Hacker News: adrianb

New comment by adrianb in "Norway reviews cybersecurity after remote-access feature found in Chinese buses"

adrianb — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:41:08 +0000

Volvo cars was sold to Geely but Volvo Buses (+ trucks) is still a Swedish company.

New comment by adrianb in "Woman wins case against British Airways over flight vouchers"

adrianb — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 15:12:58 +0000

> She was entitled to a refund or vouchers.

Is this true? Many (most?) airlines offered vouchers en masse when they had to cancel most flights during COVID, with no option for full refunds.

New comment by adrianb in "Woman wins case against British Airways over flight vouchers"

adrianb — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 15:11:01 +0000

At least Air Canada was forced by the Canadian government to pay back vouchers to people who asked for them, as part of a deal for financing.

I was able to claim the full value of the flight I had to cancel in April 2020.

Interestingly, even the initial vouchers took many months to be delivered to my email (6 months or more I think). But the refund was very quickly paid. The power of government coercion...

New comment by adrianb in "Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says"

adrianb — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 21:22:59 +0000

It's widely accepted that the Huanan market cases are an early super-spreader event and not the first human infections. Basically we don't know who and where the first infected humans were. We do know lots of people got infected at the market and that became the first time a new pneumonia was noticed in hospitals.

New comment by adrianb in "Controversial experiments that could make bird flu more risky to resume (2019)"

adrianb — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:52:24 +0000

Trillions and trillions of mutations and still the most dangerous H5N1 viruses were created a decade ago by Fouchier and Kawaoka. And how did that help us prepare for the inevitable natural evolution of the same virus?

New comment by adrianb in "Amsterdam's 'stay away' campaign targets troublesome visitors"

adrianb — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 17:37:04 +0000

I found it suspicious that it mentions "sleeping in cars" which shouldn't be needed for day trips as most places in the country are at most 3 hours drive from Amsterdam and places in Belgium and Germany can be reached that fast as well.

Day trip means people return home at night, not that they sleep in the cars.

New comment by adrianb in "Leaked documents outline DHS’s plans to police disinformation"

adrianb — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 20:57:00 +0000

Seems to cover more than that, things we should be ignorant of could simply be labeled as False. Malinformation seems to be about how facts should only be interpreted in a certain way. So for example a factual statistic but it can only mean what the government decided it means (i.e. supports the government's policy).

New comment by adrianb in "Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire"

adrianb — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 15:49:15 +0000

Actually controlling inflation means slowing it down. So the gallon of milk will be only 7 cents more expensive than last month, not 70 cents.

New comment by adrianb in "Twitter admits it overstated users for years ahead of Elon Musk takeover"

adrianb — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 17:33:43 +0000

But a public company has higher public transparency obligations than a private one. Why do you think being afraid of Elon will make them more transparent than being afraid of the SEC?

New comment by adrianb in "How the UK became the sick man of European tourism"

adrianb — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 18:57:08 +0000

> For 2021, national tourist board Visit Britain has forecast that visitor numbers will be lower even than in 2020, when travel restrictions were at their highest.

Not sure how they evaluated the travel restrictions, but in 2020 there were travel corridors between many European countries including the UK, while for most of 2021 to enter the UK there were required PCR tests (usually 3) and home quarantine. 2021 restrictions definitely felt more strict, at least in the summer.

Restrictions for arrivals were only lifted for the vaccinated in the autumn.

New comment by adrianb in "This resume got me an interview"

adrianb — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:11:05 +0000

The point is that she gets called because of buzzwords such as Blockchain and AI and what have you.

If the education and job experience is made up, how do you know you're not getting calls because you sent a fake CV mentioning great education and relevant past jobs?

New comment by adrianb in "Job vacancies surge past one million in new record"

adrianb — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:43:07 +0000

How so?

If these days a house listed for x gets offers at x+10%, after average wages increase it will receive offers at x+20%. Is there any historical precedent of house prices not rising faster than inflation, absent external factors?

I think a major correction of house prices can happen in two ways:

- economic catastrophe (everyone's unemployed) / war / natural disaster / ... - we wouldn't want to buy a house anyway in that case;

- major increase of interest rates or minimum deposit required - we wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage in that case.

New comment by adrianb in "Partisan attachment: How politics is changing dating and relationships (2020)"

adrianb — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 12:31:34 +0000

I agree, religion offers simple ways to classify actions as good or bad. Following the church teachings or priest's guidance was enough to make an individual confident they are a good person, doing good things.

Meanwhile, in real life, everything is complex, few things are clearly good or bad, everything has advantages and disadvantages. People need a simple compass to distinguish good and bad. It seems the "political beliefs" are taking up that space in a secular society.

New comment by adrianb in "G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals"

adrianb — Sat, 05 Jun 2021 19:25:41 +0000

Also it seems the agreement is that 7 countries agree that all countries in the world need to have that minimum rate? How would they convince the rest of 180+ countries? Especially, how do you convince the ones who would lose a lot of tax income by closing their tax heaven loopholes.

The Other 'Tank Man' Photographs (2014)

adrianb — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 19:54:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-22452

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398363

Points: 25

# Comments: 2

New comment by adrianb in "Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B"

adrianb — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 19:41:36 +0000

The same was true of Yahoo in its last days as an independent company. Their holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (an independent, successful company) were worth more than Yahoo's market cap.

Selling Yahoo to Verizon meant splitting the web properties out from the company, leaving it as a shell for its holdings.

New comment by adrianb in "Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission"

adrianb — Fri, 21 May 2021 10:13:28 +0000

Wearing masks when sick is a good hygiene practice in general. But in COVID context with significant asymptomatic spread it won't help as much as it does for colds and flu.

New comment by adrianb in "The End of Retirement (2014)"

adrianb — Thu, 20 May 2021 08:12:51 +0000

Could be. But one thing that was pointed out to me is that once our generation gets closer to retirement age, the governments will be more willing to address our concerns. Probably at the price of making the next generation's retirement plans even more dubious.

The change in attitude is due to the fact that older people are more likely to vote and that politicians and their friends also tend to be in the past-middle age-but-not-retired-yet age bracket.

New comment by adrianb in "More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins"

adrianb — Mon, 17 May 2021 21:40:57 +0000

Infected animals were found in the market where the outbreak began 4 months after it started. We have nothing comparable a year and a half after COVID.

New comment by adrianb in "More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins"

adrianb — Mon, 17 May 2021 21:28:02 +0000

Wikipedia [1] seems to include sources:

> In late May 2003, studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from Asian palm civets to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was also later found in raccoon dogs (Nyctereuteus sp.), ferret badgers (Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like coronaviruses in Chinese bats.[60][61]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...