• 0 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 18th, 2023
  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtoGreentext@sh.itjust.works•Anon is deeply disturbedEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    No, stores pay the fee to the provider (MasterCard/Visa/American Express/etc) for processing the transaction. This is why you see those little signs that say “minimum credit card purchase $5” or w/e in smaller shops, because if the transaction is too small they lose money on it.

    You might actually inflict $2.50 in losses on the location for processing a single transaction for a $0.50 sauce cup.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Why can't we go back to small phones?English
    1·
    2 days ago

    I am of two minds on this. I love repairing electronic equipment, it’s what I do for a living, and I buy old tech to fix up all the time.

    Replaceable batteries seem like a good thing, in terms of reducing waste for devices that are otherwise still useful… theoretically.

    Realistically, the charge management circuitry and the battery chemistry in phones has gotten so good today that most batteries have a useful lifespan that is longer than the useful life of the device. Three years is easily doable for any mid-range phone on the market.

    At five years you’re probably going to be disappointed with the battery performance, but how many people are continuing to use a 5-year-old phone? At that point the internal technology has changed substantially and there might even be a new network standard that you want to use, so you’re probably replacing the whole device even if replacing only the battery is an option.

    On top of that, giving the user access to the battery means the phone body can’t be fully sealed against moisture and dust, plus the access panel is a big mechanical weakpoint which means the body will be less rigid than a fully enclosed device and thus more prone to breaking when dropped or sat on. Adding those weaknesses back into mobile devices will make them more fragile and (I predict) will lead to more frequent failure and replacement of the entire device, which will offset any waste-saving benefit from the replaceable battery.

    Plus, the addional space required to fit in the replaceable battery casing, the removable access panel and the contact points for the battery means either the whole device will have to be bulkier or the battery will have to be smaller (than it would otherwise be with a permanent internal battery).

    Replaceable batteries made a lot more sense in 2010 when the batteries were shit (and sometimes still NiCad) and the charge management was basically nonexistent (so the battery cycling wore it out faster). Today it’s weight and bulk, plus fragility that will probably lead to equivalent or increased e-waste.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtoPrivacy@lemmy.world•Meet Rayhunter: A New Open Source Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular SpyingEnglish
    12·
    4 days ago

    Previous solutions have also focused on attacks on the legacy 2G cellular network, which is almost entirely shut down in the U.S. Seeking to learn from and improve on previous techniques for CSS detection we have developed a better, cheaper alternative that works natively on the modern 4G network.

    Calling the 4G network “modern” is a bit of a stretch at this point. As they said, previous attempts at this have been 2G so it’s cool to see something for a newer standard, but it’s about 5 years too late for 4G.