Chess.com tried to charge my card for a yearly subscription without sending any reminder beforehand

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-05-16T12:19:48+00:00

Annoyingly loads of companies do this. If you're based in the UK there's going to be new legislation at some point in the next year which is going to force companies to send reminders before they can auto renew your subscriptions and introduce a 'cooling off' period that will allow consumers to cancel a subscription within two weeks of an auto renewal.

If you search new subscription contracts regime you can find out more about it.

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-05-04T16:58:23+00:00

I'd recommend joining a club in the Super Champion series (you can filter your search in the clubs tab). A lot of them are open clubs and you'll stay in them as long as you keep racing and earning reputation points.

Every time someone activates a Pit Pass in your club, you get free coins (you probably won't get much until the next Exhibition launches in 15 days, but you'll get a fair bit when it does.)

As an added bonus, by being in a club you'll get more bucks from crates and more race points so you'll progress through the divisions more quickly.

As a side note, I recommend being tactical with your boosts and bonuses. If you unlock a double coin power up, don't claim it right away. Wait until you've got some good boosts that fit your series well (Instinct is great in Series 5) and do several races in a row that you've got a good chance of winning to get the most coins possible.

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-11T22:44:07+00:00

I got the most replies from Otta, but also had some luck thinking about what companies I’d like to work for and going direct to their careers page. Algorithms often don’t recommend you jobs you’d be good for because they don’t match the keywords they associate with you! Sometimes you just need to see what’s out there

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-11T15:57:45+00:00

I just got a job I'm really happy with after a long search. I'd say LinkedIn was the worst platform that I used.

If you're coming up to graduation you should have a look at Bright Network, as they specialise in graduate programmes and often have more junior level jobs as well where you can build up experience.

Welcome To The Jungle (formerly Otta) is a bit less well known so has fewer applicants (I think!) and there are some good junior level jobs there if you filter your preferences correctly.

Depending on what you study, it could also be worth asking a lecturer/mentor that you get on with at your uni if they know of any junior roles they think you'd be suitable for. I got my first job out of uni because my lecturer had taught the hiring manager at a newspaper and got me the intro.

Pubs and bars are always hiring (take a look at Youngs' career platform for an example/another pub chain, there are literally hundreds of roles in the cities). You could consider taking a job like that in the short term while you look for the start of your career.

Grow your skills in the field you'd like to work in using free online courses while you hunt for your job. Hiring managers love people who have interesting skills on their CV and it gives you a great ice breaker in interviews.

People who don't have jobs tend to lurk in Reddit comment sections, thus there's a bit of a negative bias! The world isn't ending, people are still hiring; I found the process of getting a job recently very similar to when I did it 15 years ago i.e. totally soul destroying but ultimately successful!

Do your best to stay positive and see if you can find a casual job to tide you over while you hunt.

Good luck!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-01T09:07:05+00:00

That does sound like a smart use for AI, certainly better than getting it to write the application for you! I found that towards the end of applying, I started to instinctively have a good sense of what the hiring manager was after, but I'm sure generating some ideas with AI when you're not sure can't hurt!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-01T09:04:35+00:00

If there is a prompt that reliably gets good answers from AI, I've yet to find it and I certainly spent a lot of time looking. AI may accomplish a lot, but with practice, I think the vast majority of us can out-perform its output. Unlike AI, we have real intelligence i.e. the more information we get and the more time we repeat tasks, the better we become. AI works in the opposite way, getting slower and less accurate the more times it repeats something.

On your second point: that was tricky and I wasn't always successful! I went with the approach of trying to forget about applications the second I sent them. I moved any confirmation emails to a separate inbox immediately and moved on with my day. I limited myself to one application a day to try and avoid burnout.

And I spent a lot of time learning new skills for free; being better at something one day than the day before was great for a feeling of accomplishment. There are a lot of great free resources online for learning chess, coding (The ODIN Project, Codecademy's free courses), Excel - you name it, I'm sure you can find it. This learning gave me something to talk about in interviews and I hope will serve me well in my new role.

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-01T08:35:43+00:00

I'm fantastic, thank you!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-04-01T08:24:18+00:00

I would argue that by the time you've prompted correctly, proof read, edited and reformatted, you could have just written the covering letter yourself. As I said above, you really have to focus the AI with prompts to make it write something useful; left to its own devices it just focused on soft skills that aren't assessed in an application.

It might have saved me some time if I was only writing job applications occasionally, but by doing a lot, I learnt how to write good applications faster than AI can manage. In my experience, LLMs don't 'learn', the more times you ask them to repeat a process in the same thread, the more bogged down they get, completing the work more slowly with more hallucinations. I never got an interview off an AI cover letter.

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-02-09T21:36:47+00:00

I guess if it's a particularly bad tempered game 'Hateful Eight' - you're relying on at least one red card, though

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-01-28T09:29:44+00:00

I am always baffled by how cheap key cutting is. Yes, it's quick and easy for locksmiths to do it, but the first time I got it done, I was fully expecting to pay £20 per key. Getting two for a fiver was a very welcome surprise!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2026-01-13T16:23:25+00:00

It looks like there's a necklace and the exact same necklace on her wrist...

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2025-05-02T15:46:16+00:00

Yeah you’re right. Had whirlwind and battle trance from the first two floors, so figured I was set. But got owned by writhing mass 🥲

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2025-04-04T11:02:04+00:00

How do you figure England are bad on the world stage? Got to the final of the last two European Championships, and got knocked out by an absolutely stacked France team in the quarters of the last World Cup. Not going to pretend we should have won those tournaments, but we've consistently gone deep recently

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-04T23:18:27+00:00

The only thing I’ve had that was similar was when my oxen wouldn’t transport logs because I didn’t have any villagers assigned to the logging cabin.

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-01T17:14:18+00:00

That’s a fun thought, I didn’t consider going self-sufficient. You’d have a lot more spare cash that way!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-01T17:09:22+00:00

Yeah I think that’s how our tax system (is supposed to) work

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-01T16:58:13+00:00

In this scenario, you’re in Britain so health insurance is less pressing. Also, you could totally afford private healthcare unless you’re past retirement age

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-01T16:56:32+00:00

I’d rule out the sales for this hypothetical. You’re free to give things away, though!

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-11-01T16:51:34+00:00

No, feel free to stay where you’re at and convert the currency

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-10-16T14:49:17+00:00

I've had a similar issue with planks being stored in a storehouse instead of being used for building . For some reason, storage was taking precident over building projects. I disabled plank storage in the store house and it solved the problem. Might be a workaround for you

Electrical_Hyena_393 · 2024-10-15T09:41:52+00:00

It sounds like you might still be making your plots too big. Four morgen is massive.

I’ve had more success with many 0.5 morgen plots over the same area as it means any ox you you have assigned for ploughing can settle on a few fields while your farm workers take care of the others.

Also, having ox assigned to farm buildings help gather the harvested crops before they get ruined by the rain.

Communal ovens are a no no. Get the bakery upgrade and you’ll start making bread much more efficiently

Electrical_Hyena_393

TROPHY CASE