Americans get to face another three years at higher risk of having our payment card numbers scooped up by criminals while we fuel up our cars. The major credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, have given gas stations an extension, pushing the deadline for them to install payment terminals with chip (EMV) readers back to October 2020.

You’re probably a big fan of payment system liability shifts, but let’s review anyway: the United States was one of the few countries still using magnetic strips on our payment cards, and decided to join the rest of the world.

The system is called EMV (EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa) and has been in use for decades. Instead of a magnetic strip, the cards use a microchip that makes it harder for crooks to intercept payment card numbers, and impossible to buy credit cards online and create cloned cards.

Since this meant retailers and banks needed to buy new equipment that can read the chip-equipped cards, the card networks set a series of deadlines. The deadline for retail points of sale was in October 2015, for ATMs was October 2016, and for gas station pay-at-the-pump terminals was supposed to be October 2017.

After these deadlines, liability for fraudulent transactions would fall on the merchant still using an old payment terminal, not on the bank that issued the credit or debit card. That doesn’t affect consumers all that much, but it definitely affects retailers, some of which have sued card issuers over the delay in certifying those new payment systems that they had to install.

What does all of this have to do with gas stations? Gas pumps are fantastic targets for card skimmers, devices that capture customers’ card numbers as they’re swiped through the magnetic reader, since they aren’t in the direct view of a cashier, and they get lots of traffic. Security reporter Brian Krebs notes that gas station skimmer attacks have increased this year, perhaps because chip cards and readers are finally becoming prevalent. They’ve been especially plentiful in Arizona this year.

Here’s the problem, if you’re a gas station owner: those pay-at-the pump terminals are really expensive. That’s why the payment networks announced this week that they’re giving gas stations an additional three years to get new equipment.

Retrofitting some stations with older equipment is more complicated than swapping in a new card reader. “In some cases, older pumps may need to be replaced before adding chip readers, requiring specialized vendors and breaking into concrete,” Visa noted in a statement.

What all of this means is that it’s going to be a good idea for a while still to use a credit card rather than a debit card at the gas pump. If a scammer gets hold of your debit card number, they can drain your checking account and cause financial havoc as all of your payments bounce. Using a credit card leaves you with a bit of breathing room in case of suspicious transactions.

A strange light was visible in photos of Mars like the one above taken by the Curiosity rover last week. Is it a beacon from an underground extraterrestrial base as some UFO researchers suggest, or simply sunlight glinting from a shiny rock? NASA claims it's likely the latter, but what do they know.

In spite of the fact that superstar rock bands and pop artists still travel the world in private jets and tricked-out custom buses while having their every whim catered to before and after performing to thousands of fans who pay huge amounts of money for tickets, the music industry is dead. At least if you believe Gene Simmons of KISS. And who’s whose to blame for this death that has occurred only in Mr. Simmons’ mind? That would be music fans.

In an interview with MetalHammer Magazine [via TorrentFreak], the one-time arena rock god and godfather of rock merchandising laments the end of an era, all due to pesky kids and their file-sharing.

“The sad part is that the fans are the ones who are killing the thing that they love: great music,” explains Simmons. “For fuck’s sake, you’re not giving the next band a chance.”

And by “next band,” we presume he actually means once-popular arena rock acts like KISS, because his statement ignores all the many, many artists who are not only doing just fine in an era of digital downloads and easy file-sharing, but are thriving because of this ease of delivery. Instead, he goes on to complain about how much money he’s not earned.

“How much have we lost through illegal downloading? It’s certainly millions,” explains Simmons. “I don’t think it’s tens of millions, but it’s certainly millions.”

Simmons has long been an outspoken critic of file-sharing, going back to the days of Napster and other early peer-to-peer networks.

“They should have bitch-slapped them,” he says about the operators of the early p2p platforms. “Gone down with the FBI, seized everything and put everyone in jail. But then they should have done what the Allies did with the Nazis: made them work for us.”

Can you imagine Napster founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker sitting in a garment factory, silk-screening KISS t-shirts, faking bandmembers’ autographs on KISS photos and posters, and drilling holes in KISS bowling balls?

State Sen. R. Clayton 'Clay' Davis, excellently portrayed by actor Isiah Whitlock Jr. on "The Wire," was a corrupt and conniving man with a catchphrase that consisted of one word/slur pronounced over an exaggerated amount of time.

This word, this fantastic word, can be played on repeat thanks to a simple red button on a simple webpage. (Whether you should press this button at work will depend on your office, of course.)

Click the red button, hear Clay Davis say, "Shiiiit," hit the button again, hear Clay Davis say, "Shiiiit," etc.

The site comes with a counter. You can keep track of how many times you've hear Clay Davis say, "Shiiiit." Ours is already at a pretty high number.

If this wonderful and simple page isn't enough for you, there's also a Clay Davis saying "Shiiiit" app. It has pretty good reviews.

Based on this very NSFW audio compilation, hopefully Bunk will get his own app and button, too.

(H/T Baltimore City Paper.)