Hacker News: mariojv

Spain Is Thirsty

mariojv — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 16:16:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/business/spain-water-desalination.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41257668

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by mariojv in "Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem"

mariojv — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 21:05:24 +0000

It's kind of dystopian that it would even get to this point, but I wonder if there would be a business model that could sell "squatter insurance" to people, requiring that they follow particular security system procedures, but pay them out if someone successfully squats in their place.

New comment by mariojv in "Japanese 'My Number Card' Digital IDs Coming to Apple's Wallet App"

mariojv — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 05:04:09 +0000

I’d hate to run out of battery or accidentally break my phone and lose access to something as basic as an identity document or my main means of transportation, at the same time as having lost access to call for help.

The wealthy are building "passport portfolios"

mariojv — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 04:27:41 +0000

Article URL: https://unusualwhales.com/news/the-wealthy-are-building-passport-portfolios-collections-of-second-and-even-third-or-fourth-citizenships-in-case-they-need-to-flee-their-home-country

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40194432

Points: 9

# Comments: 3

Spanish Court reopens investigation in Pegasus spyware scandal

mariojv — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 01:04:22 +0000

Article URL: https://www.dw.com/en/spain-court-reopens-investigation-in-pegasus-spying-scandal/a-68901546

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40139255

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Europe's A.I. 'Champion' Sets Sights on Tech Giants in U.S.

mariojv — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 05:23:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/business/artificial-intelligence-mistral-france-europe.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40020726

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by mariojv in "Japan's Nikkei surpasses 1989 all-time high"

mariojv — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 05:32:03 +0000

???

Are you claiming the Fed has directly purchased US stocks? I don't think they have.

I've only ever seen reports of them buying government and mortgage debt: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/22/how-the-federal-reserve-affe...

You can argue the purpose of these actions was to prop up the stock market, but I don't think they've ever intervened in as direct a manner as the Bank of Japan has with buying company stocks.

New comment by mariojv in "Japan's Nikkei surpasses 1989 all-time high"

mariojv — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 04:01:52 +0000

Not sure, but BOJ was a net seller of stocks in 2023: https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Bank-of-Japan/BOJ-turned-net...

So, it seems like they're at least starting to offload their stock holdings.

I was very surprised when I learned that their central bank was purchasing stocks. I'd heard about it first in 2020, but apparently it had been going on before the pandemic.

It makes me wonder if the US stock market crashed hard enough if the Fed would start buying up stocks on the major indexes. Are they even legally allowed to do this? If so, what other assets can the Fed acquire? REITs? What about direct real estate purchases? I wonder if corporate real estate crashed hard enough from remote work if they'd prop it up.

The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking

mariojv — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 18:50:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/science/space/atomic-doomsday-clock.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39348718

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

On the High Seas, a Pillar of Global Trade Is Under Attack

mariojv — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 06:12:12 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/world/on-the-high-seas-a-pillar-of-global-trade-is-under-attack-f6e495c5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213185

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by mariojv in "Basic Gerrit Walkthrough – For GitHub Users"

mariojv — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 15:47:24 +0000

I liked Gerrit when working on OpenStack several years ago. The use of patch sets seemed pretty intuitive, and it was nice that there wasn't a "force push" workflow available that would hide changes from previous reviews. I tend to use a merge rather than rebase workflow with GitHub now, but I often see developers do the opposite, which can make directly viewing code changes from previous reviews challenging.

I am surprised that this post advocates for amending commits, though. It's been a while, so I might be misremembering, but I think a tool like git review makes that unnecessary:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/git-review

https://docs.opendev.org/opendev/git-review/latest/

New comment by mariojv in "President Biden Announces Billions to Deliver World-Class High-Speed Rail"

mariojv — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:29:31 +0000

I wish the map were higher definition. I see a line from San Antonio (or Austin?) to El Paso, my most traveled route, but nothing in the text description about it. There are also some other lines linking the Texas Triangle which would be great!

Regardless, I hope this plan sees fruition in a reasonable timeframe. Further investments in transit within cities themselves would be welcome too, given a lot of folks may be renting a car at 1 end of a high speed rail trip, but this seems great.

New comment by mariojv in "Extracting training data from ChatGPT"

mariojv — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:49:05 +0000

To me, it seems like more of a competitive issue for OpenAI if part of their secret is the ability to synthesize good training data, or if they're purchasing training data from some proprietary source.

What we know about aliens, according to science

mariojv — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 17:44:32 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/11/25/aliens-uaps-scientific-evidence/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38415027

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by mariojv in "Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?"

mariojv — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 16:38:05 +0000

I wonder how they chose which countries to include in the graph. A lot of my family's Venezuelan and have 0 spice tolerance whatsoever despite growing up near the equator.

They also seem to be ranking things per recipe rather than per unit of food eaten by the population, if you read the abstract. Even if there are 9 spicy recipes and 1 bland recipe in a country, if the 1 bland recipe is eaten every day, doesn't that just show that there are more spicy varieties of dishes?

Still an interesting article regardless.

New comment by mariojv in "Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president"

mariojv — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 03:25:05 +0000

That's an interesting fact about the ketchup. What other everyday similarities like that did you notice?

New comment by mariojv in "Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president"

mariojv — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 03:16:12 +0000

Would they need to do it all at once like this? How have other countries that have officially dollarized handled the transition, if there are any major ones?

It looks like the list of countries besides US that exclusively use USD is small, none with a population over 100k, although I know several economies have de facto dollarized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution#Countrie...

Maybe that Wikipedia list is out of date. I'd thought Ecuador was running on dollars.

New comment by mariojv in "Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans"

mariojv — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:01:50 +0000

My eyes popped at that salary for a notary in Spain given most eng positions seem to pay under 60K euro.

It looks like they need a law degree, too, so I'm sure they offer legal services other than property transactions?

https://www.notariado.org/portal/en/how-to-be-a-notary

New comment by mariojv in "Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically"

mariojv — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:30:07 +0000

On the topic of fire codes, most Spanish apartment buildings also don't have smoke alarms, as far as I can tell. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246950

I'm not against safe building, but some friends of ours were actually denied the ability to be eligible to foster a child because their home didn't have 2 points of egress in every room. The US seems particularly stringent about anything fire-related.

The EU's plan to regain its competitive edge

mariojv — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:52:22 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/124b4cdb-deb9-49a0-b28d-d97838606661

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38163380

Points: 2

# Comments: 0