I wanted to copy and paste the name of the park from the Times of India article so I could see the location in Google Maps, but the Times of India injects their URL into anything you try to copy. Such antisocial behavior. And I can't believe that browsers (Firefox in my case) even permit this. Is there ever a legitimate web-design reason to override copy or Ctrl^C?
> Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset
Except you can't in Canada. The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones).
You can disable alerts in Brazil. So in one sense, Brazil is more free than Canada.
> The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones).
I'm Canadian too, and I'm able to toggle all the options off on my Android phone, it just does absolutely nothing and all the alerts still come through.
>> Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset
> Except you can't in Canada. The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory.
Same for USG and Presidential alerts. I disable them anyway - which I can do after rooting. For one phone I deleted the PotUS alerts file. On another one I edited a config file. On my current handset, I disabled the wireless alert system.
The problem is that Canada ignores all of the different categories, and just sends everything out as a presidential alert.
> I disable them anyway - which I can do after rooting
Yeah, I used to root my phone and do the same thing, but I don't any more since rooting is too easy to detect with hardware-backed Play integrity these days :(
Shortly before COVID there was a string of amber alerts arriving in the wee hours of the morning in Ontario regarding missing children. Didn't matter where in the province (larger than many European countries) it happened the alerts would to out regardless. A mix of people complaining about it and social media about why you're a bad person if you don't welcome these alerts. But inevitably they went away by and large. Not aware of any stated policy change I just suspect that they have become more conservative about sending them out because it was frankly ridiculous. Rousing millions of people from bed with any regularity over things they absolutely do nothing about would have only snowballed into a demand that it stop, even with the social media engine shaming people
It's great fun too, just a couple weeks ago I was startled awake at around 3:30AM for an emergency alert, concerning a 75 year old woman who had wandered off about an hour from where I live. Really annoying, I wake up at 5AM for work so I was pretty pissed off. Finally got back to sleep and startled awake again, must've been around 4:30AM. It was an emergency alert to let us know THEY HAD FOUND HER.
"HEY EVERYBODY WAKE UP, SOUND THE ALARMS, THERE'S NO EMERGENCY, SHE'S PERFECTLY SAFE"
Even weeks later, I'm literally sitting here fucking furious thinking about it.
There was a scheduled test last weekend, and I disabled the single “emergency alert” option in my iPhone’s settings. But it didn’t work, I still received the alert, complete with the heart attack inducing sound.
What was the large-scale commercial procedure for making electrodes that pass through the glass without letting air in? I assume that electronics manufacturers must have been making millions of such vacuum tubes in the past. Is the knowledge lost (or not practical for hobby use)?
As mentioned in TFA, the most important factor for successfully joining a metal and a glass is to match their thermal expansion coefficients.
Most pure metals have a much greater thermal expansion than any glass, which will cause cracks.
In the nineteenth century, the first successful joinings of metal with glass were done using platinum, but that is obviously too expensive for normal applications.
Eventually a special alloy of iron-nickel-cobalt was developed, which is named kovar and whose thermal expansion is matched to that of a certain type of borosilicate glass.
The use of kovar was widespread in electronics, starting with the vacuum tubes and gas tubes, and then continuing with the first generations of transistors and integrated circuits, which used metal packages.
All the old transistors and operational amplifiers that were packaged in metal cans had pins and package bases made of kovar.
When kovar had to be joined with a different kind of glass than the type with which it is matched in thermal expansion, that glass was coated in one or more layers of different kinds of glasses, with that matched to kovar in contact with the metal and the intermediate layers having intermediate thermal expansion coefficients, interpolating between the bulk glass and kovar.
Kovar is not a good thermal or electrical conductor, which is why the modern power transistors that use plastic packages (e.g. TO-247) and copper bases and pins (which are plated with nickel or tin, to avoid corrosion) can easily dissipate much greater powers than the old transistors in TO-3 metal cans, which had the same size. On the other hand, the old transistors in metal packages were pretty much immune of environmental influences.
Ordinary incandescent bulbs must have similar sealing requirements, but they probably mostly rely on using a thin conductor that doesn't contract much when it cools. Also IIRC modern incandescent bulbs do not use a high vacuum but contain a low pressure inert gas so leakage would be slower if it occurs at all.
As you say, incandescent bulbs are less demanding because they do not use high vacuum, but they have the additional requirement that the pins that support the tungsten filament must resist to very high temperatures, because some heat is conducted through the filament into its support.
This is why the pins that support the filament are typically made of molybdenum. Molybdenum has a relatively low thermal expansion coefficient in comparison with most metals, so there are certain glass compositions that can match its TCE. The glass through which the pins pass is not of the same type as the bulb, which is made of cheaper glass, but it is of the type matched in TCE with molybdenum.
AFAIK, in in the US: Modern high-efficiency incandescent bulbs are exactly like the halogen bulbs of yore, but with the small quartz envelope wrapped in a familiar light-bulb-shaped shell, and with a base that matches. It's like a light bulb within a light bulb.
Except for all the ones that aren't modern or efficient. Common 40-Watt appliance bulbs, for instance: Those are still built using the old methods. They never changed. This strongly suggests that we never forgot how to seal metal wires into a glass bottle full of nothing.
But this article isn't about industrial processes. It's about rediscovering things at home, and that stands on its own merits. :)
Incandescent bulbs used dumet/platinite, which is an nickel-iron alloy like kovar except it's turned for a different CTE. This stuff isn't that expensive when mass produced - it's just those who can afford usually borosilicate can afford paying a premium for kovar.
A lot of thought went into selecting the correct metal and glass for the application.
Kovar[1] was typically used in commercial applications where tubes were constructed from hard (borosilicate) glass. In fact, there were special formulations of borosilicate, such as Corning 7052, and later 7073, which were designed to match with Kovar. So both the metal and the glass were designed to work together. This involves engineering the metal and glass such that they shrink at about the same rate from the glass's setting point (temperature where the glass's internal stresses start to align, but before the glass solidifies) down to room temperature.
An aside on how Kovar works, because it's neat: Kovar is ferromagnetic, and the mixture of metals changes the Curie Point - the temperature above which which a ferromagnetic material stops being magnetic due to the atoms being too energetic. The Curie Point isn't a single point, it's a region. Ferromagnetic materials' lattices actually expand as they become more magnetic - this is the Magnetovolume Effect. So by adjusting the ratios of materials, Westinghouse was able to balance the Magnetovolume Effect (materials wants to expand as it cools and regains its magnetism) with the natural lattice shrinking due to cooling, and create a region where the metal matches the shrink rate of glass.
Conversely, consumer-grade vacuum tubes, such as the ones in radios, guitar amplifiers, incandescent bulbs, and televisions, typically use cheaper soda-lime or lead-alkalai silicate glass[2]. This glass had completely different thermal expansion characteristics, so different materials for leads were required. For thin leads, what they typically[3] did is use a Dumet (42/58 Nickel/Iron) wire clad in a copper sheath and coated with borax. The bonded dumet-copper (about 80/20 by weight) expands at a compromise between the two, so it can be matched to the thermal expansion of glass. The borax aided in oxide control and bonding to the glass (this is copper's "red oxide" as mentioned in the article). But this format only works for thin wires, because as we accumulate surface area we start to have to worry about axial stress from the wire expanding along its axis. So for larger leads, a (more expensive, less conductive) one-piece alloy of 52/48 Nickel/Iron had to be used instead[4].
The anodes of CRTs used yet another alloy, designed for higher expansion volume, known as "Glass-Sealing 42-6", and standardized as ASTM F31. These are 42/6/52 Ni/Cr/Fe alloys.
Lastly, to bring it all back home, the glass matters as much as the metal, and the author of this article is using an exceptionally poor glass for vacuum tube work. It seems like they are using regular Pyrex, which has a much lower expansion coefficient than most vacuum tube glass, and in fact, most metals.
[1] - The generic term for Kovar is Fernico (from Iron-Nickel-Cobalt, Fe-Ni-Co). It was invented by Westinghouse in the 1930s. Other names for Kovar are: ASTM F-15, NILO K, Pernifer 2918, Rodar, and Dilvar P1.
[2] - An exception is tubes that experienced high temperatures that might melt normal glass - such as Xenon flash tubes. Another exception is metal vacuum tubes which had small glass borosilicate beads around each lead wire, bonded to both the wire and the surrounding metal. These were common in 1940s radios.
[4] - Interesting footnote: Platinum also works great as a soft-glass seal wire, if you have the $$$$. Dumet was originally marketed as "platinite" - a platinum substitute.
The article pretty much tells you: "Copper's red oxide bonds very well to glass. In fact, the bond is stronger than the bulk glass: when it breaks, there's always a thin layer of glass left stuck to the metal. Along with its excellent electrical properties, it seems like an ideal electrode material." If you look at how vacuum tubes are constructed that's essentially what you see.
Tubes are evacuated through a hole created elsewhere, nowhere near any electrical connections. The getter is then flashed to clean up any gas molecules left over.
Nope, as also mentioned in TFA, copper has a too great thermal expansion coefficient in comparison with glass.
If vacuum tubes had pins of copper, the glass-metal joining would have cracked very soon during normal usage cycles, and there would have been no vacuum left in the tube.
Real vacuum tubes and gas tubes had pins made of kovar, which is a Fe-Ni-Co alloy with a TCE matched to a certain composition of borosilicate glass.
The kovar pins were normally plated with nickel on their external parts, to enable soldering, because molten solder does not wet kovar.
Right, point being that metal-glass seals are very effective given the right materials. This has nothing to do with how the tube is evacuated, and there is never a point where the wires have to be "passed through the glass without letting air in."
You may still be able to buy the prefabricated mass-produced tube bases for regular 9-pin miniature tubes.
These are just "wafers" of glass a few mm thick with the 9 metal pins through them. Both having matched expansion characteristics that were improved over a period of decades.
The base is held in a jig, the inner electrode assembly is tacked onto the proper pins at each point. Then the tough borosilicate glass tubing is lowered and sealed to the wafer.
Evacuation is from the top, and then that is sealed to a point like you see on any ordinary 12AX7-sized tube.
I was under the impression that they were only made in eastern Europe at this point, former bloc nations. Even then, the demand must be microscopic at this point.
xray, photomultiplier and laser tubes are still SOTA. PM tubes in particular have a huge number of glass feed through for the intermediate plate voltages.
A lot of the demand is from guitar amps, while you can just as well simulate the behaviour of a valve amp these days there's still plenty of demand for the real deal. As long as the likes of Fender, Marshall and so on want to supply valve amps to the mass market there'll probably be factories producing ECC83s, EL34s and the other common audio valves. In a lot of ways the combination of electric guitar + valve amp basically is the instrument in some styles.
There's also a niche HiFi market, my daily driver audio amp is a 1960s Leak EL84 amp. It's a cool bit of living history and it's very non-fatiguing to listen to for long periods.
They are also made in China. There is also one American company that makes a single audio tube, the 300b. They bought the Western Electric tooling, materials, and trade dress from whoever had bought it from AT&T.
I’m not sure where non audio vacuum tubes are made. I’m sure there’s a variety of companies around the world making X-ray, transmitter, laser, etc. tubes.
I'm not sure what specific glass and metal are used in neon sign electrodes, but their definitely built to hold a higher vacuum under decades of use. Their relatively cheap and you can get them with small tubes on the end for pulling the vacuum.
not sure if the thermal expansion of pyrex is much different from just borosilicate glass, but https://simplifier.neocities.org/diode3 seems to have worked something out with tungsten
Dang no way? I had a terrible experience with them (tbf it was half a decade back at this point). We were in line to check in, something like 1.5hrs before a one hour flight. The line was agonizingly slow (only 2 of like 5 check-in counters were staffed), and when we got to the counter they said we were too late, missed the window for the flight. We only had carry-ons, were 3min late for their arbitrary window, and the plane still wasn't scheduled to leave for an hour or so.
We were clearly in line before their deadline, were certainly going to make it to the gate before they even opened for boarding, had no checked bags, and they made us buy new tickets. The cherry on top was that they ran flights every hour, so we bought the ticket for the next hour but the gate agent let us on the original flight we had- so they basically just forced us to pay double for our flight.
SkyTeam in general has superb service. I have in the past decade flown Delta, Air France, KLM, and Aeromexico, and all have curbstomped my American Airlines and British Airways experiences.
The service on the plane isn’t a big deal, but in my experience strongly resembles the service off it.
In Brazil, people get so much SMS spam and phone call spam that many people turn off notifications for all text messages and phone calls and use only Whatsapp (even for voice calls).
But once in a while my iPhone in Brazil will get spam as a unblockable "system message". I'm not sure if I'm using the correct term. I'm mean that it looks just like an Apple system notification and it disappears without a trace afterward, but the content is obviously spam.
I wonder if the cell carriers are seeing this as the existential threat it is, or if they’re just continuing with the whole “bury our heads in the sand” strategy.
If having a phone number has no benefit and only brings spam, and WiFi is ubiquitous in urban areas, a huge chunk of the population don’t really need cell plans any more. And the places without WiFi coverage (less dense areas) are the most expensive to provide service.
In the US at least, the FCC used to be pushing hard to combat the spam, like requiring authentication for caller ID, and it was the carriers that were dragging their feet and lobbying against it. So something tells me they just continue to view all the spam senders as an easy income source and don’t mind letting their whole business model die if it means short term profits.
Most places with wifi around me don't offer great options. My local school blocks a lot (and I'm mostly there outside of school hours, they block more) - these are mostly places I wouldn't go anyway, but once in a while I hit something blocked. My office does the same - but they don't have public WiFi, an employee needs to get you a login (this is easy to do, but if you don't know someone who works in the building you can't connect at all). Most public wiki (including school above) also requires you accept a terms of use. Most devices won't automatically connect to any found open access point, so to use public WiFi I need to manually do everything.
That is I don't think people will use WiFi only, unless they are going to drop always reachable communication. (which given the SPAM OP mentioned maybe...)
The nice thing on iOS at least is that they make it known it's a flash message. You'll get a full screen modal dialogue including a "Why did I get this message?" link that informs you about it and also informs you that sometimes they're used for scams.
In USA, I personally get 3-5 spam phone calls and voicemails daily. Mostly all the same, like "your $20K loan is almost ready".
One time, I picked up, and it was this seemingly incredibly rude person who sounded real but continue talking in a pushy manner without stopping despite what I said.
It's insane getting so many calls all the time like I owe them a bunch of money or something. Anyone else get this?
The US seems to have completely given up on protecting its public phone network against abuse, while at the same time relying on phone numbers as the primary identifying key and authentication method for humans in countless business processes.
It took years (if not decades) of regulatory neglect to get that bad; I doubt there’s an easy fix at this point. It’s really concerning.
I suspect that the main reason is that politicians rely on the same mechanisms as robocallers and spammers, so they don't want to restrict it.
Sometimes, I get robocalls from local PACs, and they get automatically flagged as scams, because the dialer companies that the politicians use, are ones that also run outright scam campaigns, and get blacklisted.
> they get automatically flagged as scams, because the dialer companies that the politicians use
If it were possible to reliably determine the source of a call in the US phone network, spam wouldn't be an issue!
Theoretically, STIR/SHAKEN should enable that; practically, there are too many gaps to enforce it (importantly, it does not travel across TDM, i.e. non-VoIP, paths), so spammers still get away with it.
It's not a prefect system but I don't use a landline and set unknown incoming numbers to silent unless I'm actually expecting a call. Someone important trying to call can always leave a message but the spammers never have.
> Someone important trying to call can always leave a message
Curiously, it seems to have become a cultural touchstone not to leave a voicemail. I have had to educate people about this. My service is with Verizon, and for what I assume are historical reasons the caller will hear rings on their end even if my phone isn't receiving the call (AT&T does not have this issue). If you don't leave a voicemail, I literally have no way of knowing that you called. Said voicemail can be as simple as "call me".
I'm a physician, and the hospital where I do most of my work has a policy against sending PHI over text (a very reasonable policy). So many nurses are reluctant to text me anything, even when it's just "please call Adam on 3 South".
If people need to stop notifications for incoming calls/messages, I'd call that dysfunctional, not just suboptimal.
And what's worse is that even if this were to be fixed now, the reputational damage is already done, since many people will probably never change their devices back to ringing again.
> Someone important trying to call can always leave a message but the spammers never have.
I haven't lived in the US for a long time so this may no longer be true, but when I did live there, putting my number on the do not call register actually helped a lot.
Weird, I get spam about 6 times per year. I've been on the do not call registry for years. My provider also made a bunch of anti-spam changes a while ago (at least a year) which stopped nearly all the remaining spam. To me is seems like this problem is solved.
I got 3 calls purportedly from hubspot in the last week, from 3 different caller ids. It wasn’t a robocall, the same voice. I just hung up the first two times and the third asked him to stop calling. Incredible. I only answered the calls because I was expecting a call from an unknown number.
I want to mention another infection happening at payment terminals and ATMs if you're using your credit card in a foreign country: You get a message saying "Would you like to pay in your own currency? Click [Accept] or [Decline]", and there's fine print that says there's a 12-15% currency conversion markup.
To give a concrete example, if you're an American traveling in Brazil withdrawing cash from an ATM or buying something for BRL 500, you'll be presented with an option to pay BRL 500 or pay just US$110.58 in your own currency (with text saying conversion includes 15%).
But the typical American (and Canadian) credit card adds at most 2.5% to the Visa or Mastercard exchange rate, which is at most 0.5% higher than the interbank rate. So basically by clicking the wrong button, you're paying an extra 12% to the payment processor. In the example above, your credit card would have charged you about US$99.04 had you declined the conversion, and saved you $10.
I can't imagine a situation where it's to your benefit to accept the "conversion service" they're offering. I wonder if the payment processor is kicking back some of the profit back to the merchant because this swindle is spreading everywhere.
The worst part is that a couple of people that I've tried to warn don't get it. They still think that they should pick US$ (or whatever their own currency is) because that's what their credit card uses.
Some are even worse than this. When I was in Portugal, the machine said "Press (1) for GBP. Press (2) for EUR.", then on the next screen, after you select "(2) for EUR", it says "Rate will Apply. Please confirm. (1) Accept conversion (2) Reject Conversion". If you select "Accept conversion", it overrides your currency decision and you pay in GBP with their markup fee...
I saw the same in an ATM in Greece. The first screen wanted me to let them convert the currency (at a 20% markup), I declined, and the second screen said "are you sure? You might be charged a lot" and had "accept" and "decline" where the small print said "do you want us to convert anyway?".
This happened to me, but it was the merchant that clicked it...
I inserted my card, and then was reading the text and choice that popped up on the screen, and while I was reading it trying to decide which I should click, the merchant grabbed the scanner and clicked the accept...
Of course I got a charge notification on my mobile app immediately and noticed that it was way higher than it should have been, so then I had to go back to them and get them to refund the transaction so we could do it again which took forever and a manager etc etc.
Currency conversion is not only incredibly fraught with traps, but believe me, even for very intelligent and research-savvy individuals, if you're not a professional in this area, you'll struggle to see all the pitfalls and still fall for them. I don't consider myself stupid, but I spent several days seriously researching it, and ultimately, after being exploited by several new tricks, I gave up. I consider those losses as a part of travel expenses and avoid letting it amplify my losses, that ruining my travel. PayPal is even more blatant fraud. You never know how much money is left after a transfer or withdrawal until you're surprised, and then they'll say they mentioned it in some tens of thousands of words of agreement that they would deduct this amount.
On the positive side, it seems that Wise must block it because I never see the DCC "choice" when using a Wise card.
As a negative point, I've noticed that AirBnB, which used to use reasonable conversion rates, has just recently started to use exorbitant currency conversion and not allow you to pay in the local currency of the country you're traveling to (so you can let your own credit card do the conversion at a lower rate). I.e., if you try to book a property in Brazil in BRL (literally clicking on the price to pay in BRL), the charge will nevertheless go through in USD (or whatever currency is your own) with AirBnb doing the conversion at the rate they choose.
Aliexpress also shows prices in one currency but then refuses to take payment in that currency and does their own conversion with an unfavourable rate... Seems to be allowed with some combinations of delivery country and currency but not others.
I have a European currency (not Euro) and I think being charged their USD price is better than my local currency's.. I pay with Revolut and what Revolut charges me (taking my local currency and converting it to USD), is lower than what AliExpress would charge me if I had chosen to pay them in my currency.
So they charge you for an amount different to advertised? Tell your bank. You might get a refund and at least they'll have the complaint on file so the next victim might get a refund. If enough people complain and AirBNB don't fix it, AirBNB gets banned from accepting cards.
It is usually an option in your bank's app. It depends on the bank though, obviously. If it's not there, you have to be vigilant while using your card (always select the local currency when given the option).
I checked and it doesn't look like any UK banks have this option - at least I looked at about 5 different banks websites and all have pages suggesting you always select to pay in local currency but none of them have any information on disabling this behaviour
Gemini confirms it's not a thing, and not really possible (the terminals just detect the country from the card number)
I don’t know a single bank in Europe that provides this option
Edit: Perplexity says this:
> cards cannot block DCC offers because the merchant terminal identifies your card’s country of origin from the card number and offers DCC accordingly. Always manually decline at payment to let the card handle conversion at better rates
My bank (mBank in Poland) has per card options for declining various types of transactions, among others: made using the magnetic strip, with DCC, with added ATM surcharges.
The bank probably cannot disable the "service" offered by the terminal but seems to get enough information to be able to decline the transaction.
A few years ago I was checking out of a reasonably up-scale hotel in Barcelona early in the morning.
They punch numbers into one of those wireless hand terminals. I tap my card, enter the pin and then before I can react to what the screen is now saying they've punched the 'Accept Conversion' button and submit it. By the time I realise what has happened, it's too late and has started printing the reciept.
I insisted they reverse it and redo the transaction without that - the staff didn't understand and didn't care they'd cost me another 10-15%. It really adds up for a week long stay.
I once asked a cashier about this and they said it saved me money. They said representatives from the large national bank had done a presentation and noted how this is the best option for foreigners. I think they truly believe they are being helpful. Closest thing to legalized robbery.
I had the exact same thing happen to me at a hotel in China. I could not get the person at the checkin desk to understand the problem so I ended up having to just eat the extra cost. Very frustrating, it was not a small amount of money.
Well, it’s an unwise strategy to use on me if they’re feeling pressed for time. I will get enjoyment from putting my foot down for as long as is needed to reach a resolution.
That’s a 20+ minute decision they just made to try to save a few seconds.
PayPal does this too. They will offer to do the currency conversion at an outrageous rate. Not quite 15%, though always substantially more than Mastercard’s rate of the day.
Amazon does something like this too, though I'm not sure of the percent. I just know that every time I select to pay in dollars, any change in delivery options will select it back to pay in euros, where the bank is.
I genuinely don't know if this is good or not, but the UIs insistence on reverting back to another currency after my initial selection leads me to believe that my initial selection hits them the hardest the most
Amazon.com does add a ~2% "currency conversion guarantee" fee when paying in EUR, on top of whatever conversion they use. I imagine that the average cost of that "service" to them is closer to 0%.
The even worse part about PayPal is that they have a whole system of nonsensical fees to fall back to when you inevitably figure out how to evade the obvious ones. For instance, sidestepping their dynamic currency conversion by temporarily changing which currency they bill on your card (which by the way is rate limited to only a few times per month) will result in another "non-foreign transaction but with recipient in foreign country" fee appearing, covering the inherent costs of converting German US dollars to American US dollars or whatever. They will at least hide the fee from you for business transactions, but the merchant still has to pay it.
That’s 100% a US problem. Never had this issue in the EU, PayPal etc are obligated to offer the option to “just bill in transaction currency and let the card issuer handle conversion etc” without fees.
Payment terminals used to have good UX, they all clearly showed you the price when paying. Tills had displays with the price facing the customer which were clearly visible.
Now traditional POS terminals have been replaced with tap and go devices by the latest fintech, non of them show the price to the customer by design. Instead you tap a small puck and you hope the price charged is the one asked only to find a transaction fee on top when later check your balance.
It's a deliberate design choice to withhold showing the price on these devices. It's cheap to add a small LCD panel to them, the technology previously existed and still exists however the choice have been made not to.
I was in awe of an old vending machine I saw in the Caribbean recently. I didn't want anything but I spent a few seconds just pushing buttons to check prices. The segmented display read out the price the very instant I touched the button for the item. There was no perceptible delay for a bloated software stack running on some cheap processor that waits for too many bits over a crappy cellular internet connection. Everything needed was right there, between the hard-coded logic and me.
> Instead you tap a small puck and you hope the price charged is the one asked only to find a transaction fee on top when later check your balance.
I'm sorry, but it's a mandatory knee-jerk response here: "Is this something I'm too European to undestand?"
Even the the smallest, crappiest devices are required to have a line LCD to show the final price. Goes to show that consumer protection minimums do really set the bar for eventual exploitation.
In Australia, a lot of places only have a "Square Reader" on the counter where you pay. i.e. cafes, coffee shops, convenience stores, market stalls.
Terminals do exist with full displays but they are less common, mainly if you go to a restaurant as they have options for tipping on the display.
Just looking at the Square website the "Square Reader" is $69 vs $329 for the "Square Terminal". This may be part of the reason cafes etc prefer them given tight overheads.
Yes, I'm referring to European directive mandating final price displays on terminals.
I think this would be the simplest reader one can legally use in Europe
https://www.sumup.com/en-au/air-nfc-card-reader (although European market sites do not even list this model anymore)
I think your retailer has misconfigured their setup. Everywhere I tap against a puck, it is also accompanied by a screen. The puck is always just a plugin module as opposed to being integrated on the terminal.
At least in Brazil, it was very rare. In the last 3-4 years, it's almost every time you pay. And you have to grab and hold the payment terminal (especially if you're using tap / contactless payment) so the cashier or waiter, trying to be helpful, doesn't click the wrong button and cost you 15%.
Some places they're insistent that you must do currency conversion or the payment won't work. Makes me think the merchant must be getting a chunk of that profit and telling their staff to accept the conversion...
As others have said, currency conversion has been a well-known "scam" for as long as I can remember. I'm sure Martin Lewis has been talking about this since at least the early 2000s in some form.
Here in Greece it always asks "Euro or USD?". Most merchants know to press Euro, the rest ask me. I think I've maybe had one merchant press USD by accident in ten years or so.
Exactly, who has more incentive to rip you off, your bank or some random merchant/payment processor/local bank that you are probably never going to interact with again either way.
They seemed to have given up on this in some areas. I don't think they asked me this once during my visit to France in October. This included Paris and smaller towns.
When you think about it, it's just another "Tourist tax" of which are are many. Other times you just get quoted a different base price as a tourist vs. native - openly or not.
Also, every time I visit a new airport in the US, it comes to mind how damn near every medium-sized city has a sprawling, fairly clean, air-conditioned airport, with shops and seating, usually open 24 hours. The Amtrak stations in those same cities, if they exist, are usually one-room buildings that close for most of the day. The Greyhound station is nowadays usually just a spot on the side of the road.
Why the disparity? I guess there are just that many more people flying than taking the bus or train? (Built-in security and a generally richer clientele certainly help too, I'm sure)
"Yeah what are we comparing the airport to, home? Plenty of airports are amazing and beautiful.
"
The only thing they compare favourably with are shopping centres. A horrible place to spend several hours or more. Noisy, expensive, usually sterile and ugly. Not my idea of fun. Little or no natural beauty (I gather Singapore and some others have tried to turn this around.)
I have yet to enjoy a train station or bus station more. They are smelly, polluted, greasy, full of pickpockets and worse, usually no places to nap safely without a lookout, and horrendous toilet situations. Maybe there are a few crown jewel stations in very wealthy places that are better than some airports in impoverished places but if you take location into account I doubt you'd be able to come up with many examples.
My guess is that it’s because there’s a lot of very negative comments about Brazil in that article. Trying to grade people for their opinions on a topic like that gets into dangerous territory.
Remember blogs on the old web when the author would plaster his name in a huge font on every page along with his photo, and have an extensive bio about himself and perhaps even his resume?
Well this author has gone to the opposite extreme: There isn't one shred of info that I can find about him. I liked his writings and was curious who he was in real life, but there's nothing. Stands on its own merits like Death Note, Bitcoin, or Truecrypt.
But you had the option of having an unlisted or unpublished phone number. To give one datapoint, in Los Angeles in the 1980s about half of all numbers were unlisted. I would expect that the unlisted rate was much higher in big cities like L.A. compared to the rest of the country.
What I find fascinating is that people paid for privacy. Yes, indeed, people paid several dollars extra per month to maintain an unlisted/unpublished phone number. Today very few people are willing to pay actual money for privacy.
What do you mean we can’t pay for privacy and it’s not an option at any cost? Just don’t use big tech services, you pay for them with your data. Use Threema instead, or similar. It is a paid service with focus on privacy.
