You don't have to sign up for an app. The performers are being given contactless payment readers. These work with any contactless credit card.

You can also use Apple Pay or Google Pay if you choose.

The point is to make it as easy as possible to give money. Making people download apps is not the way to do that. Whether you trust a card reader from a random street performer is another matter...

Incidentally, and off topic, the app aspect is a factor with parking. Many UK councils are implementing app methods to pay for parking. Rather than something like this, that works with credit cards or phones, they seem to be adopting apps. And there are loads of them - take a long trip and you could end up being asked to install a permission hungry app for every town you stop in just to pay for parking.

And they treat all customers like potential shoplifters. You can't take bags in (here in the UK), so you have to leave your other shopping at the bag check. I refused to go in once because I had my laptop bag with me and wasn't going to risk leaving that behind the checkout desk

How would a law passed in the US force European companies to break European data protection law?

The plate - or "disc" - is actually on the elephants on the turtle's back. And the turtle's name is A'Tuin. Enjoy your visit and don't go in the Mended Drum.

The Wilhelm Scream. Played randomly at some point between midnight and sunrise. That should do it.

I used to do that, but it was too easy to ignore the notes. Now I create to-do list items on my phone and set reminders at key times. It works better for me. I know too many of us are slaves to our phones, but sadly the truth for me is that a pop up on my phone is far more likely to be noticed and far more effective than a paper note.

I think they use Qualcomm in the US because their own chips don't support one of the big carriers (because they lack CDMA maybe? I don't recall the details.)

I guess they stick with their own chips elsewhere in order to avoid paying money to Qualcomm.

It's because they get commission on the financing. In the UK that can be more than they make from the actual sale, so they'll discount to sell at a loss if you take financing, knowing they'll make it up in commission from the finance company.

SEAT have a direct sales outlet in the UK, but I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would buy from them. Prices are strictly list price, whereas all dealers will cut at least 10%, usually more, and throw in a few extras.

Are you including email? An on-prem Exchange setup with decent storage allowances, redundancy and staff doesn't come cheap. Exchange in O365 has fairly generous email storage limits and doesn't require anything like as much technical expertise to run.

It may be possible to do it for less on-prem, but good Exchange admins are hard to come by and penny pinching by management often leads to systems with tiny mailboxes so that you end up having the nightmare of local PST files if you want to keep old email.

I have no doubt it can be done right on-prem, but in practice it rarely is. Certainly as a user in a corporate environment, O365 has been a breath of fresh air.

For businesses though, the main argument seems to be the O365 is operational cost, on-prem requires capital expenditure.

Charging?

Well, the Stylus with my Samsung Tab S3 tablet doesn't need charging - doesn't have a battery at all. I've used a Surface Pen and tried a friend's Apple Pencil, and the Samsung is just as good. Pressure sensitive and accurate.

I'd hope that would become the standard, rather than yet another thing that needs charging or weird AAAA batteries that aren't widely sold.

I thought that. I bought a Pixel 2. I wish I hadn't. There are so many nice little touches I miss from the Samsung, and the hardware is nowhere near as good. I'm hoping that the S9 will support Project Treble and so make it more likely that it'll get timely updates.

Did they? Which of the services now being lumped into Google Pay are you thinking of?

Maybe banks win for personal transfers, but Android Pay has some traction. If anything, it's Paypal that got there first for web purchases. I find it easier to use Paypal for things like Netflix and other subscriptions so that it's only one account I need to update when my credit card expires. If Google gave sites a similar ability to accept payment via a Google Play account I'd use that instead.

I'm a bit worried that no.7 will break apps that do useful things in the background, such as Tasker and similar automation apps. I also wonder how it will impact apps that do geofencing.

If I recall, there are changes that app developers need to make to continue to work in the background, and it could be some time before apps catch up.

Overall I'm not comfortable with the move to greater restriction. I use Android instead of iOS precisely because it has greater flexibility.

Yeah, that's why I got one. One device that can do Now TV, Google Play and Amazon - since Amazon doesn't play nice with Chromecast and the other two don't play nice with Fire TV

It does have a problem where it outputs in 60Hz rather than the UK's 50, which can lead to juddering. Chromecast lets you change the output to 50.

My TV mitigates it to some extent, but I can still see it on - for example - the panning opening credits of Game of Thrones.