Hacker News: mmarq

New comment by mmarq in "Brexit Ten Years On: The Economy"

mmarq — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:49:49 +0000

Some effects of Brexit began right after the referendum (eg a business investment flattened since 2016).

2019–2020 are the worst years to start a comparison, because the UK uses a different accounting method to measure the government's contribution to GDP. So, COVID looks much worse in the UK and the recovery looks much better.

New comment by mmarq in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

mmarq — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:17:52 +0000

Do people pay income tax on capital gains in the US? Why summing this fantasy rate with income tax otherwise?

New comment by mmarq in "The locals don't know"

mmarq — Mon, 11 May 2026 07:54:22 +0000

> Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can.

The local working in hospitality is earning minimum wage, the premium you pay goes to the landlord.

New comment by mmarq in "Pinocchio is weirder than you remembered"

mmarq — Fri, 08 May 2026 06:23:08 +0000

Pinocchio was published in 1–2-page instalments in “Giornale per i bambini”, a magazine for children.

New comment by mmarq in "Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept"

mmarq — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:16:32 +0000

But it’s not guaranteed that you’ll ever be as rich as a pensioner who owns a flat outright.

Asset prices inflated so much that income is not completely irrelevant, but it is at best only half of the picture.

New comment by mmarq in "UK intelligence censored report on global warming and homeland security"

mmarq — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:05:25 +0000

> your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it

Your politicians are actually subsidising the rural lifestyle with direct and indirect transfers. Eg in Europe, you can buy land, leave it more or less abandoned and cash in agricultural subsidies.

New comment by mmarq in "Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU"

mmarq — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:50:26 +0000

The problem with this is that private health insurance is very cheap because there is an NHS that takes care of emergencies and does more than 50% of the rest. So your taxes keep your health insurance premia low.

Otherwise a comprehensive health insurance wouldn’t cost 200£ a month per person (I just requested a quote from AXA, as a 45 year old with no health problems, adding all packages, unlimited specialist visits and no excess)

New comment by mmarq in "Dead Internet Theory"

mmarq — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:51:17 +0000

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47342

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Disparition_(roman)

New comment by mmarq in "AWS to bare metal two years later: Answering your questions about leaving AWS"

mmarq — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:34:59 +0000

> A modern server can be power cycled remotely, can be reinstalled remotely over networked media, can have its console streamed remotely, can have fans etc. checked remotely without access to the OS it's running etc. It's not very different from managing a cloud - any reasonable server hardware has management boards. Even if you rent space in a colo, most of the time you don't need to set foot there other than for an initial setup (and you can rent people to do that too).

All of this was already possible 20 years ago, with iLO and DRAC cards.

New comment by mmarq in "Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia"

mmarq — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 05:53:36 +0000

We have a similar law in Italy, but, not having much advanced technology foreigners are willing to buy, the government uses it to prevent foreigners from buying washing machine manufacturers.

New comment by mmarq in "The government ate my name"

mmarq — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 06:44:03 +0000

My wife and child are regularly stopped at the border if I’m not with them, because they don’t have the same surname. I live in the UK.

New comment by mmarq in "Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels"

mmarq — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 06:17:51 +0000

These panels are heavily subsidised. My brother got it almost completely financed by the state of Berlin a few years back.

New comment by mmarq in "Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?"

mmarq — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 06:42:07 +0000

The reality is that these letters are written in a kind of pseudolegalistic language, where a phrase like “the employee was punctual” means they were usually late. If they were actually punctual, you'd see something more like “the employee consistently demonstrated exceptional punctuality”.

You usually need the reference letter to be reviewed by the works council or by an employment lawyer.

Elfo – An asynchronous distributed actor framework in Rust

mmarq — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 17:36:06 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/elfo-rs/elfo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44778203

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mmarq in "VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in"

mmarq — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 05:46:02 +0000

Assuming these numbers are relevant and correct, there is a reason why qualified migrants prefer other countries.

If you were a French or a German doctor or an engineer, would you spend 3 months fighting with the Home Office for the questionable privilege of earning £50K per annum in a country where a half decent flat costs £2500 a month?

New comment by mmarq in "Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026"

mmarq — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 10:56:35 +0000

> And Germany being overzealous in fiscal and monetary policy has stagnated growth and limited policy options.

German fiscal discipline is a tool of strategic independence. It started in ‘49 when they knew they would eventually had to reabsorb East Germany. Today it allows them to re-arm without having to ask permission.

Over the past 20 years, Germany grew more than Italy, France and the UK.

New comment by mmarq in "Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026"

mmarq — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 08:02:18 +0000

> The biggest issue is giving up one of the biggest instrument of control over the economy to a supra-national non-democratic organisation

This is the point. Germany managed to set up a really independent central bank (which is a non- democratic, bureaucratic, etc… thingy) and inflation was at the target for decades. Italy, France, etc… didn’t, and inflation was 2-3 point above target and above the German levels. So they joined the Euro, which has a governance very similar to the Deutsche Mark.

To this day, inflation in European countries outside the Eurozone is higher.

New comment by mmarq in "U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter"

mmarq — Thu, 01 May 2025 07:33:09 +0000

If I recall correctly, the UK changed the way in which they compute the government contribution to GDP (going from G being just cost to some estimate of the output). This caused both the COVID drop and recovery to look steeper.

New comment by mmarq in "'Tech entrepreneur took our money but failed to deliver our startup dreams'"

mmarq — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 11:00:22 +0000

My understanding is that when you transfer large sums (such as 30K) to an overseas account for the first time, the British bank is required to block it and ask you questions.

The first time I transferred money to an overseas account in my name, the bank blocked the transfer for a day until I gave them proof that I was the owner of the account, what I was doing with the money and that I wasn’t being scammed.

New comment by mmarq in "How the 2025 US Financial Crisis is Different than 2008"

mmarq — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 17:55:20 +0000

They give you stuff and you give them pieces of paper. If they misbehave, you can embargo them and now they are in trouble because they depend on you to turn said pieces of paper into something of value.