Recent Comments

Because it's faster, cheaper, and generally more effortless than any of the other options. Chip+pin is secure but takes longer, cash involves a lot more overhead.

Retailers like it because:

• It saves money. With self-checkouts everywhere, the biggest maintenance you have to do on those machines is restocking change. On a standard checkout, using a card is about as fast as using cash in most instances.
• Effortless payment. You don't have to count out and hand over cash, you don't even have to verify the number and type in a pin (for purchase under $100 here). You just wave your card over the receiver, grab your stuff, and go. Retailers like you to be less conscious of how much you're spending.

People are fine with it for similar reasons. Cash requires planning and overhead (I recently dumped a 30kg bucket of coins at the bank). Card+pin can be fiddly or annoying if you're just buying a sandwich. Contactless options are fast and convenient for small everyday purchases.
They also pass a test that eftpos/chip+pin dont: You can quickly pay for a few drinks at a busy pub. It's hard to explain how big a deal that is, but it's something credit cards never conquered. Most pubs here include an ATM so you can turn your inconvenient card into convenient cash before you order anything.

I personally make a rule of using cash when reasonable possible. I'm uncomfortable with having one piece of plastic linked to all my purchases in easily-searchable databases...but I understand the appeal completely. Eventually I'll probably have to go over to it, I just hope there'll be an easy option that still includes some anonymity.

No love for the Coleco Telstar Arcade?

No, probably not. I've never met anyone else who even knew what the damn thing was, much less had one (to be fair, until recently I couldn't remember the name of the thing either; I had to scour the Internet to find out what it was called). The consoles themselves contained very little circuitry; all the real work was done by chips embedded in the triangular cartridges.

I shouldn't be too down on the machine though; limited as it was, it made me look more seriously at personal computers instead.

affect --> effect

Anyone else here for the TurboGraphx/PC-Engine?

Uhhhh...why not just vote with your wallets and affect REAL change? AMD is opening the hardware as fast as humanly possible, supports the coreboot project, even put some extra men on the FOSS APU drivers to get them up to snuff...so why not support the company that is trying to support you by buying AMD and influencing others to do so as well? The bang for the buck is still firmly in the AMD camp and you can get some crazy powerful hardware for peanuts and if enough FOSS supporters vote with their wallets and AMD sees their sales go up because of this? Other companies WILL notice this and be more likely to support you as well.

So instead of trying to make something that if you are REALLY lucky might reach 4 digits in sales why not affect some REAL change and support a company that is really trying to help you whose gear anybody can buy?

oops, my bad, the bug report is dated November 2013 not 2012 ...

But seriously, he aggi freshmen that show up every year, driving new F150/250's look a whole lot like my nearly 20 year old pickup.

I suppose some of them do... Most of them, though, have extended/crew cabs, shorter beds to compensate for the cab extension, tiny 4-cyl engines, more and more of them are compact pickups, exteriors are rounded, and interiors are plush, with power-everything and feather-weight accelerator, brakes, etc.

An electric vehicle is necessarily going to look a bit different. No more need for the big prominent front grill for the radiator, and the engine compartment in general will be far smaller in comparison. But compare the two, and there are more similarities than differences:

* http://www.moibibiki.com/images/nissan-truck-red-1.jpg

* http://www.guysgab.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013-Nissan-Frontier-Pro4X-1.jpg

* http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Leaf-Truck-6.jpg

Looks like the cheap one is available much cheaper, still...

Harbor Freight sells it for $190, currently, which combined with the 20% off coupons they litter the country with, is only $152+tax. Their less common 25% off coupons make it just $143+tax.

* http://www.harborfreight.com/870-lb-capacity-40-inch-x-49-inch-heavy-duty-utility-trailer-with-8-inch-wheels-and-tires-42708.html

Some plywood for a base, cut-out to accommodate the 2x4s for the sides, shouldn't add too much more cost or weight to it.

I guess I have a different perspective - since my pickup is about 20 years old.

But seriously, he aggi freshmen that show up every year, driving new F150/250's look a whole lot like my nearly 20 year old pickup. The thing in the article doesn't look much like any of 'em.

The libav vs ffmpeg argument was to some as big of a religious war as any (emacs vs vi, systemd vs sysv, gnome vs kde)

I'm not sure you'll find anyone that will care, other than developers of the respective projects. One fork being replaced by another nearly-identical fork in one distro... both work fine, and the trivial differences are unlikely noticeable to end users.

Not voting it down, because it's mildly interesting to me, but only because I happen to know several of the people involved. The discussion could turn into an interesting flame-war. While the libav guys had a couple legitimate complaints, I must agree with and confirm most everything gabu (angrily) said: http://lwn.net/Articles/424050/

Thanks for taking the time, EP. I'd mostly want it for hauling 4-5 bicycles or extra luggage on trips. That second link is an off road only trailer though:

" Note This trailer is not rated for on-road use. Do not pull this trailer behind cars, trucks or motorcycles."

it might be worth considering other forms of natural energy, specifically wind and water, as a power source.

Looking at Google Maps, Laya, Bhutan definitely doesn't have a river nearby. There seems to be a wash some distance away, but it must not flow very regularly. Being up in the freezing mountains might have something to do with that. Even if it did flow regularly, it would be a huge project for one person to undertake, building their own power house to get usable amounts of power out of it, and running power lines for miles to where they need it... In a more general sense, you can't depend on having flowing water wherever you end up.

Wind, similarly, isn't consistently available. Even if you're in a windy area, you may have to unpredictably deal with many weeks with no appreciable wind, with no notice. Plus I checked prices on small wind turbines, and they're little or no cheaper than PV panels per the capacity, very bulky in their own right, and similarly will require taking large and heavy segments of steel poles with you for mounting. And like water power, designing and constructing one locally would be a big project for an individual, would not allow you to hit the ground running and have power right away like PV solar panels, etc.

And that's the BEST CASE. Worst case, you'll find yourself in an area where there is zero wind, except for the occasional storms, year-round, no available location to install it, complaints from neighbors about the noise, and lots of dead birds around it.

That said, it can be a vastly cheaper way to go. You can pickup a refurbished alternator for $43:

* http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Built-7127103-Premium-Domestic-Alternator/dp/B000EZW5QS/

Given enough input energy in whatever form, that should output 50 amps steady, while 700 watts of solar panels would cost $1,000, would be far too large to pack, and would honestly only provide maybe 1/4 the rated power due to low light levels, and low duty cycle due to no power at night. That's the way I'd go if I wanted to build electrical infrastructure for an entire village, but certainly not for my own modest energy needs while traveling. And given a lack of flowing water sources, and insufficient wind, you might need to hand-crank the thing for all your energy needs, which would be quite a feat. At that point, you'd be better off with something designed for such use:

* http://www.amazon.com/Generator-Emergency-Portable-Lightweight-Polycarbonate/dp/B00EZS8VQS

I wonder if all those remote people really want modern technology or irrelevant news impinging on their presumably happy (or why else would this person want to move there) existence?

He's going there for 2 years to teach... not because he wants to live there. Someone said it sounds like a Peace Corps mission.

I don't think you can find any peoples except the Amish who shun modern technology when they have access to it... and even they buy generators, power tools, and pay for modern medical treatment. The rest of the world lacks technology because they are impoverished. The incredible uptake of cellphones across Africa is a great model for getting the best of modern technology to the poorest corners of the world where it can dramatically improve lives.

Well, I took a quick look and found some different lightweight trailers much cheaper. They might be suitable alternatives, depending on your needs:

$240: http://www.amazon.com/Haul-Master-42708-Capacity-Utility-Trailer/dp/B00EZLP3MK/

$400: http://www.amazon.com/Yukon-Tracks-Trail-Warrior-Trailer/dp/B001RPD130/

Really, that's interesting it's not used in the US, I wonder why ours are pushing it?

Wow, I thought contactless payment was dead. It's almost never used in the US, so they don't issue many cards with it anymore. There are quite a few wallets out there with shielding built in if you want to be paranoid without the crazy looks. Search for "RFID Wallet".

I really want that little trailer, but it's $2K to $3K. :(

I see a few suggestions for solar, and this is good; you are at high altitude so the increased efficiency might offset some of the days where the weather is bad, but I can't help but feel that suitably efficient panels are bulky, fragile and expensive. I've not idea if this will work in your specific region, but it might be worth considering other forms of natural energy, specifically wind and water, as a power source. You ought to be able to construct a windmill and/or watermill using locally sourced materials - wood, mostly - so all you would need to take would be some power sockets, wire and a small motor/transformer to generate the power. A quick Google turns up a bunch of links, but this one should give you an idea of what might be possible, and it's also the kind of project that could get the locals involved and take on a life of its own over the course of the stay.

Still, better than the set of problems be changing, than increasing.

Depending on how things go, the pickup of the future could easily be ... a donkey.

I'm not feeling good about things.

A few good books. Meaty ones to chew on for a long time like the bible, baghavad gita, collected works of aristotle. Maybe some seeds.

I believe the 3rd sentence of the summary already says just that...

Never-the-less, a pickup today is practically unrecognizable from a pickup from 20 years ago. Today they're part small luxury car, part minivan, and only part pickup.

You might well just be looking at what pickups will morph into, in another 20 years, as astronomical oil price cause people to demand fuel efficiency combined with more cargo hauling capabilities than a hatchback can possibly offer. Perhaps fuel efficiency and crash worthiness rules will tighten up so much that compact pickups get to be just that small and aerodynamic, too.

where's the robotic tentacle to go with the cheerleaders? disappointed.

Leaf, not VW.

Here in New Zealand we've had the Chip 'n pin for a while, our POS terminals handle both magstripe for Eftpos/older credit cards and the chip. there's even circumstances where you can use the magstripe on the chip/pin card. I received notification the other day that my bank was replacing my eftpos card with a chip/pin debit card so will use both magstripe or chip and I can shop online with my own money... not too sure if I'm cool with that. I dont like the idea of the NFC (paywave) part of the card, going to line my wallet with tinfoil (real tin, never trust the aluminium junk!) when it arrives... if someone doesn't steal it from my mailbox first.

cause I don't want one... really...<sniff>

I'll let you know when I finally get around to trying it.

And they'll stop the Scandinavians stealing back their panels. nice one.

I feel comfortable. You're an anonymous coward though :)

That's not a pickup. That's a VW with the back chopped.

We'll see, of course, but even brand new registers and PoS are routinely going in without pin-and-chip or any thought of it. We're talking millions of readers in this great big country, with millions more ATMs and vending machines and the like. Then add in a few million more of the "Square" style plug-reader-in-smartphone-audio-jack mobile swiper setups, also actively being deployed.

When and how are all those getting changed out? How long did it take in Europe?

I wonder if all those remote people really want modern technology or irrelevant news impinging on their presumably happy (or why else would this person want to move there) existence?

I'll have a go with straight rabbit ears and see if I can get anything out

Did you try it? I'd be interested to know how it worked out.

I recall trying the same thing with a VCR probably 20 years ago. Back then, I needed to run it through an amp to get a useful distance out of it, and it was still awfully staticy at that. Of course amps have gotten a lot better, and better ones much cheaper, since then. I still suggest adding an inexpensive RCA Preamp like I mentioned. Pretty sure that'll give you enough gain for decent reception 5m away.

Hmm. I don't know the code but suspect the fix will involve ACs being able to edit their own posts ...

I actually like it... I always notice something wrong RIGHT AFTER submitting, even if I was trying to be careful, previewed my comment 20 times, and even if I'm not trying to check it after submitting. Still, I always manage to see something wrong 2 seconds later. So it's quite nice to be able to fix that. But it was a little frustrating learning how it worked the hard way... "Wasn't my comment +3 before? What happened? Did somebody do something? Why did it say 2 New comments when I already read everything here?" etc.

On the down-side, I can see people trying to be clever and continuing to update their original comment in response to every reply, instead of replying in-kind. Or even messing up discussions by completely changing their comments, making the thread below theirs completely change in meaning, and possibly becoming impossible to understand.

Example thread:

|- I hate black people. (-1 Troll)
|-- You're a racist! (+5 Insightful)
|-- Why would you say that? (+5 Informative)

Edited thread becomes:

|- I believe in equal rights. (-1 Troll)
|-- You're a racist! (+5 Insightful)
|-- Why would you say that? (+5 Informative)

I guess liberal use of blockquotes will help with that, but it might become a problem.

a solar charger for double A batteries

The devil is in the details... Most solar battery chargers have 0.5W panels which, up north, will take a week to charge 4 AAs. For hiking, there are nice big folding panels you strap to your pack, but they're vastly more expensive than bulk rooftop PV panels... eg. $70 for 14W panel, battery charger. Where as you can just as easily get a bare 30W panel for the same price.

With the remaining money I'd purchase a two year supply of scotch, a couple cases of cigars, and enough weed to live well.

If you're following your own advice of living zen, you'd instead bring seeds for all of the above, and grow and process them yourself....

I kind of feel when you're headed out to rural Bhutan, the question isn't how to maintain your current tech needs, it's how to adapt to a tech-free lifestyle.

Don't underestimate the value of BRINGING technology, showing it around, and leaving it to the locals when you go. Something trivial to us, like an eReader just loaded up with several gigabytes of eBooks, would be like a lifetime supply of content in a self-contained library, to a remote community. A few eBooks on modern farming methods could greatly improve their lives. Throw in plenty of tech, like solar water/home heating, electrical motor and propeller design, and they might be able to build their own infrastructure over time.

Just a staticy feed of a few minutes of news every week can be a tremendous tool for them, keeping them up on events in the world around them, and perhaps being a life-saver in the event of natural or man-made disaster.

It's a shame that data broadcasting on shortwave isn't a big thing... Just imagine being in the middle of nowhere, and every day the SD card in your $50 shortwave radio just accumulates several more articles from Wikipedia, and even a few pictures, with no effort on your part. Maybe a Project Gutenberg book every week or so. And more. And that's just the "free" stuff I can quickly think of. I'm sure the many NGOs would be happy to come up with tons of original educational content for broadcasters send out to to entire continents full of isolated people, along side whatever audio programs.

You can kinda-sorta do that with ham packet radio, but that's far more time consuming and involved, and doesn't scale at all, where broadcasting data would work incredibly well.

Read some Peter Matthiessen to get into the spirit of zen-living.

I think I'd rather have several back-issues of Mother Earth News mag, the original "off-the-grid" publication, telling me how to raise livestock, how to build well-insulated houses with hay bails, how to dig a well, etc., etc. Might be very useful to a remote village.

New text:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self Reliance
Another line, added for good measure.

Hmm, that's useful to know. I'll still have to think about it since I connect to the machine from 3 or 4 desktops over the course of a week (desktop, laptop, work machine, etc.). I'll look into it, because this bullshit is making me tired.

Sure wish there were a legal framework that allowed you to electrocute script kiddies and 'net douchebags.

Make sure to steal the garden gnomes too, then - great way to decorate your place.

Arrr, you may walk the plank then, matey.

Ha ha! I just "recovered" this week: installed PC-BSD (FreeBSD) on my work machine. No more systemd! (Unfortunately, no VMWare, either - haven't decided what to do about that yet, especially since I paid for it).

I traveled extensively in Europe this year and bumped into a lot of ATMs where my non-chipped American credit card was totally worthless. About time the Americans joined the modern world. As for the golden age of credit card fraud coming to an end, I'm not so sure. They can't make a carbon copy of my credit card at the restaurant anymore, but now they can camp onto my wireless, hack my router, decrypt my HTTPS connection, steal my identity, post revenge porn of me all over 4chan, trash my email, steal my bank password, and transfer my bank balance to an undisclosed location in the Cayman Islands. While they're at it they can see if I reused passwords, hack my server, and use my Yahoo account to tell all my friends I got kidnapped in Greece and will they please wire some money to that account I never mentioned in the Cayman Islands?

I kind of feel like we're out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Great article, great question - thanks for posting, Evil V. Also, I didn't know about SWLing, so thanks for linking to it.

I had to ask myself that very question when I joined a volunteer service that sent me to the wilds of rural Central America back in '98 (ie, sort of before the Internet was a thing). I brought a couple of toys to keep entertained - binoculars, bird books, guitar, some writing projects - plus a walkman, a dozen very carefully chosen cassettes, and a shortwave. To this day I like shortwave, but was starting to come to grips with the fact it's a largely dead medium. Even with a decent antenna these days I struggle to get much of anything better than evangelical preachers, China, some Arabic, and megahertz after megahertz of static. It's a wasteland out there even by the standards of 1998.

Went the other route then and got myself one of these this year. I love it, there's tons of stuff to listen to, and the reception is flawless until my wifi connection cuts out. That doesn't answer the question these guys are asking though.

Got to say I'd still bring the binocs, bird books, guitar, and a (reluctantly) a shortwave. I'd probably also bring a netbook and external harddrive, and hook myself up with a POP3 account and maybe an instance of leafnode running on the netbook, so I could sync mail and news. You're going back to the age of sporadic connections and doing most of your work offline, then uploading it. That said, the GSM revolution has made a lot of places phenomenally accessible all of a sudden, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nepal and the like have benefitted from it. I wrote this piece about my surprise at being able to connect to the internet from a remote location in the Sahel, and this piece called Life in 56K about how easy it is to live on low bandwidth.

As for these radio buffs obsessed with longevity, I'd simply use the money to buy a radio and two spares, a solar charger for double A batteries, and enough flannel to make them two or three little protective baggies. With the remaining money I'd purchase a two year supply of scotch, a couple cases of cigars, and enough weed to live well. Actually, sounds marginally better than my current lifestyle. I kind of feel when you're headed out to rural Bhutan, the question isn't how to maintain your current tech needs, it's how to adapt to a tech-free lifestyle. Bring a sack of books, some pens and notebooks for writing, aforementioned scotch, some star maps, and an open mind. Would be nice to not be glaring at the glowing, square screen for a while. Read some Peter Matthiessen to get into the spirit of zen-living.

You're absolutely right. But it does go a long way in setting expectations for FOSS evangelists rallying for a totally free hardware platform that they can run TrisquelGNU/Linux on and satisfy their philosophical requirements. You're not going to get that kind of hardware easily unless you can whip up demand for a healthy volume of the product, or you're willing to pay some seriously higher margins. That's instructive.

I buy my Linux laptops from either ZAReason or System76 these days. I'm not really saving any money, but it gives me the confidence that the hardware will work perfectly with Linux, and often that's what I'm looking for the most. As I mentioned on the Bodhi article, I'd love a Linux tablet. But I'm not holding my breath, and this article makes it clear why.

Ironically, you get the best 'open' hardware out of China these days. What's that Longsoon machine Richard M. Stallman uses? And isn't it a MIPS chip on the inside? That's a pretty interesting set of circumstances.

it is so good that we have such an open community that we feel safe and free to announce fetishes in public

I don't think it's going to help potential customers to know "what's happening behind the news." They're not in it for the joy of experiencing the journey with you... They would simply like to buy the product you promised them. In other industries, an 18-month delay isn't a complete deal-breaker. But in computer hardware, that puts your product a complete generation behind what you promised. It is not remotely the same product it was, 2-year earlier. It has a short shelf-life. You promised grapes and instead delivered raisins...

It's a good cautionary tale to would-be small hardware designers... Getting it to market is a far harder task than you'd imagine. But the key is simple, either get in bed with a big company to push things along, or start with something very small and simple. At the very least, don't start out by making speculative promises, when so many parts of the process are beyond your control.

bug: posting as Anonymous Coward lets me then edit all other Anon Coward posts!

It there a fuse? Like to stop evil people from revising history that makes them look bad later after they get caught? Does the post get an obvious "edited" (thus tainted) badge? Maybe with the original versions available if you click on that badge?

I've been a zsh fan since the early 90's. About a year ago I installed http://ohmyz.sh/ (https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh), and after a little adjusting of it and myself, I love it.

The thing I miss most about zsh when I'm in bash is auto-cd. Just typing a directory path to cd to it. I know - it doesn't sound like much, but I do love the feature. Hey, look - it seems that bash has that as of 4.0 (which I guess is very recent). I'll have to set it more aggressively when I'm visiting other hosts...