So, long story short, my cousins and I have never been that close. But when I got pregnant last year they all took it upon themselves to throw me a baby shower. I was really surprised and appreciative of it, they got me some awesome gifts and afterwards I sent them some heartfelt thank you cards. So fast forward to a month later, I give birth. I sent out some pictures and texts letting the family know that he was here. Nobody really cared.. nobody came to see me, nobody congratulated me. And it's been almost a year and I still text them from time to time asking how they are, and I don't ever hear back from them. So I guess I just want some advice on family dynamics? Were they just trying to put on a weird show by throwing me a baby shower? I have no idea. I've always felt isolated from them anyways, but it's been bothering me. Thanks for listening to my rant, lol.

What is Power over Ethernet (PoE)?

PoE is a technology that can transmit power and data to devices through twisted pair cables in Ethernet.

What devices can you connect to a PoE switch?

A PoE switch comes equipped with numerous Ethernet ports that are capable of connecting various devices, including VoIP phones, wireless access points, and IP cameras.

How does PoE work?

The PoE power supply system consists of two primary equipment roles:

• Power-sourcing equipment (PSE): Typically a PoE switch, this device supplies power to the powered devices through Ethernet. It provides functions such as detection, analysis, and intelligent power management.
• Powered devices (PD): These devices include wireless APs, portable device chargers, card readers, cameras, and other powered devices. Depending on whether they comply with IEEE standards, PD can be categorized as standard or non-standard.

When should I use a PoE switch?

The increasing prevalence of the Internet of Things and smart cities has led to a surge in the number of mobile terminals, including wireless APs, cameras, and IP phones. These devices can be deployed in various locations, making it challenging to provide them with power through traditional wiring methods, which often results in high costs.
Moreover, in large-scale LAN applications, administrators often have to manage multiple terminal devices in the same time. These devices require a unified power supply and management. However, due to the limitations of power supply locations, this can create significant inconvenience in power supply management. PoE technology effectively resolves this problem.

Typical scenarios for using PoE switches:

1. VoIP phones: If your organization uses a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone system, these phones need to transmit data and power at the same time, so using a PoE switch can simplify wiring and reduce the number of devices.
2. Network cameras: When installing IP cameras, you can provide power and data connections to the camera through a single Ethernet cable without the need for additional power cables.
3. Wireless access points: PoE switches can be used to provide power to wireless access points (APs). This way, you can install the AP in the best location without being restricted by the location of the power outlet.
4. Industrial automation equipment: In industrial environments, use PoE switches to power automation equipment, sensors, and controllers.
5. Digital signage and lighting: PoE switches can provide power for devices such as digital signage or LED lighting used in offices, stores, or other places.

PoE Standards Introduction

In order to standardize the development of PoE power supply technology, and to solve the compatibility problem between power supply and powered devices from different manufacturers, IEEE Standards Committee has released three PoE standards: from 802.3af in 2003 to 802.3at in 2009, and then to the latest 802.3bt in 2018, the new standard is backward compatible.

IEEE 802.3af

IEEE 802.3af, also known as standard PoE, has a supply voltage of 44-57V and a supply current of 10-350mA. It specifies that PSE devices need to provide up to 15.4W of DC power on each port. However, some power is lost on the Ethernet cable in actual transmission. Thus, only 12.95W is available to the powered device. It can support VoIP phones, APs, etc.

IEEE 802.3at

In October 2009, in order to meet the needs of high-power terminals, the IEEE 802.3at standard was born. On the basis of being compatible with the 802.3af standard, the IEEE 802.3at standard provides up to 30W of power to meet new needs.Its supply voltage of PoE+ ranges from 50V to 57V and the supply current is about10-600mA. Due to power loss, the guaranteed minimum output power on each port is 25W. This type can support devices that require more power like tablets, alarm systems, etc.

IEEE 802.3bt

In September 2018, the IEEE Standards Committee released the IEEE 802.3bt standard to further improve PoE power .It further enhances the power supply capability, with Type 3 providing up to 51 W power supply and Type 4 providing up to 71.3W power supply. Also included support for 2.5GBASE-T, 5GBASE-T, and 10GBASE-T, expanding the use of applications such as high-performance wireless access points and surveillance cameras and other applications.
Generally, IEEE 802.3af standard is called PoE power supply, the IEEE 802.3at standard is called PoE+ power supply, and the IEEE 802.3bt standard is called PoE++ power supply, also known as 4PPoE. The parameters corresponding to the three power supply technologies are shown in the figure below.
Asterfusion Network Switches Comply with Various PoE Standards

What are the benefits of using a PoE switch?

Although PoE power supply cannot improve the quality and speed of the network, it greatly expands the deployment scenarios of Internet access devices. The PoE function also brings many other advantages, including:

● Cost reduction

Power is provided directly through the network cable, which significantly reduces the number of power sockets required for installing network devices and the resulting power wiring, which can reduce access costs and deployment costs.

● Flexibility

Without being connected to a power socket, devices such as surveillance cameras, wireless access points, and IP network phones can be placed in any ideal location, and are easy to move, which improves deployment flexibility. At the same time, the powered device can be remotely managed by controlling the PoE power supply device to perform operations such as power off and restart, which improves management flexibility.

● Security

Using standard-compliant PoE power supply can intelligently protect network devices from overload and insufficient power supply, and naturally avoid the potential risks caused by incorrect power supply installation.

● Ease of use

The relevant standards for PoE power supply are backward compatible, and standard-compliant power supply and powered devices can negotiate parameters on their own, providing a nearly “plug and play” experience.

● Reliability

The PoE power supply end can perform power redundancy backup through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), ensuring continuous operation even during a main power failure.

Benefits of SONiC-base Layer 3 POE++ switch

PoE++ can provide up to 90 watts of power. It can meet the network requirements of industrial automation, data centers and other environments because it can achieve more efficient power transmission and reduce power loss, and supports power priority (power can be allocated to key devices first) and device discovery (allowing PSE to detect and verify connected devices). In these complex environments, three-layer switches have many advantages such as fast speed and good performance, and are highly favored by people. SONiC, as a popular open source network operating system, is also widely used in large-scale user scenarios due to its scalability and ease of use.
There are limited manufacturers on the market that can provide three-layer PoE++ switches, and even fewer manufacturers that can adapt to SONiC. Asterfusion’s self-developed 3-layer POE++ switches have excellent performance.
These open network switches are preloaded with a feature-rich SONiC NOS ( AsterNOS) which is a container-based application deployment . It makes the switch easy to expand new functionalities even by users. It supports wire-speed Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing with MC-LAG feature, comprehensive QoS, advanced security and complete network management .Asterfusion PoE/PoE+ /POE++ switches can power any 802.3af or 802.3at 802.3bt device of the market, enable them flexible and secure.
Asterfusion now has 8 port Gigabit /16 port Gigabit /24 port Gigabit /48 port Gigbit PoE /PoE+/POE++ switches that follow with the PoE standard for greater security and better functionality.
The Following Table lists Asterfusion 24/48 Ports Gigabit PoE/PoE+/POE++ Switches.
PoE StandardAsterfusion PoE Switch ModelPortSwitch CapacityPower BudgetPSUFans 802.3atCX102S-8GT-M-SWP8x1GBase-T, 2x10Gb SFP+ ports28Gbps150W12 802.3at/btCX102S-16GT-M-SWP16x1GBase-T,2x10Gb SFP+ ports36Gbps150W12 802.3at/btCX102S-16GT-DPU-M-SWP16x1GBase-T, 2x10Gb SFP+ ports36Gbps150W12 802.3at/btCX204Y-24GT-M-SWP224x1GBase-T,4x25Gb/10Gb SFP28 ports124Gbps370W13 802.3at/btCX204Y-48GT-M-SWP448 x 1G base-T , 4 x 25GE SFP28 ports148Gbps740W13 802.3at/btCX206Y-48GT-M-HWP448x1G BASE-T ,6x25Gb/10G SFP28 ports198Gbps740W23 802.3at/btCX206Y-48GT-M-HWP848x1G BASE-T ,6x25Gb/10G SFP28 ports198Gbps1440W23

How to choose the right PoE switch for your needs?

There are several factors you should consider when choosing the number of PoE ports for your push button. These include the number of current and future devices, scalability, power budget, and network architecture. By evaluating these factors, you can choose a PoE switch that will perfectly match your network needs.

Other Questions and Answers

What is the difference between a Gigabit PoE switch and a PoE switch?

When considering the difference between a Gigabit PoE switch and a PoE switch, it’s important to assess the specific needs of the network. If the network environment does not require high-speed transmission and the distance is short, a PoE switch can be chosen. However, if higher transmission speed and coverage are needed, especially with future expansion plans, selecting a Gigabit PoE switch would be more appropriate. Therefore, the most suitable PoE switch should be chosen based on the actual network requirements, budget considerations, and future expansion plans to ensure stable and efficient network operation.
PoE switchGigabit PoE switch Transfer SpeedSupports a maximum transmission speed of 100MbpsSupports a maximum transmission speed of 1000Mbps (1Gbps) Transfer DistanceThe transmission distance is generally shortUnder the same conditions, it can support longer transmission distance Applicable SceneSuitable for some scenarios with low transmission speed requirements and short transmission distance, such as general home networks, small offices, etc.Suitable for scenarios with high requirements for transmission speed and large coverage, such as enterprise-level networks, large office buildings, etc.

What is the difference between a PoE switch and a normal switch?

With PoE technology, there is no need to provide separate power supplies for terminal devices as long as there is a network environment. PoE ensures the normal operation of the terminal devices by providing power through the network cables.
In contrast, normal switch devices cannot provide power support for terminal devices. For them to operate properly, they must be powered by external sources such as power sockets or adapters.
Compared to normal switch, PoE switch significantly reduces the need for extensive power cable installation, simplifies the overall line installation process, and facilitates maintenance in the long run. However, PoE switch does require terminal devices to have the capability to receive power through network cables.
Currently, PoE switch has made significant advancements in industries such as security, IT, medical, and education, thereby promoting industry growth. Users should choose between PoE switch and normal switch based on their specific needs and industry characteristics.
There is a physical picture of Asterfusion’s PoE switches:

Can a standard PoE switch be used as a normal switch?

According to the PoE power supply principle, a standard PoE switch(Active PoE switch), can identify whether the connected device needs power supply, and can usually disable the PoE function through software, so it can be used as a normal switch. Non-standard PoE switches(Passive PoE switches), usually output a DC voltage with constant power at the port. Connecting normal devices may cause the risk of damaging the device, so such switches are not recommended for use in non-PoE scenarios.

Can a normal switch obtain PoE function through software upgrade?

The PoE function needs to rely on hardware functions to be implemented, so the PoE function of the switch cannot be obtained through software version upgrades. For application scenarios where normal switches need to access PoE devices, connecting PoE injectors between the device and the switch is a feasible transition solution. PoE Injectors require independent power supply. The input interface is connected to the normal switch through a network cable, and the output interface can output a data signal with a certain power superimposed on it, so that the non-PoE device can achieve the functions of communication and power supply.

Is the PoE device safe?

According to the principle of PoE power supply, as long as the PoE function adheres to the IEEE 802.3 af/at/bt standard, it is considered safe. For instance, even if a non-PoE device is connected when the PoE function is enabled, it will not be harmed. As mentioned earlier, after a successful “handshake,” the PSE will transmit the required power to the PD based on the agreed parameters. Otherwise, power transmission will not occur. Since this process is well-defined in the IEEE 802.3 af/at/bt standards, PoE power supply methods that conform to these standards are deemed safe and reliable. The Asterfusion PoE equipment also features a PoE detection alarm function, which stops power supply in case of PD device overload, short circuit, threshold exceedance, or chip temperature surpassing a certain threshold, offering further safety protection.

Will PoE impact network speed?

PoE allows fulfilling power supply and network transmission requirements over a single line simultaneously, without impacting network speed. Ethernet signals are differential signals, and PoE loads power on 2 or 4 pairs of differential signal lines without altering the signal level difference between the pairs. Hence, power supply and communication do not interfere with each other.

What is the maximum distance for PoE power supply?

PoE typically has distance limitations for power and data transmission. On standard Cat5e and Cat6 Ethernet cables, the maximum transmission distance is 100 meters or 328 feet. It’s essential to ensure that the distance between the power supply equipment (PSE) and the powered device (PD) does not exceed this range. If a longer distance is required, additional extension devices or technologies may be necessary to extend the power supply distance.

How to determine the required power for PoE power supply devices?

Taking a PoE switch as an example, the total power output of the switch’s PoE ports is limited. Typically, the selection is based on the PoE switch’s total power output, the rated power required by the powered devices, and the number of ports required. When connecting PD devices with multiple power requirements, it is necessary to determine in advance whether the total power output of the PoE switch can be greater than the total input power of all connected PD devices, and whether the PoE switch supports the corresponding power level standard.
To illustrate, consider a PoE switch meeting the 802.3at standard with a total output power of 130W for 8 ports. According to the 802.3af standard, a single port of the PSE device can output a maximum power of 15.4W. Hence, the device can meet the needs of all 8 ports connected to 802.3af standard PD devices. Under the 802.3at standard, the PSE device needs to provide a maximum power of 30W per port, allowing connection to a maximum of only 4 802.3at devices requiring 30W power supply. Therefore, when selecting a model, it is essential to consider standard compatibility, the number of interfaces, and whether the PoE power supply device’s total output power meets the requirements. This prevents the issue of standard compatibility but insufficient power supply due to insufficient device load capacity.

What are Active PoE and Passive PoE?

Active PoE and Passive PoE are two different types of PoE based on the compliance with IEEE 802.3 standards and the PoE power supply principle.

Active PoE(Standard PoE)

Active PoE is an Ethernet power supply technology that negotiates the appropriate voltage during device connection. Active PoE switches adhere to the IEEE 802.3 standard and perform a series of tests and checks before providing power, ensuring compatibility with the remote device (PD device). This communication negotiation process is sometimes referred to as a “handshake.” If compatibility is not established, the active PoE switch will refrain from providing power to avoid potential damage to non-PoE devices.
Taking the Asterfusion CX204Y-24GT-M-SWP2 as an example, the Asterfusion PoE switch offers a range of advanced technologies to safeguard network basic protocols against malicious attacks, such as DHCP Snooping, dynamic ARP detection, ND Snooping, IPSGv4/v6, and more. Moreover, it supports port isolation technology and ACL policies in both outbound and inbound directions, ensuring a secure and flexible networking solution for users. Additionally, the switch implements MAB authentication, which restricts unauthorized devices like printers and IP phones from illegitimately accessing the network. In summary, Active PoE presents a safer and more intelligent Ethernet power supply approach.

Passive PoE(Non-standard PoE)

Unlike Active PoE, Passive PoE functions as a straightforward Ethernet power supply (PoE) system without involving negotiations between the power supply equipment (PSE) and the powered device (PD). It delivers power continuously to the connected device through the Ethernet cable, bypassing protocol checks. Instead, the power adapter’s wires connect directly to the network cable, merging the power interface of the powered device with the network port. Although Passive PoE lacks standardized technical specifications and negotiation mechanisms, it offers a simple and direct power supply method suitable for specific application scenarios.
In summary, Passive PoE provides a straightforward and direct power supply method, which can be beneficial in certain specialized situations , a family scene with a limited budget , for example.
Active PoE SwitchPassive PoE Switch StandardIEEE 802.3af/at/btN/A Power InjectionAfter NegotiationImmediately Power Supply ModePoE Mode A/PoE Mode B/4-Pair PoEPoE Mode B Ethernet Support10/100/1000BASE-T10/100BASE-T Max. Distance100m100m SafetyHighLow CostMediumLow

I (M27) think I'm falling for a girl I can't have. She's in Europe (lives in my hometown) and I'm in the US (moved here 7 years ago). We used to work for the same company here in the states about 2 years ago. She since left the company and the country. I didn't shoot my shot when she was here because it didn't feel right at the time and, to be honest, I did not consider her as a potential gf. I wasn't even looking for a relationship then. Now that we reconnected on social media and text almost daily, I can't but wonder if I missed my opportunity. Any interaction we have just brings the warmest feeling and a huge grin to my face. I haven't specifically told her that I like her in that way, nor did she say anything like that, but we sent many flirty messages to each other during these past 5 months. I am pretty sure she knows I like her, I just don't know if it's mutual. We exchange pictures (not nudes) just pictures that support whatever we are talking about in the moment (like reactions to memes and stuff). She sent me a fun letter (like mailed an actual letter written on paper) about her past relationship experience. She included a couple of printed pictures of herself in that envelope and sprayed it with her perfume. I mailed her a post card for the Bday and she says she's checking that mailbox multiple times a day. She's beautiful, confident, very outgoing, and we have the same sense of humor. The other day she mentioned that she can see the possibility of her coming to the US in the future. And later she said that she might want to move to a different country, but didn't specify where to exactly. I keep thinking about inviting her to visit me, however all these clues and signals from her might be just the unrealistic idea of her I created in my head, and I can't figure our what is real and what is made up by me. It's quite an expensive trip and quite a huge thing to ask someone. I don't know if it's even fair to suggest such a thing. I wish I could be direct and just ask her how she feels about me, but it's So Damn Hard Man. And I know if I don't ask I will 100% regret it. No woman ever made me feel this way, not in the last 5 years at least. I don't know what to think or do in this situation. I might just go ahead ask how she feels and if it hurts it hurts. The idea of her is intoxicating. Please help. What would you do? How would you go about finding out whether this is mutual?
Just in case, apologies for any bad English. I am still perfecting it.

I’ve lost so many things over the years, a ridiculous number of cell phones, purses, backpacks, passports, my debit card.
But it’s been a while since I lost something that wasn’t easily replaceable or traceable.
Everyone(i.e. my mother) thought it was silly to go back. But for some reason I was convinced I was going to find it. And if I didn’t I probably would just want to go home and cry. But it was there! Being watched over by an older toothless gentleman, who was taking pictures of it. I was like wow this man kept it safe… nope he had been there for ten minutes and was about see something say something.
My ss card, my work card were all in there. I just feel really lucky.

My bag was stolen while eating at fast food. Included in the bag are:
PWD ID - it has my full name, birthday, house address, emergency contact which is my wife and her phone number, also signature. Already have an affidavit of loss for this.
Company ID - it has my name and my wife and our address as contact number, I signature. Already got an affidavit of loss for this
1 ATM and 2 credit card - these are already permanently blocked.
3 health cards - I've already informed my company and wife's company. I'm assuming they knew how to handle this as they will issue a new card and hopefully deactivated the stolen cards.
1 house keys and 1 car keys - we already changed all the locks in the house and on the process of changing the ignition and locks of the vehicle. Currently we are parking the vehicle with stolen car keys inside our driveway and block it with our other car, this is until we have changed the car keys.
I'm over thinking right now that they can use the PWD ID and company ID to make loans or open accounts on OLA. They can perhaps edit the pictures and practice my signature? We also have a police report but by my wife, I'm a PWD so I wasn't able to write that's why my wife was the one who filled up the police report. Are the police report and the 2 affidavit of loss for the 2 IDs enough to protect myself?

Hey all jsut upgraded my rig to AM5 so selling my MB and CPU and Ram, plus some other things taht god left out as I downsized my SFF. Currently the Ram, CPU, and Mobo are still put together, So ill do a bundle price if you want it all but im also willing to part it out:
All Timestamps: https://imgur.com/a/gRVle60

• ROG Strix X570-I Gaming [200$] Love this thing to death, still kicks ass has no IO shield tho
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) [50$] Sold
• AMD Ryzen 7 5700G 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor [135$]
• Noctua NH-L9a-AM4, Low-Profile CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 [20$]
• ^ ALL that above not parted out ill do [320$] It got parted out

Some Misc Things From Leftover Builds (please take these or give me a OBO they just sit around my house collecting dust)

• 2 x NF-F12 120mm Nocuta Fans [15$ for one, 20$ for both] Sold
• Silverstone SX700-PT 700 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply (I dont even know where I got this, comes with a 20% off cable mod code) [80$]
• NZXT Kraken X53 [80$]
• In Win Chopin [Free just pay shipping] (Has like 90% of the parts, idk where they went also comes with a misc screws that may be related to it idk just take it)

Other things that I am trying to sell

• Bose Quiet Comfort 35 Series 2 [125$] (has a few nicks as it was my everyday wear for a while but still works great)
• Nintendo Wii [80$] (No controllers but has all the important bits, power cable sensor bar) + comes with a bunch of games mario kart, lego star wars, (see img for more)
• 2 x Rasberry Pi 4 model B both come with a 64gb micro sd card [40$ a piece, or 60$ for both]

Some closing notes. Everything on the list comes with its original box execpet the ram and cpu cooler. If you want also just give me a OBO for everything. Also random note if you have a DJ deck that you are willing to trade lemme know. All prices do NOT include shipping, and I will proritrize local pickup if someone is local vs shipping. Please PM if you have any specific questions or want more in depth pictures of anything

I'd like to find someone who captivates me. Someone who I can talk with effortlessly. I want to meet a person who I can include in my daily tasks, and talk with throughout the day. I just want to find someone I can be open with. Platonic conversation or romance. Whatever you are looking for, don't hesitate to message me. I hope to hear from you.
I love a number of things, and hate very little. I'm fairly open to trying new things, but some of the things I enjoy are as follows. I love the outdoors. I've never been camping, but I would like to try it with someone some day. I also love to fish. I mostly fish salt water. I do occasionally fish freshwater though. I like to check out new spots around me, but I mostly fish on the beach. Do you like to fish? What are some of your favorite places to go?
I also enjoy the shooting sports. I primarily target shoot. I take part in a little bit of everything, including rifle, pistol and shotgun. It would be nice to find someone who is into shooting or would like to learn/become more familiar. If you shoot, what do you like to shoot mostly? What's been your favorite gun to shoot so far?
PC games are also a enjoyable pastime for me. I have a variety of games, most of which are on Steam. I have other games on various other stores/services. I enjoy a wide variety of different kind of games, so I'm sure we can find something to play together if you game. What are some of your all time favorite games? What are you currently grinding on that you can't put down? One hobby I discovered later on in life is Magic the Gathering. I play both online on MtG Arena, and with physical cards. Magic has become something I am particularly fond of. Do you play any kind of card/table top games? What's been your favorite so far? If you play Magic, what are some of your favorite deck themes?
Music has always been a part of my life. My tastes are varied, ranging from country, death and black metal, electronic, classic rock, folk, pop punk, and more. Do you have a favorite band? What has been your favorite concert you've been to?
I'm honestly an ambivert. I enjoy doing things outside, as well as spending time indoors. I can veg out all day under the covers curled up in my bed, or I can take a trip somewhere and experience something new. I think my personality is a mix of the best of both worlds. What would the perfect day consist of for you?
As far as my personality is concerned, I would say I am fairly relaxed and laid back. I feel like I am somewhere in the middle between loud and excitable, and shy and quiet. Around people I don't know, I tend to be fairly quiet and to myself. In the company of someone who I am close with, I am more open and free. Do you open right up to people, or does it take a while to become comfortable with someone new?
All I hope for is a connection. It could be platonic, or it could blossom into romance, and commitment. I'm not putting a limit on what I am looking for.
With the prior being said, I am single. I may be interested in changing that with the right person. The idea of commitment excites me. Monogamy is appealing to me. Do you feel satisfied with your social life? What kind of connection are you looking for?
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I appreciate it. I hope you can identify with something I wrote. If you do, please reach out.
P.S. Please feel free to check my post history, and check out a few pictures of my cat if you would like.

I'd like to find someone who captivates me. Someone who I can talk with effortlessly. I want to meet a person who I can include in my daily tasks, and talk with throughout the day. I just want to find someone I can be open with. Platonic conversation or romance. Whatever you are looking for, don't hesitate to message me. I hope to hear from you.
I love a number of things, and hate very little. I'm fairly open to trying new things, but some of the things I enjoy are as follows. I love the outdoors. I've never been camping, but I would like to try it with someone some day. I also love to fish. I mostly fish salt water. I do occasionally fish freshwater though. I like to check out new spots around me, but I mostly fish on the beach. Do you like to fish? What are some of your favorite places to go?
I also enjoy the shooting sports. I primarily target shoot. I take part in a little bit of everything, including rifle, pistol and shotgun. It would be nice to find someone who is into shooting or would like to learn/become more familiar. If you shoot, what do you like to shoot mostly? What's been your favorite gun to shoot so far?
PC games are also a enjoyable pastime for me. I have a variety of games, most of which are on Steam. I have other games on various other stores/services. I enjoy a wide variety of different kind of games, so I'm sure we can find something to play together if you game. What are some of your all time favorite games? What are you currently grinding on that you can't put down? One hobby I discovered later on in life is Magic the Gathering. I play both online on MtG Arena, and with physical cards. Magic has become something I am particularly fond of. Do you play any kind of card/table top games? What's been your favorite so far? If you play Magic, what are some of your favorite deck themes?
Music has always been a part of my life. My tastes are varied, ranging from country, death and black metal, electronic, classic rock, folk, pop punk, and more. Do you have a favorite band? What has been your favorite concert you've been to?
I'm honestly an ambivert. I enjoy doing things outside, as well as spending time indoors. I can veg out all day under the covers curled up in my bed, or I can take a trip somewhere and experience something new. I think my personality is a mix of the best of both worlds. What would the perfect day consist of for you?
As far as my personality is concerned, I would say I am fairly relaxed and laid back. I feel like I am somewhere in the middle between loud and excitable, and shy and quiet. Around people I don't know, I tend to be fairly quiet and to myself. In the company of someone who I am close with, I am more open and free. Do you open right up to people, or does it take a while to become comfortable with someone new?
All I hope for is a connection. It could be platonic, or it could blossom into romance, and commitment. I'm not putting a limit on what I am looking for.
With the prior being said, I am single. I may be interested in changing that with the right person. The idea of commitment excites me. Monogamy is appealing to me. Do you feel satisfied with your social life? What kind of connection are you looking for?
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I appreciate it. I hope you can identify with something I wrote. If you do, please reach out.
P.S. Please feel free to check my post history, and check out a few pictures of my cat if you would like.

My crazy story of being cheated on
Hi, I made a couple of posts about my current love life that I deleted, I was cheated on 10 years ago and I wanted to vent a little and let it be a lesson so similar things won’t happen to y’all. It’s long but maybe you can read a little everyday as “chapters” lol.
You’ll see I was very very stupid and I can see that as I type it all. Most of you will read it and think I was an actual idiot to let it all happen the way it happened: I was in love, I kind of thought that only happened to people that was weird and twisted. Maybe I thought that only proof of her fucking another dude was “real” cheating .I was also lost on money problems and my mother’s sickness and I guess at some point I was in some deep denial and after that even just amused to see what would happen next just waiting for a “real” reason to leave. Some of you might believe me because maybe you felt similar things.
I married a girl I met when I was 14, she was 15. Through several years she tried to be my grilfriend and I wasn’t quite sure and we met from time to time to catch up. When I was 26 we met again and I decided that i wanted to give it a try, we started dating. She was my very first girlfriend and we married when I was 30.
I loved her and I was comited to the relationship, I never thought either of us could cheat,I was never jealous and I always believed what she told me until…
I
I worked at home and she worked as social worker, she had a car. She used to come home at 11 and one day she got home like 4 hours later, she never called me, said her phone had no power and she got lost in traffic and that was it, I don’t remember she handling it like it was a big deal. I had been worried that she had been involved on some accident or something that I was relieved when she got home. I wasn’t a partygoer type and she had expressed her wish to go out drinking and dancing, so I thought maybe she had gone to some bar with her work friends or something and I thought that was the worse that could’ve happened.
II
The very next day I’m sleeping at our bed and she’s on another room, her cell phone vibrates and I see a message that says “have a nice day” from “Dr. Omar”. When she enters the room I tell her Dr. Omar said hi and she starts telling me that he works with her and that’s where I start to worry…kind of. Facebook was starting to be popular and I look him up and when I see his picture I think that if my wife cheated on me with him, she would be crazy. I even tell her and she laughs and we brush it off.
III
You will think I’m very very stupid, but when this happened, I became worried but I rather took it as a weird reason to play Sherlock Holmes, thinking I wouldn’t really find anything. I installed a sotware to record what was typed on the house computer (I know) but I could only see what was typed, not where or if the other person replied.
With the software, I find my wife has an e-mail account I didnt’t know about, and she uses it to… get chain e-mails from this guy? I access the account but I only find jokes and lame “motivational” messages forwarded to her (this was back when people forwarded power point files). The worst was a mail about women wearing kinky dresses and the file asks what’s your favorite, he replied “the nurse costume”.
Back then cell phones didn’t have so many security features as now, but they also didn’t store so many messages or have social media on them. I get the Dr’s phone to see if he makes calls to the house or whatever. one night I decide to call him from my cell phone, just to, i dunno, wake him up and bother him. I say nothing.
Next day, when my wife returns from work, she is angry and tells me I embarrassed her in front of many coworkers because the Dr. said that someone called him late at night and when he shows them the number she sees it’s mine. I actually thought that she could have just said nothing, right? but she says she told’em all it was my number. She’s very angry, but then I told her “Oh, I called him because I saw you have an e-mail account just to write to him”. Then she changes her attitude completely and starts acting submissive. Later I asked her in front of how many coworkers this happened and she says: “He just told me, no one else was there”.
By know, you know how stupid I was, but I still just thought she had made that account to… be rebellious? I couldn’t believe she0d bang that dude or anything.
Around this time, she crashed her car and had to wear a neck piece and stay home. I don’t remember how I knew but she called him one day i left the house, she said she called him to ask her about health issues regarding the accident. I told her “yu work with many other doctors and your mother is a nurse!” I know, i know…
I started going to her work to pick her up at random times and I ran into the doctor a couple of times, he seemed terrified of me, but still, I couldn0t believe there was something else to their relationship…
IV
At her work she had another young coworker who i knew. Once she was on vacation and the guy had an aciident. She wanted to go to her job to give him some paperwork he needed and I told her that It’d look weird to people since she wasn’t her girlfriend or wife and she had asked to be on vacation and then she went running to her workplace to see that dude? The agreement we made was that I’d give him the paperwork, not at her job but at a halfway point. When i got back home she told me she told her mom about the situation and that her mom agreed with me that she shouldn’t have gone herself.
Regarding this dude, I never saw messages or anything. At some point there was an office party that she told me only workers could attend but later on she told me I could go with her. During that party she danced a lot with that dude and they were even kind of gone for some time when I was stuck with some talkative dude. I never thought much of it until other things happened.
V
By now you must think I was an idiot. Well, I discoverd she sent a picture of her boobs to yet another guy, this time a guy she knew from school. This time I confronted her, she did the thing where they ask you how much you know to know what to tell you. First she though I’d just found the pic and told me “it was for you” until I told her i knew she sent i to some dude (also, you must realize she was stupid too to keep using the same computer!). This time we did argue, but it was around the time she crashed, I wanted to leave but she grabbed me and I didn’t want to push her and injure her, so we ended up at the fllor doing some pathetic thing where I wanted to leave and she didn’t let me.
When she trusted I’d stay and got away from me, I left. But I came back and somehow the routine made me stay. I still somehow thought she had just sent a picture, not actually banged a guy.
That’s where she gaslighted me with “I0ve been feeling ignored” and fuck I even started trying to be more romantic and take her out more often!
VI
During all this I become more and more obsessed about “seeing what’s going on”, I started showing by her job at unexpected times, I kept watching the computer register, I bought a digital recorder that I didn0t even use…
VII
Once I thought I read some e-mail where she told some dude from school she’d meet him. I even told her around those days but she denied it, she didn’t get mad or deffensive which made me doubt.
VII
By that time my main concern was that I wasn’t making enough money, we were trying to have a baby, we were on treatment with one doctor, then another. That also messed with my mind, how could I be cheated with someone who anted to have my baby?
Once she came home with some flower arrangement and she told me she won it on a raffle, the flowers didn’t look a lot like something a lover would give as a gift, but I didn’t believe the story. On the pot I found a card (?) that said “for your desk” with the name of the flowershop. I called saying that a friend had been given a nice arrangemente form their shop and I wanted to know the model, I said “they were sento to (my wife’s name), They told me that they did send them to her but obviosuly when I asked if they know who sent them they didn’t tell me.
When we were on fertility treatment we changed doctor, from a female doctor to a male doctor friend of hers. We ent to a building with many offices on it. The flowershop that sent her the flowers was on that building.
IX
She told me that she’d take a thanatology course on saturdays, she’d never been interested on improving her skillz so i thought that was a nice thing. I used to go with her before the class started. I don’t remember having walked into the actual place where the class happened. I left her with the car and I went back home. She even suggested once that my dad could be interested on attending the class (he didn’t want to) but now I think maybe she just said that to dupe me or something. When the course was near its end I noticed she took more attention into her appearance, once she even wore some corset thing that made her look slimer, which I found odd.
My main problem these days is that I didn’t have enough money, for the rent, for the fertility treatment and my dentist told me I’d have to get an expensive treatment so I switched from freelancing to an office job, which made me unhappy at first. Her mom used to travel a lot with her retirement money and sometimes she invited us but I didn’t feel like going sometimes because I didn’t like her mom paying for things. I also thought that being a little apart would help us so she traveled to some state, she came backe, showed me pictures and stuff.
Then, she said the thanatology course would have a celebration for its ending, but that it’d be on the very same place she had just visited with her mom, that was so unbelievable I think at this moment I just was waiting for some “real proof” to end it all. I even took her to the airport where no one else was, they’d meet her there, she said.
I came back to the house and I was just depressed, I logged in into her e-mail (I know, again) and saw nothing. there was a moment where I thought maybe I was just being paranoid and that everything’d be alright.
Then I hit refresh
I found messages to yet another dude, planning the trip. He lived there or something, she sent her money she took the time to take from her employment’s account. I searched the house and found the receipt with his name. I searched the computer’s file and I found her speaking of having had sex with someone the week she travelled with her mom and sister.
I texted her “Say hi to (dude’s name)”.
No reply.
The next day she called me and sounded nervous, tried to ask me “what I knew”, I found that very maddening since she just asked to make a story up. when she saw i knew “everything” she got mad and started saying “well, he does love me and will treat me better” and stuff like that. that was on saturday.
On sunday she called asking for forgiveness and stuff but I didn’t care anymore. I said I wanted to divorce and she couldn’t make me change my mind. She said she’d go to the house on monday when I was at the office to take her stuff out and I think in this aspect having now an office job helped me. Maybe if I had to see her I would’ve changed my mind or fell into routine like the time before. She did take her stuff out and wasn’t there when I got home. One day she even made one of her girlfriiends I knew “call her” saying it was a friend from her job (why would they call at an hour she was at work then?) and I recognised her voice but didn0t say nothing. She talked about how nervous she was and that she had been with her in the trip but I didn’t believe it, I found the effort laughable.
Weeks later I met her at the divorce office and signed, then we both went to have breakfast holding hands (wtf!), she said that she agreed to the divorce because she thought it was my way of getting my anger out ut she thought we would remarry later or something. I said goodbye.
BTW, sometime after the divorce I learned she had a baby, with a guy she'd met before we divorced... I've never felt bad about losing her.
Feel free to voice your opinion or ask me stuff

u/PinkPenguin I went to lunch with my parents today, and on the way back, we stopped at the PO so I could pick up my mail. My dad asked where they were all from, so I was reading off postmarks/return addresses, and when I got to AZ, someone made a comment about the heat, so I passed up the donkey in the desert, and everyone got a good laugh! My dad also thought the different stamps were cool.
u/federal-honeydew9131 thank you for the card from the Holocaust Museum. I looked up the artist to learn more about him and see more of his work. I hope you make it back to Belize for some excellent food at some point, and I wish you luck with your tandem read. I tried that once, and it just didn't work out.
u/melhen16 Happy Pride! Thank you for the Rainbows :) As always, I love the stamp collection - my dad was interested in all my mail and really thought the stamps were pretty awesome as well!
u/frolickingfinns4ever thank you for sharing The Tale of Two Kitties! I've found more than one solo kitten over the years by following their yells. There's that moment of "Was that a kitten or a bird? ... It's a bird, right? ... Please be a bird" But of course it's a kitten.
u/unseenbowl thank you for the Lion King watercolor card from Disneyland! It's so dark and different from what I'm used to, and I just looked up some of Vance Gerry's other concept art.
u/35days thank you for the postcard of Kerala; my favorite book is set there, so it made that gorgeous picture stand out even more. I love the snow leopard stamp as well! I hope the weather there is less dreich today :)
u/Powerful_Cobbler_215 haha thank you for the literature card and cat stickers :)
u/hoolu123 yay, bugs! I love them!
u/Rand_ston Happy Pride! Thank you!
u/Tinawebmom LOL great way to turn around a disappointing affirmation :)
u/duygusu thank you for the awesome literary "history" card! I love both the word cards I've gotten from you :)

Hi all, I'm new and it seems I posted this to the wrong group. I got confused and thought this was "Am I The Asshole Here" . My apologies.
Long story short, my husband grew up coddled by his mother and was raised in a sexist and prejudiced household. They raised him to look for a girl that would essentially take on the "mother" role and be his wife. I grew up watching the women of my family bust their asses and lose their minds over sexist and ungrateful men, so you better believe I promised myself I wouldn't end up like the women in my family. Obviously I wasn't an ideal candidate for their son for multiple reasons, thus it is taking them an absurd amount of time to accept us as an item. < Him and I really liked each other and had and still have a wonderful friendship, even in marriage. So we went on and moved in together as bf and gf rather sooner than we expected (because they attempted to control who he could be with and tested his manhood, basically.) So here we are all moved in. A few years later we got married and had kids.
His family setup was strange from the jump, and unfortunately I dont have time to get into the finer detail of all that. But basically, I've noticed his sister (almost more than his mother) is oddly possessive over him, like it's almost past "sisterly protection" of her brother. She never left home, never had a relationship, and is well into her 30's. He is the baby of the family and is the only one who left home.
Sister is very loud (and very wrong over half the time. Horrible combination if ya ask me..) , very fatuous yet very opinionated, very childish, and very bratty when something isn't about her. No, she is not developmentally behind, she is literally just that spoiled and parents allowed her to have run of the mill in that house. You should have seen her facial expression drop when we first announced that we were expecting.
Anyway here's an example of what I'm talking about. In the beginning of our relationship she would do stuff like tell my husband to edit his facial hair a certain way and just basically control him even from a distance and put him in very awkward places mentally. He thought her behavior was normal and would say things like "My sister said I should do this" or "My sister said ___" My sister my sister my sister. All I would hear. I guess his parents gave up on raising him and made her HBIC. Idk.
When it comes to events and things going on in our home, mother and her daughter will bypass me and only speak to and ask my husband about such things and will make up lame excuses for not contacting me when I've given my number multiple times.
At this point, I had to talk to my husband and explain to him my anger and frustration with the women of his family and explained that their behavior isn't how all this works and it is no longer going down like this. I am the woman in his life now and they are challenging me as a woman by doing and saying certain things that basically silently scream "I don't like you for my son/brother and I'm going to treat you like it." even if they never outright say it. Their actions are very loud. He (as he should have) heard me out and is trying his best to get them to respect me. He isn't good with confrontation and they love ignoring problems so there's that..he is too scared to have bass in his voice when it comes to them, I can relate, but still.
Here's another example, when I would buy them gifts for the holidays and clearly put more thought into the gift than he ever would and sign both our names on the cards inside, guess who they would hug and thank for the gift? Him.
I shouldn't have to feel like I am competing with my MIL and SIL as if they are women after my man, if that makes sense..?? And why the F U C K am I even competing with my SIL over her brother?? I don't give a flying fuck about what my brothers do to that extent because 1. Ew?? wtf? 2. They are their own individual people. I wish this bitch would get a life, honestly.
So here we are....AITAH???????? Any further advice????? We are young and trying our best here.
Edit: Hi all, I'm new and it seems I posted this to the wrong group. I got confused and thought this was "Am I The Asshole Here" . My apologies. I was deep in emotion while typing all of this. I understand that no one is perfect and everyone has their flaws somewhere, this situation is just really sticky especially with children in the picture, and I am trying to consider their feelings besides their father and I's feelings. Just up and leaving and breaking up our family isn't an option because we still love each other very much. It just makes me so sick of what we deal with out of his family. He basically is in the process of undoing years of.....idk what else to call it besides 'brainwashing', and that will take time. Change is actively happening, but so slow that I could scream.

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
STAT OF THE WEEK: Shopify's Shop App is approaching a $1B GMV run rate. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said that in Q4, the Shop App nearly reached $100M in GMV in a single month.
Wix is launching a generative AI tool that lets customers create and edit mobile apps for iOS and Android using text prompts. The tool requires Wix’s premium Branded App plan for $99/month. First a chatbot has a conversation with users to understand the goals, intent, and aesthetic of their app. Then the tool generates an app that can be customized and previewed from the editor. Finally Wix helps you submit the app to Apple and Google app stores.
Last week I reported that US officials escalated a crackdown on the controversial customs exemption known as the de minimis rule. The US Customs and Border Protection suspended six customs brokers from Entry Type 86, including Seko Logistics, which says that it processes millions of parcels under the rule each month. Since then, Seko Logistics filed a court action against against the CBP, seeking to remove any conditions for reinstatement until the alleged violations are identified. The lawsuit compelled the CBP to conditionally reinstate Seko, but the logistics provider asked the Court of International Trade to require the CBP to identify the violations that led to the suspension, which it says caused “significant monetary loss” to the company and its clients.
Despite the crackdowns, Tim van Leeuwen from air cargo consultant Rotate said in a LinkedIn post that its data doesn't yet show that the moves by CPB have had any impact on freighter flights entering the region, and that there are currently around 100 flights per day between North east Asia and North America, up from 50 flights a day a few months back. That's not to say that backlogs of packages won't start to eventually pile up, but so far so good in terms of inbound shipments.
Remember last week when I reported (story #2) that PayPal, JP Morgan Chase, Visa, Expedia, and Brave had all launched (or would be launching) an ad network? Well the story continues…
United Airlines announced the launch of Kinective Media, which it says is the first network that uses insights from travel behaviors to connect customers to personalized, real-time advertising and offers. The platform allows brands to advertise on United's mobile app and inflight entertainment screens.
Costco is launching an ad network built on the trove of data from its 74.5M members' shopping habits and past purchases. The retailer is currently testing the ad network's capabilities and fielding offers from potential vendors. Mark Williamson, assistant VP of retail media at Costco, joked that Costco has the “100th mover advantage” since they are so late into retail media sales, but that entering late will help them avoid the pitfalls of other companies' ad networks.
Tesco Marketplace relaunched last week after taking a hiatus since 2018. The marketplace is back with around 9,000 products from 3rd party sellers., and of course with all 3rd party marketplaces, ads are inevitable (although they haven't officially been announced).
The Washington Post introduced an advertising solution called Zeus Prime, which is intended to offer an alternative to Google and Facebook for publishers and advertisers. The publication partnered with buy-side demand platform Polar to build the ad-buying user interface. The product, for now, will allow clients to purchase ad inventory directly on the Washington Post in real time, with plans to add additional local and national media companies to the network.
Google is opening a new Google TV Network to get more advertisers to its free ad-supported programming. According to Google, over 20M devices tune into Google TV's free channels every month, spending a little over an hour watching per day. The channels currently play non-skippable ads and 6-second “bumper ads”, which Google isn't changing, but simply opening up a new network for advertisers to purchase inventory more easily. Google also noted that new ad formats may be coming in the future.
eBay will no longer accept American Express cards as a payment option on its platform because of “unacceptably high fees”. The company notified customers about the change last Wednesday, which is set to take effect August 17th. eBay noted that credit card transaction fees are rising unchecked due to lack of competition and that more robust regulations are needed in the industry to help lower fees — which caused every eBay seller on the planet to think, “Well isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?” American Express shot back by saying that its fees are similar to other cards accepted on eBay and that dropping AMEX as a payment option contradicts eBay's stated goal of increasing competition at the point of sale. American Express also noted that eBay accounts for less than 0.2% of its total network volume, so like, whatevs.
TikTok Shop outperformed other e-commerce platforms including Temu, Shein, Etsy, and even Walmart, when it comes to customer retention, according to data from Earnest Analytics. It also beat out other social commerce platforms like Whatnot, Flip, and Instagram Checkout. TikTok seems to have cracked the code on customer retention, and they've done it in an entertaining way, without sending 140 promotional e-mails over two months like Temu. Amazon was the only e-commerce platform that beat TikTok Shop in the study, which looked at data between January 2022 and February 2024. That makes sense given that customers shop on Amazon for all of their household goods, not just for impulse products they discover. However the same could be said of Walmart, and TikTok beat them.
Sellers who use Amazon's Buy with Prime are seeing mixed results since the service launched a year and a half ago, according to Business Insider. The Bean Coffee Company says Buy with Prime only accounts for about 3% to 5% of sales, though they expect it to eventually grow to more as customers become familiar with the service. The owner says that determining the correct price to account for Amazon's shipping and fulfillment fees is the most difficult part of using Buy with Prime. Tria Beauty saw a 7% to 11% of its D2C sales come from Buy with Prime over the past 18 months. Despite the slow adoption and initial hiccups, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and company leadership told Business Insider that they are very confident about Buy with Prime because the initiative is still in its infancy.
The British Independent Retailers Association, which has thousands of members in the country, filed a £1.1B damages claim against Amazon for allegedly illegally misusing members' proprietary data for competitive purposes. The association is also claiming that Amazon manipulated which retailers were selected for its coveted “Buy Box.” The claim, although similar to other lawsuits and investigations in the past, both previous and ongoing, is the biggest ever collective action to be launched by retailers in the UK, covering the period between October 2025 and present. Andrew Goodacre, CEO of BIRA said in a statement, “Whilst the retailers knew about the large commissions charged by Amazon, they did not know about the added risk of their trading data being used by Amazon to take sales away from them. The filing of the claim today is the first step towards retailers obtaining compensation for what Amazon has done.”
A group of 11 current and former OpenAI employees, plus two from DeepMind and Anthropic, issued a public letter last week declaring that leading AI companies are not to be trusted. The employees wrote that AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and they do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this. They also expressed the difficulty in standing up to AI leaders, citing that ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks they are concerned about are not yet regulated.
Automattic launched a new program called Automattic for Agencies that brings together multiple products including WooCommerce, WordPress.com, and Jetpack into a single dashboard for managing multiple client sites and billing. The program also offers discounted pricing and revenue sharing opportunities, such as a 50% revenue share on Jetpack product referrals, including renewals.
Shopify shareholders approved the company's compensation plan for executives, which proxy advisers recommended they vote against. The plan could see the company hand out millions in salaries and share-based awards to its top executives including a $20M stock option to CEO Tubi Lütke and a $75M option to COO Kaz Nejatian in lieu of his 2024 annual equity award. The advisers disapproved of the plan because it involves paying Shopify execs more than leaders at companies it considers to be peers, despite Shopify performing moderately worse than its counterparts.
Shopify also welcomed two new board of directors including Lulu Cheng Meservey and Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. Lulu is the founder and CEO of Rostra, a startup that helps founder-led companies go direct with their communications, and Prashanth is the CFO of Uber.
eBay launched a new AI tool that enables sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops, such as having the product sit on a tablecloth, couch, or colorful background that reflects the specific brand. The feature is powered by the open source model Stable Diffusion and comes one year after eBay introduced an AI feature that generates titles and descriptions for a product listing.
Bold Commerce introduced a number of new features including: 1) Subscription Upsells (nudge one-time orderers to subscribe), 2) Express Add-Ons (lets existing subscribers ad any products to their subscription order), 3) Customer Portal Upsells (offers within the customer dashboard), 4) E-mail Upsells (triggered after a shopper places an order), 5) Convertible Subscriptions (lets customers switch products they subscribe to each month), and 6) AI Powered Smart Upsells (create personalized upsell offers on autopilot). The company's co-founder Jay Myers will be speaking at the SubSummit 2024 next week, which they sponsor, about maximizing revenue and customer LTV using their new tools.
Italy's antitrust regulator fined Meta €3.5M for alleged non-compliance with transparency standards and inadequate user data management. The agency said Meta failed to promptly inform users registered on Instagram via the web about the commercial use of their personal data. They also flagged Meta's management of account suspensions on Instagram and Facebook as deficient.
Affirm will now allow shoppers to split the cost of a purchase into two interest-free payments, known as “Pay in 2.” The BNPL provider also launched “Pay in 30” which allows customers to pay in full without interest within 30 days of purchase (like a credit card, LOL). The company is planning to test and implement the new credit options with its merchant partners in the coming months.
Speaking of BNPL… Australia's government is preparing legislation that would require BNPL providers to carry out basic credit checks on new customers. Australia says that it recognizes the competition that BNPL has brought into the credit markets, but that BNPL products are not currently covered by the National Consumer Credit Act. The legislation will establish a new category of “low-cost credit” under the Act “to reflect the lower risk and cost of BNPL compared with other regulated forms of credit.”
In an unlikely partnership, Capital One is teaming up with Stripe and Adyen to offer a free open source product called Direct Data Share, which is an API that allows merchants to send real-time transaction data to help reduce e-commerce fraud and false declines. The three companies will share certain data like IP addresses to prevent fraud transactions across each other's respective payment network.
Taobao, one of China's largest e-commerce websites owned by Alibaba, leaked 11.1M user records that include customers' names, phone numbers, and mailing addresses, according to a report by Cybernews, which said that someone was harvesting Taobao data illegally “possibly through web crawling or other unauthorized means.” Taobao rejected the report and said that the platform experienced no data leak.
X announced that they will now allow users to post adult content on its app, so long as it's properly marked, prompting every X user to ask the same question — “you couldn't do that before?” The content, however, will be prohibited from appearing in profile photos or banners.
In other X news, the company's only PR employee, Joe Benarroch, resigned, according to the Wall Street Journal. Benarroch was head of business operations, which included overseeing X's corporate communications. Wait, so was he the guy that would respond to media inquiries with a poop emoji?
PrettyLittleThing, a UK-based fast-fashion women's retailer, introduced a £1.99 fee for users to send back their unwanted clothing, which will be deducted from their refund. The company joins other e-commerce retailers like Boohoo, H&M, and Asos in introducing a returns fee.
The FAA issued Amazon Prime Air additional permissions that allow the division to operate drones beyond a visual line of sight, which is a typical requirement for all commercial drone operators. Amazon was able to acquire this special permission by developing an onboard detect-and-avoid system. Let's hope it works! The new authorization will allow Amazon to expand its delivery area in College Station, TX.
In other drone delivery news… Walmart added drone delivery as an option in its mobile app in areas where it offers the service. Starting later this month, customers in Dallas Fort Worth area will be notified of the new ordering capability through the Walmart app if they are eligible for drone delivery. The service will use drones from Alphabet's drone delivery service, Wing.
Shopify told employees that as of July 1, the company will no longer allow certain types of expense reimbursements including up to $55/month for home Internet, a $25 credit towards any Shopify merchant store on their birthdays, up to 50% of registration fees for employees looking to sign up for a sports team with their coworkers, and up to $1,200 a year for books, professional development subscriptions, and language-learning resources. Shopify said they need the money for that new executive compensation plan. LOL.
Cross-border sales volume of clothing and footwear in England dropped from £7.4B in 2019 to £2.7B in 2023 after Brexit, according to research from Retail Economic and Tradebyte. The Guardian wrote that the research “shows the extend to which complex regulations and red tape at the border have deterred firms from sending goods across the Channel.”
LoadUp, a junk removal company that offers eco-friendly waste management solutions, launched a new division called Refurn, which helps online furniture retailers reduce the cost of returns. After a customer returns a piece of furniture, Refurn lists the item for resell to its network of buyers, who pick up the item from the customer's home after it's resold. Sounds good if Refurn can flip the items fast enough! Otherwise the customer is stuck with a returned couch in their house for weeks.
DHL eCommerce relocated its Grand Prairie location to a 220k sq.ft. distribution center in Irving, TX. The company invested $57.5M in the land, construction, automation, and sustainability features of the facility, which will employ around 150 employees. The company is also closing its Raleigh NC distribution facility and eliminating 120 positions from the city by the end of July to move the operations to Concord.
Walmart said it expects to generate profits in its US e-commerce business in the next two years, including its advertising and consumer data businesses, according to its CFO John David Rainey, who added that Sam's Club is already profitable in e-commerce. Walmart's e-commerce business rose about 22% in sales during the latest quarter, while the company has simultaneously been working to drive down costs.
Copia Global, a Kenyan B2C e-commerce platform that allows retailers to shop and restock essential goods using a mobile app, has stopped taking orders from Central and Eastern Kenya due to cashflow challenges. The company also laid off over 1,060 employees in an attempt to scale back operations and avoid a complete shut down.
Speaking of layoffs… Microsoft is laying off somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 workers across its Azure cloud and mixed reality departments as part of its mission to “define the AI wave,” according to a leaked memo. Google cut a group of workers from the team responsible for making sure government requests for its users' private information are legitimate and legal, raising concerns that Google is weakening its ability to protect customer data. So are requests now granted on the honor system?
Amazon is expanding its Grubhub partnership, which began in 2022 by allowing customers to order from Grubhub directly on Amazon.com or the Amazon app. Amazon Prime members will now automatically get a free Grubhub+ subscription, which usually costs $120/year and includes no delivery charges on orders over $12, among other perks.
A court ruled that Meta must face a lawsuit over claims it breached its terms of service by soliciting fraudulent advertisements from Chinese companies. The case was initially dismissed in 2022 by a judge who ruled the claims were barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but a new ruling in appeals court says otherwise.
Zara is bringing its live-shopping broadcasts to the US, which are already popular in China, as part of its aim to attract shoppers as sales cool after the pandemic boom. The five-hour live shopping broadcasts, held each week by Douyin, have helped drive up Zara's sales since they premiered in November, and now the company wants to take its livestreams to the West.
Okendo, a Shopify app that offers customer reviews, referrals, and surveys, launched a loyalty program called Okendo Loyalty, which allows merchants to offer points and rewards for actions such as sign-ups, leaving reviews, engaging on social platforms, and referring friends. Members can then redeem points for rewards designed to drive repeat purchases.
Bath & Body Works inked a multi-year deal with Accenture to modernize its tech stack. The two companies will work together to create new capabilities such as a digital Fragrance Finder, a generative AI powered conversation experience to help customers find the right cologne or perfume. I can picture the live chat now, “It's not working. Should I scratch my screen to get the smell?”
AI companies could soon run out of publicly available training data for their large language models, according to a study by Epoch AI. The study predicts that sometime between 2026 and 2032, there won't be enough new blogs, news articles, or social media commentary to sustain the current trajectory of AI development, putting pressure on companies to tap into customers' private data in order to get a leg up. Umm, I believe they've already started…
For example… Artists are currently outraged at Meta after the company confirmed how it was using public pictures on its apps to train its image generator, calling the act predatory in nature and threatening to leave Instagram. Then there's the whole Adobe fiasco that went down last week when Photoshop updated its TOS to give itself the right to review user designs stored in its cloud, including NDA work, and use it to train its AI tool. Adobe has since released a statement clarifying that it does not train its Firefly AI models on unpublished user content, but users aren't buying it.
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Shopify's acquisition of Threads (the Slack alternative, not the Meta owned Twitter clone).
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
For more details on each story and sources, see the full edition:
https://www.shopifreaks.com/wix-ai-app-builder-ebay-vs-amex-amazons-1b-lawsuit/
What else is new in e-commerce?
Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
-PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter
PS: Want the full editions delivered to your Inbox each week? Join free at www.shopifreaks.com

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
STAT OF THE WEEK: Shopify's Shop App is approaching a $1B GMV run rate. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said that in Q4, the Shop App nearly reached $100M in GMV in a single month.
Wix is launching a generative AI tool that lets customers create and edit mobile apps for iOS and Android using text prompts. The tool requires Wix’s premium Branded App plan for $99/month. First a chatbot has a conversation with users to understand the goals, intent, and aesthetic of their app. Then the tool generates an app that can be customized and previewed from the editor. Finally Wix helps you submit the app to Apple and Google app stores.
Last week I reported that US officials escalated a crackdown on the controversial customs exemption known as the de minimis rule. The US Customs and Border Protection suspended six customs brokers from Entry Type 86, including Seko Logistics, which says that it processes millions of parcels under the rule each month. Since then, Seko Logistics filed a court action against against the CBP, seeking to remove any conditions for reinstatement until the alleged violations are identified. The lawsuit compelled the CBP to conditionally reinstate Seko, but the logistics provider asked the Court of International Trade to require the CBP to identify the violations that led to the suspension, which it says caused “significant monetary loss” to the company and its clients.
Despite the crackdowns, Tim van Leeuwen from air cargo consultant Rotate said in a LinkedIn post that its data doesn't yet show that the moves by CPB have had any impact on freighter flights entering the region, and that there are currently around 100 flights per day between North east Asia and North America, up from 50 flights a day a few months back. That's not to say that backlogs of packages won't start to eventually pile up, but so far so good in terms of inbound shipments.
Remember last week when I reported (story #2) that PayPal, JP Morgan Chase, Visa, Expedia, and Brave had all launched (or would be launching) an ad network? Well the story continues…
United Airlines announced the launch of Kinective Media, which it says is the first network that uses insights from travel behaviors to connect customers to personalized, real-time advertising and offers. The platform allows brands to advertise on United's mobile app and inflight entertainment screens.
Costco is launching an ad network built on the trove of data from its 74.5M members' shopping habits and past purchases. The retailer is currently testing the ad network's capabilities and fielding offers from potential vendors. Mark Williamson, assistant VP of retail media at Costco, joked that Costco has the “100th mover advantage” since they are so late into retail media sales, but that entering late will help them avoid the pitfalls of other companies' ad networks.
Tesco Marketplace relaunched last week after taking a hiatus since 2018. The marketplace is back with around 9,000 products from 3rd party sellers., and of course with all 3rd party marketplaces, ads are inevitable (although they haven't officially been announced).
The Washington Post introduced an advertising solution called Zeus Prime, which is intended to offer an alternative to Google and Facebook for publishers and advertisers. The publication partnered with buy-side demand platform Polar to build the ad-buying user interface. The product, for now, will allow clients to purchase ad inventory directly on the Washington Post in real time, with plans to add additional local and national media companies to the network.
Google is opening a new Google TV Network to get more advertisers to its free ad-supported programming. According to Google, over 20M devices tune into Google TV's free channels every month, spending a little over an hour watching per day. The channels currently play non-skippable ads and 6-second “bumper ads”, which Google isn't changing, but simply opening up a new network for advertisers to purchase inventory more easily. Google also noted that new ad formats may be coming in the future.
eBay will no longer accept American Express cards as a payment option on its platform because of “unacceptably high fees”. The company notified customers about the change last Wednesday, which is set to take effect August 17th. eBay noted that credit card transaction fees are rising unchecked due to lack of competition and that more robust regulations are needed in the industry to help lower fees — which caused every eBay seller on the planet to think, “Well isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?” American Express shot back by saying that its fees are similar to other cards accepted on eBay and that dropping AMEX as a payment option contradicts eBay's stated goal of increasing competition at the point of sale. American Express also noted that eBay accounts for less than 0.2% of its total network volume, so like, whatevs.
TikTok Shop outperformed other e-commerce platforms including Temu, Shein, Etsy, and even Walmart, when it comes to customer retention, according to data from Earnest Analytics. It also beat out other social commerce platforms like Whatnot, Flip, and Instagram Checkout. TikTok seems to have cracked the code on customer retention, and they've done it in an entertaining way, without sending 140 promotional e-mails over two months like Temu. Amazon was the only e-commerce platform that beat TikTok Shop in the study, which looked at data between January 2022 and February 2024. That makes sense given that customers shop on Amazon for all of their household goods, not just for impulse products they discover. However the same could be said of Walmart, and TikTok beat them.
Sellers who use Amazon's Buy with Prime are seeing mixed results since the service launched a year and a half ago, according to Business Insider. The Bean Coffee Company says Buy with Prime only accounts for about 3% to 5% of sales, though they expect it to eventually grow to more as customers become familiar with the service. The owner says that determining the correct price to account for Amazon's shipping and fulfillment fees is the most difficult part of using Buy with Prime. Tria Beauty saw a 7% to 11% of its D2C sales come from Buy with Prime over the past 18 months. Despite the slow adoption and initial hiccups, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and company leadership told Business Insider that they are very confident about Buy with Prime because the initiative is still in its infancy.
The British Independent Retailers Association, which has thousands of members in the country, filed a £1.1B damages claim against Amazon for allegedly illegally misusing members' proprietary data for competitive purposes. The association is also claiming that Amazon manipulated which retailers were selected for its coveted “Buy Box.” The claim, although similar to other lawsuits and investigations in the past, both previous and ongoing, is the biggest ever collective action to be launched by retailers in the UK, covering the period between October 2025 and present. Andrew Goodacre, CEO of BIRA said in a statement, “Whilst the retailers knew about the large commissions charged by Amazon, they did not know about the added risk of their trading data being used by Amazon to take sales away from them. The filing of the claim today is the first step towards retailers obtaining compensation for what Amazon has done.”
A group of 11 current and former OpenAI employees, plus two from DeepMind and Anthropic, issued a public letter last week declaring that leading AI companies are not to be trusted. The employees wrote that AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and they do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this. They also expressed the difficulty in standing up to AI leaders, citing that ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks they are concerned about are not yet regulated.
Automattic launched a new program called Automattic for Agencies that brings together multiple products including WooCommerce, WordPress.com, and Jetpack into a single dashboard for managing multiple client sites and billing. The program also offers discounted pricing and revenue sharing opportunities, such as a 50% revenue share on Jetpack product referrals, including renewals.
Shopify shareholders approved the company's compensation plan for executives, which proxy advisers recommended they vote against. The plan could see the company hand out millions in salaries and share-based awards to its top executives including a $20M stock option to CEO Tubi Lütke and a $75M option to COO Kaz Nejatian in lieu of his 2024 annual equity award. The advisers disapproved of the plan because it involves paying Shopify execs more than leaders at companies it considers to be peers, despite Shopify performing moderately worse than its counterparts.
Shopify also welcomed two new board of directors including Lulu Cheng Meservey and Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. Lulu is the founder and CEO of Rostra, a startup that helps founder-led companies go direct with their communications, and Prashanth is the CFO of Uber.
eBay launched a new AI tool that enables sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops, such as having the product sit on a tablecloth, couch, or colorful background that reflects the specific brand. The feature is powered by the open source model Stable Diffusion and comes one year after eBay introduced an AI feature that generates titles and descriptions for a product listing.
Bold Commerce introduced a number of new features including: 1) Subscription Upsells (nudge one-time orderers to subscribe), 2) Express Add-Ons (lets existing subscribers ad any products to their subscription order), 3) Customer Portal Upsells (offers within the customer dashboard), 4) E-mail Upsells (triggered after a shopper places an order), 5) Convertible Subscriptions (lets customers switch products they subscribe to each month), and 6) AI Powered Smart Upsells (create personalized upsell offers on autopilot). The company's co-founder Jay Myers will be speaking at the SubSummit 2024 next week, which they sponsor, about maximizing revenue and customer LTV using their new tools.
Italy's antitrust regulator fined Meta €3.5M for alleged non-compliance with transparency standards and inadequate user data management. The agency said Meta failed to promptly inform users registered on Instagram via the web about the commercial use of their personal data. They also flagged Meta's management of account suspensions on Instagram and Facebook as deficient.
Affirm will now allow shoppers to split the cost of a purchase into two interest-free payments, known as “Pay in 2.” The BNPL provider also launched “Pay in 30” which allows customers to pay in full without interest within 30 days of purchase (like a credit card, LOL). The company is planning to test and implement the new credit options with its merchant partners in the coming months.
Speaking of BNPL… Australia's government is preparing legislation that would require BNPL providers to carry out basic credit checks on new customers. Australia says that it recognizes the competition that BNPL has brought into the credit markets, but that BNPL products are not currently covered by the National Consumer Credit Act. The legislation will establish a new category of “low-cost credit” under the Act “to reflect the lower risk and cost of BNPL compared with other regulated forms of credit.”
In an unlikely partnership, Capital One is teaming up with Stripe and Adyen to offer a free open source product called Direct Data Share, which is an API that allows merchants to send real-time transaction data to help reduce e-commerce fraud and false declines. The three companies will share certain data like IP addresses to prevent fraud transactions across each other's respective payment network.
Taobao, one of China's largest e-commerce websites owned by Alibaba, leaked 11.1M user records that include customers' names, phone numbers, and mailing addresses, according to a report by Cybernews, which said that someone was harvesting Taobao data illegally “possibly through web crawling or other unauthorized means.” Taobao rejected the report and said that the platform experienced no data leak.
X announced that they will now allow users to post adult content on its app, so long as it's properly marked, prompting every X user to ask the same question — “you couldn't do that before?” The content, however, will be prohibited from appearing in profile photos or banners.
In other X news, the company's only PR employee, Joe Benarroch, resigned, according to the Wall Street Journal. Benarroch was head of business operations, which included overseeing X's corporate communications. Wait, so was he the guy that would respond to media inquiries with a poop emoji?
PrettyLittleThing, a UK-based fast-fashion women's retailer, introduced a £1.99 fee for users to send back their unwanted clothing, which will be deducted from their refund. The company joins other e-commerce retailers like Boohoo, H&M, and Asos in introducing a returns fee.
The FAA issued Amazon Prime Air additional permissions that allow the division to operate drones beyond a visual line of sight, which is a typical requirement for all commercial drone operators. Amazon was able to acquire this special permission by developing an onboard detect-and-avoid system. Let's hope it works! The new authorization will allow Amazon to expand its delivery area in College Station, TX.
In other drone delivery news… Walmart added drone delivery as an option in its mobile app in areas where it offers the service. Starting later this month, customers in Dallas Fort Worth area will be notified of the new ordering capability through the Walmart app if they are eligible for drone delivery. The service will use drones from Alphabet's drone delivery service, Wing.
Shopify told employees that as of July 1, the company will no longer allow certain types of expense reimbursements including up to $55/month for home Internet, a $25 credit towards any Shopify merchant store on their birthdays, up to 50% of registration fees for employees looking to sign up for a sports team with their coworkers, and up to $1,200 a year for books, professional development subscriptions, and language-learning resources. Shopify said they need the money for that new executive compensation plan. LOL.
Cross-border sales volume of clothing and footwear in England dropped from £7.4B in 2019 to £2.7B in 2023 after Brexit, according to research from Retail Economic and Tradebyte. The Guardian wrote that the research “shows the extend to which complex regulations and red tape at the border have deterred firms from sending goods across the Channel.”
LoadUp, a junk removal company that offers eco-friendly waste management solutions, launched a new division called Refurn, which helps online furniture retailers reduce the cost of returns. After a customer returns a piece of furniture, Refurn lists the item for resell to its network of buyers, who pick up the item from the customer's home after it's resold. Sounds good if Refurn can flip the items fast enough! Otherwise the customer is stuck with a returned couch in their house for weeks.
DHL eCommerce relocated its Grand Prairie location to a 220k sq.ft. distribution center in Irving, TX. The company invested $57.5M in the land, construction, automation, and sustainability features of the facility, which will employ around 150 employees. The company is also closing its Raleigh NC distribution facility and eliminating 120 positions from the city by the end of July to move the operations to Concord.
Walmart said it expects to generate profits in its US e-commerce business in the next two years, including its advertising and consumer data businesses, according to its CFO John David Rainey, who added that Sam's Club is already profitable in e-commerce. Walmart's e-commerce business rose about 22% in sales during the latest quarter, while the company has simultaneously been working to drive down costs.
Copia Global, a Kenyan B2C e-commerce platform that allows retailers to shop and restock essential goods using a mobile app, has stopped taking orders from Central and Eastern Kenya due to cashflow challenges. The company also laid off over 1,060 employees in an attempt to scale back operations and avoid a complete shut down.
Speaking of layoffs… Microsoft is laying off somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 workers across its Azure cloud and mixed reality departments as part of its mission to “define the AI wave,” according to a leaked memo. Google cut a group of workers from the team responsible for making sure government requests for its users' private information are legitimate and legal, raising concerns that Google is weakening its ability to protect customer data. So are requests now granted on the honor system?
Amazon is expanding its Grubhub partnership, which began in 2022 by allowing customers to order from Grubhub directly on Amazon.com or the Amazon app. Amazon Prime members will now automatically get a free Grubhub+ subscription, which usually costs $120/year and includes no delivery charges on orders over $12, among other perks.
A court ruled that Meta must face a lawsuit over claims it breached its terms of service by soliciting fraudulent advertisements from Chinese companies. The case was initially dismissed in 2022 by a judge who ruled the claims were barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but a new ruling in appeals court says otherwise.
Zara is bringing its live-shopping broadcasts to the US, which are already popular in China, as part of its aim to attract shoppers as sales cool after the pandemic boom. The five-hour live shopping broadcasts, held each week by Douyin, have helped drive up Zara's sales since they premiered in November, and now the company wants to take its livestreams to the West.
Okendo, a Shopify app that offers customer reviews, referrals, and surveys, launched a loyalty program called Okendo Loyalty, which allows merchants to offer points and rewards for actions such as sign-ups, leaving reviews, engaging on social platforms, and referring friends. Members can then redeem points for rewards designed to drive repeat purchases.
Bath & Body Works inked a multi-year deal with Accenture to modernize its tech stack. The two companies will work together to create new capabilities such as a digital Fragrance Finder, a generative AI powered conversation experience to help customers find the right cologne or perfume. I can picture the live chat now, “It's not working. Should I scratch my screen to get the smell?”
AI companies could soon run out of publicly available training data for their large language models, according to a study by Epoch AI. The study predicts that sometime between 2026 and 2032, there won't be enough new blogs, news articles, or social media commentary to sustain the current trajectory of AI development, putting pressure on companies to tap into customers' private data in order to get a leg up. Umm, I believe they've already started…
For example… Artists are currently outraged at Meta after the company confirmed how it was using public pictures on its apps to train its image generator, calling the act predatory in nature and threatening to leave Instagram. Then there's the whole Adobe fiasco that went down last week when Photoshop updated its TOS to give itself the right to review user designs stored in its cloud, including NDA work, and use it to train its AI tool. Adobe has since released a statement clarifying that it does not train its Firefly AI models on unpublished user content, but users aren't buying it.
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Shopify's acquisition of Threads (the Slack alternative, not the Meta owned Twitter clone).
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter
PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Pictures/Proof: https://imgur.com/a/rtx-4070ti-super-dAAT3Za
Selling: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER GAMING OC 16G Graphics Card, 3x WINDFORCE Fans, 16GB 256-bit GDDR6X, GV-N407TSGAMING OC-16GD Video Card
Bought it in late Jan 2024, but it didn't fit my SFFPC build. Looking to let it go for $700 Local cash or $740 Shipped with Paypal G&S.
Comment before chat/PM.

We have an art business where we sell our paintings and prints for $80-$500. This guy sent us an email which follows:
How are you doing today?Am Stephen Davis from Washington,DC .I love your work, do you have a price list I can see or any available artwork at the moment? I would like to purchase some of your arts as a surprise gift to my wife in honor of our upcoming wedding anniversary .As a matter of importance, I would also like to know if you accept check as a means of payment .i await your response.
Best regards,
Stephen.
—————
We told him the prices were all on the website he responded with:
Hi Herby,
Thanks for the response. Having carefully looked through the pictures of your works. I have chosen the piece (Fluffy Deer, Forgotten Land, Oceans of Sand and On The Wing and Feeling Calm) asking price being $2500. In regards to payment, my reason for choosing check as a means of payment is owing to the fact that my wife handles the family bank cards and paypal transactions. So I am choosing a check to keep this a complete surprise as intended. Consequently, I would authorize a check to you for the payment of the chosen piece of work as soon as I have your full name and contact address (preferably for FedEx delivery no P.O box). As soon as you receive the check and it clears your bank, I will have my personal shipping agent (who is also moving my other properties) contact you to arrange shipping/pick up of the piece from you. This is to avoid my wife receiving it if it was directly shipped to my address which would ruin the surprise for the wedding anniversary.
I will be looking forward to receiving your cell phone number, full name and physical address the check should be issued to, in your email.
regards,
Stephen.
—————-
He just sent a check for $4,500 which is $2,000 above the stated price. How does this scam work? Is there a safe way to cash this check without tying it to my bank account?
Thanks for everyone’s help on this one.
Herby

Hi everyone! I would like to ask for your help. I got this R4 card for my Nintendo DSi, but the progress of the games is not being saved! I replaced the SD card that came with the R4 with a SanDisk SD card as some of you suggested, but it still isn't working. For example, when I play Diner Dash, the progress is saved when I turn the console on and off, but if I play another game, my Diner Dash progress is gone. The same issue occurs with other games. Do you know what I might be doing wrong and how I can fix it?
Here is the data on the SD card and a picture of my SD card and R4.