Mars? It's a great dream, but even in the most optimistic scenarios it will never be profitable.

Collecting contributions to send the most annoying politicians and celebrities there on a one way trip would be very profitable.

...if you just use AI."

That should say, "...so your real CC number is NEVER actually used"

1. The ApplePay system is more secure because you have to initiate the payment. Nobody can just walk up and press a payment terminal up to your card.
2. Additionally, the ApplePay system uses a rotating number in the background, so your real CC number is actually used (from what I understand)
3. In my own personal experience, the tap-to-pay system on my card is much less reliable than my phone or watch. I don't know why or how; it used to be better, but then I got a new card and now it's terrible.

I use my card when making large purchases that require a chip-and-pin. I would actually go so far as to say that NFC should be removed from cards because of point 1, and they should only be used for chip-and-pin transactions, while phones take over all tap-to-pay transactions.

I don't understand QR codes on smartphones, but apparently they're popular in other countries because they can be used by even extremely cheap dumbphones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

...Elon's odd & moody behavior of late is possibly due to more than just ketamine.

Windows is a pile of shit, but it's the devil we know, to be honest. I've learned hundreds of Windows work-around the long hard way over the years. Linux might be a cleaner OS, but still has a learning curve for certain "edge case" things.

Call me lazy, but I'm a creature of familiarity and habit these days. Go ahead and take away my Slashdot Card, but Satya can stay on my lawn for now.

> won't create a nuclear winter

I already corrected that in a followup.

> It also won't irradiate us all.

If roughly 50 or more are hit, yes it will.

If they accidentally forget to put a tower in, they're gimping themselves

Who is "they"? The vendor would set up phones initially and test them. If by chance the phone can't find ANY usable towers, the phone can prompt the user for the option of having their phone ignore the registry (along with a stern warning).

Not a show-stopper, just need a decent Plan B.

not to mention some companies do cross-sharing agreements which would need to sync.

I don't see why that's a problem. Vendors can include all registered towers even if a user's plan won't permit usage of some. The authorization for such towers would simply fail and the phone would try the next one. (A priority ranking for towers can be included, and be based on the user's provider plan so it can make smarter guesses.)

It's a reasonable idea on paper, but cellular networks weren't built with centralized tower authentication in mind -- especially not legacy protocols like 2G and 3G

Okay, but they should require it for new or overhauled towers to start heading in that direction. Maybe give the industry a window of 5 to 10 years to add it.

WW1 and WW2 were not fiction.

Correction, bombing fission plants won't trigger nuclear winter by itself, just irradiate us all.

Fission on a large scale is too risky. During a big war many of those nuke plants will get either bombed into radioactive dust/rivers or neglected, triggering a nuclear winter, killing off 95% of humanity.

It's not the full solution. I hope fusion pan's out. Stellerators have Yuuuuge potential on paper. (I expect computing power will eventually make Tokomaks obsolete compared to stellerators.)

Such actions are not mutually exclusive.

Why don't telecons maintain a database of legitimate towers and send an updated list to one's phone every week or so? If you ride out of the area, a new list for the new area is downloaded just before you reach the boundary. (There might be special "starting" towers the world over in the local list.) The phone should only attempt communicating with towers in the database.

In emergencies such as 911 one could override that protection upon user confirmation.

Or do they spoof legitimate towers also? Seems they couldn't do much to one's phone unless they first gain access credentials somehow. The phone could even report suspicious towers to the telecom so they can whack or sue common offenders.