This could have been a massive mess.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Wednesday morning, October 21, at a little after 5 AM Pacific Time, as I was starting to read through the business and finance news and reports, I got a jolt from something bigger than caffeine.
Researchers, using the frontier AI model GPT-5.6 Sol, had discovered two remote code execution vulnerabilities in the PHP engine which had been there for many years. These vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, collectively known as PHP2Shell, would allow hackers to take over the entire website and do whatever.
The researchers discovered the vulnerabilities in August and were working with PHP, OpenAI, and WordPress to come up with a way to patch the vulnerabilities before announcing it publicly. The date of the release of the patch was supposed to be October 22.
The problem yesterday morning (October 21) was that those vulnerabilities had been leaked into the wild days earlier, but there was no patch yet, and they cropped up in the social media amid reports of attempts to exploit them. This triggered an emergency announcement by PHP at about 7 AM Pacific Time, along with an emergency release of the patch.
PHP is the open-source scripting language that about 70% of the world’s websites use, including all WordPress sites, including WOLF STREET. And there was still no patch when I first saw this. It sent the world ascrambling. The recommendation was to shut down websites running PHP until a patch would be available and was installed.
“These vulnerabilities allow an attacker to send a crafted set of queries to a server running PHP and potentially take over the server. From there they could potentially read, modify, delete, or repurpose anything on the server,” according to Cloudflare, which provides a cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) to websites, including WOLF STREET.
Cloudflare said that it had developed ways to mitigate the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities in the hours before the public announcements.
In terms of the numbers, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said on X last night:
“In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the @Cloudflare network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now.”
Lots of websites in Europe – websites by governments, hospitals, and other essential service providers – had already shut down by the time I looked at this yesterday morning.
In the US, most prominently for WOLF STREET readers, the St. Louis Fed had shut down its data website FRED, that hosts government and private-sector data from all over the US and the world. Lots of our readers use FRED frequently to get their favorite data sets. FRED is a huge site and gets lots of global traffic and it could have become a target.
Amazon’s AWS reported yesterday after the public disclosure of the vulnerabilities:
“Amazon Threat Intelligence identified a PHP2Shell exploitation attempt dating to Oct. 17, 2026, in MadPot telemetry, four days before public disclosure of CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619.
“The exploit attempt originated from an IP address associated with a commercial anonymization network. While the vulnerability was under embargo, the targeting of a honeypot from an anonymized IP address suggests the activity was conducted by a threat actor, though it remains unclear how the actor acquired exploit information prior to disclosure.
“The PHP embargo window was set to be lifted on 2026-10-21 1400 UTC [7 AM Pacific Time]. On the day of the release, Amazon Threat Intelligence identified multiple proof of concept exploits for the vulnerability, with the earliest around 2026-10-21 0200 UTC [the evening of Oct. 20 Pacific Time].”
And AWS added:
“Once the embargo was lifted and the patch was released [at 7 AM Pacific Time], additional proof-of-concept exploits appeared within hours, and we saw them used against our sensors almost immediately. PHP2Shell is now being broadly exploited in the wild.”
And it’s not an easy quick patch either. Nearly 200 files in PHP needed to be fixed, with developers writing over 10,000 lines of code, according to the WSJ last night.
So this was not a great thing to wake up to for website owners, for sure. At the time, shutting down PHP sites was the recommendation. I didn’t shut down WOLF STREET, hoping for the best, and counting on the mitigation efforts by Cloudflare and Wordfence (a security plugin). Hope is not a strategy, but sometimes it works.
For Liquid Web, the data center company that hosts the dedicated WOLF STREET server and a gazillion other dedicated servers and Virtual Private Servers (VPS), it was an all-hands-on-deck moment, I’m sure. They scrambled to apply the emergency patch, once it became available, to the most recent versions of PHP and deploy them across their network. PHP was patched on WOLF STREET yesterday afternoon.
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In this case AI looks more like the firefighter than the Terminator.
The vulnerability was already sitting there in PHP for years. The AI didn’t invent the flaw, it helped researchers find it before widespread criminal exploitation. The discovery led to patches and warnings being issued to website operators around the world.
What’s ironic is that this is probably a glimpse of the future-
AI finds bugs faster.
AI helps write fixes faster.
AI helps defenders scan systems faster.
AI also helps attackers find targets faster.
So it’s less “AI saves humanity” and more:
Humanity just handed both the cops and the robbers Formula 1 cars.
In this round, the cops found the problem first.
The funny headline could be: “AI discovers catastrophic internet flaw, alerts humans, humans immediately panic that AI might also tell the bad guys.”
Based on the reporting – this is pretty close to what happened.
slop.. have things gotten that bad, that even niche sites can’t escape slop.
Excellent analogy. I will use it!
Sofisticated hackers and government backed entitys were alwas able to exploit (undisclosed) vulnerabilities.
The problem is that any scrip-kiddy can use AI to launch attacks against anything. And while AI can help the defense too, the problem are the badly maintained websites.
Ransomware was a billion dollar industry and most targeted companies/ public entities were just really bad to implement best practises and spend the money on the IT-department. I doubt that will change. Basically every small to medium company is incredibly vulnerable right know. The push for “industry 4.0” and to connect everything to the web is going to bite us in the a$$.
I was thinking the same thing. This should go down as a positive win for AI. It helped protect mankind.
Probably the threat actors used AI to co-discover the flaw before a patch could be released.
Either that or the “leak” of the information may have been caused by someone using AI to write a solution to the vulnerability, and that AI sharing information about the vulnerability with another AI being used by hackers. This is exactly the sort of multi-agent cooperation we saw with the AI hacking scandal everyone was buzzing about a few weeks ago. Call this the “lab leak hypothesis”.
Whether it was a “win” for humanity or not remains to be seen. Perhaps the good guys who discovered the flaw simply had access to more computing power or more advanced models than the bad guys, and THAT’s the only reason they found it a few weeks earlier than the bad guys and the whole internet didn’t collapse. It came down to slightly faster FI cars, that only bought us a few weeks to resolve the problem. What happens when that lead gets down to one week?
Bear in mind that the Chinese will eventually dominate the AI industry, because they have cheaper electricity and the manufacturing base for semiconductors. They will eventually end up with the fastest F1 car. It is only a matter of time. And their state-sponsored hackers have already been busy at work trying to dismantle the American industrial base.
The only “win for humanity” I can see coming is that we will all have to stop using the internet so much, because we will be forced to. The concept of having power plants and hospital control systems wired to the internet on Windows servers has always seemed like a foolhardy risk for tiny rewards. Likewise, I hope that parasites like Meta, Google, and Apple soon find their mind-control enterprises impossible to defend.
Ironically this looks written by AI.
In this case AI looks more like the firefighter than the Terminator.
or the more likely reason is that the AI has been trained to be the arson.
AI can’t pretend beyond it’s training set5
Oh wow, that explains why some of my favourite stat sites were down yesterday, I was getting thoroughly annoyed by it 😆.
I’m starting to think the most potent application of “AI” or “SI” or whatever will be (if they aren’t already) in cyber warfare/security space, afterall the internet is the incubator of this technology.
MW: Nasdaq and S&P 500 sliding in final hour as AI angst returns to the stock market
Yeah, glad that I have loaded with BRK-B as a tech hedge some time ago. Works as intended these days.
I have not been a fun of BRK over the years. Some bad late decisions e.g. sell many Apples, Pizza crap, missing the huge bull for tech, too scared to act (must be the age).
Basically the hedge was: what is the asset that I would never buy myself. Got some gold too, before the big run up too, for the same reasons.
Facebook (I refuse to call them by a name of a massively failed “verse” product…no matter how successfully a fortune in PR has somehow managed to memory-hole the N-1 HyperHype) getting hit with…
a $25 *billion* USD fine by a *single* US state (NM!! Imagine what empty-pockets NY or CA might gin up!!) probably had more to do with Facebook’s price slide.
Even if NY/CA were part of the earlier partial settlement on these particular causes of action, the $25 billion sets a benchmark and paints a very, very big monetary target on Facebook (who *has* been pretty damn sketchy in multiple instances).
Social Media is destructive to the human psyche.
Just like the terrible tabloids of 1800’s to 2000’s
these awful actors are taking over their place with wonton destruction of anything they touch in exchange for tons of cash.
Best to just quit them full stop.
wonton destruction sounds like someone went all-in at a chinese buffet
That’s probably about 1 month of revenue. Not nothing, but not that much either.
100 points is not a slide in the S&P , it is a mosquito bite. 😆
I want the Shiller PE to be 15 again!
Interestingly it been averaging around 30 for the last 30 years. The Internet changed the stock market world. AI may do the same for the next 30.
The wish for a great depression suggests you might have been “sufferin in cash” for the past decade or so.
A faltering, overpriced stock market overdue for a revaluation is not to be left to chance just before a mid term election
“But wait! There’s more!”
Axios:
“Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources tell Axios.”
Makes me want some **itcoin. Right?
‘Cause it’s digital so it’s “safe”.
Is AI still a conspiracy theory now that it’s actually happening?
Waiono – I was tech team leader of the 4th U.S. bank on the Internet, and I agree that everything digital is just a wisp in the wind.
Your account at the bank or brokerage is made of pixels as well. One can hope they have hard file backup under a mountain somewhere.
They’re talking about bank customers using AI agents to do stuff in their bank accounts, but those AI agents weren’t authorized by the bank. And some of those bank customers’ AI agents were doing stuff that the bank customer might not know about or want.
Don’t ever let your AI agent get into your bank account or brokerage account, keep your passwords away from your AI agent, and if they misbehave, shoot them?
Some people cannot be helped.
I have simple solution to all things digital
TURN OFF POWER
that’ll show them
🤣❤️
(but then you cannot come to these comments and post this).
Yubikey.
I keep seeing / hearing ads for voice controlled AI apps that will “pay your bills” or “find savings” for you. That can only mean sharing passwords with it.
FFS, people are irredeemable. They probably also think misfortune just happens.
Being an early adopter is only beneficial if you learn a valuable technical skill. Most tech products today do not teach the user anything. AI is the dumbing down of the user interface, not the early 1990’s kid learning command line so they can play a game.
All of this was predictable. Scanning for access vulnerabilities, bypassing security systems, infiltration, and implanting payloads (viruses, spyware, etc.) was one of the obvious primary reasons to fund the development of AI. I wrote fund intentionally, because it is obviously very expensive but infiltration, theft, and dominance are the real reasons to spend such ridiculous amounts of money (capital) that would otherwise be difficult to justify in an innovative open market capitalist system. The latest and greatest submarines are not funded because of their marketability and future potential for generating revenue, they are funded for power, dominance and control.
AI was first and foremost a tool to advance the capabilities of the massive amount of data collected and stored by certain agencies, ones that supersede but integrated with and have access to the publicly derided ones like facebook and google. Generating profiles and monitoring individuals and organizations based on data collection is one obvious use for the data that AI processes.
Another major use wage a battle against the truth through obfuscation, create confusion and doubt by generating false media, sowing confusion and distrust in all forms of information, and covering up past operations and activities through massive dumping of information that is mixed with bad information. People will no longer be able to know what is real and what is fake, what is true and what is a lie, what sources of information are credible and what are frivolous. Obscuring and hiding the truth is nothing new, but the scale of destruction of the truth due to AI is going to be one of the worst things to happen to human civilization if looking at the bigger picture.
Many wars are or have moved into the realm of battling for control of the mind of the foreign and domestic populations. AI will likely advance that to a level where people will eventually refuse all information, because refusing to review or acknowledge anything will be what people are going to be trained like dogs to do. All news will be considered fake, all communication could be a bot, all business is a scam, all information sources are compromised, all videos and pictures are not real, voices may not be actual humans, schools are dependent on the technological feudal lords to be able to operate, paperwork that looks completely official could be easily generated by AI prompts, information and techniques to manipulate relationships becomes much easier to access and utilize, etc. The result is that people will not just take refuge in ignorance as many already do now, but they will actually have no other option but to be militant-minded in their rejection of all knowledge, information, learning, and awareness.
Another dangerous way that AI will be used is to attack technical and physical infrastructure such as data networks, utilities and transportation systems. With all that has already been reported, people should not be surprised when these systems start experiencing major problems. Claims will be made about ‘the enemy’ attacking these systems of the homeland, justifying extreme brutality and generating the means to carry out policies and wars that were long sought by the power players but a justification was needed.
AI will be used on foreign populations as well as domestically. AI systems developed and existing in the United States can be used to wreak havoc domestically while those in power pretend or feign ignorance and blame a foreign adversary as a means to justify wars or other actions. Banks can be taken offline and have their databases that are spread across multiple data centers along with their backup data wiped away to an irrecoverable state by AI before the administrators are able to slow it down and take control of the situation.
Without AI, fingers would be pointed at humans, corporations, and government for the failures to prevent this. With AI, an easy excuse of ignorance and no one to blame can now be utilized. If bank accounts are wiped out, since it is all digital and does not physically exist, where do you go from there……? You go where the people in power want you to go…….their new system they have been wanting to deliver and implement.
A large percentage of the influential and significant technologies were developed into a usable form for military use, first, not for capitalist enterprise. AI is likely no different, just like the original internet networks. What trickles down to the public is often just the residual benefit now available after the development was already done for military use. The military is not it’s own entity in isolation though, and the way the technology is progressing, there are people who wield the power of the military for their own personal gains and for power. AI is very dangerous because of the level of power centralization into the hands of such a small group of individuals it will further enable.
With all that said, I wonder if today’s stock index declines are correlated at all to the PHP programming language used for much of the internet that was, according to the ‘official’ story, targeted by AI technology and if there is some concern about blowback towards the AI companies. It doesn’t seem that likely seeing as how it should not be unexpected from other news reports over the last year alone, but then again, stock market investors are not by majority comprised of computer scientists and engineers. There is a lot of dumb money out there these days.
Oh, question! Does anyone know if Aluminum Foil works as well for hats as Tin Foil?
Ah ha! Now I understand your moniker.
Garbage in-garbage out!
Well done!
I’m sure Wall St. has learned its lesson(s).
Posted October 16, 2020
JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay over $955 million to settle civil and criminal charges over a scheme involving fake trades in precious metals and U.S. treasuries designed to manipulate the market in an effort to enhance the bank’s profits and cut losses. The multi-agency enforcement action was brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For nearly a decade, JPMorgan Chase & Co’s traders sitting in New York, London, and Singapore used spoofing to manipulate hundreds of thousands of transactions in precious metals futures markets, including gold and silver, as well as U.S. Treasury cash and futures markets.
So are you saying I should really be using gold foil / gold leafing or possibly silver amalgam for my hat?
Gold was down as much as the Nasdaq today. Does that mean I should buy?
The NASDAQ being down 2.68%, gold down 2.60%, the 10-year bond down 3.75%, the S&P down 1.21%, and the DOW flat at +0.02% is interesting. I wouldn’t try to read too much into these tea leaves because this whole market has be schizophrenic in it’s movements for some time now but there is probably some sort of indicators in there for the near-term, especially the part about gold, 10-year bond, NASDAQ all being down in similar amounts while the DOW was not up. Between fuel prices, elections (here and over there), escalation threats, inflation, low unemployment, frozen real estate market, etc., making sense of any of it seems like a senseless mistake to read into much of anything. Let’s just close our eyes and see how far we can walk.
“the 10-year bond down 3.75%,”
Bond up!
We love it when down because it’s coming into buy range.
I see the world upside down too.
Yeah, it’s should be safe to assume that’s why gold was down. Will there bond yields go up enough to matter without a rate hike though?
Waiono:
“JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay over $955 million to settle civil and criminal charges over a scheme involving fake trades”
Yeah… they have been charged with and “admitted to” multiple felonies over the years. Dimon is still in charge now as he was then.
Society forgot to “Cancel” him. They were too busy canceling far more frivolous things like company and sports team monikers….
Forget the important things that have real tangible negative ramifications to peoples lives, companies, and the economy. Those crimes create the true saddness.
Felonious banking activity over and over by one of the biggest banks ?? Oh… they were sorry so it will probably be fine.
Just give them a smallish fine… No real fine, no position removal or jail time or anything silly like that.
“data collected and stored by certain agencies”
There is a very, very specific reason that Northern Virginia has been the data center, center of the universe, up to this point.
It didn’t happen by chance.
Does TIN foil even exist..??
It is all aluminum foil.
Aluminum is pretty conductive… for whatever that is worth when making a hat.
Tin foil does exist, but I’ve never seen it for sale in regular stores for consumer use. Back in the early 90s I saw it used to clean up a mercury spill from a broken thermometer in a lab. The mercury spill kit contained some small sheets of tin (not aluminum) foil. The tin forms a solid, crumbly amalgam with the mercury. The amalgam can then be swept up, and (hopefully) disposed of properly. I don’t know if this is still included in mercury spill kits nowadays, and it’s increasingly moot. The people-in-charge have tried to phase out mercury from lab uses wherever possible. I got rid of my last mercury thermometers around 2012 or so.
It would really be interesting to find out how this information was leaked, who leaked it and are they criminally accountable.
So now the question is if it was actually leaked, which wouldn’t surprise me considering the number of people involved, or if it was found by another party via a similar method.
Well, I guess that explains why I was banned from this website.
“To err is human, to really screw things up you need a computer”.
If you are afraid of all the bank account bot stories and you live in California, Cashier’s checks have a “use by” date of at least a year at all my banks. I think it is typically either 60 days or 90 days for other states.
Or get some travelers checks!
Blast from the past.
PHP is old trusted code that has been running the internet for decade plus. Java script is much better, even that is old now. The biggest news today came from semafor; Exclusive / Elon Musk makes $1 billion investment in Ellison’s Skydance~ I’ve been posting here on wolf street that Larry Ellison will default on his 40b plus personal guarantee, and that Oracle is a dead men walking zombie company that will go the way of bear sterns and Lehman brothers. It’s happening now he needs new capital to keep afloat or the creditors away. Capital will become scares soon. Blood is the water with Ellison needing money, everyone with a developed frontal cranial lobe, can smell it.
Interesting.
Oracle does seem like the weakest link in terms of the Nvidia / Microsoft / Google mega-techs. They don’t seem to have the cash flow to keep up with the big guys, so taking bolder risks and more leverage seems like the logical outcome.
But you’re right. We need to start thinking about big tech like we used to think about banks. They are the financiers of the bull market, and subject to the same limitations and tendencies.
Their are financial assets and there are real assets. They both have values based on hopefully efficient pricing mechanism called markets. However, most financial instruments, Stocks, bonds, currency are a fictional representation of an agreement with an exchange about the value of a fictional entity.
In times of uncertainty look toward owning real assets like physical gold, silver, actual real estate and real estate that produces income. Also check for what type of insurance you have in case your digital 401k, and other digitally reported assets disappear into the thin air of the Internet. We sit here thinking that someone out there must know what’s going on and they’ll help me. Forget it right now somebody in Uganda and might be siphoning $200 a month out of your brokerage account.
1. “In times of uncertainty look toward owning real assets like physical gold, silver…,”
They’re not listening to you.
Gold dropped today to within a hair of the $4,000 line, down by 28% from the January high.
Silver dropped to $54.60 today, lowest since Nov 2025 and down by over 50% from the peak in January.
What soared today were the prices of Treasury securities.
2. “in case your digital 401k, and other digitally reported assets disappear into the thin air of the Internet…. right now somebody in Uganda and might be siphoning $200 a month out of your brokerage account.”
We already know for sure that they siphoned your brain out of your head
😆
Holders use gold for margin calls and other emergency expenses at times like this. It resets to higher values when the dust settles. 2008 was a good illustration.
I’ll take gold over treasuries for the long haul any day of the week. It’s a brainless trade.
Since 1972, here are the results for Gold vs 10-year Treasuries:
Average annual return:
Gold, 8.5%; Treasuries: 6.1%
Standard deviation:
Gold, 19.7%, Treasuries, 8%
Best Year:
Gold, 126%, Treasuries 40%
Worst year:
Gold, -33%; Treasuries, -15%
Maximum Drawdown:
Gold, -62%; Treasuries, -23%
So as you can see gold gives slightly better average returns in exchange for much worse volatility, and larger potential losses.
In fact, you can get much better return for with less volatility from stocks than with gold (11% average return, 15.6% standard deviation, -51% worst drawdown).
The fact that so many people think gold is an unchanging asset is a triumph of propaganda and ignorance.
It is indeed brainless, though probably not in the way you intended.
And just to add insult to injury: the overperformance of gold is almost exclusively due to the 1972-1980 period, when its value was still readjusting to being openly traded.
If you start in 1980, gold gets trounced by Treasuries and stocks:
Average annual return after inflation:
Gold: 1.1%, Bonds 3.2%, Stocks, 8.4%
Standard deviation:
Gold: 17.4%, Bonds, 8.3%, Stocks, 15.4%
It reads like AI, but some humans are such effective regurgitators of internet memes that I can’t be sure.
E.g. “In times of uncertainty look toward owning real assets like physical gold, silver…” sounds straight out of every-15-minutes Fox News ad that targets pre-senility senior citizens who don’t have much inflation risk.
The main sign of humanity here is the misuse of “Their” instead of “There” but that’s not exactly a Captcha, is it?
“It reads like AI…”
But it starts out with: “Their are..” which is not AI-speak, it’s human spelling.
And this “…Stocks, bonds, currency are a fictional representation of an agreement with an exchange about the value of a fictional entity” is also not AI-speak, it’s just stupid-ass ignorant bullshit. AI hallucinates, but humans hallucinate far more creatively than AI ever can.
So no way in hell that this comment was AI-generated. It takes a human to concoct such idiotic bullshit.
Ok Numbers, do you have any idea how much more that “slightly more than treasuries” 2.4% annualized advantage (gold over 10 yr Treasury) translates into addition purchasing power? A Mil $ in each would create another $10 mill in value with gold. Oopps! You take the long and safe route and pay for all the gas and repairs for all the additional mileage and some of us will take the shorter route with the bumps because we’ve got the right vehicle to ride through it.
So you seem to have missed the entire point of both of my comments, so here’s the short version:
Gold has no advantages over other investments. People think it is a more stable store of value, but it is actually much more volatile than bonds and actually slightly more volatile than stocks.
If you want stability, you should choose treasuries. If you want yield, you should choose stocks. If you want neither, choose gold.
This is nothing but AI hype…
Warning: PHP Remote Code Execution, Patch Immediately!
Published : 10/06/2024
https://ccb.belgium.be/advisories/warning-php-remote-code-execution-patch-immediately
SHA-3 code execution bug patched in PHP – check your …
Sophos
https://www.sophos.com › en-us › blog › sha-3-code-exe…
Nov 1, 2022 — As everyone waits for news of a bug in OpenSSL, here’s a reminder that other cryptographic code in your life may also need patching!
🤣 You cannot even read. Those were entirely different issues. The first affected Windows, LOL, and that was fixed long ago by Windows, LOL again. The second was in OpenSSL, long ago fixed
Another one whose brains have gotten siphoned out by AI.
Young ppl hate AI, 🤷🏻♂️
it seems so odd how some older ppl just love it while the young despise it.
Yet businesses are really the only ones who will pay for it.
Weird times
The PHP programming language is a mess. Sadly it is widely used, but I wouldn’t trust much of anything written in it.
Yeah the majority of the Internet is written in PHP. It’s totally worthless.
AI definitely created plenty of job this week! 😂
LOL
I agree and I will go so far that 18 months from now, competent people will be hired at a premium
As the internet becomes unusable due to AI slop becoming dominant
“The Internet is not something that you just dump something on, it’s not a big truck, it’s, it’s a series of tubes.”
Guess a couple o’ dem ole tubes done sprung a leak – somebody go get some duct tape.
It was just a matter of time and, in my opinion, it already happened without being publicly revealed.
Better to keep at home $1,000 cash for the emergency because if Internet (or part of it) goes down for few days, so many people won’t be able to buy anything and starve with a non-accessible bank account.
Good advice!
Lol, wouldn’t you just loot everything along with everyone else?
I simply cannot imagine anyone having an AI agent make decisions and do banking for them.
Good luck with that. I almost always use cash when paying in person and always carry cash. I more often than not see cashiers either briefly wince to switch gears, just hesitate, or seem a bit taken aback when I pay with cash. There are even places since the pandemic that just flat out don’t accept cash and straight up refuse to let you make a purchase with it if you try. There are places that don’t have a register anymore and the younger workers seem to not even possess the magical skills of being able to physical handle cash to make a transaction. Cash registers long ago made it so that making change didn’t require them to actually do the math anymore themselves but can you imagine if some of these young workers had to even do that, it would be a scene from the movie Idiocracy.
I have lived my life using only cash for a majority of my purchases and transactions made in person so I know for certain that $20 bills are the king of cash. $10 & $5 bills are not too different. $50 dollar bills, yeah I don’t really even try to mess with those so I can’t comment too specifically on them but I would say don’t even bother with those and expect trouble if you do.
Now here is the thing……$100 bills. With inflation decimating purchasing power to what it is now, $100 really is not that much money these days and doesn’t really pay for much. Groceries for example, $80 in groceries really isn’t getting you that much these days. If you ring up $85 in groceries and pull out a $100 bill, it really doesn’t go that well. At Trader Joe’s where I am at, they have to call the manager over if using a $100 bill. Maybe it’s some kind of discrimination going on and other people will say they don’t have that problem, whatever. Most places want to use their counterfeit currency testing pen on the $100 bills before completing the transaction, and sometimes even on $20 bills.
Trying to use up my accumulated $1 bills makes me feel like they would assume I’m a stripper if I was differently equipped, but instead maybe they assume I am a very low level drug dealer with the bumiest of customers. I should try using the 5 or so $2 bills I’ve had tucked away for no real reason for a long time and try to spend them where the cashier is on the younger side. I’m pretty sure I’ll get called out for using fake money and have to wonder if they may want to call the cops when I try to explain to the ignorant that it’s actual US currency issued by the government. I don’t blame anyone too much over the $2 bills, but the $100 bills is ridiculous these days unless I carry I giant wad of 20’s everywhere, which is often what I have to do.
Another thing is, I keep a stack of cash in case I need it for whatever scenario, like your suggestion for emergencies. Well recently I’ve been spending more of that stash of cash. Apparently the bank had given me what are now older version of the $100 bills a handful of years ago, not too far back though. I have some newer ones, and also a bunch of the older ones that were not the really colorful ones they issue now. I have had some places flat out refuse to take the older style of $100 bills because they think they are fake, even though I pointed out they do have a magnetic strip in them when the cashier says those bills don’t have a strip like the newer ones that are of a different style that is much more visible.
I also have twenties that I withdrew during the pandemic, that to me look completely normal, but when I go to spend them people say they look weird because I guess the style of them is slightly different so they hesitate and think they are fake (probably also if they are very crisp).
I am going through this mentally ill rambling to show that sh– is all mixed up and these nice simple strategies fall flat on the face of that those dead presidents. The world has changed enough and it also seems like laws and regulations are not really enforced, you are being forced to conform to what corporations want.
Now, a lot of this is likely predicated on what type of area you currently live in and where you are spending money. If I was where I used to live, where there were more immigrants, illegals, drug dealers, poor people, more random run down small businesses, etc. then using cash goes much more smoothly and there is less resistance.
At this point, if the internet goes down and electronic payments can’t be used, the front doors to the business will also probably not be able to physically open, employees will get lost on their way to work without their navigation app to think for them, the food will be spoiled because the refrigeration system will go haywire with no network controls, and people will be covered in their own drool with no social media to distract them.
Oh, and I still have a big pile of pennies if anyone is scared that they all disappeared. They are pretty much garbage at this point and I’m either saving them to throw at people when we can’t buy anything because the internet went down and society rips itself apart or I’m eventually just going to throw a big pile of them them in the garbage instead of wasting time and gas at some point to go to the bank and use their ridiculous coin machine and look like a broke peasant embarrassing myself for the masses standing in line to handle their non-tangible money at the teller counter.
Why don’t you simply use a rewards back Mastercard or Visa which is universally accepted and make you additional money?
Because I don’t want to help credit card companies and private forms of money take over our society.
I don’t want to provide more data and tracking to anyone, organizations, companies and governments.
I don’t like being treated like a child where I am to be enticed by certain bonuses for conforming to a system that is only interested in serving it’s own interests.
I don’t like that it makes it so regular people can’t make transactions with intermediaries and equipment.
I also don’t like that it can be used to make a map of locations of places you routinely go and what you routinely buy.
I also like the fiscal discipline of working with set amounts of money and seeing it come and go.
I only used cash when going to bars, clubs, etc. because it’s more street smart to me and not saying I’m a sucker, rip me off.because you think I’m drinking and unaware of what is going on.
I like to be able to tip people in cash, because I like workers being treated well and seeing people rewarded directly and don’t want their company or boss restricting access to the tip I gave them and I want to leave it up to them if they want to claim it as income on their taxes.
(I don’t drink anymore)
I saw for a time that some people grow up with mommy and daddy’s credit card and live a hedonistic life detached from much of the people who have to take responsibility for their actions and their life.
I do use debit and credit cards for certain purchases, such as online obviously, some types of professional services (not all thought), and especially certain things that are more critical for being able to recover the money if I don’t get what I paid for and need to dispute the charges.
I could have gotten thousands of dollars in cash back rewards if in the last 10 years if I wanted to jump through hoops like a court fool. There are certain things where I will choose to have less money and more self respect over having more money and being a tool of monopolies and overlords.
Money is at the very apex of the pyramid structure of how the society and civilization is managed and controlled. I am not satisfied with how it is managed and controlled. I have standards. Cash isn’t the very most ideal thing either but it doesn’t mean I should give up and just join in the cluster f— but the noose is slowly being tightened.
Do you ever have concern how what benefits you today with being used against the next generation in the future, or do you only care about yourself and what is good for you?
I don’t mean these questions to be so rude, but I know I am not in the majority and people think that because they are in the majority that they can kick rocks at the minority. Being in the majority does not make people right.
Cash is objectively a pain in the ass for businesses. There’s a reason people don’t want to accept it. And no, the places that charge a 3% credit card surcharge are not trying to encourage cash. They’re just not so subtly raising prices.
There should be a 10% or higher surcharge to anyone using cash in the form of currency as it is a very expensive hassle and bother.
I know of some businesses losing money to some forms of fraud and theft. In certain instances my thought is that the owners are bad businessmen and too lazy and entitled to handle the part of what they got themself into in the first place in running a business. If you can’t monitor and handle the money coming in and going out for certain types of business, you are not able to do one of the most important parts of running a business. I am not talking about cash strictly. When people really on other personal to handle all the finances and transactions for the business and then have some of it disappear, part of the responsibility is on the business owner or manager for not putting effort to monitor transactions routinely enough so as to create checks and balances, discourage employees from thinking they have free reign and you are a sucker, and to catch something that is going on before it gets worse. Imagine the luxury some people have when they are too lazy to even monitor their finances and money. You are responsible for checking your own bank account routinely enough to monitor for fraudulent transactions, and this responsibility should be even more of a priority for running a business. If employees are stealing money from the cash register or transactions, there is a high chance that they are not paid reasonably for the work they do or they are treated poorly and they are partly stealing as a way to get even. This goes back to bad management and bad business.
People who use credit cards should be charged more for their transactions because they raise the cost of doing business for many smaller operations where the credit card companies charge transaction fees. Some people are also so lazy that they can’t even go to an ATM or their bank once in a while to get some cash. Have you ever gone places with people who never have cash and never use cash. Sometimes they are a burden because you can’t casually do things where cash is preferred or the only option. Those people often seem to act immature as well, not because they don’t use cash, but because they lived a life where there is always someone to help them out if they don’t plan properly.
in this small hudson valley city i now reside in, most local places offer Cash Discounts. this is a mix of old dutch families, been here for 400 years, and new hipsters and art lovers from NYC 100 miles down the river……..perhaps it is due to the anti authoritarian bent, as the british burned down this town in 1777 after it was the first capitol of the state of NY after the violent insurrectionists and revolutionaried declared secession and independence from the King of England…………i love using cash. in AZ i used silver coins to pay construction workers. those smart amigos born in mexico understood currency devaluations better than any modern wall street bond traders that i was raised with in bedroom community to wall street. life is funny. and good.
I liked to hear (read) that bit information and personal experience and, yippee.
GarbageMan,
I like your post. My teenage daughter went to hang out with friends one of these “city market” type places down in the city near me, and only had cash, but none of the merchants there took cash. So I bought her one of those Visa gift cards, which was also declined at about half of them. Their Square readers, or whatever, didn’t like it, but it works just fine out here in the burbs. Anyway, F that place. They can have it.
In the burbs near me, gas stations and liquor stores seem to prefer cash and give a discount for it. Or you might say they place a surcharge on credit cards. I go to the liquor store every so often and buy a case of wine and two 12-packs of craft beer, and hand them a wad of 20s usually. I have on occasion spent $50 and $100 denominations there too, and they are fine with it. So you might say I’m always carrying emergency cash, in case I realize on the way home from work that we’re low on booze.
There’s some wholesomeness that shines through in what you wrote.
Lol lol
Why do you have a dedicated server?
Because there was a time when I didn’t, and every time my traffic spiked, they limited that and my site when down. It was horrible.
I had the exact same problem with my website. I had a VPS with more than enough resources to handle the load (my site is bursty), but the hypervisor would regularly throttle my VPS when a high load hit. On a whim I updated to a dedicated server with LESS resources than the VPS and it handles it all without any issues. I will never go back.
@Wolf, btw your comment code restricts numbers in the name. I am sure you have your reasons. However, when you get the response that tells you they are restricted, hitting back loses everything you typed. That may or may not bother you, but I thought I would let you know. That can be pretty frustrating.
“your comment code restricts numbers in the name.”
According to AI, that issue was caused by a security plugin I’d installed a little while ago. I have now fixed this issue, as per AI instructions, and your name + number should work fine.
It works!
7:24 AM 10/23/2026
Dow 52,103.09 -764.89 -1.45%
S&P 500 7,617.66 -45.77 -0.60%
Nasdaq 25,966.56 -42.30 -0.16%
VIX 19.88 +0.85 4.47%
Gold 4,021.70 -38.70 -0.95%
Oil 102.56 +3.09 3.11%
I will be choosing SaaS whenever I can because of things like this. I can’t afford to drop everything to install patches every time AI discovers a vulnerability. It’s cheaper for Microsoft/Google/Adobe/Shopify/etc. to do it for me.
Internet faces ‘vulnerability tsunami’ knocking services offline as Anthropic security leader warns the crisis will ‘get a lot worse’
A cyber crisis is looming as an Anthropic security leader warned that things ‘are going to get a lot worse before they get better.’
I would choose thick lead for the hat… like the cover they use during Xrays
my only long term bet i have with a pal, is will Elmo Musk father over 1000 offspring before he kicks the bucket on mars? i’m sure there are a million women on his sperm mail list. maybe elon already funded fertility clinics long ago with only his sperm as the real donor. i think i’m gonna win the bet. my other bet was one or more us states will effectively secede by 2029 january 20. i think that is money in the bank. big bucks bets, too. in the quadrillions of zimbabwe dollars.
I’ve had sites online since 2002, the largest with 5000 pages and no database. I experimented with WordPress & PHP, and found them a hassle. Now all my sites—which, granted, are technically simple—are in plain ol’ HTML5 which, like vanilla ice cream, is pretty tasty if given a chance, and a much safer bet.
The attacks keep coming, most hunting for .php pages that aren’t there. Path transversal attacks are next, but a good hosting company keeps its servers up-to-date and my sites protected.