When I was in England, Ireland, France, Italy, and Greece, I found cash was essential. Sure all the big chain places took cards, but the small places didn't. If you stopped to grab a sandwich at a cafe, you probably needed cash.
In Canada even a small mom and pop shop always takes credit cards and debit cards. I found the same could not be said in any of the countries we visited.

You need a better bank.
I pay zero to send or receive email money transfers, and zero to withdraw cash from an ATM (not that I ever use an ATM any more...)

Interac (no "t") is why Canada is years ahead of the US on electronic payments. one type of card available to almost everyone (unlike credit cards which can be hard to get if you are poor, unemployed, or have bad credit) and which works at practically every retailer in the entire country, usually without any fees.

Any time I travel outside of Canada, whether to the USA or Europe, I'm always amazed at how far behind places are for electronic payments. I haven't needed cash in my wallet in Canada in years, you simply never find a situation where it's needed. Every business takes Interac, Visa, and MasterCard, and I pay the same price in the store whether I use that or cash, so I might as well do the convenient way, and every person can receive email money transfers. The only reason left for cash in Canada is for "anonymity" (and it's always debatable how well that works anyway)

So you value convenience over security.

I specifically avoid tap and pay and insisted the issuers give me cards without it to avoid the massive security hole it provides.

Chip and PIN takes approximately 10 seconds longer, and is infinitely more secure.

Look at some of the proof of concept hacks in the field.

With RFID people are able to copy enough details to generate a mag-stripe without your card ever leaving your pocket. Meanwhile, merchants are trained that if the chip on a card doesn't work to revert to mag-stripe.

So now we have exactly the same insecure mag-stripe transactions, and at the same time we can now copy the mag-stripe without even seeing the card.

Sure, chip and pin is more secure, but only if you get rid of RFID and mag-stripe, neither of which is happening.

The difference is that because these cards are "fraud proof" the bank will refuse to reimburse you for the fraud, and will instead leave you on the hook for the bill. In some cases the banks have actually had people arrested for daring to say that they were the victims of fraud.

The credit card companies aren't doing this for you, they aren't doing it for security, they're doing it to shift the risk.

Actually, RFID with no PIN is a massive step backwards from mag-stripe, sure mag-stripe could be easily copied, but RFID doesn't even have to leave your pocket to get copied, and there are many proof of concepts in the wild for this already.

I live somewhere where ALL credit and debit cards have chip and pin, unfortunately almost all the credit cards also have RFID. I've had long arguments with my banks and finally managed to get non-RFID cards, but it's really hard to get back up to the level of security provided by mag-stripe

And to be clear, although all our cards have chip and pin, they also all have mag-stripe, so the cards themselves aren't actually any more secure than they were before, but because most stores (not all) also use chip instead of mag-stripe, you don't generally give away your card to let the staff skim them anymore.

And this is something I've always said, Google glass is not something the masses even want right now, however it would be really useful as a work tool. I can certainly see this technology being useful for nurses, paramedics, police, and many other working professionals.

Maybe after people get used to it's abilities at work they'll find a want/need for it outside of work, but that's in the future, the workplace uses could exist right now.

As usual though, this requires more than just wine, it also requires tricking google in to thinking you have windows in the first place just to be allowed to download it. If you go to the site with a linux machine it downloads the normal google earth for linux, and doesn't let you download the PC version. (I'm guessing a user agent change would fix this, but it's yet one more hoop you have to jump through that shouldn't be necessary.)

You're right. People don't have nearly as much power...

Except whenever a device has any flex to it we hear people complain that it doesn't feel solid enough or premium enough, so people scream for metal frames instead of plastic etc.(Current technology can do plenty of flex from the stand point of avoiding breakage, but people don't want it.)

This works well for FedEx, UPS, and Purolator. But Canada Post can't seem to figure it out. They refuse to read the big sign on the front door that says "all couriers please go to side entrance" and instead hang a card on the front door. Unfortunately the "front" door of this building is nowhere near anyone inside and therefore nobody hears if someone were to knock there.
We asked Canada Post at one point and were told their policy prohibits going to any door other than the front...

Unfortunately I live in Canada, we don't have USPS, and Canada Post's options pretty much amount to "Screw you, you're stuck with us!"

I asked if I could have them just hold the packages, and they said no, they must deliver them to the correct address.
We asked if we could get the delivery person to come to the side door of our building (where people can actually hear the door, rather than the front door that nobody is near) and even with a sign telling all delivery people to use the side door, Canada post told us that it is against their policy to go to any door but the front. (UPS, Purolator, and Fed-Ex can all figure it out)

I've also had the tracking information show a package loaded on to a truck for delivery, and then scanned back in to the depot, with no attempted delivery at all five days in a row. and I've had 2 packages go completely missing never to be seen again (both were ones that weren't "tracked")

As for UPS, I've had their "guaranteed overnight delivery" take over a week, including them saying that they had no idea where the package was (but that it wasn't lost, because to declare it lost would take another week of investigation) and still refuse to reimburse the shipping costs, or provide any other compensation (so much for the "guarantee") (we shipped a second package to replace the first, and they both showed up on the same truck eventually)

I've also had DHL "accidentally" ship a package ground when we paid for air shipment, again, no compensation for the extra 4 days it took that package to take what should have been a one day drive.

and Both Purolator and FedEx have repeatedly delivered our packages to the wrong address, or other people's packages to our address.

About the only courier company I've had any real success with is Greyhound.

Exactly this. I can't get delivery companies to do more than sprint to the door, hang a card and sprint back to their trucks. You pretty much have to be standing on your front lawn and tackle the guy to actually get your package. If you wait for a knock or the bell to ring it's too late.

I'd actually prefer if they wouldn't even bother sending my package out for delivery, if I got an email notification when it hit their depot (like I already do) I could drive straight there and pick up my package a day earlier, as it is I have to wait for them to "attempt delivery" and only after that can I drive to that same depot and pick it up myself. Loading the package on to the truck when the guy has no intention of carrying it to your door (yes, this is common!) is a ridiculous waste of everyone's time.

If you read the summary, they mention that this will be a low earth orbit constellation, and that it will be much faster than traditional geostationary satellite networks. If you read anything more than the summary, you'd see references to how data transmission through a vacuum is 40% faster than through a fibre optic cable.
This will be competitive with terrestrial networks for most uses, and superior for long distances (such as anything that's currently on submarine cables)

If you're referring to the Mars comments, yes, it will be insanely slow. but I suspect people would still want a way to communicate back to earth and a way to access the knowledge and data available to us on earth. Slow is better than nothing. The biggest challenge there will be convincing any form of site to even wait long enough, and to design an appropriate system to send all the info you need in one burst instead of lots of back and forth like we usually do now.

Don't forget that SpaceX has also significantly reduced the cost of launches (with expectations that they will manage to reduce costs by another large margin yet). Between the two this is actually possible. Still a big, expensive, ambitious, project, but no longer impossible.