Hacker News: AnssiH

New comment by AnssiH in "Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer"

AnssiH — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:39:13 +0000

At least in Finland merchant contracts often specify higher rates for non-EU cards.

New comment by AnssiH in "Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer"

AnssiH — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:19:33 +0000

My understanding is that they are much less generous on average compared to U.S.

E.g. for now I have the most premium card offered by my bank (50€/mo), and it gets me extra product insurance, rental car insurance, travel insurance, free lounge access, and some other things like that, but no cashback or similar.

I think some premium cards do offer cashback nowadays, but they are in the minority. Some cards also offer airline reward points. My experience is limited to Finland, though.

New comment by AnssiH in "How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs"

AnssiH — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:18:39 +0000

I don't think any EU One-stop-shop scheme covers "local" goods sales in other EU member states yet, i.e. an EU company has to register in all EU countries they hold stock in.

That is changing with the Single VAT Registration (SVR) legislation, effective in 2028.

New comment by AnssiH in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

AnssiH — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:36:17 +0000

In Finland international inbound calls using Finnish caller ID are simply blocked (mandated by regulation since 2023).

New comment by AnssiH in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

AnssiH — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:30:08 +0000

It is technically possible, here in Finland such blocking (i.e. all inbound international calls with Finnish caller ID, except for roaming) has been obligatory for a few years now (https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...).

New comment by AnssiH in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

AnssiH — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:34:30 +0000

Or just block international spoofing, to allow the case you mention.

E.g. in Finland the relevant regulation (https://traficom.fi/files/media/regulation/M_28_L_EN.pdf) says (in section 10):

> Telecommunications operators must block calls terminating from the public international interface when the calling party number is clearly incorrect or the calling party number is a Finnish telephone number and the situation does not involve roaming as referred to in section 7.2.1.

New comment by AnssiH in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

AnssiH — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:38:28 +0000

If a legitimate French business contracts with a Moroccon call center, they will then of course follow French law since the French business is liable.

As for international scam calls, not sure what the situation is in France and what measures they have in place, but one relatively easy way is to block international callers from spoofing a local caller ID, which decimated these calls in Finland a couple of years ago: https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...

New comment by AnssiH in "Finland's last analogue landline phones go silent after 150 years"

AnssiH — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:05:20 +0000

For residential users in Finland, the last-mile replacement for POTS is not fibre but cellular, at least where phone calls are concerned.

New comment by AnssiH in "Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards"

AnssiH — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:08:28 +0000

Direct debit is not the same as debit card. You can pay in physical stores with debit card but not with direct debit (which does not involve a card at all).

New comment by AnssiH in "Waymo Premier"

AnssiH — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:18:13 +0000

Medical bills are covered (the Wikipedia summary seems accurate to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance#Finland). But I'm going to guess that those medical bills, and related damages, are much lower than in the U.S.

Maybe also lower average value of cars and less accidents here plays some part. But not sure how large that difference actually is.

Could also be some difference in the insurance premium systems: The amount of accidents changes one's cost for next year based on fixed rules - the ~$20/mo is with the highest discount (no liability insurance covered accidents in many years). The maximum it can grow to (for me, with my modern car) is ~US$100/mo, by having 4 consecutive covered accidents without accident-free years. Not really sure how wildly this varies in other countries or if the systems are similar...

The optional car insurance is more expensive, my full coverage (including damage, theft, parking, glass, fire, towing, substitute car etc.) is in the ~US$100/mo range, with ~$230 deductible on most coverage, and towing, substitute, glass repair at $0.

New comment by AnssiH in "Waymo Premier"

AnssiH — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:51:18 +0000

Hmm, for my €209/year (~$20/mo) liability insurance I get unlimited coverage for personal injuries and €5M coverage for property damage (both mandated by Finnish law).

It sounds like you pay much more. Any idea why?

New comment by AnssiH in "Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability"

AnssiH — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:50:25 +0000

The test was run by an unnamed third party, so cURL's history has no relevance to their benevolence.

New comment by AnssiH in "Making RAM at Home [video]"

AnssiH — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:23:07 +0000

They also have "Underrated" and "Overrated" which apply points but do not act as tags. So I guess the easiest way to get +5 Troll is to have many Troll and Underrated votes, if it works the way I think it does.

New comment by AnssiH in "Telnyx package compromised on PyPI"

AnssiH — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 09:38:28 +0000

I tried, but they used some 3rd party KYC platform whose country selection dropdown seemed to have every country except Finland (even Åland, a region of Finland, was there).

Support wasn't helpful.

Went with Twilio instead.

New comment by AnssiH in "End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance"

AnssiH — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:51:08 +0000

My impression was that the temporary permission-granting regulation was passed before the relevant privacy law came into effect, but I didn't check the dates now.

New comment by AnssiH in "The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos"

AnssiH — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:54:20 +0000

Here is the regulation that will be voted on: https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?refer...

Note that the amendment was already amended on 11th March to set expiry to Aug 2027 and to also exclude E2E communications.

New comment by AnssiH in "The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos"

AnssiH — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:26:29 +0000

The proposal they are voting on is about continuing the current time-limited implementation (voluntary scanning, Regulation (EU) 2021/1232).

This is not about mandatory scanning.

New comment by AnssiH in "The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos"

AnssiH — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:08:05 +0000

The majority of the MEPs are not onboard mandatory scanning, otherwise that would've been passed already.

The site is conflating mandatory scanning with voluntary scanning (status quo). The upcoming vote is about continuing the voluntary scanning (which would otherwise expire).

New comment by AnssiH in "Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'"

AnssiH — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:48:30 +0000

I don't think the vendor ever said "unhackable" in this case, though. At least not publicly.

New comment by AnssiH in "RISC-V Is Sloooow"

AnssiH — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:18:44 +0000

The cross-compiler part itself is easy, but getting all the build scripting of tens of thousands of Fedora packages to work perfectly for cross-compiling would be a lot of work.

There are lots of small issues (libraries or headers not being found, wrong libraries or headers being found, build scripts trying to run the binaries they just built, wrong compiler being used, wrong flags being used, etc.) when trying to cross-compile arbitrary software.

All fixable (cross-compiling entire distributions is a thing), but a lot of work and an extra maintenance burden.