So, I recently bought a Macbook. Windows PC had died a horrible death involving Windows 10.
I have my backup - but I no longer want to use Firefox (I have Chrome, I have Safari... that'll do). I need to convert Firefox bookmarks into something useful. Normally, you'd export as "bookmarks.html" and have at it. Unfortunately I don't have the running system to export from.
Firefox has some loopy compressed json backup format - I couldn't read that based on 5 minutes googling. I used "places.sqlite" from the profile directory instead.
Here is a bit of perl which will do a very rudimentary job of converting the mozilla sqlite database into something approaching bookmarks.html. I hope somebody finds it useful, and maybe it saves them installing Firefox just for a conversion.
Showing posts with label it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label it. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Saturday, 3 October 2015
US Chip & Pin Implementation Fudged Again - but is it Relevant?
Over here in the UK, we have become quite used to chip & pin transactions. In fact, visiting a Chinese restaurant in Leeds last night I saw a sign saying "To combat fraud, we will only accept chip & pin" - must have been there years. I can't remember the last time I saw a card with only a magstripe.
Wait, yes I can - it was a few months ago, in Boston. In the US, chip and pin is virtually unknown. I'd say I've seen more chip & pin in Kenya than in the states, and they too aren't far on with adoption. It seems, yet again, that a move to introduce chip & pin in the US has failed - a partial move, but not really.
Does it actually matter though? Is carrying a bit of plastic around in our wallets about to become a thing of the past? Last week I saw Barclay's advertise "bPay" in a free paper at the train station. Contactless fob... wristband... sticker. Is that even too physical? I plan to pay for my ironing to be done with Paym - just using an app. My wife pays for her car detailing with Paypal. With uber we pay for taxis with a card that nobody needs to see.
Here in the UK, we seem to be going magstripe >> chip&pin >> contactless >> no-card. Is the US just going to skip a generation, in the same way landline phones never made it into Kenya? Those guys skipped straight to mobile because the cost of putting in a load of wires was higher than the cost of the latest generation of technology. These days, not every revolution has to follow all the stages!
I quite like my wallet - but it probably has too many things in it. I suspect it won't be long before there's neither plastic cards, nor pictures of her majesty.
Wait, yes I can - it was a few months ago, in Boston. In the US, chip and pin is virtually unknown. I'd say I've seen more chip & pin in Kenya than in the states, and they too aren't far on with adoption. It seems, yet again, that a move to introduce chip & pin in the US has failed - a partial move, but not really.
Does it actually matter though? Is carrying a bit of plastic around in our wallets about to become a thing of the past? Last week I saw Barclay's advertise "bPay" in a free paper at the train station. Contactless fob... wristband... sticker. Is that even too physical? I plan to pay for my ironing to be done with Paym - just using an app. My wife pays for her car detailing with Paypal. With uber we pay for taxis with a card that nobody needs to see.
Here in the UK, we seem to be going magstripe >> chip&pin >> contactless >> no-card. Is the US just going to skip a generation, in the same way landline phones never made it into Kenya? Those guys skipped straight to mobile because the cost of putting in a load of wires was higher than the cost of the latest generation of technology. These days, not every revolution has to follow all the stages!
I quite like my wallet - but it probably has too many things in it. I suspect it won't be long before there's neither plastic cards, nor pictures of her majesty.
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