The real competition in payment card interchange

More competition brings consumers better products for lower prices - but be careful who the customers are. Aneace Haddad points out that the competition in payment cards schemes is not for merchants, who will accept all major schemes anyway, and not for customers, who know their card will be accepted, but for banks - and banks prefer the highest interchange fee, not lowest.

One more fact about interchange fees that should have been obvious - will merchants pass lower interchange fee to customers if their lobbying succeeds?:

If merchants pass along reductions to consumers, then their margins would be the same - so why all the cost and effort of lobbying the government to cut interchange? It doesn't make sense. Of course they will keep the savings.

Notes from CCC 2008

While attending [CCC 2008](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/), I was making notes, as usual (see [DIMVA](http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/2008/notes-from-dimva-2008/), [DeepSec](http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/2007/notes-from-deepsec-2007/)). Slides for some talks are available on talk pages in the [Fahrplan](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Fahrplan), or try to find a [recorded video](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Documentation#Conference_Recording). I hope the notes are useful.

Management-speak

Just saw this: "Leverage use of …".

I fully expect to see "Leverage leverage of …" within a year.

Notes from DIMVA 2008

While attending [DIMVA 2008](http://www.dimva2008.org/), I was making notes, like when attending [DeepSec](http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/2007/notes-from-deepsec-2007/) last year. Slides from the talks are currently not available, the web site only lets you buy the proceedings. I hope the notes are useful.

Introducing audit-viewer

I have been working on a GUI tool for simple viewing, searching and summarizing of Linux audit logs.

The first release is now available at [`fedorahosted.org`](https://fedorahosted.org/audit-viewer/). Test it, break it, tell me what you miss!

mlocate at fedorahosted.org

[`mlocate`](http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/mlocate/) is now hosted [at `fedoraproject.org`](https://fedorahosted.org/mlocate/) as well.

This makes an upstream bug tracker and a public Mercurial repository available.
Hopefully it will be possible to submit `mlocate` translations using Transifex at [`translate.fedoraproject.org`](http://translate.fedoraproject.org) in a few days.

Packages moving out…

`libuser`, `tmpwatch` and `usermode` were previously only published as SRPMS in rawhide, with a somewhat-public CVS at `elvis.redhat.com`.

Thanks to the cool Fedora administrators, all three packages now have a proper upstream home at [`fedorahosted.org`](https://fedorahosted.org/):

* [`libuser`](https://fedorahosted.org/libuser/)
* [`tmpwatch`](https://fedorahosted.org/tmpwatch/)
* [`usermode`](https://fedorahosted.org/usermode/)