Sort of, but many of them have language that makes it ever more the same thing as a surcharge. Particularly in gun shops/shows, its VERY common to see "All listed prices include a 3% cash discount. This discount cannot be earned via credit card.".

What's crazy is when that put that verbiage on AUCTIONS. The auction price that I bid myself somehow is supposed to include a "3% cash discount".

Sort of. The "rewards" are also there to make people spend using the credit card and carry a balance. They know if people think they're "making money" while charging purchases that they're more likely to rack up that total. They know they'll make more via the interest charges in the long run. Sure some particularly responsible card users may be able to game it for some rewards, but they'll be so much in the minority that it won't matter.

Debit cards don't carry that potential, so you won't find any debit cards offering rewards anywhere close to what the credit cards offer.

The DoD is known for viruses transporting payloads across airgaps onto Internet-connected machines. One thing it isn't is "so secure".

But, to the extent that it IS secure, it uses pretty much what I outlined. They use Class 3 certs for all users and all machines, and have done since about 2001. The US Navy got to trial run thei system to shake down the defects in the design, before they rolled it out to everyone. Beyond that, they use segregated networks (in principle, physical separation rather than logical separation, but who knows?) and encrypted communications.

What I've done above is take what the US DoD uses today, threw in what the US DoD recommended but never actually implemented in the 70s to fill in some of the gaps, and also included what the US DoD implemented and actually used in the way of Trusted OS deisgns in the 70s and 80s. The NSA and IRS likely use some variants on the same techniques.

So, what I've got above is pretty much why the DoD is as secure as it is.

What I've done is augmented it to handle the fact that you need to verify the hardware and not just the endpoint, and that you need to verify the physical host independently of the logical host. But that's pretty much it.

The problem is that you're focusing on the tech and - over time - you WILL lose track and get tired of the tech, because it happens to literally everyone. I'm extremly techy. But there are some things that are entirely in the realm of tech where I think "Oh, come on, this is nonsense, why can't I just do it the old way?!" (e.g. systemd, which I find to be the universal bane of anything I want to achieve).

That will come to us all. We're already doing it. Why do I have to ID myself to access this website? Why do I have to jump through MFA hoops just to sign in to my email? etc. etc. etc. All with good intention, good reason, and with purpose, but increasingly we, the users, will get frustrated with it all while the 20-somethings will just treat it as normal because they grew up doing it, and then get frustrated with whatever comes after when they are 50-somethings.

The tech is not the problem here. The problem here is sheer, utter, idiocy. Maybe in the form of someone far outside the normal mental bounds being solely in control of their finances (for example), but idiocy nonetheless.

And the cure isn't tech-training. The cure is "being a suspicious / paranoid bastard". I'm a suspicious / paranoid bastard. Good luck trying to scam me because even when there are legitimate processes, I am happy to just stop and say "Nope. I'm not going to do that." Look at the nonsense in your posts and the OP - buying Amazon gift cards, buying gold and giving it to a courier, etc. etc. etc.

It doesn't matter how sweet-talking someone is... I ain't gonna do that. Letting people take over my computer remotely? I don't even let people I know and love TOUCH my computer (and they know that). Nobody touches my computer. Nobody logs into it but me. Nobody knows that password. And no, even my kid, doesn't get to "just browse" on it, nor on my phone. I have other devices if they want to do that.

Scam-prevention isn't about learning the latest tech and keeping up to the date, it's about being an entirely suspicious bastard about everything. It's why my dad distrusts electronic transactions. He'll do them but you know what he does? He gets me or my brother to CHECK first. Others in my family have been scammed - credit card cloning in restaurants (good, luck, that card doesn't leave my sight... and, yes, I've had that argument with restaurants and pubs... card reader behind the bar? Okay, then bring it here? No? Then I come there? No... oh look you CAN do it in front of me but you just didn't want to...), mum accidentally signed up to a new electricity company on the doorstep (but UK contract regulations mean we shut that down once we heard about it), I've had a guy at my door trying to insert a key into a pre-pay electric meter in my house who said - explicitly - that he was "from your electricity supplier". He wasn't. He was from a rival, committing fraud on my doorstep, trying to force me to switch supplier to him without me noticing. And me, being the suspicious bastard, refused to let him do so, and warned the rest of the street (the police came along eventually, shut them down, and asked for evidence, but I didn't have any CCTV recording audio near the porch or I would have nailed him to the wall). He looked all official in his little hi-vis, and they were blanketing the whole street the same way... and people fell for it.

My dad REGULARLY asks me if "that was you on the texting again the other night" - because he gets texts with the "Hi Dad, I lost my phone and have no money...." He never responds but he always checks in with me afterwards just to make sure. And I think him realising how often it's NOT ME makes it clear just how widespread scams are so he's even more suspicious.

We just need to teach people to be suspicious and make official processes official enough that they are NOT suspicious. This requires absolutely no fancy tech or tech-training at all.

It just needs people to think "What the fuck am I doing buying Amazon gift cards to pay my tax bill?"

That is true, but the archaeology shows that this won't work for all island-hopping or all river navigation.

For example, we have clear evidence of hominins not just living on islands across the Mediterranean when no ice was present (it was free-standing water) but commuting to and from shore. We also have evidence of technologies travelling upstream along river-based communities at speeds that cannot be accounted for by simply walking.

So we need a model in which they could actively navigate against the water flow AND across significant distances of open water.

Everyone caught onto the fact that it's nonsense that's nothing to do with AI.

Actually, the people who forget that seem to be in the business of marketing and press releases. QC has been the apocalypse that would turn the world on it's head breaking crypto left and right in the next 2 years for at least 10 years now. It still can't do prime factorization better or faster than a sixth grader with a pencil and paper. And the sixth grader won't charge as much.

Perhaps it will be useful one day, but not today. It may well take 100 years. Remember about 3 years ago when the size of quantum computers was going to double overnight? And how it went radio silent shortly after? The problem with QC isn't that it will never get here at all, it's the damned hype machine that promised it would be here now.

It's the same hype machine that told us we would be using crypto currency for all of our everyday transactions by now. The same hype machine that claims AI will replace everyone next year.

We know that boats built 1.1 million years ago (so around the time of the split) were capable of going long distances up/down rivers between settlements, and across open waters beyond visual range to islands. This places certain language requirements on the hominins of the time, although we can't be sure hobbits had full access to all of those requirements. (There's not much evidence of boat building.)

However, they must have genetically had the capability, whether or not their brains were large enough to make any use of it.

That is all perfectly true, but we have a problem. Boats were capable of navigating reliably and robustly up/down rivers and across open sea beyond visual range. This requires much more complex communication than a gorilla or a chimpanzee is capable of, but obviously orders of magnitude less than a modern human or a Neanderthal.

It would seem reasonable to say that homo florensis was as much like us as those who first built deliberate boats for voyages requiring complex navigation.

The homo genus arose 2.2 million years ago. Evidence of complex communication exists as far back as 750,000-1.1 million years ago. Homo sapiens arose 300,000 years ago and are technically the "modern humans" as far as outward physiology is concerned. The brain was the size of modern humans for much of the 2.2 million years, but it is disputed how much. Since homo florensis is clearly not being likened to modern humans in the morphological sense, it would seem reasonable to conclude that they must be talking about some intellecual capability.

Fusion is going to be necessary at some point, and you can't start those with solar panels. Reducing wilderness is acceptable up to a point, but beyond that you start to screw up vital corridors and endanger whole sections of the food web - including those not directly impacted by the panels. So yes, you can increase solar and wind, but there are upper limits you absolutely should not cross. We're nowhere near those in the US, yet, but they shouldn't be ignored.

Nuclear as a general purpose fuel is dangerous, yes. So you need much much higher standards for designs and maintenance to keep them safe, and you really need Gen 4+ in order to be able to use nuclear waste as fuel (as we've a lot of that and can then dispose of the energy locked in it quickly and safely). A few more nuclear plants won't cause problems, provided they are Gen 4+ and preferably molten salt not water.

It's hard to not blame TEPCO to some level, as the tsunami was a one in 500 year type and was around 500 years after the last one of that magnitude. Although they're not exactly clockwork, it does become kinda obvious that you need to take such things into consideration. Yeah, yeah, there was no "legal obligation". Honestly, that isn't worth a damn. Either you update the design as new risks are determined (regardless of the law) or you knowingly take that risk.

However, you're absolutely right that the tsunami and the earthquake caused most of the property loss.

That's not how this works. There are a few ways to send an image to the bare display, but HDMI isn't one of them. If you actually look up the item list from TFS you will see that.

You didn't expect them to actually explain how you could manufacture an e-ink panel starting with sand and some chemicals in your kitchen, did you?