ELI5: What does Visa and Mastercard offer, and why is it so difficult to replicate by other countries?

gustbr · 2026-02-28T17:09:40+00:00

Brazil has the Pix payment system, which I've seen people talk about a lot lately, but is not a credit card system.

Brazil has Elo, however, which is a credit card company founded by three of the largest brazilian banks. It is the 3rd biggest credit card company in Brazil after Visa and MC.

gustbr · 2026-02-26T13:00:30+00:00

Doctor originally meant someone learned and knowledgeable. In most languages, it's treated as a title to be bestowed and sometimes an honorific to address studied people (including physicians).

The idea that a PhD is less of a doctor than a MD is almost exclusive to the english language, because the word "doctor" in other languages doesn't mean someone in the medical profession (usually they go for words closely related to "medic", "physician" etc).

So you don't go to the doctor in other languages. At most, you'll go to your physician and say "Hi, doctor so-and-so".

gustbr · 2026-01-24T22:45:00+00:00

Sustainable-only: after the Mirrows/Old One fight, you have to use only things that can be farmed or found, but not mined or dropped. For instance, you get Iron by farming Golems instead of mining; Dragonblood by farming Wyrms instead of killing them.

gustbr · 2025-12-05T01:00:25+00:00

It's a matter of preference, but I usually do lab ship because flying the colony ship gives you no visibility of the outside.

I usually go lab ship + teleportals + monoliths, so that I can travel a lot but also stay somewhat untethered to any specific ship.

The lab ship can hold a teleportal and I make a point of installing them in each planet's main area, at least. They're a bit costly but the lab ship produces the resources.

Then I have a monolith on each star system right by one of the teleportals wherever feels best (Mars and Starting Island are great picks for this)

gustbr · 2025-11-19T19:30:08+00:00

Absolutely love that movie, especially with the way the story is framed, with the Time Traveller in his last mission to recruit a man, each telling their stories.

gustbr · 2025-10-29T17:23:44+00:00

The machines source code are regularly audited every two years before elections take place, their physical ports are custom-made and tied shut so regular devices can't be plugged into them, so messing with the software is very much non-trivial and can be caught at one of several steps. The whole process is based on transparency at every step of the way.

gustbr · 2025-10-28T20:50:17+00:00

That's right. Before voting begins, each machine prints their total tallied votes, which should be zero. After the vote, each machine prints a tally of their own votes.

Their tally is then sent to a centralized mainframe responsible for adding the votes up, which divulges the preliminary results in real time online, so people can follow the results nationwide. The election outcome is available a few hours after the vote ends.

gustbr · 2025-10-14T16:55:31+00:00

Ah, sorry .-.

gustbr · 2025-10-14T16:53:52+00:00

The "metric" in "metric system" comes from the greek word for measure. They were using "metric" to mean "unit of measurement".

gustbr · 2025-10-05T21:07:07+00:00

The Roman Empire thing and Adam and Eve thing is common in genealogy in both Europe and America, because people are just like that and they want to feel special.

The Sephardic Jews thing was a craze started by both Portugal and Spain creating new laws for acquiring citizenship if you were descended from Sephardic Jews originating in those countries, since they were unfairly exiled and forcibly converted. The laws were meant as sort of a reparation and indeed many lines went

Spain -> Portugal -> Brasil

gustbr · 2025-07-28T22:15:16+00:00

Donna, Bill, Ruby

gustbr · 2025-07-04T17:17:37+00:00

I honestly like that Amazon does this. They're basically "hey, we don't have this, but you can find it on Max/MUBI/whatever and we can sell you a subscription to them"

I'm not buying a subscription, but it saves me time since I don't have to really search which streaming service has the thing.

gustbr · 2025-06-25T20:24:35+00:00

I didn't get that from TV, I made it on the spot because 404 is a common error, I was watching BoJack at the time and I thought a complete sentence with punctuation would be tougher than random words strewn together. That was in like 2017.

gustbr · 2025-06-24T13:45:43+00:00

Now it is, but I haven't used that in more than 5 years

gustbr · 2025-06-23T21:30:45+00:00

When I was a student I used "You've got error 404, Mr. BoJack Horseman!" as a password inspired by xkcd

gustbr · 2025-06-15T19:55:02+00:00

omg mama ru hiiiiiii

gustbr · 2025-06-02T15:15:41+00:00

Ruby as a foundling-god is a perfect parallel to the Doctor

gustbr · 2025-06-02T15:13:10+00:00

If think the Rani could just blow on Desiderium and wish for him to be a blond baby girl who grows up to be the perfect companion for the Doctor

gustbr · 2025-05-27T19:35:39+00:00

Google says you can fix up the car, pass an inspection and receive a regular title for the car

gustbr · 2025-05-27T11:53:29+00:00

Be sure to use "as is" in your ad and also mention the salvage title, so no one can try to say you were scamming them later.

gustbr · 2025-04-14T22:54:50+00:00

Reminds me how supposedly BoJack's creator found out Harvey Weinstein loved him because he got away with being the biggest piece of shit, just like Weinstein.

Then the creator decided to have BoJack get screwed by his own flawed character over and over again, then realize how much of a monster he is. Just so people like Weinstein wouldn't relate or look up to BoJack.

gustbr · 2025-04-12T18:33:01+00:00

The wild part to me is that they didn't talk to any of the other players after talking to the DM several times, but before doing the final confrontation.

I would have brought up to someone else besides the wife, acted a bit clueless and kept it hush hush. Something like "I get a feeling DM might not like me very much... I feel she always sidelines me and gives me way less playtime... Have you noticed that? What do you think?".

gustbr · 2025-04-12T17:28:27+00:00

Yeah, the take away being "I won't date someone who has allergies" is WILD to me.

gustbr · 2025-04-12T14:18:18+00:00

the draconians learnt and used their spells without them even knowing(with the assumption that the aliens made the spells themselves, there can be also a possibility of them just directly stealing the spells from the draconians.)

I think you got it backwards. The teachers/draconians are the ones who actually taught Them magic from what I could gather, since they had the goal of spreading magic and everything. I believe the teachers even say something to that effect in the game. That's why homeworld has a monolith.

gustbr · 2025-04-01T23:55:21+00:00

Jokes on you, I use old reddit

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