u/kndb

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. We are about to go to Austria and then make a trip from Vienna to Salzburg by train. I’m trying to buy a ticket at the oebbtickets-dot-at website for an OBB train ride. When I’m about to pay it takes me to saferpay-dot-com for the actual payment.

I tried my U.S. Wells Fargo credit card. The saferpay page shows, “the transaction could not be processed. Please contact the merchant.” I checked the Wells Fargo app and there’s no mentioning of any declined transactions.

I tried my Apple Pay, and got the same message.

Then I also tried the Visa card number for my Revolut account and got the same result. (Note that it has enough cash in it for that purchase.)

None of those services show that there was an attempt for a charge or that it was declined.

Has anyone dealt with that OBB service in Austria? How do you pay for it? (Is it my U.S. debit/credit cards that trip it off, or what?)

PS. I’m not in Austria yet. Im using my U.S. residential ip (via VPN) to connect to their website.

I was contacted by an Australian company to provide some software consulting services. They gave me their developer that needed assistance and I coached him via Teams. It was two work stints.

They paid me for one, although it took a long time to get hold of anyone to do anything payment-wise. After that the dev used more of my services. So last month when I sent them my second invoice they just ghosted me. I checked their website and it’s a legit company. The logo says, “your trusted network engineering & cybersecurity partner.”

I sent two emails already. The first one was with the invoice. I sent it a month ago. Then at the start of this month I sent just a plain email (no attachment) with a question if they received my invoice. Both were ghosted. It’s an email of someone at that company. And I know that it was a valid email because that’s how he contacted me.

The current unpaid bill is around $780 usd.

Have you had any prior experience with a non payment? And would you even pursue it?

PS. I know that it’s silly to take on a job without prepayment. I usually do this if I can verify that it’s a legit company. It also never happened to me when a company is from one of the Five Eye countries. So that will be a lesson for sure.

Has anyone tried Savanna Fiber internet service?
https://savannafibre.co.ke/services.php

I see them being heavily promoted in our area and online (including reddit) with offers of half the price of what Safaricom Home Fiber charges. Which tbh gives me a big red flag. I also see a lot of fake reviews.

Has anyone tried it? What's the down- and upload speeds? Also latency? And reliability of the connection? Customer service?

This is our first trip to Austria, so apologies if I’m asking the obvious. We are planning to make a short trip from Vienna to Salzburg. I’m wondering if I need to pre-book the train tickets online or can we just buy them at a train station right when we go there?

Also are there different types of coaches for that longer train ride?

Apologizes if I'm asking the obvious. This is our first trip to Austria. We will be going to Salzburg for a 5 day stay at the end May. And I need to pick the hotel. I found one (Hotel Gerl) but it looks like it's a bit off the city center (just checking the Google maps.) Would that be a problem getting to it and back (without a car)? Or would you recommend getting something near the city center?

I guess I'm wondering how's the public transport in Salzburg?

Hey everyone:

This is our first trip to Austria. We will be arriving quite late in Vienna after a long flight. We can't pack light and I will have to deal with two large and heavy suitcases. I know pretty well that Vienna has a good public transport system, but in this case I don't want to deal with trains. We need to get to our AirBnb quickly, rest and then explore the city on foot.

We often take an Uber from the airport when we arrive. Thus, I'm curious if Uber works in Vienna? (I know that some cities do not allow Uber, or Uber is not popular. If so, is there a ride sharing alternative that is better.)

Im trying to figure out why the fan on my uninterrupted power supply for my computer goes crazy at night. Are there any power surges/issues with the voltage or frequency at nights? It’s been happening for the last 3 days. At first I thought that the UPS overheats. But it is way cooler in the room at night than during the day. Just to test I tried to open the window but it didn’t help.

Notice that the fan is quiet on that UPS during the day, even though I’m still using the same computer in the same capacity. But it starts spinning like crazy at around after midnight.

I don’t have any means to measure the voltage and frequency on the power line at night. I wonder if that is tue issue?

I am an American citizen. I co-rent an apartment with my college friend in the WA state but I spend most of my time outside of the U.S. I am a software developer and I keep that apartment for domicile and also to keep my server/computer in (I remote-desktop into it for work and to get a U.S. ip address.)

The question I always ask myself is what to do car-wise when I’m in the U.S. I have an old sedan that sits under a tarp/car cover in the apartment complex but I have to pay additional $35/mo for that parking space. Unfortunately when I come back I always need to replace the battery and last time I had to replace tires on that car, which all adds up over time. Plus, the car is old (especially when it sat there for a year-plus) and there’s also car insurance that I need to pay for. I tried to put a freeze on the insurance but it still adds up to about $35-$40 a month.

So I’m wondering if I get rid of that car and rent instead? I tried to price it but it was quite expensive, say if I stay for about a month per year.

What is your approach to driving in the U.S.?

PS. Unfortunately I’m in the area where public transport is nonexistent and ride sharing is quite expensive. I don’t have family members nearby that can take care of my car if I park it at their place. And my roommate is someone I wouldn’t trust doing that.

This question is primarily for the US nomads. It’s my second time filing for FEIE. I did it twice via an expat tax preparer. Same guy.

This year my tax return was accepted by the IRS (via electronic filing) and today I got a notification from my U.S. bank that my refund was received in my checking account. Except that the amount that was deposited is $1.6k less than what we filed for (form 8879).

I logged in to IRS-dot-gov to check and can confirm that it is showing that reduced amount. I also contacted the tax preparer and he told me to wait for the IRS to send me a letter with the explanation. The thing is that I have an electronic delivery selected at the IRS website. And the IRS-dot-gov doesn’t seem to show any letters. Or maybe I didn’t look at the right place.

Have you had anything like this happen to you?

Not sure how to resolve this. I also wonder if there's an ongoing attack on the Microsoft email services, or if someone is targeting me specifically.

I have a publicly facing website with a blog that is geared for software reviews. Since about a month I started receiving a large amount of spam and phishing emails into my inbox that is connected to that website. That email address is not posted on the website, but anyone could get it if they send me a message and if I reply.

I also have an old Hotmail account that is something like mywebsitename-at-hotmail-dot-com. It is tied to too many services for the years of me using it so that now it's somewhat cumbersome to change.

So today my iPhone started showing a popup "Enter the password for the Hotmail account ...". It's a legit thing. I went into the iPhone settings and sure enough that account needs me to re-enter password.

I have that account set up with a 35-character long unique password that was generated by a password manager. It also has a Google Autheticator 2FA set up.

But when I try to enter the password (from the built-in password manager on my iPhone) the Microsoft page is showing this error: "You've tried to sign in too many times with an incorrect account or password" and shows me a Captcha. But even if I type in all the Captcha characters, it just goes back to the same screen. I tried it 3 times already.

Note that I did not attempt to log in to that Hotmail account with an incorrect password before that. It sounds like someone was trying to brute-force into it.

Any idea how do I log in now?