RTE's sketch of the repercussions of a Euro collapse for Irish consumers. basically: you won't have any finances, particularly if you have a mortgage

'it might be in your interest if you have a tracker mortgage and are unable to get a better rate of interest on the €5,000 that you are being tempted to repay PTSB. You can get up to 4.2% from PTSB deposit accounts, 9.7% from 10-year Irish sovereign bonds, 9% from residential property. Yet PTSB is prepared to give you less than a measly 2% over a five year period on your €5,000 repayment.'

'With the price of bread running into billions a loaf the German people [...] had to get used to counting in thousands of billions. This, according to some German physicians, brought on a new nervous disease known as "zero stroke," or "cipher stroke" [...] The persons afflicted with the malady are perfectly normal, except "for a desire to write endless rows of ciphers and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in logarithms."' (via Joe Drumgoole)

'The tic-tac-toe lottery was seriously flawed. It took a few hours of studying his tickets and some statistical sleuthing, but he discovered a defect in the game: The visible numbers turned out to reveal essential information about the digits hidden under the latex coating. Nothing needed to be scratched off—the ticket could be cracked if you knew the secret code.'

'just how much is €25 billion that [Ireland's taxpayers] have to borrow for [failed bank] Anglo?' some great answers, including: start our own space program with 20 space shuttles; build 6 LHCs or 2 ITER fusion reactors; scrap fares on all public transport for 33 years; buy 2 of Asia's largest banks; buy Steve Jobs himself; detach the People's Republic of Cork by building a ten-metre-wide moat; buy every house and apartment listed on Daft.ie

Ross Anderson's lab demo an attack on TV whereby any Chip-and-PIN debit card can be used in conjunction with a MITM device, with a PIN of "0000", verified online, and producing a receipt saying "PIN Verified". thoroughly hosed

'this is yet another case where security economics trumps security engineering, but in a predatory way that leaves cardholders less secure.'