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User: Geeky

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  1. You don't have to sign up for an app. The performers are being given contactless payment readers. These work with any contactless credit card.

    You can also use Apple Pay or Google Pay if you choose.

    The point is to make it as easy as possible to give money. Making people download apps is not the way to do that. Whether you trust a card reader from a random street performer is another matter...

    Incidentally, and off topic, the app aspect is a factor with parking. Many UK councils are implementing app methods to pay for parking. Rather than something like this, that works with credit cards or phones, they seem to be adopting apps. And there are loads of them - take a long trip and you could end up being asked to install a permission hungry app for every town you stop in just to pay for parking.

  2. Re: A loss for children. Adults, not so much. on Toys R Us To Close All 800 of Its US Stores (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    And they treat all customers like potential shoplifters. You can't take bags in (here in the UK), so you have to leave your other shopping at the bag check. I refused to go in once because I had my laptop bag with me and wasn't going to risk leaving that behind the checkout desk

  3. How would a law passed in the US force European companies to break European data protection law?

  4. Re:It's turtles all the way down on Stephen Hawking, Who Examined the Universe and Explained Black Holes, Dies at 76 (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    The plate - or "disc" - is actually on the elephants on the turtle's back. And the turtle's name is A'Tuin. Enjoy your visit and don't go in the Mended Drum.

  5. Re:Upcoming update triggered by mistake on Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    The Wilhelm Scream. Played randomly at some point between midnight and sunrise. That should do it.

  6. Re:Paper on Ask Slashdot: Best To-Do/Task List Software? · · Score: 1

    I used to do that, but it was too easy to ignore the notes. Now I create to-do list items on my phone and set reminders at key times. It works better for me. I know too many of us are slaves to our phones, but sadly the truth for me is that a pop up on my phone is far more likely to be noticed and far more effective than a paper note.

  7. Re:Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 910? Why? on Samsung Announces the Galaxy S9 With a Dual Aperture Camera, AR Emojis (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    I think they use Qualcomm in the US because their own chips don't support one of the big carriers (because they lack CDMA maybe? I don't recall the details.)

    I guess they stick with their own chips elsewhere in order to avoid paying money to Qualcomm.

  8. Re:Fuck dealerships on Tesla Pushes Even More States To Upend Auto Dealer-Friendly Laws (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    It's because they get commission on the financing. In the UK that can be more than they make from the actual sale, so they'll discount to sell at a loss if you take financing, knowing they'll make it up in commission from the finance company.

  9. Re: This is uniquely a US problem. on Tesla Pushes Even More States To Upend Auto Dealer-Friendly Laws (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    SEAT have a direct sales outlet in the UK, but I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would buy from them. Prices are strictly list price, whereas all dealers will cut at least 10%, usually more, and throw in a few extras.

  10. Re:Who is using it and what for? on Microsoft's Cloud Bet Continues To Pay Off In Latest Earnings (theverge.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are you including email? An on-prem Exchange setup with decent storage allowances, redundancy and staff doesn't come cheap. Exchange in O365 has fairly generous email storage limits and doesn't require anything like as much technical expertise to run.

    It may be possible to do it for less on-prem, but good Exchange admins are hard to come by and penny pinching by management often leads to systems with tiny mailboxes so that you end up having the nightmare of local PST files if you want to keep old email.

    I have no doubt it can be done right on-prem, but in practice it rarely is. Certainly as a user in a corporate environment, O365 has been a breath of fresh air.

    For businesses though, the main argument seems to be the O365 is operational cost, on-prem requires capital expenditure.

  11. Re:wirless charging on Big Backing For 'Universal Stylus' Campaign (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Charging?

    Well, the Stylus with my Samsung Tab S3 tablet doesn't need charging - doesn't have a battery at all. I've used a Surface Pen and tried a friend's Apple Pencil, and the Samsung is just as good. Pressure sensitive and accurate.

    I'd hope that would become the standard, rather than yet another thing that needs charging or weird AAAA batteries that aren't widely sold.

  12. Re:Headphone jack on s9 confirmed! on Future Samsung Phones Will Have a Working FM Radio Chip (androidpolice.com) · · Score: 1

    I thought that. I bought a Pixel 2. I wish I hadn't. There are so many nice little touches I miss from the Samsung, and the hardware is nowhere near as good. I'm hoping that the S9 will support Project Treble and so make it more likely that it'll get timely updates.

  13. Re:Too late for the UK on Google Rebrands All Its Payment Solutions As 'Google Pay' (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Did they? Which of the services now being lumped into Google Pay are you thinking of?

    Maybe banks win for personal transfers, but Android Pay has some traction. If anything, it's Paypal that got there first for web purchases. I find it easier to use Paypal for things like Netflix and other subscriptions so that it's only one account I need to update when my credit card expires. If Google gave sites a similar ability to accept payment via a Google Play account I'd use that instead.

  14. Number 7 worries me on Slashdot Asks: What Are Your Favorite Android Oreo Features? (thehackernews.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm a bit worried that no.7 will break apps that do useful things in the background, such as Tasker and similar automation apps. I also wonder how it will impact apps that do geofencing.

    If I recall, there are changes that app developers need to make to continue to work in the background, and it could be some time before apps catch up.

    Overall I'm not comfortable with the move to greater restriction. I use Android instead of iOS precisely because it has greater flexibility.

  15. Re:That's exactly why... on Roku Gets Tough On Pirate Channels, Warns Users (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that's why I got one. One device that can do Now TV, Google Play and Amazon - since Amazon doesn't play nice with Chromecast and the other two don't play nice with Fire TV

    It does have a problem where it outputs in 60Hz rather than the UK's 50, which can lead to juddering. Chromecast lets you change the output to 50.

    My TV mitigates it to some extent, but I can still see it on - for example - the panning opening credits of Game of Thrones.

  16. Oblig XKCD needs updating... on Google Allo For Chrome Finally Arrives, But Only For Android Users (engadget.com) · · Score: 2

    This XKCD needs updating... or does Allo have so few users it doesn't even register on the radar?

  17. Prostitution is undesirable. It's okay to ban prostitution, though perhaps a bit foolish.

    That's a matter of opinion and there are several levels of prostitution, from street walking to brothels to high end escorts. It is possible to have a positive client/provider relationship where both parties are equally happy with the arrangement.

    I know it's difficult to establish who is doing it out of their free will and who is being coerced beyond a reasonable level (arguably we're almost all "coerced" to work by the need to feed and house ourselves), but there are sex workers who have made a rational choice and are happy with it.

  18. Re:Idiots everywhere... on Crypto-Bashing Prime Minister Argues The Laws Of Mathematics Don't Apply In Australia (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think that's about right, sadly.

    Future historians may look on the last few hundred years in the same way as the first Greek/Mycenaean civilisation prior to the Greek dark ages, or Rome prior to the fall of the empire.

    There have been blips before. They never last. We're just unlucky that we're living through the end of one and can remember the high water mark.

  19. Re:Doesn't belong here on Seeking YouTube Fame, A Teenager Kills Her Boyfriend (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Dostoyevsky also wrote Crime and Punishment, which is also appropriate.

    I found War and Peace a long but relatively easy read (I also enjoyed Anna Karenina). I've found other books harder going and hence longer reads - I find Thomas Hardy hard going, and I've attempted (and failed) to read Ulysses (Joyce)

  20. Re:120 whatchyamacallit on It's Too Hot For Some Planes To Fly In Phoenix (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    I don't know if this is a common UK thing - and possibly age related as younger people here mostly use celcius - but I think of low temperatures in celcius and high temperatures in fahrenheit.

    So for me, 0 is freezing, negative numbers are really cold (-5C to -6C is about as low as I've seen it get here), 0 - 10 is varying degrees of chilly - all in celcius.

    I still think of hot as 80s and 90s though, and if someone tells me it's 30C I do the mental conversion to fahrenheit to get a sense of just how hot that is.

  21. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The difference between wrongly balanced braces and whitespace is that whitespace is invisible. You're literally trying to debug an invisible error - it's indented to the same level, but with a single tab instead of spaces.

    Maybe I'm using the wrong editor, but I get annoyed at the number of times it seems to forget that I'm using spaces to indent and adds a tab, throwing off the code. I have to keep running the "convert tabs to spaces" function on it before I save.

    OK, I'm an occasional Python programmer, so maybe it annoys me more than someone working with it all day every day. It's just a mental gear shift and annoyance that I could do without compared with every other language I currently use. There's a lot I like about Python, but the whitespace thing is a pain in the arse.

  22. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Agree. Code should not fail to run because of programmer errors that are not visible in the text editor - i.e. a stray tab instead of spaces.

    It's also a nightmare copying code snippets, especially from the web - you might as well retype them by the time you've fixed the tab vs. space issues.

  23. Re:If it is not on WhatsApp Users Are Reporting Outages Worldwide (metro.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    People outside of the geek bubble don't care about peer to peer. Mostly they don't care about encryption either (although WhatsApp does have end to end encryption). They care about what their friends use. Whatsapp has a critical mass. I use it because of the people I want to talk to, not because of its technical qualities.

    And at least it's not Facebook Messenger... although it still surprises me that FB haven't eliminated it to have a single messaging platform to support, given that they own WhatsApp.

    I'm also not sure how you'd manage to get peer to peer working on mobile - what with battery considerations and lack of permanent connectivity.

  24. Re:You get what you pay for... on Bose Headphones Secretly Collected User Data, Lawsuit Reveals (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you, but I can't stand that music with rocks in.

  25. (Plus, I actually *like* the idea of being able to bargain for a car for way less than MSRP. I can't do that with Tesla, so I don't buy their cars...)

    I hate that aspect of it. I hate the fact that someone with better bargaining skills than me could get exactly the same product for less money. Sadly, here in the UK, dealers are the norm. There is a direct sales showroom for one manufacturer fairly close to me, but they only sell for MSRP - and even I could get 10% off that at a dealer.

    I wonder if I could argue that haggling on price discriminates against the less socially capable..!?