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When I got my first account to accept credit cards in the 90s, they sent me a kachunka machine along with a bunch of window stickers, all of which were kind of
by dhosek 1y ago
When I got my first account to accept credit cards in the 90s, they sent me a kachunka machine along with a bunch of window stickers, all of which were kind of silly since it was for a magazine and I almost never took payments in person (it was also a challenge to persuade banks that the fraud risk was low since magazine subscriptions required a stable mailing address over the course of a year—as it turned out, the only instance of fraud I ever had was a subscription plus back issue order sent to Hungary—still kind of weird to think someone would engage in crime to get issues of a magazine about typography).
- necovek 1y agoIn the 90s through political turmoil in the Balkans (former Yugoslavia, so perhaps Hungary which borders it to the North was similar), it was impossible for young adults to acquire a payment instrument that worked online (even my dad had a tough job getting a Visa card: you had to deposit something like 500 Deutsche Marks for a limit of 200 DMs, which was like 50x monthly salary, and only one or two banks issued them). Thus, lists of stolen credit cards were circulating online after 1995 when we got dial-up internet into homes (it was only in Unis before that). If you had any interest in any topic you read about on the web or in a book, that was the only way to get things even if you had the money otherwise. Btw, what typography magazine was it?
- dhosek 1y agoSerif. Publishing it was a great way for me to lose a lot of money I didn’t have.
- necovek 1y agoThanks! It seems nothing but the homepage works on http://www.serifmagazine.com/ http://www.serifmagazine.com/ — I assume this is it?
- dhosek 1y agoYes, it is quite thoroughly defunct. Back issues show up at high prices at specialty bookshops occasionally. I offered what I had in the basement a few years back at a discount and what was left at the end of the summer went into the recycling bin, so a lot is truly rare. I’m not sure I even have a complete set myself. In the backlog of my things to do is a best-of compilation of articles from the published (and one planned but unpublished) issues.