And of course, seeing if the seeds they sent back out are still viable is good too. I mean, we're talking backups here. And part of a good backup is knowing that your backup is restorable and leaves things the way you expect after they are restored.
That's a big part of the research at the Millennium Seed Bank in England, which has a much wider remit (all plants!) but stores much smaller quantities of seed per species. (Svarlbard has sacks full, the MSB may have as few as 10 or 100.)
The MSB has 13% of species banked so far. Withdrawals have been made, generally to "repair" areas devastated by mining etc.
Contactless has been widespread in London for about three years, and very common in the last 18 months (since it became possible to pay for buses and the tube with it).
It's only for transactions under £20 (and transport), and if you do too many in a row you need to enter a PIN.
Considering that Visa and MasterCard regulations (and the UK's own laws) require that merchants still accept signatures, I don't see that going too well.
Isn't that only for special circumstances, e.g. a person with a disability that means they can't use a PIN?
Many merchants don't accept signatures: train ticket machines, cinema ticket machines, self-checkout at supermarkets, etc.
It certainly won't eliminate the swipe cards for a long, long time. They've had chip and pin in Europe for a decade, and you can still swipe.
Expect that to change.
Swipe readers have been absent in Europe on unsupervised machines (e.g. buying a train ticket) for years, and aren't available at some smaller shops — unless they expect American trade, it's not useful. Even if it does exist, the cashier would often be reluctant to use it.
My new employer has given me a new Macbook Pro, and Kubuntu mostly works, but it will require some manual fiddling.
Booting, thunderbolt ethernet, thunderbolt display, wifi, external mouse/keyboard, external HDD, and all essential things do work. Disconnecting and reconnecting the display works 90% of the time, which I'm pleased with -- KDE now remembers where my toolbars and windows should go.
I don't have power management working, the touchpad is half-working (no scrolling), and I gave up getting the retina display + an external standard display to work -- I've reduced the resolution of the retina display.
I haven't yet put much effort into fixing these things, partly because I don't know whether they can be fixed (in reasonable time) and partly because I'm busy with the new job.
I've recently moved to Denmark, and am surprised how popular paying "by mobile" (by online banking, using a mobile app) is. And that is a new, incompatible method.
Places like hot dog stands accept it, or a bar for a $3 drink.
At least some stores will substitute for you. Problem is, they don't care as much about your shopping as you do, so they won't necessarily make intelligent substitutions. You'll order the cheapest and get the most expensive, or you'll order the no-GMO organic hippy version and get back a packet of chemicals.
The supermarkets in Britain will either charge you for what you ordered if they substitute something more expensive, or let you refund it when it's delivered (substitutions are generally packed separately, so you can check immediately and hand what you don't want to the driver). They also let you specify what should happen, you can e.g. ask for the item to be skipped if the exact thing isn't in stock.
Here in the UK there is a online only supermarket called Ocado that I use and solves this problem
What's possibly surprising to Americans is home-delivered groceries is a solved problem in Britain. Tesco has been selling through a website since 1996, almost as long as Amazon. Delivery costs as little as £1, and you choose a time slot for delivery.
Wander round any British town or city and you'll soon notice delivery vans from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado, Waitrose, Asda or the other large supermarkets. They're probably the most common commercial vehicles after about 7pm in residential areas.
That requires a data connection, so international roaming, and is slower than an app which caches all exchange rates and updates (or so it seems) once a day.
I don't see what's wrong with an app. Converting currencies is something I do fairly often, probably for about 10 weeks a year (holiday + business travel).
currency converter app ? Look up exchange rate of country you're about to land in, do math while there. Why is that hard ?
Because Europe, and because I don't like dividing by 13.5.
Four friends, renting a holiday house together, from three countries, in a fourth. We were paying for things in SEK, we wanted to know the cost in CHF, GBP and DKK (perhaps surprisingly, no-one was from the eurozone). An app is quicker than using the calculator.
The one flight I took with in-flight WiFi, on a Norwegian plane, blocked access to the Google Play store, App store, etc (and this was written clearly when I accepted the T&Cs). Presumably, for exactly this reason.
It was a little annoying, as the purpose of connecting to WiFi was to install a currency converter app.
You could tweak an existing keyboard layout definition to do this -- it's easy on Linux, and there is (or at least used to be) a tool to do it for Windows.
A young woman was elected as an MP in Scotland, regardless of the "colourful" Tweets she'd written since she was 14: http://www.express.co.uk/news/...
Wikipedia says "as most of them were a few years old they were generally ascribed to immaturity and did not appear to do any significant damage": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The trick to "out-witting" the US Mint's genius bill-recognition scheme is to move some of the circles around –the yellow ones. They are 5-circle constellations, which is how Photoshop recognizes them as US currency. This has been known since the 'new' $20's came out about 15 years ago.
The US didn't invent everything;-)
It's been known about since 2002, when it was found in European banknotes dating back to 1996. It's thought to be a Japanese invention.
However, the card will likely have limited geographical scope (eg the London Oyster Card), so if you're travelling widely you'll need a bunch of them or pay higher fares.
London introduced the Oyster card before contactless credit/debit cards existed, and even before the standards for transport cards were completed.
Since some time last year, contactless credit/debit/phone payments have been accepted on the London Underground, trains, buses and trams. There were suggestions in the media that Transport for London wanted to reduce Oyster card use, since it costs them more. I can believe that, with the huge number of adverts encouraging people to use contactless cards.
Some sold-in-Europe cars flash the brake lights under ABS braking, then put on the hazard lights until the driver speeds up again: http://support.volvocars.com/u...
The retailer is on the hook for physical verification of the card in the way you are suggesting ("hey, they are accepting physical cards without checking the limit. SPREEEE!!!!!")
Sure, but they still need a valid PIN, and the retailer can balance the risk against a lost sale.
EasyJet selling a pack of crisps in the air for £8.50 obviously take that risk, a supermarket might choose not to sell a TV. This could be complicated to explain to staff though.
If you have a US "Chip & Signature" card, and plan to use unattended payment in Europe, make sure your bank understands what you expect to do, and has issued a card that agrees to Chip only transactions when told a signature is impossible. Or better, get one that has Chip & PIN. Because if your card stubbornly requires a signature, and it's talking to a vending machine in a cheap hotel it will get told to fuck off.
Much more importantly than a vending machine in a cheap hotel, a machine selling metro or train tickets.
My experience in the UK (where I live) is such machines require a PIN even for small amounts (£2), but in Germany it's only required for large amounts.
At a large station and/or in commuting hours there might be a ticket office open, but you can't rely on that.
They did it as the credit card market is more competitive in the States. Many people have several cards, and the issuers felt that requiring people to remember a PIN would make it less likely that the shopper would choose their card.
Slashdot Mirror
Most British households have an electric kettle, a large jug with a 2-3kW heating element that heats the water to boiling point.
It takes about 2 minutes, or less if there's less water, so I don't see why it benefits from being remote controlled.
Cup of tea, anyone?
And of course, seeing if the seeds they sent back out are still viable is good too. I mean, we're talking backups here. And part of a good backup is knowing that your backup is restorable and leaves things the way you expect after they are restored.
That's a big part of the research at the Millennium Seed Bank in England, which has a much wider remit (all plants!) but stores much smaller quantities of seed per species. (Svarlbard has sacks full, the MSB may have as few as 10 or 100.)
The MSB has 13% of species banked so far. Withdrawals have been made, generally to "repair" areas devastated by mining etc.
http://www.kew.org/science-con...
BBC World Service used to be funded directly by the government, although this changed in 2014. I don't think people have caught up with that yet.
Contactless has been widespread in London for about three years, and very common in the last 18 months (since it became possible to pay for buses and the tube with it).
It's only for transactions under £20 (and transport), and if you do too many in a row you need to enter a PIN.
Considering that Visa and MasterCard regulations (and the UK's own laws) require that merchants still accept signatures, I don't see that going too well.
Isn't that only for special circumstances, e.g. a person with a disability that means they can't use a PIN?
Many merchants don't accept signatures: train ticket machines, cinema ticket machines, self-checkout at supermarkets, etc.
It certainly won't eliminate the swipe cards for a long, long time. They've had chip and pin in Europe for a decade, and you can still swipe.
Expect that to change.
Swipe readers have been absent in Europe on unsupervised machines (e.g. buying a train ticket) for years, and aren't available at some smaller shops — unless they expect American trade, it's not useful. Even if it does exist, the cashier would often be reluctant to use it.
Oh, and nice bit of LOLbertarian bias in the summary.
The best bit FTA "A leaked copy of the rules for consultation"... which is available online, at https://consultations.tfl.gov.... , TfL
How great is "great"?
My new employer has given me a new Macbook Pro, and Kubuntu mostly works, but it will require some manual fiddling.
Booting, thunderbolt ethernet, thunderbolt display, wifi, external mouse/keyboard, external HDD, and all essential things do work. Disconnecting and reconnecting the display works 90% of the time, which I'm pleased with -- KDE now remembers where my toolbars and windows should go.
I don't have power management working, the touchpad is half-working (no scrolling), and I gave up getting the retina display + an external standard display to work -- I've reduced the resolution of the retina display.
I haven't yet put much effort into fixing these things, partly because I don't know whether they can be fixed (in reasonable time) and partly because I'm busy with the new job.
Debit cards use a fixed fee, usually a few cents, up to 50c for a very small retailer.
I've recently moved to Denmark, and am surprised how popular paying "by mobile" (by online banking, using a mobile app) is. And that is a new, incompatible method.
Places like hot dog stands accept it, or a bar for a $3 drink.
At least some stores will substitute for you. Problem is, they don't care as much about your shopping as you do, so they won't necessarily make intelligent substitutions. You'll order the cheapest and get the most expensive, or you'll order the no-GMO organic hippy version and get back a packet of chemicals.
The supermarkets in Britain will either charge you for what you ordered if they substitute something more expensive, or let you refund it when it's delivered (substitutions are generally packed separately, so you can check immediately and hand what you don't want to the driver). They also let you specify what should happen, you can e.g. ask for the item to be skipped if the exact thing isn't in stock.
They've been working on this since 1996.
Here in the UK there is a online only supermarket called Ocado that I use and solves this problem
What's possibly surprising to Americans is home-delivered groceries is a solved problem in Britain. Tesco has been selling through a website since 1996, almost as long as Amazon. Delivery costs as little as £1, and you choose a time slot for delivery.
Wander round any British town or city and you'll soon notice delivery vans from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado, Waitrose, Asda or the other large supermarkets. They're probably the most common commercial vehicles after about 7pm in residential areas.
That requires a data connection, so international roaming, and is slower than an app which caches all exchange rates and updates (or so it seems) once a day.
I don't see what's wrong with an app. Converting currencies is something I do fairly often, probably for about 10 weeks a year (holiday + business travel).
currency converter app ? Look up exchange rate of country you're about to land in, do math while there. Why is that hard ?
Because Europe, and because I don't like dividing by 13.5.
Four friends, renting a holiday house together, from three countries, in a fourth. We were paying for things in SEK, we wanted to know the cost in CHF, GBP and DKK (perhaps surprisingly, no-one was from the eurozone). An app is quicker than using the calculator.
The one flight I took with in-flight WiFi, on a Norwegian plane, blocked access to the Google Play store, App store, etc (and this was written clearly when I accepted the T&Cs). Presumably, for exactly this reason.
It was a little annoying, as the purpose of connecting to WiFi was to install a currency converter app.
I implemented this in 2005 as a coursework exercise at university.
You could tweak an existing keyboard layout definition to do this -- it's easy on Linux, and there is (or at least used to be) a tool to do it for Windows.
A young woman was elected as an MP in Scotland, regardless of the "colourful" Tweets she'd written since she was 14: http://www.express.co.uk/news/...
Wikipedia says "as most of them were a few years old they were generally ascribed to immaturity and did not appear to do any significant damage": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The trick to "out-witting" the US Mint's genius bill-recognition scheme is to move some of the circles around –the yellow ones. They are 5-circle constellations, which is how Photoshop recognizes them as US currency. This has been known since the 'new' $20's came out about 15 years ago.
The US didn't invent everything ;-)
It's been known about since 2002, when it was found in European banknotes dating back to 1996. It's thought to be a Japanese invention.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
However, the card will likely have limited geographical scope (eg the London Oyster Card), so if you're travelling widely you'll need a bunch of them or pay higher fares.
London introduced the Oyster card before contactless credit/debit cards existed, and even before the standards for transport cards were completed.
Since some time last year, contactless credit/debit/phone payments have been accepted on the London Underground, trains, buses and trams. There were suggestions in the media that Transport for London wanted to reduce Oyster card use, since it costs them more. I can believe that, with the huge number of adverts encouraging people to use contactless cards.
Some sold-in-Europe cars flash the brake lights under ABS braking, then put on the hazard lights until the driver speeds up again: http://support.volvocars.com/u...
The retailer is on the hook for physical verification of the card in the way you are suggesting ("hey, they are accepting physical cards without checking the limit. SPREEEE!!!!!")
Sure, but they still need a valid PIN, and the retailer can balance the risk against a lost sale.
EasyJet selling a pack of crisps in the air for £8.50 obviously take that risk, a supermarket might choose not to sell a TV. This could be complicated to explain to staff though.
If you have a US "Chip & Signature" card, and plan to use unattended payment in Europe, make sure your bank understands what you expect to do, and has issued a card that agrees to Chip only transactions when told a signature is impossible. Or better, get one that has Chip & PIN. Because if your card stubbornly requires a signature, and it's talking to a vending machine in a cheap hotel it will get told to fuck off.
Much more importantly than a vending machine in a cheap hotel, a machine selling metro or train tickets.
My experience in the UK (where I live) is such machines require a PIN even for small amounts (£2), but in Germany it's only required for large amounts.
At a large station and/or in commuting hours there might be a ticket office open, but you can't rely on that.
Card payments can be accepted without power — that's what the raised numbers printed on the card are for!
They can also be done offline (no internet/phone) — I've used my Chip+PIN card on planes, on trains in tunnels, at farmer's markets etc.
They did it as the credit card market is more competitive in the States. Many people have several cards, and the issuers felt that requiring people to remember a PIN would make it less likely that the shopper would choose their card.