Hacker News: mytailorisrich

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:54:49 +0000

You don't need a QR code "across the internet". A QR code is for in-person payments. That may be convenient for private individual to private individual (which is a niche market) but for stores or things like transport contactless, which we already all have, is clearly superior UX and there is neither a demand nor a point in having QR codes instead.

My take-away from this tedious thread is that Wero does not currently support contactless. It is fine to admit it (I don't why people turn into fanboys over randopm things) but that does make it of limited use for in-person transactions apart from niche use-cases and, certainly, this means NOT "Goodbye to Visa and Mastercard" just yet.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:39:26 +0000

But why would we want to take a step back when we have contactless right now? This makes little sense... It is worse UX and does not work (I think) for quick things like taking the bus or underground.

Again, China has what is has because people had phones but no payment cards, and they don't have "software freedom" either (whatever that means): They are fully bound to the two providers (Alipay and WeChat) which provide accounts to a point now that is much worse that my dependency or Visa or Mastercard here in Europe because most places now do not accept anything else.

What would make sense is for the likes of Wero to find a way to support contactless so people can just tap exactly as they do now. As said by another commenter, this does not require a physical card (and already exists with Apple Pay and Google Pay). Frankly, Wero is a solution looking for a problem at this point in time...

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:53:06 +0000

I guess the point is: Why would you bother with QR codes if you have contactless?

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:53:16 +0000

IMHO, QR codes are a big step back from contactless and appeared in countries that didn't have widespread card adoption (e.g. China),

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:44:48 +0000

How does it work when you need to pay for something in person? (what contactless is for)

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:36:26 +0000

What's the benefit of this over contactless payments?

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Heat pumps and EVs can save EU households over €2,200 a year – report"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:50:44 +0000

Cynically, in the UK heat pumps are also promoted because they an alternative to public investment in energy production and grid upgrades, which are already under pressure with the transition to EVs. This applies to many European countries...

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Hanoi’s humble beer glass and the memory of a nation"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:25:43 +0000

Of course, how did I forget Amora!

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Hanoi’s humble beer glass and the memory of a nation"

mytailorisrich — Tue, 19 May 2026 19:37:07 +0000

It used to be like that in France with Maille glasses (mustard and gherkins).

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late"

mytailorisrich — Mon, 18 May 2026 09:43:58 +0000

You need to know how the person behaves and how to approach them. Some people will take very badly to be 'challenged' by a subordinate in public but may have no issue if you make a 'suggestion' in private.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue"

mytailorisrich — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:14:11 +0000

"This is a parody website. Any resemblance to real companies wash-trading their revenue is purely coincidental and also definitely happening."

New comment by mytailorisrich in "UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system"

mytailorisrich — Fri, 15 May 2026 09:10:23 +0000

The internal organisation and management of the NHS is horrible.

It is horrible to work for them and in fact in consulting as soon as you hear that the project is for the NHS people run and hide not to be assigned.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract"

mytailorisrich — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:38:12 +0000

Yes you can use the code however you want but equally they are free to bar anyone they wish from accessing their servers. These are completely orthogonal issues in a legal sense.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "David Attenborough's 100th Birthday"

mytailorisrich — Fri, 08 May 2026 21:03:18 +0000

Population 1926: ~2 billion

Population 2026: ~8.3 billion

Can't escape this and its consequences on the environment.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Noyb: "LinkedIn locks GDPR rights behind a paywall""

mytailorisrich — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:16:34 +0000

> For a fee of around 30 euros per month, any user can also view the list of visitors to their own profile. However, if LinkedIn is supposed to provide the same information as part of a GDPR data subject access request, it allegedly cannot

A GDPR data request access forces a company to disclose what personal data their hold about you.

It very unclear how a list of visitors to your profile is your personal data. Seems more like personal data of the visitor. Possibly you may argue that the number of visits is your personal data but it seems a stretch to argue that the details of the visitors (what is a paid for service) is.

That being said, when it comes to interpretation of the GDPR anything is possible...

New comment by mytailorisrich in "BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets"

mytailorisrich — Thu, 07 May 2026 07:34:04 +0000

> You can’t legalize your way to cultural assimilation

And that's why we are unlikely to see mass immigration allowed in China. They know that and can see what has happened and is happening in Europe and are thus likely to protect themselves. That's not my opinion but what Chinese think if you can discuss openly with people there.

This is a puzzling badly-received point of view here, but I think Europe and its official narrative that are actually the odd ones out globally.

China is investing a lot in automation and they already have state of the art automated factories. I think this will be the way forward for them and everyone (birth rates are dropping everywhere).

New comment by mytailorisrich in "BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:45:46 +0000

It isn't true that most migration is internal, actually. Across the whole EU in 2023 77% of new immigrants were non-EU [1], for instance.

[1] https://www.rfberlin.com/immigrant-population-eu/

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Boris Johnson sees a "blessing" in falling British births"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:23:28 +0000

He is correct in his analysis of course. Current population levels have brought the planet to its knees.

The hypocrisy is that he himself has 8 chikdren...

New comment by mytailorisrich in "BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets"

mytailorisrich — Wed, 06 May 2026 20:38:12 +0000

I doubt it because the Chinese are very protective of their homogeneity and see what has happened in Europe as a massive cautionary tale. So my guess is that they will be very picky and control both quality and numbers tightly.

New comment by mytailorisrich in "Two millionth electric car registered as market rebounds from tax changes"

mytailorisrich — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:40:56 +0000

Yes, seems a bit generous. What I found most often is ~4-5% with up to 18% higher tax payers (>50k) in latest tax year (threshold being frozen...).