Hacker News: mmc4444

New comment by mmc4444 in "Show HN: Shopify's Top 90 Most Successful Startups in 2021"

mmc4444 — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 11:55:01 +0000

They sell a lot of bicycles but the majority of their products are accessory items.

New comment by mmc4444 in "Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked"

mmc4444 — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 11:30:48 +0000

How do you manage to get totally locked out of your account though: if I have backup codes, a backup email address, the backup code for my 2FA app... surely I am protected from this, right? Assuming my account doesn't get hacked and turned into a spambot.

I am sitting here thinking of what would happen if my Gmail account got blocked. The disruption it would cause to me is enormous.

New comment by mmc4444 in "Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal"

mmc4444 — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 10:57:47 +0000

> so only some go through Tor (see the Silk Road case for why), but that also equally applies to VPNs.

Can you explain this?

New comment by mmc4444 in "Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics"

mmc4444 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:43:24 +0000

> inheritance is a problem because it's un-earned wealth

> Inheritance taxes should be high, without being overly punitive

What's strange is that when you talk to people about inheritance tax they become instantly outraged at the idea of the government taking their money by force, yet they seem to have no problem with the government forcibly taking close to half of their salary.

It's a strange paradox and it seems that people just aren't used to the idea, despite it being much fairer. Tax the wealth of the dead rather than the earnings of the living.

If we could slash income tax in half but implement an inheritance tax of, for example, 50% above a certain threshold, it would be a win-win for everyone. The rich would still leave lots of money to their kids and the average person would get to keep more of their earned money. It's more meritocratic on every level.

Sadly, so many of our leaders now are very wealthy themselves, so this isn't a proposition they're likely to be enthusiastic about.

New comment by mmc4444 in "EU countries team up for semiconductor push"

mmc4444 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:33:07 +0000

In Northern Ireland there are small pockets of people learning it purely out of nationalist sentiment. Sinn Fein have been trying to force an Irish language act through for years which would see us become more like the south in that regard despite virtually nobody speaking it (the south, at least, has areas in the west of the country where it is actually a first language and therefore justifiable).

It's very frustrating because we do foreign languages so badly but instead of making an effort to improve our foreign language skills they're trying to push a largely dead language for purely symbolic reasons.

New comment by mmc4444 in "EU countries team up for semiconductor push"

mmc4444 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:28:32 +0000

> No more awkward meetings where 20 people understand each other reasonably well, but not the single UK representative... (true story)

I'm confused by this. Are you saying that the native English speaker in the room was the one having difficulty understanding what the other non-native speakers were saying?