It is likely that your quality of life would improve if you paid significantly MORE taxes. In addition to you paying more taxes the rich would pay more taxes. That additional tax would outweigh your contribution. And then you could get roads, bridges, working schools, police, etc.
This (incorrectly) assumes that more and more of those taxes aren't stolen by politicians and their friends lining their pockets. Corruption and graft are so rampant that they aren't even worthy of notice most of the time.
The US Taxes for education highly, but their functional spend (as in teacher pay + actual school supplies) is nowhere near the same $. Instead each town has it's own school board, staff, etc. which all need to get paid to justify their (frankly massively redundant and useless) jobs. Plus lots of other useless and overpaid work being done. Lots and LOTS of useless babysitting. Plenty of corruption and graft.
If the amount paid went directly to educating students we wouldn't have problems and teachers could be the highly paid people they deserve to be.
As someone who's seen a bunch of common core and also is fairly adept at the math they're trying to teach i will say this.
In theory, it's a good idea. They're trying to teach all the math tricks and functional process to quickly and easily do math problems. Really. Unfortunately they're failing at it AND they're teaching that INSTEAD OF 'normal' math.
Once I figured out wtf they were doing, i realized most of it very directly aligns with my own mental tricks for doing math. But that's after a decade+ of schooling to learn how to do it and what it all meant and THEN developing the tricks for that. Instead they're teaching these shortcuts before kids even understand the basics of what they're doing and have that down pat. That's the problem. They tried to shortcut education to fit more in...sorry not going to happen.
Why would they be able to? If you donâ(TM)t accept the terms you lose access to the service. Flag as Inappropriate
Because they paid money for a service that isn't being provided as agreed to in the contract?
Exactly this.
MP went hog wild selling yearly subscriptions for an upfront price. Material changes to the agreed-upon terms would not be permitted by US law - things like price or availability would count while things like mailing address or cancellation method would not. I expect that what they're doing will be challenged in court by someone or other. The catch is, even with this new rule the service is still a great deal... so who's really going to want to not do business with them?
Yes, it was "done before" but never in the manner or scale the SpaceX is doing. Vertical landing of a no-payload, single stage rocket or only the 2nd/3rd stage is more than slightly different from full recovery of your FIRST stage along with delivering a commercially viable payload to orbit.
Your comparison to Apollo fails in the same way, especially considering the fuel requirements for a moon landing/launch are comically smaller than on earth.
Even so, who cares? SpaceX is *currently* the *only* one doing so for actual commercial launches in an industry largely constrained by the number of launches available, not by customers interested. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Your suggested 'fix' would likely decimate their sub base and is short-sighted to say the least...oh, and it's what they already did in the past and got no traction with.
#2 already happens. Most of their subs are about break-even and see ~1 movie a month. Discount tickets they can't force unless they're in a position of power which was likely the whole point of making their service practically free for a while.
Monetizing customer data isn't a big part of their plan in the traditional way, instead they have (and plan) the opportunity to upsell for additional services. For example, you bought your ticket and have 2 hours to way - well here's a local restaurant that opentable says has an available reservation, or here's a coffee house two blocks away since you only have 1 hour. Oh, and would you like to pre-order your concessions and get on the short pickup-only line when you arrive?
But all this (plus negotiation for reduced/bulk ticket prices) requires they to be a bigger player than they were...which they have accomplished.
It used to be $50-60/month for the service about 6 years ago when it was new. I know, I had it. It was also quirky, didn't have the app, and didn't work all the time. But even then it was a deal if you lived somewhere expensive like I do (NYC). However, back then I wound up ditching it because the movie cost vs sub cost wasn't a big difference so there was little benefit unless I committed to 5+ movies every month.
I'm pretty sure this round of pricing was basically to make their name, get their subs, and cement their position in the industry. From what they've said, many people with MP are only seeing 1-2 movies a month anyway so the new plan doesn't impact them.
I don't think their plan is to make money from straight sub vs. ticket cost, but instead to have the leverage to negotiate with studios, theaters, and the like to help drive movie attendance. After all, the theater makes little to no money off your admission ticket and the vast majority from concession sales. Other than having to give up control, they don't care what happens as long as something drives lots of viewers to their theater.
Guess what? Your use case isn't exactly the same as everyone else's!
What if those movies didn't cost you any money? What if checking out that odd titled movie your friend randomly mentioned was a matter of just stopping in and seeing it...and leaving if it sucks with no hard or cost? BC that's what moviepass also is.
Some people (particularly younger ones and diehard fans) will see movies multiple times. There certainly ARE movies to watch. They might not all be great, but when the ticket price is zero there's much less motivation to wait for DVD.
You're also not correct about their business model. They've already announced that a large portion of their members see 1-2 movies a month so not a huge loss. Most people DO have time to see several movies a month if they want and comparing it to a gym which most people view as suffering, not enjoyment is... well worse than a car analogy. Plus by reducing their price for a while their customer acquisition cost fell from ~$50/user to effectively zero...which is largely do to the heavy users getting their friends to sign up. So even the 'costly' users are actually paying for themselves in terms of overall subs.
Relative to the population of people who frequently hold their breath for extended periods of time. At least define your terms to match the discussion. This isn't something that the population as a whole is tested for.
Ikea furniture is great, but imperfect by design. Tolerances are wide, parts vary, and it takes a wack now and then to get the parts into place. This is intentional since it's far, FAR cheaper to build out of particleboard and holes in that are never going to be totally exact.
What is more impressive is an assembly AI that can cope with that. One that can tighten 50 screws slightly differently because they need to be or tweak two pieces so they slot together as intended. Usual laughs aside, Ikea stuff isn't rocket science to assemble as long as you actually pay attention. Their instructions are usually very specific, but no one looks at the details. I've built tons of it and every time I got stuck or confused on some bit it's because i didn't look at the instructions carefully enough and swapped a part/pin/order. Once you figure out their general ways though you can practically ignore the manuals.
Getting a machine to adapt to a repeatable assembly with moderate variations is more impressive than one would first believe. I'm curious how fast round two assembly went and how fast someone who knows how to use an allen key built it instead of those two women who were more interested in smiling and laughing than knowing how to assemble things.
I don't think too many people understand what maintenance on large machinery means. It's slightly different than the occasional oil change and swapping tires every few years when they're bald that people are used to.
With that in mind though, i don't think it's impossible to design more redundancy and automate a lot of the maintenance if that's factored into the design. To date, it's just been far easier and cheaper to have an engineer do it.
How you handle a connecting rod replacement in the middle of the ocean without humans would be interesting though. But perhaps the answer is you don't. You design enough redundancy into the ship to continue after even a major engineering fault and then you send out a crew to the ship for repair. But overall I don't think there's that much savings to all this and, frankly, people are better off having the jobs available a lot of the time.
Apparently Space X predates the Space Shuttle and its reusable SRBs.
I'm with you on most of it, but not this. Calling the SRBs 'reusable' is misleading. They we're recoverable and refurbished similar to the shuttle itself. Also, the massive difference between solid rockets and liquid put these in rather different categories (even though it wasn't specified originally).
So besides your completely incorrect information, do you have any more nonsense to share? It's amusing if nothing else.
Your predictions about Tesla's being junked are also comical and completely disproved by the Roadster. Even Tesla's FIRST car ever shows how very wrong you are and they've massively improved since then. Feel free to conjure up 'proof' of your nonsense claims though so we can all laugh at how stupid they are. Might as well mix in some vaccines-cause-autism 'proof' while you're at it too.
I'm not a diehard fan just realistic. The cars aren't perfect but in many ways they far exceed traditional ICE vehicles, particularly in regards to maintenance and durability.
Uhm no. That's exactly the opposite of how the engines are designed.
Modern jet engines are specifically designed to contain all the debris in an engine failure - in particular all the blades which are both the most energetic and most durable. They destructively test by pyrotechnicaly detaching a blade at max RPM...go google, it's fun to watch.
Something fucked up here and parts impacted the rather fragile plane...which happens, but it not the design intent. Had the engine not contained MOST of the debris they likely would not have been able to land at all.
'Not much demand' given the density of Manhattan is still more than most people could believe. Subways at 3AM on a weekend run infrequently but are often quite full, especially when they have the endless closures and delays.
Also, 'obvious reasons' are not obvious to all the people who ride the subway in NYC late night. You may think the subways are still unsafe like they were in the 80s but you'd be wrong.
Late night, weekend? Factor in work that redirect trains, closes other lines, swaps some train line segments for buses, closes some stations entirely, runs some local trains express so you have to overshoot your destination and backtrack, and trains that come ever 30+ minutes...and you're often better off walking.
From someone who's been to most major US cities and quite a few non-US ones... and lives in NYC, the trains here are horrible. If they could run properly 18 hours a day instead of poorly all 24 it would be an immense improvement. The tube in london is far, far better. Despite the cramped trains and limited late night service...the trains actually run and run fairly often even at 2AM.
People who talk about how great the 24/7 NYC Subways are rarely have any 24/7 experience with them.
I don't think you quite understand the issue. This is not about some proprietary interface where lithium ion with its particularities can be fit in. This an existing AAA and AA standard, which requires very tight tolerances on size, coupled with low cost, coupled with requirements to work in both high throughput and long durability modes.
AA sized lithium batteries exist. They're 3,7V and they suffer from same self-discharge problem that old rechargeable Ni-Cd and NiMH had. They do not work in any of the standard AA hardware. They suffer from several other similar problems that current AA and AAA chemistries have to much lesser degree if at all. At the same time, around 2010s, NiMH chemistry was reworked to the point where it became better than alkaline batteries in terms of energy capacity, and they could hold charge for years, which is why they're sold pre-charged.
Lithium ion is simply not a good chemistry for AA and AAA world. You pick a proper tool for the job. The problem seems to be that many people didn't get the message on shift in NiMH world, and still think that if they want batteries that will work for more than a couple of weeks after being left alone in the tool, they have to get alkline. Nowadays, you should be using NiMH for this purpose.
Do you have any idea what you're even saying?
Let's go in order: Li-Ion cells certainly have standard sizes and tolerances. Very long-durability (5+ years), low output, limited access is definitely the realm for non-rechargeable batteries but also a fairly niche use case. 'high throughput' i assume you mean to be high current output is most certainly NOT a strong spot for alkeline batteries. In fact, they fail miserably in most high-current situations and are easily bested by even Ni-Cad cells
AA Sized Li-Ion cells exist but aren't commonly used because of the voltage difference. However, AA sized Lithium batteries (Li-FeS2 to be particular) are 1.5v cells with significantly higher energy density and high current capacity compared to alkaline batteries. Go google it. They're a great replacement for alkaline batteries except they're expensive (and disposal etc).
NiMH still falls short of the capacity of alkaline cells except for high-current use where alkaline falls short. NiMH chemistry for 'pre-charged' cells is actually tweaked for lower self-discharge at the cost of some capacity so your example is the exact opposite of what you should be referencing.
The "AA and AAA world" is a misnomer. It's simply the voltage that was available so things were designed around it. It's actually not ideal at all though. A higher voltage requires lower current (and/or fewer cells...which is why old things used to have 2,4, or even 6+ AA cells) which reduces wiring cost, resistive losses, and so on.
Not sure why you have a hard-on for NiMH but it's primary benefit is simply low-cost.
The Note 7 in particular definitely IS banned on commercial flights.
I still agree with GP that the risk was greatly over-sensationalized. It made good reading but the actual number of devices shown to spew fire and brimstone were extremely few, especially in comparison to the number of devices sold.
The overall Li-Ion risk is real though. Individually, it's nearly zero. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of Li-Ion cells in my possession of the the course of a year and have never had one catch fire. However, others do and...if you have a large brick of them catch fire in the cargo hold of a plane you can quickly have a catastrophic situation. It might be a one in a billion chance, but there's several billion total passengers per year.
Macys was doing this at one point about two years ago. I ran into it while christmas shopping. Unless the first letter of my signature was comprehensible as the first letter of my name it would reject the signature. I made several purchases one day there and kind of... got to play with it. A block letter followed by a squiggle was fine. Anything that resembled my actual signature not so much.
My bad, i thought this was/. where people knew at least a tiny bit about the tech...
It's harder, but by no means impossible, to read and duplicate a chip card. You do also need the PIN but there are plenty of examples of that being compromised with cameras primarily but also with hacked keypads and other means.
It's significantly harder to skim a chip-and-pin vs mag stripe(mag stripes were never secure, only slightly obscure... for a while) but it can, has, and will still be done fairly regularly.
Slashdot Mirror
It is likely that your quality of life would improve if you paid significantly MORE taxes. In addition to you paying more taxes the rich would pay more taxes. That additional tax would outweigh your contribution. And then you could get roads, bridges, working schools, police, etc.
This (incorrectly) assumes that more and more of those taxes aren't stolen by politicians and their friends lining their pockets. Corruption and graft are so rampant that they aren't even worthy of notice most of the time.
Well no...
The US Taxes for education highly, but their functional spend (as in teacher pay + actual school supplies) is nowhere near the same $. Instead each town has it's own school board, staff, etc. which all need to get paid to justify their (frankly massively redundant and useless) jobs. Plus lots of other useless and overpaid work being done. Lots and LOTS of useless babysitting. Plenty of corruption and graft.
If the amount paid went directly to educating students we wouldn't have problems and teachers could be the highly paid people they deserve to be.
As someone who's seen a bunch of common core and also is fairly adept at the math they're trying to teach i will say this.
In theory, it's a good idea. They're trying to teach all the math tricks and functional process to quickly and easily do math problems. Really. Unfortunately they're failing at it AND they're teaching that INSTEAD OF 'normal' math.
Once I figured out wtf they were doing, i realized most of it very directly aligns with my own mental tricks for doing math. But that's after a decade+ of schooling to learn how to do it and what it all meant and THEN developing the tricks for that. Instead they're teaching these shortcuts before kids even understand the basics of what they're doing and have that down pat. That's the problem. They tried to shortcut education to fit more in...sorry not going to happen.
Material changes are protected. It's the same reason they can't change the monthly charge if you signed up for a fixed price over the contract terms.
Because they paid money for a service that isn't being provided as agreed to in the contract?
Exactly this.
MP went hog wild selling yearly subscriptions for an upfront price. Material changes to the agreed-upon terms would not be permitted by US law - things like price or availability would count while things like mailing address or cancellation method would not. I expect that what they're doing will be challenged in court by someone or other. The catch is, even with this new rule the service is still a great deal ... so who's really going to want to not do business with them?
Yes, it was "done before" but never in the manner or scale the SpaceX is doing. Vertical landing of a no-payload, single stage rocket or only the 2nd/3rd stage is more than slightly different from full recovery of your FIRST stage along with delivering a commercially viable payload to orbit.
Your comparison to Apollo fails in the same way, especially considering the fuel requirements for a moon landing/launch are comically smaller than on earth.
Even so, who cares? SpaceX is *currently* the *only* one doing so for actual commercial launches in an industry largely constrained by the number of launches available, not by customers interested. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Your suggested 'fix' would likely decimate their sub base and is short-sighted to say the least...oh, and it's what they already did in the past and got no traction with.
#2 already happens. Most of their subs are about break-even and see ~1 movie a month. Discount tickets they can't force unless they're in a position of power which was likely the whole point of making their service practically free for a while.
Monetizing customer data isn't a big part of their plan in the traditional way, instead they have (and plan) the opportunity to upsell for additional services. For example, you bought your ticket and have 2 hours to way - well here's a local restaurant that opentable says has an available reservation, or here's a coffee house two blocks away since you only have 1 hour. Oh, and would you like to pre-order your concessions and get on the short pickup-only line when you arrive?
But all this (plus negotiation for reduced/bulk ticket prices) requires they to be a bigger player than they were...which they have accomplished.
It used to be $50-60/month for the service about 6 years ago when it was new. I know, I had it. It was also quirky, didn't have the app, and didn't work all the time. But even then it was a deal if you lived somewhere expensive like I do (NYC). However, back then I wound up ditching it because the movie cost vs sub cost wasn't a big difference so there was little benefit unless I committed to 5+ movies every month.
I'm pretty sure this round of pricing was basically to make their name, get their subs, and cement their position in the industry. From what they've said, many people with MP are only seeing 1-2 movies a month anyway so the new plan doesn't impact them.
I don't think their plan is to make money from straight sub vs. ticket cost, but instead to have the leverage to negotiate with studios, theaters, and the like to help drive movie attendance. After all, the theater makes little to no money off your admission ticket and the vast majority from concession sales. Other than having to give up control, they don't care what happens as long as something drives lots of viewers to their theater.
Guess what? Your use case isn't exactly the same as everyone else's!
What if those movies didn't cost you any money? What if checking out that odd titled movie your friend randomly mentioned was a matter of just stopping in and seeing it...and leaving if it sucks with no hard or cost? BC that's what moviepass also is.
Some people (particularly younger ones and diehard fans) will see movies multiple times. There certainly ARE movies to watch. They might not all be great, but when the ticket price is zero there's much less motivation to wait for DVD.
You're also not correct about their business model. They've already announced that a large portion of their members see 1-2 movies a month so not a huge loss. Most people DO have time to see several movies a month if they want and comparing it to a gym which most people view as suffering, not enjoyment is ... well worse than a car analogy. Plus by reducing their price for a while their customer acquisition cost fell from ~$50/user to effectively zero...which is largely do to the heavy users getting their friends to sign up. So even the 'costly' users are actually paying for themselves in terms of overall subs.
Especially since you can buy a nice laptop for that much too
If the Guinness Book of World Records doesn't officiate something then it doesn't count!
If people do something extraordinary and it doesn't hit social media and trend, then it never really happened.
Don't you know these basic rules of society??
Relative to the population of people who frequently hold their breath for extended periods of time. At least define your terms to match the discussion. This isn't something that the population as a whole is tested for.
Ikea furniture is great, but imperfect by design. Tolerances are wide, parts vary, and it takes a wack now and then to get the parts into place. This is intentional since it's far, FAR cheaper to build out of particleboard and holes in that are never going to be totally exact.
What is more impressive is an assembly AI that can cope with that. One that can tighten 50 screws slightly differently because they need to be or tweak two pieces so they slot together as intended. Usual laughs aside, Ikea stuff isn't rocket science to assemble as long as you actually pay attention. Their instructions are usually very specific, but no one looks at the details. I've built tons of it and every time I got stuck or confused on some bit it's because i didn't look at the instructions carefully enough and swapped a part/pin/order. Once you figure out their general ways though you can practically ignore the manuals.
Getting a machine to adapt to a repeatable assembly with moderate variations is more impressive than one would first believe. I'm curious how fast round two assembly went and how fast someone who knows how to use an allen key built it instead of those two women who were more interested in smiling and laughing than knowing how to assemble things.
I don't think too many people understand what maintenance on large machinery means. It's slightly different than the occasional oil change and swapping tires every few years when they're bald that people are used to.
With that in mind though, i don't think it's impossible to design more redundancy and automate a lot of the maintenance if that's factored into the design. To date, it's just been far easier and cheaper to have an engineer do it.
How you handle a connecting rod replacement in the middle of the ocean without humans would be interesting though. But perhaps the answer is you don't. You design enough redundancy into the ship to continue after even a major engineering fault and then you send out a crew to the ship for repair. But overall I don't think there's that much savings to all this and, frankly, people are better off having the jobs available a lot of the time.
Apparently Space X predates the Space Shuttle and its reusable SRBs.
I'm with you on most of it, but not this. Calling the SRBs 'reusable' is misleading. They we're recoverable and refurbished similar to the shuttle itself. Also, the massive difference between solid rockets and liquid put these in rather different categories (even though it wasn't specified originally).
So besides your completely incorrect information, do you have any more nonsense to share? It's amusing if nothing else.
Your predictions about Tesla's being junked are also comical and completely disproved by the Roadster. Even Tesla's FIRST car ever shows how very wrong you are and they've massively improved since then. Feel free to conjure up 'proof' of your nonsense claims though so we can all laugh at how stupid they are. Might as well mix in some vaccines-cause-autism 'proof' while you're at it too.
I'm not a diehard fan just realistic. The cars aren't perfect but in many ways they far exceed traditional ICE vehicles, particularly in regards to maintenance and durability.
Uhm no. That's exactly the opposite of how the engines are designed.
Modern jet engines are specifically designed to contain all the debris in an engine failure - in particular all the blades which are both the most energetic and most durable. They destructively test by pyrotechnicaly detaching a blade at max RPM...go google, it's fun to watch.
Something fucked up here and parts impacted the rather fragile plane...which happens, but it not the design intent. Had the engine not contained MOST of the debris they likely would not have been able to land at all.
Another 'expert' who doesn't live in NYC.
'Not much demand' given the density of Manhattan is still more than most people could believe. Subways at 3AM on a weekend run infrequently but are often quite full, especially when they have the endless closures and delays.
Also, 'obvious reasons' are not obvious to all the people who ride the subway in NYC late night. You may think the subways are still unsafe like they were in the 80s but you'd be wrong.
Yes, it "runs" 24/7. Technically.
Late night, weekend? Factor in work that redirect trains, closes other lines, swaps some train line segments for buses, closes some stations entirely, runs some local trains express so you have to overshoot your destination and backtrack, and trains that come ever 30+ minutes...and you're often better off walking.
From someone who's been to most major US cities and quite a few non-US ones ... and lives in NYC, the trains here are horrible. If they could run properly 18 hours a day instead of poorly all 24 it would be an immense improvement. The tube in london is far, far better. Despite the cramped trains and limited late night service...the trains actually run and run fairly often even at 2AM.
People who talk about how great the 24/7 NYC Subways are rarely have any 24/7 experience with them.
I don't think you quite understand the issue. This is not about some proprietary interface where lithium ion with its particularities can be fit in. This an existing AAA and AA standard, which requires very tight tolerances on size, coupled with low cost, coupled with requirements to work in both high throughput and long durability modes.
AA sized lithium batteries exist. They're 3,7V and they suffer from same self-discharge problem that old rechargeable Ni-Cd and NiMH had. They do not work in any of the standard AA hardware. They suffer from several other similar problems that current AA and AAA chemistries have to much lesser degree if at all. At the same time, around 2010s, NiMH chemistry was reworked to the point where it became better than alkaline batteries in terms of energy capacity, and they could hold charge for years, which is why they're sold pre-charged.
Lithium ion is simply not a good chemistry for AA and AAA world. You pick a proper tool for the job. The problem seems to be that many people didn't get the message on shift in NiMH world, and still think that if they want batteries that will work for more than a couple of weeks after being left alone in the tool, they have to get alkline. Nowadays, you should be using NiMH for this purpose.
Do you have any idea what you're even saying?
Let's go in order: Li-Ion cells certainly have standard sizes and tolerances. Very long-durability (5+ years), low output, limited access is definitely the realm for non-rechargeable batteries but also a fairly niche use case. 'high throughput' i assume you mean to be high current output is most certainly NOT a strong spot for
alkeline batteries. In fact, they fail miserably in most high-current situations and are easily bested by even Ni-Cad cells
AA Sized Li-Ion cells exist but aren't commonly used because of the voltage difference. However, AA sized Lithium batteries (Li-FeS2 to be particular) are 1.5v cells with significantly higher energy density and high current capacity compared to alkaline batteries. Go google it. They're a great replacement for alkaline batteries except they're expensive (and disposal etc).
NiMH still falls short of the capacity of alkaline cells except for high-current use where alkaline falls short. NiMH chemistry for 'pre-charged' cells is actually tweaked for lower self-discharge at the cost of some capacity so your example is the exact opposite of what you should be referencing.
The "AA and AAA world" is a misnomer. It's simply the voltage that was available so things were designed around it. It's actually not ideal at all though. A higher voltage requires lower current (and/or fewer cells...which is why old things used to have 2,4, or even 6+ AA cells) which reduces wiring cost, resistive losses, and so on.
Not sure why you have a hard-on for NiMH but it's primary benefit is simply low-cost.
The Note 7 in particular definitely IS banned on commercial flights.
I still agree with GP that the risk was greatly over-sensationalized. It made good reading but the actual number of devices shown to spew fire and brimstone were extremely few, especially in comparison to the number of devices sold.
The overall Li-Ion risk is real though. Individually, it's nearly zero. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of Li-Ion cells in my possession of the the course of a year and have never had one catch fire. However, others do and...if you have a large brick of them catch fire in the cargo hold of a plane you can quickly have a catastrophic situation. It might be a one in a billion chance, but there's several billion total passengers per year.
Macys was doing this at one point about two years ago. I ran into it while christmas shopping. Unless the first letter of my signature was comprehensible as the first letter of my name it would reject the signature. I made several purchases one day there and kind of ... got to play with it. A block letter followed by a squiggle was fine. Anything that resembled my actual signature not so much.
My bad, i thought this was /. where people knew at least a tiny bit about the tech...
It's harder, but by no means impossible, to read and duplicate a chip card. You do also need the PIN but there are plenty of examples of that being compromised with cameras primarily but also with hacked keypads and other means.
It's significantly harder to skim a chip-and-pin vs mag stripe(mag stripes were never secure, only slightly obscure ... for a while) but it can, has, and will still be done fairly regularly.
Built his car so poorly he had to send it to space to get rid of it?
Go to B&H in NYC and they'll prove you wrong.
I get the reference, but their system is actually pretty damn impressive and worth a mention:)