Uh, so you don't already HAVE chips?! My EC card has had them for years. All ATMs use the chip, and magnetic strips only work as a fallback option (though there are safeguards against simply using a copied card without chip).

I am curious, what are the options for online banking in the US today? When I was a customer of Citibank in the US in 2001, it was just username/password (I had an HBCI encryption chip on my German card then...)

Excuse me, but that is clearly bullsh*t. Having gone through University will make you suspect fraud, but just because you have seen it everywhere left and right during your studies. From students cheating in math exams and "forgetting" references in their papers, to 100% faked studies published by high-ranking journals.

So true. I recommend everyone who never hasn't to try dual-clutch transmissions. Best thing you can get. I once tried a 2010(?) Dodge caliber with CVT. BAD experience. Bad acceleration, relatively bad mpg, sounds terrible. Dual-clutch - at least in Volkswagens - is perfect.

Question to beekeepers: Is feeding HFCS/fructose to bees considered good practice? Sounds fishy to me, to feed bees a completely different sugar in place of glucose.

That's happening everywhere. The problem is partly with the patients being quite impatient with their doctors. All *my* doctor did when I came to him with e.g. a a severely sore throat or a sinusitis was to tell me that yes, he could give me antibiotics, but he would recommend I try some other things first: inhalation, drinking a lot of water, avoiding eating and drinking anything the most common bacteria would love. Basically for a sore throat: no dairy products, no sugar, instead sour food and drinks.

Of course, if you can't work and don't want to call in sick, he prescribes antibiotics.
Sometimes also as part of the diagnosis, since testing in the lab cuts deeper into his budget than a test drive with antibiotics. So, it's the health provider's fault: Lab testing: expensive and therefore evil. Antibiotics: cheap way to go.

Perpetual idiocy. I remember reading that most physicists agreed that everything in physics had been discovered. That was right before Einstein.

We can not know what we can not (yet) know.

I voted "zero", but it's more "one a week". Interestingly, because I have 100 free sms/mo on my plan, still I almost always use WhatsApp. Mainly because I use it to share pics ("should I buy this/that?").

Just like in Germany, where guns are outright illegal, and only outlaws (and police and few hunters) have guns. Now what happens in a city like Bremen, that has some problem with ethnic gang crime? They create a "gun-free zone". No joke! In the middle of a country where guns are illegal, we have a gun-free zone. Trick question: does it apply to legal or illegal guns? :-)

...because, you know, everything in nature is *always* in balance. That's why ice ages are but a myth, just like evolution. Which both don't happen without some "balances" tipping.

You can't tell me that he was the first to have these ideas:

- Swap batteries! How could I NOT think of that! To be honest, I *did* buy spare batteries for my phones. But I never used them. Part of the problem is the loooong boot process of most current phones, another part is the flimsy back cover - and the fact that I use an additional leather cover for my phone. And the aforementioned rule of the USB chargers. Makes changing multiple batteries *very* inconvenient. I just pack a small 2xUSB / 2A charger and cables wherever I go. It's a good conversation starter to have another USB cable for the person sitting next to you (with the same problem). Plus, my phone would literally suck the batteries empty within a few hours.

- Hacked furnitures: I wonder what dimwit coined the word "hack" for that. But I guess that, just like me, there must be more people doing this kind of thing. Hold a tablet above my bed? My SO would literally KILL me. Exercise machine vs. tablet computer: I have that. But for a laptop, since I still don't own a tablet. And my phone is obviously too small.

I wonder why the above comment has been moderated "funny". I think he was dead serious. But it's good to know that at least SOME criminals are such utter morons that they would leave a digital "paper trail".

Maybe he/she just remembered his 8th grade chemistry class, like I just did. Table of elements and such. Made the pun rather obvious.

Maybe it's because both solutions do not target the real problem: the distance between workplace, home, and other important destinations in your daily life.

If you live in suburbia, you're probably forced to commute every day, and also drive to shopping malls miles away.

Consider the averave New Yorker living in Manhattan (I know, expensive...), and you will probably see a sharp drop in miles traveled because they can walk/cycle to work (or use mass transit), and drop by Bed, Bath & Beyond on their way home.

"any /more/ anonymous". And sorry for not being logged in at the time of writing.

Does a photovoltaic system really increase resale value? And why not buy a cheap generator for backup? It also works at night and in winter...