Brexit Deal Mentions Netscape Browser and Mozilla Mail (bbc.com) 194
References to decades-old computer software are included in the new Brexit agreement, including a description of Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Mail as being "modern" services. From a report: Experts believe officials must have copied and pasted chunks of text from old legislation into the document. The references are on page 921 of the trade deal, in a section on encryption technology. It also recommends using systems that are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The text cites "modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x." The latter two are now defunct - the last major release of Netscape Communicator was in 1997. The document also recommends using 1024-bit RSA encryption and the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which are both outdated and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Informative)
Not surprising. The whole of Brexit can be summarized by cranky Brits shouting "Get off my lawn!
That would be logical and reasonably tolerant and sensible compared to Brexit. "Get your bloody COVID treating doctors out of my hospitals" is more like it. At the end of last year about 10,000 EU medics had quit [theguardian.com] vastly up from previous years and there are more than 10,000 fewer nurses from the EU than would have been expected (nurses moving from the EU to the UK fell from about 6k a year to below 1k). Today it turned out that, London has started taking apart the emergency hospitals in London [independent.co.uk] because there are not enough staff for them to consider using them.
So, given that we are now at the stage where the number of ICU nurses available determines the number of people being saved from Covid, and that the NHS is about 100,000 people short of the ideal staffing level, there will be thousands of people dying because they voted to send those nurses home and taking hundreds of their fellow citizens with them. Lovely.
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Not surprising. The whole of Brexit can be summarized by cranky Brits shouting "Get off my lawn!
That would be logical and reasonably tolerant and sensible compared to Brexit. "Get your bloody COVID treating doctors out of my hospitals" is more like it. At the end of last year about 10,000 EU medics had quit [theguardian.com] vastly up from previous years and there are more than 10,000 fewer nurses from the EU than would have been expected (nurses moving from the EU to the UK fell from about 6k a year to below 1k). Today it turned out that, London has started taking apart the emergency hospitals in London [independent.co.uk] because there are not enough staff for them to consider using them.
So, given that we are now at the stage where the number of ICU nurses available determines the number of people being saved from Covid, and that the NHS is about 100,000 people short of the ideal staffing level, there will be thousands of people dying because they voted to send those nurses home and taking hundreds of their fellow citizens with them. Lovely.
And what about the countries these nurses are coming from? Should these not get any care and should only Britain get it?
Re: Get off my lawn! (Score:2)
Perhaps. But lots of those countries are doing much better than Great Britain. And in the zero sum game of resource allocation, the U.K. shouldn't be concerning itself with such issues. They should be trying to preserve their useful institutions.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about the countries these nurses are coming from? Should these not get any care and should only Britain get it?
Of course, and that's one of the reasons why Brexit is bad. The UK's National Health Service has begun to steal doctors even from countries where it has an agreement not to do that [telegraph.co.uk] to make up for the shortage which Brexit has caused [birmingham.ac.uk].
That's really a separate issue though. In the case of the countries we often used to take medics from, like Germany, they actually are doing fine and get UK medics in return. It's a great interchange - they come to places like Glasgow, which was one of the places in the EU with they highest incidence of lung disease [bbc.co.uk] and a world leader in coronary heart disease [nhsggc.org.uk] whilst also having some excellent research centres studying the dieases [gla.ac.uk] which make it a great place for getting experience would never see in their own homes town. British medics go to places like France or Germany where many techniques that aren't yet considered affordable in the UK are routine.
The change is making things worse for the UK in both directions. One of the main aims of Brexit is the ability to treat skilled immigrants almost as badly as unskilled immigrants on temporary visas are treated. The UK medics won't want to come back because they want to build up EU residency, whilst the EU medics are afraid of things like the loss of the right to family reunion which mean they can't know they will be able to care for their older relatives whilst working. In the meantime, UK medics have been fleeing to countries like Australia and New Zealand [bmj.com] en-masse just because lack of staff makes conditions for doctors in the UK so bad.
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I don't think you have in any way addressed my point. In fact, your change of topic and abandonment of it seems telling.
Simply put - you seemed, for a second, concerned about the supply of doctors in other countries. Suddenly when it turns out that this is being badly affected by Brexit, you cease to be interested in that and make what seem completely unrelated points, completely beside the point. Can you perhaps come back? Could I propose one of a) to the issue of doctors for other countries and address
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Simply put - you seemed, concerned about the supply of doctors in other countries ...
No, I am not, because I have no control or power over it, so why be concerned?
May I quote you from before
If you aren't concerned about it, why did you ask the question? It's very difficult to take the rest of your comments seriously if you are just saying these things for rhetorical effect.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:4, Interesting)
The weird thing is that if you speak to a lot of brexit supporters they complain about foreign nurses that don't speak English...
Of course it's nonsense, the English language requirements for being a nurse are considerable and strictly enforced. It's actually a huge problem for the NHS, a lot of potential hires can speak and read/write good English but don't have the specific qualifications they need, and getting this is time consuming and expensive.
Honestly, people have no idea... I was talking to a friend who voted against brexit but doesn't like immigration. He thought that his town was about 90% non-white. Last census from 2011 was 86% identifying as White British.
Re: Get off my lawn! (Score:2)
Racists gonna be racist. That's why listening to their problems is a chump move. Ostracize and marginalize them. It's the only way.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here in Germany. The ex GDR part of it is full of racists, but this is also the part with the least amount of foreigners.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Informative)
Places with the fewest foreigners are the most xenophobic and worried and immigration because they are the least familiar with those things.
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Places with the fewest foreigners are the most xenophobic and worried and immigration because they are the least familiar with those things.
This sentiment seems true, and it's often put forward, but it's actually somewhat misleading. We tend to think that "unfamiliarity breeds contempt," but it's really familiarity/undifferentiation that causes hatred. Think about it this way: the people we hate the most tend to be our nearest neighbors. The British have fought the French far more than the Turks. White Americans are often more overtly racist against Mexicans than against Argentinians. Likewise, here in St. Louis there's often significant racial
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It's because people don't distinguish between nationalism and racism anymore. Nowadays does racism include difference in ethnicity in it's definition and so recognises nationality as a factor in racism.
This means that whenever people of different nations are in a conflict or disagreement then racism can be implied. It makes nationalism and any notion of national pride into racism, because it gets continuously interpreted as such. Just putting your national flag onto your car identifies you as a racist.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm generalising a little, but it does seem to be the older generation that suffers from this malaise of the mind when it comes to foreign doctors.
It's the same "casual" racism that peppers their speech, to the point where they don't even realise they are doing it - almost unconscious bias.
You'll hear them whinge about it when there's no "foreigners" about, but as soon as there's one in close proximity, it's usually all sweetness and light and smiling. There's a disconnect somewhere, between some being a "person" and someone being a "foreigner".
"They don't do things the same as us"
"They've got funny shaped heads"
"He seemed a bit simple, couldn't even talk proper"
Then they'll head off on their summer hols (vacation) into Europe, go to a resort full of other Brits, eat the same food they eat back home and wax lyrical about how nice it is "over there".
Things have got considerably better over time, but alas, the improvements clearly weren't enough to prevent narrow minded "Little Englanders" from winning the day.
Sadly, this 1950's mindset still persists not only in the leading party of our government, but also in a fairly sizeable chunk of our ageing population. There's this bizarre idea that the UK is still somehow a colonial power, yet a little down on its luck, but as soon as we sort out all those "johnny foreigners", we can magically reclaim our standing in the world.
This ridiculous "war time spirit" - as if it were even slightly logical to compare an invading facist threat to the EU.
Bonkers.
Re: England: Extremely incompetent government. (Score:2, Interesting)
Works as expected.
Like some neocons in the U.S., for some British conservatives the collapse of government services is the point. They don't want successful government programs because they want small government which can be managed by multi-national corporations.
Re:Get off my lawn! (Score:4, Funny)
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The mentioned passage is taken from an EU law and not a British law. Britain does well to leave this outdated bureaucracy of the EU behind.
Europe has never considered that immigrants would naturally seek an English-speaking country as their primary destination for immigration. It's gotten so one-sided for Britain that many people from within the EU immigrated to it all while Britain is rather small (Sweden, Finland and Italy are i.e. larger than Britain). The EU wanted to find out the hard way how much a co
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Stop spreading this bullshit around.
The bloody English has been the ones pushing for the uncontrolled EU expansion in the first place.
Every problem they have blamed the EU for was house made and most real problems the EU has also goes back to shitty British ideas.
Good fucking riddance, and have fun with the growing non-EU immigration. [independent.co.uk]
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Stop spreading this bullshit around.
The bloody English has been the ones pushing for the uncontrolled EU expansion in the first place.
Every problem they have blamed the EU for was house made and most real problems the EU has also goes back to shitty British ideas.
Good fucking riddance, and have fun with the growing non-EU immigration. [independent.co.uk]
You can certainly blame the Brexit on the British people. We voted for it.
But to believe we had much control and influence on EU politics is the bullshit here. We were always one voice among the 27 and every government, not just ours, had to sell EU decisions like it was theirs. We had to suppress conflict and pretend all is well in Europe. This worked for many years, but it had to fail for Britain eventually. People in Britain are still proud and celebrate V-Day, and so Britain was destined to leave the EU
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Didn't RTFA, did you? The EU immigration went down hard. The immigration from outside the EU (read India, Pakistan, China) on the other hand...
And yes, the UK either pushed for idiotic ideas, threatening to brexit otherwise, or vetoed good ideas. This is why I am happy to see the English gone. They have been a toxic influence in the EU for far too long.
And as for being proud and dominant, pride goes before a fall.
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Wow, oh wow, American here and you sound just like the confederate flag waving assholes we have here trying to gut themselves and thinking they are being bold and innovative
70% of America recognizes that minorities are getting the short end of the stick and make proposals to correct it, and 30% of America goes psychotic, suggests that simply recognizing racism is creating it and them pushes laws that continue to target and abuse minorities
y'all can just go jump in a lake with rocks in your pockets, which is
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I don't see how you Americans can compare your racist crap to our immigration politics. With your "Mexican Wall" and the never-ending racial problems, which you still haven't solved to this day long after your civil war, do I just fail to see the comparison, sorry. I think you should feel sorry for trying to compare your problems with other nations. That's just very bad and bound to backfire.
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lol, what a wordy way to say, "I'm rubber you're glue..."
If you cannot see similarities between US border wall and use of fear to modify British immigration policies, then you are simply avoiding what is plainly in your face
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/siraj... [buzzfeed.com]
Not racist at all, no sir.
Do you actually believe your own bullshit?
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One of the longest lived Euro Myths in the UK is the "bendy banana", the bogus claim that the EU was going to regulate the shape of bananas. In fact the EU adopted the British rules on banana imports.
I remember a debate on TV with the public a week after the vote. Some woman on there said she was going to vote remain but was in the supermarket, saw some bananas and remembered that old lie so voted leave. I nearly put a fist through the screen.
British people know less than nothing about the EU. That is to sa
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So you saw some woman make a comment regarding bananas and therefore you conclude all of Britain is stupid.
You don't see the irony in this?
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Not all, but enough.
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Boris Johnson has been a pack leader is misinforming the British populace, and yet they love him
I have no idea what that means, but I expect bad results
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Yep. And I also remember de Piffle waving a kipper around blaming the EU for regulations that only exist in the UK.
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I'm afraid we still are. The average level of Brexit debate, reawakened by the last-minute panic negotiations over the past few weeks, haven't been any more enlightened than what we saw pre-referendum IME.
The most strident pro-Remain types are still relying on tropes like these.
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Europe has never considered that immigrants would naturally seek an English-speaking country as their primary destination for immigration.
What are you trying to convince us of? That Austria, Germany, Spain and Belgium all have better English proficiency than England? I mean that's your point right? I knew education was bad in the UK but do you not learn English anymore?
I mean it's either that are you're talking out of your arse.
Sorry kiddo but the reality is net immigration into the EU show that both in absolute terms and in per capita terms the UK isn't all that interesting. Hell in per capita terms it's below average compared to the rest of
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You have to admit that the English that the manage to burble out is rarely related to what is taught in schools globally
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What are you trying to convince us of? That Austria, Germany, Spain and Belgium all have better English proficiency than England? I mean that's your point right? I knew education was bad in the UK but do you not learn English anymore?
I mean it's either that are you're talking out of your arse.
Sorry kiddo but ...
It's the immigrants who make this choice and based on what they know, and not us. You haven't really figured it out, but please keep calling me kiddo.
What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The agreement was half-baked at the last minute. There are be DECADES worth of work for the Eu negotiation team as well as whatever goes for negotiators in Britain. As well as the courts - there will be hundreds of court cases on both sides.
2. Both teams cut-n-pasted like there is no tomorrow without amending.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
It does not surprise me.
1. The agreement was half-baked at the last minute. There are be DECADES worth of work for the Eu negotiation team as well as whatever goes for negotiators in Britain. As well as the courts - there will be hundreds of court cases on both sides.
2. Both teams cut-n-pasted like there is no tomorrow without amending.
In a sense I'm not sure that's a bad idea.
If you're on a short timeline it's better to copy language you understand and has been tested as opposed to trying to write something new on the fly.
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Well the timeline was a bad idea. A completely arbitrary limitation chosen by morons in control who couldn't negotiate themselves out of a wet paper bag. But sovereignty!
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It does not surprise me.
1. The agreement was half-baked at the last minute. There are be DECADES worth of work for the Eu negotiation team as well as whatever goes for negotiators in Britain. As well as the courts - there will be hundreds of court cases on both sides.
2. Both teams cut-n-pasted like there is no tomorrow without amending.
In a sense I'm not sure that's a bad idea.
If you're on a short timeline it's better to copy language you understand and has been tested as opposed to trying to write something new on the fly.
Uh, let me know just how effective that "proven" language is when you're forced to defend the encryption strength of SHA-1 simply because a lawmaker was too fucking lazy to do anything but cut and paste what is now deemed as worthless shit.
Frankly I'm not sure what's more worthless here; outdated legal terminology, the lawmaker, or the taxpayers ignorantly paying for all of this.
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Frankly I'm not sure what's more worthless here; outdated legal terminology, the lawmaker, or the taxpayers ignorantly paying for all of this.
How about the taxpayers that are actively defending it.
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It does not surprise me.
1. The agreement was half-baked at the last minute. There are be DECADES worth of work for the Eu negotiation team as well as whatever goes for negotiators in Britain. As well as the courts - there will be hundreds of court cases on both sides.
2. Both teams cut-n-pasted like there is no tomorrow without amending.
In a sense I'm not sure that's a bad idea.
If you're on a short timeline it's better to copy language you understand and has been tested as opposed to trying to write something new on the fly.
Uh, let me know just how effective that "proven" language is when you're forced to defend the encryption strength of SHA-1 simply because a lawmaker was too fucking lazy to do anything but cut and paste what is now deemed as worthless shit.
Frankly I'm not sure what's more worthless here; outdated legal terminology, the lawmaker, or the taxpayers ignorantly paying for all of this.
It "recommends" SHA-1, it doesn't prescribe it.
I think programmers tend to misunderstand how legal language works, treating it as a program they must faithfully execute bugs and all.
Legal language really is evaluated by it's intent, not quirks in wording. When surprises or loopholes do pop up it's because the intent of the document wasn't quite what someone expected.
But in this case the intent of the document is clearly not to use SHA-1, and no one is going to use the agreement as a technical guide on the s
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It does not surprise me.
1. The agreement was half-baked at the last minute. There are be DECADES worth of work for the Eu negotiation team as well as whatever goes for negotiators in Britain. As well as the courts - there will be hundreds of court cases on both sides.
2. Both teams cut-n-pasted like there is no tomorrow without amending.
Really? The Brexiteers have had since 1973 to plan Brexit down to the most minute detail and that includes drawing themselves a map to the place where the big door with the blinking [EXIT] sign is located. On top of that they've had four years to negotiate the post-Brexit agreement. That works out to one page per day and several quality vacations in between. You'd think they would have used that time sensibly to make a post-Brexit agreement that didn't require copy-n-paste. Any number of arch Brexiteers, th
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Why would anyone think that? They are Brexiteers: "sensible" is not their strong suit. As you point out, they are led by a bunch of deceitful traitors.
I suspect they'll just rejoin (Score:3)
As far as I can tell Brexit was sold by billionaires to the public at large so that said billionaires could isolate Britain and use them for cheap local labor and easy access to the EU.
The whole thing could be solved by pushing assimilation like the Fins do (multi-culturalism be damned) and undoing Thatcher's "reforms", which destroyed their Unions. But well, Britain's left wing are kinda a bunch of boobs, just like Ameri
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I suspect they'll just rejoin
Why would the EU take them back?
As far as I can tell Brexit was sold by billionaires to the public...
What billionaires? I think that is the opposite of what happened. It looks to me like almost every major corporation and professional organization came out against Brexit. Brexit support was a combination of Russian media influence + grassroots xenophobia.
The wikipedia article on Endorsements of the Brexit referendum [wikipedia.org] has hundreds of links to company statements on the issue. I checked 7 random businesses, 3 random newspapers, and 5 random trade groups and only 1 of them so
The EU will take them back for the same reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, one of the nastiest things about Brexit is that it's going to be used to try and kill the NHS and privatize their healthcare system for profit. US insurance companies are already lining up to demand the UK "open their markets" for "competition". As a member of the EU Britain had the economic clout to tell the US to go fuck themselves. Without that backing it becomes very possible for America to use trade deals to pressure the UK into privatizing their healthcare, which is exactly what America is moving to do.
This is doubly ironic because a fuck ton of old folks voted for Brexit because they thought it would protect the NHS, and it's the exact opposite.
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I am expecting England to become a rather busy nexus for Russian money laundering as soon as Boris and crew get a chance to write huge holes into their new spate of laws, including SHA1 may as well be an open door to Russian sabotage
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they took them in the 1st place
The EU took the UK in on its third attempt. Which required some pressure from West Germany, and it wouldn't have worked if De Gaulle hadn't stepped down. In hindsight, it turns out that De Gaulle was correct on his assessment of the UK ("a number of aspects of Britain's economy, from working practices to agriculture have made Britain incompatible with Europe" and "Britain harbours a deep-seated hostility to any pan-European project"). At this point, I don't think there's any political will to let the UK bac
Re: I suspect they'll just rejoin (Score:2)
Perhaps a couple of well-placed billionaires were behind Brexit (I honestly don't know/care, because 'Murica). But generally billionaires like trade agreements and mobile labor.
Nope, here's why (Score:2)
You're narrative is wrong (Score:3)
The outsourcing was happening no matter what under Thatcher. She broke the Unions. That has nothing to do with the EU. It didn't even make it easier. It spared some lawyer a few hours of paper work is all.
Letters didn't make people leave, lies did. The pro-Brexit told everyone how much better it would be and made up numbers about how much money was being given to the EU. Add to that a large number of Muslim immigrants, a bit of the
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Check out this guy, realizing with days to go that his business is fucked and about to go bust: https://twitter.com/livefrombr... [twitter.com]
If you scroll down a bit there is a YouTube video of him produced by UKIP talking about how wonderful brexit will be. Too many idiots like that for this country to prosper.
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I think what should be done is a push to reduce the power of germany over the EU.
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Some parts of the UK will rejoin in the next decade or so, but the rest - I doubt it.
Re: I suspect they'll just rejoin (Score:2)
That's what right wing means. Left wing is the revolutionary progressive wing. Right wing is the statist conservative wing. How economics fits into that architecture is fluid. Like abortion and gun rights.
This shows the crap quality ... (Score:3)
of the civil servants who wrote this detail. The politicians would have negotiated higher level principles and left the details to supposedly well informed expert advisors. This shows huge ignorance among the elites both in London and Brussels. This is sad and frightening: us IT techies can see that they have got this so completely wrong ... what else are they getting wrong in topics that us IT techies do not understand?
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The politicians would have negotiated higher level principles and left the details to supposedly well informed expert advisors.
You clearly haven't been paying attention remotely to what's going on. The negotiation hasn't been about principles for well over 2 years now. The devil has always been in the details.
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Well moron politicians explain the absence of unicorns, but the point is it wasn't moron politicians negotiating. The negotiating teams from both sides are not some elected morons and have been doing nothing BUT details for a long time now.
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The shortage of time was down to UK government ministers who refused to request an extension. If there are those who should be described as "crap quality", it is probably there.
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That logo (Score:2)
Almost feel like the only reason for highlight that part of this story is so /. can use the Netscape logo again.
learning lessons (Score:2)
Instead of mocking the inclusion of obsolete tech into legislation, we should learn to not write legislation in ways that they become obsolete in the first place.
Legislation this specific is counter productive and ignored in the end when it is obsolete, but often remains on the books to become a hammer to bludgeon citizenry with ... when convenient.
Do you have a glove in the glove box as required by some law somewhere still on the books?
A hard brexit? (Score:2)
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No deal always meant more than Hard Brexit, which Britain most definitely got. The poor, stupid bastards.
"In short, even as Mr Johnson faces a difficult choice between a hard Brexit with a trade deal or an even harder Brexit without one"
https://www.economist.com/grap... [economist.com]
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A Hard Brexit would be one without a UK-EU trade treaty. Trade relations would default to international trade regulations. This treaty puts negotiated trade relations into effect on 1 January.
That would be a "no deal". "Hard" Brexit is more or less anything outside the single market, including this deal whilst "soft" would be inside the single market (e.g. Norway+). There are a couple of keys to this. Firstly the UK loses the right to sell many services to the EU as before and secondly you get full customs checks at the border so you can't just ship items back and forward over the border as needed. If you are shipping products form the US to Europe and then want to break up the batches there
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Can someone in the know tell me. Is this the so-called 'Hard' Brexit? If not, then what's different about it compared to that?
Hard and soft are really relative. This is sort of like a Ronda Rousey, full on, but with a boxing glove, punch in the face hard Brexit. It's unlikely to kill you but you might need some weeks in hospital to recover and you'll definitely need new glasses. It's not a Tyson Fury bare knuckle hard Brexit after which a normal country would likely die, but it's also not a gentle, friendly ass slap type of Brexit.
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The term was used to rank Brexit by means of pain through insertion up the rectum.
The "Hard" brexit being a violation with a fence post.
The "Soft" brexit being an attempted violation by a flacid toy.
What they got now was something along the lines of violation with an eggplant. It's not soft, it's going to hurt a whole lot, it'll be uncomfortable as hell, but at least there's no splinters.
I honestly feel sorry for those people who thought a negotiation by such a small country against such a large powerful tr
Any updates? (Score:4, Funny)
I was trying to check the official website but it kept trying to get me to download RealPlayer 4.0. I gave up and just went to the next site on the Brexit webring.
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Now that.... is funny!
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While I"ve seen a few CC terminals here in the US that you can do the "tap" thing, I don't believe I've ever seen it used.
I seem pretty much everyone plug their card in if it has s chip, or swipe it if not...or use good old cash.
I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to a tap card.
Frankly, I"m not terribly excited about having any sort of RFID in my credit cards.
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While I"ve seen a few CC terminals here in the US that you can do the "tap" thing, I don't believe I've ever seen it used.
I seem pretty much everyone plug their card in if it has s chip, or swipe it if not...or use good old cash.
Is the credit card the same as Apple/Android tap-to-pay systems? If yes, then I almost exclusively use that now. I've never used a credit card tap, but it's at least been several months since I've swiped or dipped a credit card. I can use phone tap at gas station, Costcom, grocery stores, any place with a Square terminal/tablet, etc.
I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to a tap card.
Frankly, I"m not terribly excited about having any sort of RFID in my credit cards.
Agreed.
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OH....this tap thing isn't referring to tapping the card, but using your phone to pay?
I'd never heard ti called that.
Well, even with that, I do see some of those terminals here and there, but again, I've rarely seen anyone use it.
Most people in most places I see, still plug a phy
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I haven't seen many people 'tap' their credit card either. But I see people here in the US use the NFC on their phones to pay for stuff all the time. Especially now with Covid and people afraid to touch things.
As for Wales, it's been a while since I've been there. But all I remember are coal mines and sheep.
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That's because it typically won't work in the US. I've tried it. It even won't work in the US with my UK-based credit card which does work with tap-to-pay in the UK.
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While I"ve seen a few CC terminals here in the US that you can do the "tap" thing, I don't believe I've ever seen it used.
I seem pretty much everyone plug their card in if it has s chip, or swipe it if not...or use good old cash.
I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to a tap card.
Frankly, I"m not terribly excited about having any sort of RFID in my credit cards.
Really? I didn't think US Americans were that reluctant to adopt new technology. I used to think the Germans were Europe's biggest Luddites when it comes to digital tech, I was wrong about that. However, even if our German friends are sometimes still somewhat slow in adopting the latest in technology even they seem to have developed an enthusiasm for 'tap' payments via Apple or Android pay and the likes.
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We are the biggest luddites for a reason - this summer I have crashed a Lidl cash register twice trying to tap with my phone.
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I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to a tap card.
Compared to the magnetic strip it is a enormous improvement. The magnetic strip could physically get worn out and had the disadvantage of possible demagnetization. This was not a big issue in the beginning when I only used my card for withdrawing money at the ATM, usually in amounts that made sure I didn't have to withdraw more money in the same week. But when I started paying with the card I went through cards in shorter time than the automatic renewal period.
But even when compared to the chip-and-pin is i
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That's interesting...I'm gathering by your use of the term "chip and pin", that you're saying that every time you use a credit card, that you have to type in a PIN number (yes, I know redundant and repetitive)...?
Ok, that I've NEVER seen before.
I believe you do that if you are using a DEBIT card which is basically an ATM card for making purchases directly with funds. coming from you bank.
But I've not heard of having a real credit card and having to remember and use a PIN number to use it.
They use a PIN in some European countries, but US credit cards may not be able to authenticate that way. I've had problems using my credit cards (in Brussels this February, for example), and have had to go back to mag-stripe swipe in some cases. Doing that is a PITA, since e.g in a restaurant, I can't pay the server with the portable terminals they usually use.
It's actually a great 2FA system - a "password" and a physical token.
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You don't just hand your credit card to the waiter in Europe and let them take it back to swipe/plug into the register in the back like you do here in the US?
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You don't just hand your credit card to the waiter in Europe and let them take it back to swipe/plug into the register in the back like you do here in the US?
You used to, but that was when the payment terminal was physically connected to the point-of-sales terminal at the bar and only the waiters could go back there to process the payment.
Of course it differs a bit between restaurants, but this is normal in my home town for all regular or family style restaurants: nowadays, the waiters have small portable payment terminals that connect wirelessly to the phone network. So when you ask for the check they will print the receipt at the point-of-sales terminal and br
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That's interesting...I'm gathering by your use of the term "chip and pin", that you're saying that every time you use a credit card, that you have to type in a PIN number (yes, I know redundant and repetitive)...?
Yes, the chip-and-pin refers to you having to stick your card, chip-side into the terminal and enter your PIN to authenticate yourself. Some places took away the PIN requirement if the purchase was below a certain amount but it was very rare as the risk fell upon the merchant in the case of fraud.
In my home town I ever only saw that being used by one lunch-time restaurant, but a year later or so the contactless payment cards were issued and they had this from the start: small purchases do not need PIN veri
Re: its far more likely to be intentional. (Score:2)
Magnetic swipe is a simple swipe. No PIN necessary. That's a better user experience than chip-and-pin. There's zero benefit to the consumer in chip-and-pin.
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Magnetic swipe is a simple swipe. No PIN necessary. That's a better user experience than chip-and-pin. There's zero benefit to the consumer in chip-and-pin.
I think you missed these:
- much harder to defraud you as the customer when you need a PIN, and
- no problem with demagnification of the strip resulting in a card that now needs a manual carbon swipe.
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The chip is a computer and it provides a one-time authorization. You can't steal the card number or easily clone it. Sure, the liability for fraud might fall on the bank or card company - but having new replacement cards issued constantly comes at a personal cost in time and convenience.
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We have them in San Diego Vons/Albertson's grocery stores. I've seen customers use them and one of my CCs supports it but I never use it.
I try to always use the "chip" and pin function. I'll even go inside a gas station to prepay for gas because the inside terminal uses the pin and chip but the pump island just has you swipe. If someone is listening in on the pump island data transfer, it's all in clear text as opposed to using the security chip.
Pretty sad that some places are excessively slow to update to
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While I"ve seen a few CC terminals here in the US that you can do the "tap" thing, I don't believe I've ever seen it used.
I seem pretty much everyone plug their card in if it has s chip, or swipe it if not...or use good old cash.
I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to a tap card.
Strange, most of the places I shop have tap-capable terminals (local supermarkets, Costco, restaurants, Best Buy (I think), etc.) Lots of places don't have it though (Home Depot, Lowe's, gas stations).
It's strange, but it takes a lot less time to authorize with a tap than it does inserting the "smart chip" - and that's with the same credit card in the same readers. I usually tap if I can, since that also reduces wear on the card. I've had cards de-laminate, including metal-core cards.
Frankly, I"m not terribly excited about having any sort of RFID in my credit cards.
I'm not too keen on
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Frankly, I"m not terribly excited about having any sort of RFID in my credit cards.
Depending on who issued your card of course, may the amount be limited to like £20-£30 and it's also insured against theft. So even when you get robbed and somebody then uses your card do you have less worries than with cash. Anyone using your contactless card will leave a digital trail behind and you most often have CCTV near checkouts that makes this more difficult. I practically no longer carry cash with me for this reason.
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nimbus scoffed:
In many parts of the UK the idea of a tap credit card is still dark magic, so I wouldnt be surprised if some petrified parliament figure intentionally shoehorned in some esoteric clause to include his Netscape desktop.
That did not - and could not have - happen. The British negotiating team (whose membership was entirely appointed by Boris Johnson) "worked" on the agreement in Brussels, without ever once asking Parliament to weigh in on the language of the document they were hammering out. The outdated tech references that got included are entirely a factor of the panicky haste with which the negotiations were conducted.
And that, again, was Boris the Spider's doing. He wanted an agreement that neither House
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This isn't the result of the UK or London being stuck in the past compared to Europe though. These are (as far as anyone can tell) current EU standards for policing-related data exchange between EU members which were copy and pasted into the Brexit deal in order to give us continued access to that exchange of data. That is to say, the European Union has been mandating the use of insecure encryption technologies for years and the BBC is spinning this to instead support the mainstream narrative that the UK sc
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Cash transactions on buses? What? They stopped taking cash in 2014.
There are very few places I know that don't take credit cards which means they accept contactless. Even big issue sellers can be found with contactless these days.
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if youve spent any time in England or Wales then you know the "high tech" European veneer the city of London routinely espouses is perpetually undermined by bus services that still requires a cash register transaction,
public internet hot spot access thats still rationed out by the minute at exorbitant rates, and the Great Western Rail systems furiously British diesel/electric compromise.
In many parts of the UK the idea of a tap credit card is still dark magic, so I wouldnt be surprised if some petrified parliament figure intentionally shoehorned in some esoteric clause to include his Netscape desktop.
I pay with my Pop Card and my Visa card contactless for busses metro, subway and trains, and caps, too. And you still can pay cash afaik, I only haven't done it in years tbh.
Were you trying to pay with Bitcoin?
What the heck are you on about? (Score:3)
if youve spent any time in England or Wales then you know the "high tech" European veneer the city of London routinely espouses is perpetually undermined by bus services that still requires a cash register transaction
The Oyster system in London works with contactless payments via card and supports buses, underground and trains via unified zoning. For people without contactless cards, terminals are used which support EMV (via chip-and-pin) for topping up a dedicated Oyster Card. If you want to pay in cash, you can buy a traditional magstripe day ticket via the same terminals or just "top up" an Oyster Card. Contactless is the norm in most urban areas of the UK for smaller transactions, with Apple Pay supported for mor
Re: its far more likely to be intentional. (Score:2)
Where are these parts of the UK that don't have contactless? Hell even my local chippy that was for years cash only started taking cards in 2019. The biggest hold out was B&Q, but they got contactless at the start of the year.
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Meanwhile, the sane population of America is excited to finally have an actual president in office again, after 4 years of a guy who can't decide if his favorite part of the job was the golfing or the tweeting.
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