, but I wouldn’t feel bad about the Civ one–that seems legit.

Back when Words With Friends was big, I developed a reputation among my friend groups for being very good. I wasn’t terribly good, but I noticed there was no penalty for misspelling a word. So each turn, I’d try a bunch of high-scoring combinations that seemed like they might be words, and eventually one would work.

My family plays heavyweight games, and enjoy strategy (whether it’s a “strategic” game or not). We mostly get along well (though we’ve had to ban a couple games that got too heated too often), but we’re quite competitive and we put a lot of thought into games when we play.

My wife’s family is the polar opposite. They seem to enjoy passing cards or pieces around without much reason or goal (they often play pure-luck games). The first time I sat down to a game of Rummykub with them, I won the first three games in a row, and it wasn’t close. Fortunately I had the sense to pull back a bit, but then it was super boring. Finally I gave myself a new goal–each game, I mentally chose another player at the table and would subtly play to see if I could get them to win. I had about a 3/4 success rate on that, and the whole experience was more enjoyable for everyone.

How is it that technology has gone backwards in this area?

If it’s not “slam”, it’ll be something else just as bad. Be careful what you wish for, or it might be replaced with “obliterate” or “wreck” or something worse.

Instead, how about we get news outlets to stop writing ambiguously abbreviated headlines as if they still needed them to fit on a page? “Stud Tires Out” could mean two wildly different things, and you can easily fit a couple more words into the 80% of the screen you’ve filled with ads.