If you meet someone who doesn’t know how to pump gas, it’s likely due to one of two things: Either they’ve never driven a car/don’t have a license because they live in a city where it’s unnecessary, or they’re from either Oregon or New Jersey, where it’s illegal to pump your own gas. That could be changing for Oregonians soon, at least to a certain extent. [More]
It’s no secret that the robot revolution is coming, when our machines achieve self-aware intelligence and rise up against us as our new overlords. But really, we’re letting it happen because it’s just so much easier to let a robot pump your gas. Especially in the winter when the car is so toasty warm and the pump is so icy cold. Brrr.
The problem seemed easy enough to solve. SMM asked a Circle K cashier to pre-pay $20 on a gas pump using his credit card. Only the pump didn’t stop at $20 like it should have: it kept going until it reached $23.42. No big deal: SMM headed back in the store to pay the extra three and a half bucks. That’s when he learned that somehow, the first $20 he paid didn’t count. [More]
If you’re the type of person who already reflexively jiggles every card slot and looks for pinhole cameras whenever you go to swipe your card, despair. There is no 100% foolproof way to protect yourself, as proven by a pair of banditos who stole 3,600 card numbers after installing a credit card skimmer inside several gas pumps, reports the MountainView Voice. [More]
Meet the faulty check valve, a little gremlin that lives inside the gas pump. It could be pilfering your pennies. Or it could be pilfering the gas station’s. It really doesn’t care. According to an AP article, a faulty check valve inside a gas pump is difficult to diagnose and often goes ignored. The pricing errors it produces could either be in favor of the gas station or the consumer. How does this work?
“In the summer time fuel gets hot and as the fuel gets hot the volume expands, but the energy does not,” says a new report from NPR. The basic idea is that while the volume of fuel expands and contracts, the amount of potential energy within the gas stays the same. A gallon of gas at 80 degrees won’t push a car as far as a gallon of gas at 60 degrees.