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You can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.

All iPhones can.

Hardware/software-wise, yes, but putting money on the card is a problem if you don't have a credit/debit card issued by a Japanese bank (or perhaps a few others). That's fine for locals, of course, but not helpful for many foreign visitors.

I had no problem topping it up with apple pay while in Japan.

Yes but I'm not going to buy a phone with an OS that I dislike just for my occasional trips to Japan.

Pixel phones bought outside Japan supposedly can if you do a little adb hacking to enable it, but I don't have a Pixel to try it myself.

Pixel phones outside of Japan are missing the Felica chip.

Apple pays the fee for all phones in the world to have the chip. Google only pays for Japan devices.


No, the chip is there, gated by a SKU check, so that Google only pays the licensing fees for their Japanese SKU.

As far as I could tell from everything I've read from multiple sources, every Pixel since Pixel 4 _has_ the chip, it's just not enabled and you can enable it with rooting.

https://xdaforums.com/t/global-pixel-device-unlock-felica-su...


The chip is not missing, the configuration is.

I assume it's a licensing issue, where Google is too cheap to pay JR for the phones sold outside of Japan, so only setup the JP models and only pay the license for those.


I still remember they used disinsect the aircraft cabin, before you land in Indian airports with an aerosol spray https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/spray

https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/aircraft-disinsection


They still do this when you land in Australia

Not in my experience. I have only flown international ten times or so in the past 20yrs but I have never seen that when returning to Aus.

I was interested in this because it happened the last time I returned to NZ, but I hadn't seen it before. There are several approved methods and it depends on the airline. The method that doesn't involve spraying with you onboard is more expensive so tends to be used by budget airlines, and also airlines who might rotate their planes and crew around routes more often because it is a treatment that lasts for weeks.


Probably depends on where the plane is coming from. Source: me who just returned from Europe last week, no spraying. And have traveled internationally several times in the last few years and also no spraying.

From the link:

"Benefits of entering a voluntary formal arrangement include:

* disinsection methods are undertaken while passengers are not on the aircraft."

Used to see someone wandering down the aisles with spray cans on arrival - but not on the last several trips to Oz.


They do but chances are it's not 100% effective.

Rather, "there is no evidence to show that using insecticide to kill mosquitoes inside aircraft cabins is effective in preventing introduction and spread of mosquito-borne diseases."

https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/aircraft-disinsection

Not sure where the idea came from that spraying the cabin aisle would penetrate the luggage bins, cargo hold, under the seats, or really anywhere.


1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

2. Risk is convex, so every risk increase by measures not taken is multiplicative, not additive.

The real question must be: does the disinfection do more harm than it provides reduction of risk.


> 2. Risk is convex, so every risk increase by measures not taken is multiplicative, not additive.

Wait. Is this true? f(x) = x^2 is convex but f(x+d) = f(x) + O(x). Are you saying that human risk assessment is estimated to be exponential?


They did that on our take off from Naples just a month ago, they said it's against insects.

It used to happen in NZ too. I don't know if it still does.

As a kid (in the early 70s) I remember the air hostesses walking down the isles with a spray can. They don’t do that any more, but I wonder if or why they don’t add lower concentrations of the aerosol to the air conditioning at the end of the flight.

You could spend tens or hundreds of millions building an automatic system (certification for aircraft is not cheap or easy) or just hand the flight attendant a can of spray.

Sure, but I can imagine the more expensive airlines worrying that the ‘optics’ of spraying your passengers down aren’t great (to be clear - I’m not objecting and I’d rather they do it). I wasn’t suggesting they retrofit to existing aircraft of the period, but rather just build it in as they design the next generation airflow system. Or do you think it would still be way too expensive even then?

Adding systems to aircraft, whether retrofit or new design, is a horrifically complex and expensive thing.

What kind of disinfectant is used? How is it distributed? Does it do something bad at -80 degrees C? At +80 C? If it freezes, what happens? What if someone loads the wrong thing into the disinfectant bucket? Like fuel? Or oil? Where do we put the switch to isolate the cockpit from the disinfectant? Where does flipping that isolation switch go in the unknown-fume-event checklist?

What if it catches fire? It's not enough to say it can't catch fire, you must assume it will catch fire. The fire suppression system has to be aware of it. What if the fire suppression system erroneously thinks the disinfectant system is on fire? What if it was erroneously thought to be on fire, and then later _actually does catch fire_? How long can we fly with a flaming disinfectant system that someone in Terribadistan filled with kerosene?

You probably have more than one disinfectant module, probably attached to each pack. Is the plane "disinfected" if only one pack is operational? If your disinfectant module fails, does it bring the pack down with it? No? Now we have to certify the packs for both with-and-without disinfectant module operation.


You sure? Gas bill has been astronomically high lately.


Meanwhile the apple firmware cannot read vFAT ESP. Apple wants ESP to be HFS.


Out of curiosity, how recent is this? I haven't owned my own macbook since the pre-touchbar era (I think the last model I had was the early 2015 Pro), and I had heard that Linux had gotten harder to boot since then due to newer firmware (I remember hearing for a time the newer models were yet to get wifi support on Linux, although I don't know how long that lasted), but at least up until then I was able to use a fairly typical Linux setup dual booted alongside MacOS. I remember using a blogpost I found as a reference, but I think the order of the steps I used were turning off FileVault, shrinking the main MacOS partition by the amount I wanted to use for Linux, doing the Linux install the way I normally do (one FAT ESP partition with refind installed, then the rest as a LUKS volume with LVM root and swap), turn off SIP by booting the macbook into recovery, booting into MacOS and running the `bless` command to set the refind partition to boot by default, rebooting back into recovery to turn SIP back on, and then finally booting back into MacOS and turning FileVault back on. Essentially, by temporarily turning off SIP and FileVault, I was able to get Linux booted by default with my usual LUKS/LVM setup but also have the option to select MacOS from my refind menu and have that booted with the usual FileVault/SIP protections. Based on what I'd read about the efforts to support Linux on the new ARM macbooks and Apple seemingly not going out of their way to block this, I would have thought that this method would still work, although maybe there's something I'm missing.


There is no UEFI on M1 macs. However boot protocol there is completely different and complicated.


Oh wow, that is a big change! Even though I know Microsoft influenced and pushed the UEFI standard, my first macbook was my first introduction to EFI booting (since I had used legacy BIOS on my PCs up until college), so I've always associated it with Apple hardware.


M1 Macs have more in common with iPhones than with Intel Macs.

See https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/SW%3ABoot for example.


Some snarky people would even say that modern Macs are in fact iPhones, just with a different form factor.

The unification of the operating systems for both devices continues with every macOS release. (And that's not only about the unification of the naming scheme…)


It absolutely can. Fedora uses HFS+ for the ESP on Macs because it integrates more cleanly into the Apple boot menu you get when you hold down command on boot, but the firmware handles FAT just fine.


Interesting, when did that start? Our ancient iMac (2009?) with Ubuntu Mate on has a vfat ESP.


Icky as HFS may be, anything is better than VFAT.


One of the chair dissented on these rules: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P204800MotorVeh...

Says these rules will stifle innovation and some car makers are doing direct sales so rule is not really needed.


"Some people are not doing it anymore" is a ridiculous reason to not-ban something that absolutely should be banned.


We don't need to make murder illegal anymore because some people are not doing it.



Just be a little careful with the state returns on CashApp. It has a bug on handling mortgage interest deductions if your mortgage is over $750000 and the state allows deduction up to $1000000. Double check by filing with other tax software and verify the refund amount is the same. I used freetaxusa.com to get this right.


Cash App taxes has a bug where mortgage interest deduction is not handled properly with state vs federal. If your mortgage is more than 750000$ and your state is California or a state allows deduction up to a million $ in mortgage interest then you will end up getting a lower refund.

I'd double check by filing with another software just to make sure (i.e https://www.freetaxusa.com/)


Cash app also couldn't file my ev credit correctly. Support was significantly worse than useless. Ended up going with Free Tax USA this year but I've also seen bugs with them.


LVAD goes for 5 years


More like 10 and more now, 5 years was the stuff we were making in the 90s and early 2000s.


The doctors want you walking (with help) as soon as possible after a heart transplant, unless something is horribly wrong.


Air purifiers do not remove co2. The green way to get fresh air into a well insulated house is to use a energy recovery ventilator (ERV)


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