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Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

plastc.com

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Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

voltagex_ wrote: post #119
thaumasiotes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee I have a credit card for precisely this purpose (it's also general-purpose cash back). It's not as useful as you might expect -- most places in China that accept foreign credit cards do so only through an agreement with a chinese bank that imposes a ridiculously disadvantageous exchange rate. (But there's no "conversion fee" -- the bank generously bills you in USD…

>my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee I'm assuming they're making money on the exchange rate, then?

Quite possible, but when I checked it was something like 0.5%, more than an order of magnitude better than the "convenience" of having a chinese bank bill your card in USD.

I asked them (my bank) about it, got a response I don't remember, and decided I could live with 0.5%

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#122

Post by flashman »

NamTaf wrote: post #117
abalone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everywhere that accepts cards Given the shift to chip-and-PIN, which can't be emulated like this -- Plastc claimed they could but never demonstrated it (because it's impossible) -- they were way too late to market with this idea even 3 years ago. And if merchants are going to roll out new POS hardware they might as well jump to NFC as it leapfrogs cards on convenience. And security, if your device implements tokeni…

Yeh, this always seemed doomed outside the US, which in general appears to be ahead of the US for card security. Especially in AU, I don't even really go to bars with cash any more, I just use contactless payment with my card literally everywhere. Coffee, lunch, bars, etc. - pretty much everywhere has paypass/paywave now and has for years. Even three years ago, the writing was surely on the wall that they were exploi…

Even though I have a contactless card, I still prefer cash because it reminds me how much I'm spending. It's all too easy to tap away $40 several times a month and wonder where it all went.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#123

Post by ktta »

pdelgallego wrote: post #50
Chaebixi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just noticed they shutdown the coin servers at the end of February, and the app is useless without them. Now I can't add anymore loyalty cards to my Coin. Damn internet of shit.

RMS said "Software As a Service" is not free

I'd suggest a very interesting subreddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#124

Post by joshyy »

To be honest, I have always suspected that there is some kind of fraud going on with the company. Their Facebook page is an endless call for pre-orders. And they keep pushing the delivery date out. And further more, how the hell can you spend every bit of 9 million dollars and still not have a product? I don't know...

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#125

Post by reustle »

mattes wrote: post #36

CEO and founder Ryan Marquis deleted his Twitter? https://twitter.com/ry_marquis

I still want a chrome extension that warns me every time a previously bad acting founders name is listed on a page I'm on, or I'm on the site of one of their new 'projects'

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#127

Post by Symbiote »

mrbabbage wrote: post #93
srssays wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pay for tickets in Vienna then? I kind of like the barriers, if you are on the station platform, then you have definitely paid. For me, the stations that don't have barriers are more stressful, as you run the risk of forgetting to tap your card (or the tap not registering) and incurring a maximum fare.

Berlin has a similar proof-of-payment system, where there are no physical barriers between the street and train platforms. Most people have multi use tickets; you can buy week, month, or year long tickets. I definitely prefer the proof-of-payment setup more. London (which has turnstiles) can get crazy backups with people trying to tap into / out of the system, and the Berlin system lets you engineer more convenient a…

Some stations in London can be so busy, that they'd need some way to prevent people from overcrowding the platform even if there were no barriers.

It's pretty common for smaller stations near major football stadia to have the barriers controlled manually after big games -- totally open for some minutes, then completely shut until the platform has cleared.

(London used to have a proof-of-payment system on the articulated buses, since you were allowed to board at any door, and it still exists on the trams.)

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#128

Post by Symbiote »

voltagex_ wrote: post #119
thaumasiotes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee I have a credit card for precisely this purpose (it's also general-purpose cash back). It's not as useful as you might expect -- most places in China that accept foreign credit cards do so only through an agreement with a chinese bank that imposes a ridiculously disadvantageous exchange rate. (But there's no "conversion fee" -- the bank generously bills you in USD…

>my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee I'm assuming they're making money on the exchange rate, then?

There are several cards available in Britain which use the VISA/MasterCard spot rate, and add no further fees.

The cards tend to have no other promotion, whereas comparable cards might include travel insurance, or some gift vouchers when you sign up.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#129

Post by Symbiote »

chrisseaton wrote: post #51
egeozcan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is the need for multiple credit cards. I have a bank card (an EC-card) and I haven't used my credit-card since a month (other than automatic transactions).

Why would you ever use a EC card instead of a credit card? Credit card companies literally pay you to use their cards. Why turn down that money? I carry two credit cards because one is American Express and pays me more but fewer places accept it, so I have a backup Visa that pays me a bit less but everywhere accepts it.

("EC card" implies Germany.)

The EU imposes a maximum 0.3% fee to the merchant for accepting a credit card. This is to avoid any unfair competition between cash and cards, and between poorer people not eligible for cards that get cashback.

The UK used to have cards giving 2-3% cashback, sometimes more, but they've all been withdrawn.

I don't bother with a credit card, since it's one less automatic bill payment and one less statement to check.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#130

Post by kolinko »

blackguardx wrote: post #105
bigiain wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - but people _are_ doing this at home with stuff they buy off eBay right now: http://zacsblog.aperturelabs.com/2013/02/decapping-integrate... And as for "far beyond average hardware hacking skill", I suspect if you got Bunny Huang, Michael Ossmann, and Travis Goodspeed together and curious - this might well be broken in a single weekend! ;-)

Your link just describes decapping and reading the state of mask programmable PROM. Reverse engineering a secure IC and coming up with an exploit is several orders (like 10) of magnitude more involved.

So if the first takes a day, the latter - 10 million days?
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