eisfeld

One needs to see this also in a broader context. Right now there is a switch from cash and cards to internet based payment methods like Promptpay via QR codes for example or all these digital wallets like the True Money wallet. This means the competitors are fighting a fierce war over marketshare. Combine this knowledge with the following: True Money belongs to Ascend Group which belongs to Charoen Pokphand Group also known as CP. CP owns CP ALL which owns 7/11 in Thailand. Now you know why 7/11 is pushing the True wallet so much and even going so far as to not allowing local debit cards. They have the same owners and are fighting to become the dominant digital payment solution.

AiseanNow

Both Visa and Mastercard have cross-border transaction fees or different interregional interchange rates.

Yea that guess with BOT regulations and taxes is completely unrealistic imho. It's probably because processing fees for international cards are much higher than local and True was eating these fees until now. They probably simply don't want to do that any more. Simple matter of costs.

Yup or how about linking to the guys actual TikTok page if that's what they are reporting about? Nah, linking to stuff now verboten. He deserves to be linked to for his good deeds. AI news is not doing him justice. Here: https://www.tiktok.com/@savvyrickbrown?lang=th-TH

Ah cool, Pattaya has a new public transportation system with green buses.

You can renew a license up to 3 months before its expiry date and up to 1 year late. You could go in say July or August and renew both at the same time. There'll be a bit of luck involved as to their new expiry years matching. The car one might get an expiry date one year earlier than your motocycle license. But they both will be set to expire on your birthday.

Is it OK then to post unrelated comments? I didn't say it was. I gave an example of other articles suffering from the same issue. Very clear that this is the new way they post news now. To claim this one here is different and humorous is naive at best.

They are not all stock photos. And the note that it's a "file photo for reference only" is at the bottom of the post while the image is at the top. No idea why you are defending the new status of using only remotely related or completely unrelated images when before they used photos of the actual incident when available and link to the original news. It's clearly just because they are taking the news content from other places, rewritten by AI, without giving attribution. If they also copied the images from the other news outlets it would be too obvious. Let's be real for a moment.

Humorous? Maybe the other article of a motorbike crash who showed an image of a totally different crash was also humorous? Come on. It's pretty obvious what is happening. We are being fed automatically generated articles by an AI accompanied with an automatically selected image that is vaguely on topic. It's super low effor and quality "reporting" and nothing else. And yes it does matter. If the image wouldn't matter then why include one at all? In some other threads people were confused because the image content suggested certain things which the actual article didn't.

And no source as seems to be the new modus operandi. The image 100% is not "Courtesy of Microsoft Bing" which is a search engine and does not license out images. AseanNow news have taken a deep nosedive. Terrible.

Fuel consumption of automatics like a Click can be a bit higher because the engine revs quicker and people tend to use more throttle as you can just floor it and forget about the rest. People who drive semis tend to drive slower and the engine doesn't rev to the max immediately when opening the throttle. So it's not exactly the engine itself which causes a difference in fuel consumption. You can drive very efficiently on an auto just as well. But as said the difference in consumption is quite low nowerdays so as long as you are not a taxi or delivery driver who does hundreds of km per day every day and are tight on money, it really doesn't matter much.

I didn't want to say it but there is a taste of copyright infringement in the air. In an organized and commercial way. Not just the images but the content of the articles which is clearly taken from other news sources without attribution.

The quality of the articles is going down fast like a bike crash. Including a picture which has nothing to do with the incident apart from also being a crashed bike is just pathetic. I also highly doubt that the picture came from Google and is licensed by them. Google just indexed it and returned it in its search.

Sounds like what a covert Chinese account would say 😄

It was not easy to find the actual study because AseanNow under the new thAIger overlords has decided they don't want to link to any sources anymore and AseanNow now just copies content from whatever places. As you've found there was only the german "Bild" tabloid who wrote about it and they also didn't link to the source. The "Bild" tabloid is infamous in Germany for super low quality and being misleading or outright lying on a regular basis. I didn't find the study at first because here and elsewhere it's marked as "a new study" but I actually found it on the KFN website. The survey was done in 2022 and the study published in 2023. Link to actual study: https://kfn.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/FB-169.pdf Of course the study didn't find that 67.8% of surveyed kids finds Koran rules more important than German law. It's only some of the muslim kids that answered that and the study actually explicitly in multiple places says that due to the low amount of students (308) who are muslim and answered that part, the numbers can't be taken as statistically significant, have huge margins of error and can't be seen as representative at all. And what did we get? Some <deleted>ty article claiming that 67.8% of German school children holds the Koran with more significance than German law. It's so sad the state of journalism we are fed with. Lies lies lies.

A relevant article with some background info why Google search declined heavily in recent years: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Ukraine is in no way comparable to Tibet when it comes to the EU. I can't understand how that's not blatantly obvious. The EU has a lot of trade with Ukraine. Plenty of EU companies have offices over there. The EU takes more than half of all of Ukraines trade. Geostrategically it is also in a very important place. Ukraine has a direct border with the EU. Tibet is on the other side of the world, has virtually zero trade with the EU, was surrounded by countries that the EU can't influence much with no waterway access. It also has zero chance of defending against China contrary to Ukraine who can put up an actual fight with a chance to win. There are worlds between these countries. Have you looked at who the 1% are and how many of those are in the defense industry? Most of the rich people have suffered declines in revenue because the war takes a toll on economies. They have zero interest in having wars when they get rich by well working economies that flourish during peaceful times. What you are saying is just a conspiracy theory which actually makes no sense if you think about it a bit.

The video does not match the written reporting by AseanNow. The victim was not left abandoned, there was a person helping them. The video also stops a second after the couple existing the vehicle and doesn't show what happened after. Who is the author of this post? No source linked.

Over the past decade I have whitnessed the Thai visa requirements going up both in price and burden on the applicants. It used to be a 5 minute process for me to apply in the consulate of my home country and was very straight foward and easy. Now it's multiple week process during which I can't talk to anyone (e-visa, in-person not allowed anymore) and a lot of documents being asked for. The process is also completely in english which a lot of older people are not comfortable with. I have now heard from over a dozen people who used to spend winter in Thailand and considered completely moving there for retirement that they gave up and chose other countries. I myself while not being at retirement age anytime soon am also getting annoyed more and more. I've experienced immigration officials coming up with completely made up requirements and issues now and then for no discernable reason. At some point it's just enough and you stop and ask yourself if that waste of your time and energy has to be in your life. People who have plenty of choices don't take the crap forever.

I replied to two different questions from another poster. You have to read the quoted post before reading my reply to it. Two questions, two answers. In both cases separated by some newlines.

NATO is not involved in the Ukraine war. Some NATO member countries are supporting Ukraine with funds and weapons but that is a different thing. If NATO would be involved in the war then it would look very, very different. Why the west didn't stop China from invading Tibet? Well they can't defend everyone now can they? They wouldn't be in a very good position to defend there just geographically speaking and then you also have to be a bit realistic in that western countries have to take into account geopolitical threats, economic threats and other strategic considerations. But you can see both Russia and China have taken over territories before without much opposition and it has embolded them to do more of the same as we are seeing.

Exactly. If third countries wouldn't get involved in disputes between countries then any stronger country can just take over any smaller country. It's like a school bully. The bully wont stop by himself and the bullied guy isn't strong enough to defend himself. Others have to step in. Which is also the whole idea of NATO. All countries together are too strong for anyone else to try to invade any individual member state.

You are, as usual, confused. The people who downvote you are against the war and against Putin the warmonger. To call the downvoters warmongers is nonsensical. They didn't stir up war.

Why would Russia be frightened by a defensive alliance? NATO does not invade countries. Has not, will not. Perhaps? Either there was an agreement or there wasn't. If it's important to Russia then maybe put it in writing like everything else? Didn't happen. Reagan never ushered anything like that, it was Baker who met with Gorbachev and Baker said he didn't make any such assurance. The topic also was unification of Germany. What does Ukraine have suddenly to do with it and why is it ok to invade them?