Cross border payment with QR codes are already a thing in plenty of Southeast and East Asian countries. Crypto and stablecoins aren't needed (nor wanted, due to money laundering risks).
Ah, so they're leaving the money on the table. I suppose they're worried about money laundering.
Indonesia's electronic wallet have two tiers, unverified and verified. You don't even need a bank account (because most people don't), just a local number (which even tourist can buy easily at airport), with the limitation on unverified tier is that you can only top it up (by cash if you don't have local bank account) and spend it on merchant, no receiving nor sending money. There's also transaction limit but most of the population won't cross that in normal days.
The reason Pix needs a Brazilian bank account, is that at its core, it's just a bank transfer mechanism, like the older TED or DOC. Pix sends money from one bank account to another bank account. The main novelties are being instant, working 24h per day, and being able to use keys like a phone number or email as destinations (the Brazilian Central Bank has a central database which maps these keys to the bank account numbers).
QR payments are ubiquitous in South East Asia. The eventual goal is ASEAN-wide interoperability, and some are even already interoperable with South Korean, Japanese and Chinese counterparts. And as expected, the US is also complaining about those, merely because Americans can't grasp the concept, like how they lag on pin adoption.
Doesn't seem too different from QRIS in Indonesia, authentication is relatively painless since some apps offer either pin or fingerprint. Being open standard (multiple banks, electronic wallet and payment gateways support it, multiple payment apps support it, all interoperable) probably help since there's never any delay I've experienced for years, and this system is handling from small payment on roadside hawkers to electronic purchase in large stores both offline and online.
More fancy payment flow are also available, such as vendors generating one-time QR code that already include the payment amount, and the user apps generating one-time QR code that the vendor scan, thus switching some of user steps to the vendor.
In most cities I've lived and visited, using QR is far more convenient than paper. Good luck using contactless when most phones don't support it, and even when Visa & MasterCard pushed their contactless standard, I never encounter a single vendor with a working machine (this range from small shops to large hypermarket). Maybe because they have bigger MDR than QR, but from customers PoV contactless simply don't work, until QRIS also adopt NFC and suddenly it's workable (but not widespread yet since most phones still don't)
I suppose someone who want ereader only experience will just go with the vanilla firmware or flash CrossPoint, which this project forked from.
I personally hope this could drive more sales for those who don't necessarily want an ereader (or already have one) but are interested in tinkering with it (I doubt anyone looking for gaming or messaging will pick it, seeing it's still more expensive than a proper Android phone), and thus lower the price of future models for everyone.
There's probably some niche where ridiculously long battery life (plugging a small solar panel will effectively make it self-sufficient) and sunlight readable screen with very basic apps would be welcome.
I wonder why that's not supported by Biscuit despite dozens of other functions being present. E.g. download and display an image once an hour. Can't wake from sleep regularly?
Maybe they've just not thought about that (yet). It looks to be mostly coded by Claude so, presumably, it been a very quick project to take from zero to where it is now, and they're in the mode of throwing old socks at the wall.
For crossing the Channel, definitely not. A very special exception can be made with prior arrangement for those with disabilities that made entering & leaving their vehicle too cumbersome, but they aren't going to ride this kind of bus.
In my city, if the area is so crowded I can pick a stranger to follow to the common destination or if it's so empty that I don't have to worry about walking into someone, I can confidently read even the most engrossing novel on my phone. I won't dare doing that with any bigger screen because I won't be able to see the upcoming obstacle.
Not a native speaker, bleen for me got auto corrected by my brain to green. It doesn't make me uncomfortable, but I'd prefer grue because my brain will immediately understand we're talking about the umbrella term. If grue is said out of context, I'd imagine Gru from despicable me, when written I'd imagine gruel, but, again, because I'm not a native speaker, instead of yucky food I'd instead think about that episode of Masha and the Bear where they end up with a houseful of the porridge.
Most of the major vendors are already assembling x86 laptops for the far larger Windows market, it's cheaper to just reuse those models for ChromeOS instead of designing a special ARM design, which in turn due to lack of scale are priced similarly to their x86 counterpart. Price sensitive customers thus don't see that much saving.
Battery life is nice, but I doubt there's that much market yearning for a cheap laptop with long battery life. People who really need large screen for long work without wall power either go at x64 (which can reach 12 hours on mid range now), or change their workflow to use Android tablet. The ubiquity of USB charging port that can power the laptop (or at least top it up while standing by on lunch) also means even if an x86 laptop may not last an entire day, the owner don't have to suffer the inconvenience of carrying around the power brick.
There won't be that much saving due to the lack of scale. The mentality of (normal, well adjusted) people around me is to dismiss laptop entirely as a personal computing device, they have their phones and tablets that are far easier to use. For them to get a laptop would imply they're forced to, because there are Windows apps unavailable for Android/iOS. A cheap Arm notebook is useless for them (unless Microsoft somehow decide to work with Mediatek and the rest for cheap WoA devices). Chromebook never gained popularity in my country with lack of reliable and affordable internet access so the realistic OS would be either one of those Linux distro that support ARM (but in turn, most people don't care about Linux), or Android, in which case it's still far more natural to just get a tablet with a keyboard attachment because Android desktop experience and the apps ecosystem aren't there yet.
If it's purely DNS blocking (no IP redirection or blocking), your own recursive resolver (eg, unbound) shouldn't be affected, assuming the ISP doesn't also intercept unencrypted DNS queries. If there's also interception, encrypted DNS upstream might help (assuming they're not blocked entirely, repressive countries do this, so far not in EU)
I don't think any of them will help in Spain case though, I believe the ISP/court choose to block the IP range entirely, which hit Cloudflare customers. DNS hijinks won't solve those.
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