Hacker News: throwaway60607

New comment by throwaway60607 in "So this guy is now S3. All of S3"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 21:34:26 +0000

That's exactly why DNS verification is a overkill.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 20:44:55 +0000

Yeah, RON hasn't moved against EUR - but the price of bread, butter, eggs, ham, cheese etc in RON (as well as EUR) has moved up. That's not pegged to prices anywhere.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 19:22:29 +0000

The new trend in Europe is to talk about consumer price inflation (increase) when they say "inflation". What they mean is that usual stuff (food, building materials, etc) costs more. There's no reason the local prices should track EUR "inflation", and it's true that they don't.

How much that matters to you is another thing - it matters a lot to a poor/average wage person, I think it doesn't mean much when you're making a SWE salary.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 19:16:44 +0000

Not really, my savings converted to EUR gained thanks to the currency movement and then the interest - which is bigger than anywhere in the Eurozone. I am mostly interested in that since I buy property in Eurozone countries. What I spend in CZ is peanuts. Yeah I can buy less bread and butter but I don't really care, it's not like I'm going to buy food for 5M CZK, I spend less than 15k/month on that. And Czech property prices are currently going down anyways.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 19:12:45 +0000

What actually matters to an Eurozone resident is the currency movement against EUR, not the local consumer price inflation - you don't need to be a local consumer at all. These indicators don't move in lockstep, in case of CZK they actually moved in the opposite direction than expected.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "The first crewed mission to Mars should be all female"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 18:46:30 +0000

I don't get this talk about fairness? How could be choosing based on sex fair in any way, ever? I thought that's exactly the unfair thing we wanted to avoid in the modern world. Is it now OK to hire based on sex too? What the hell...

New comment by throwaway60607 in "At Musk’s brain-chip startup, animal-testing panel rife with potential conflicts"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 18:25:45 +0000

> In response to an inquiry from Reuters, the USDA said it had found no conflicts of interest on Neuralink’s board when the department inspected its animal-research operations during 10 inspections since 2020. The company has passed all inspections with no citations, according to public records and a person with knowledge of the examinations.

If the regulator says everything is OK, we can't expect the company to think/act otherwise. They passed all inspections and are acting according to the law. If we want change at Neuralink, the law and the regulator need to change.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 17:34:59 +0000

Just a little bit to the south.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 17:31:53 +0000

Czech Koruna. Every bank there offers it now. But the currency is losing against EUR right now (after it gained a lot in the past year).

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Europeans drain billions from banks, fed up with shrinking savings"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 16:38:59 +0000

My European savings account has 6% interest. Not EUR though.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "If You Double-Park and You’re Rich, Should You Pay a Higher Fine?"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 14:14:43 +0000

Well I think I meant something in between. You don't need to be from old money to get a property in Monaco and much less in other places in EU - I got several, and I started literally from 0. And you definitely don't need to be from old money to rent an apartment in Monaco for half a year. A senior software engineer (contractor) could afford it and would profit from the operation if they live in Scandinavia/Germany/Austria/France.

I have a good enough tax regime where I live in Central Europe - for 2022 I paid 8% including income tax, health and social insurance. But I'd definitely consider doing this if it was over 20%.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "If You Double-Park and You’re Rich, Should You Pay a Higher Fine?"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 12:36:01 +0000

You don't need citizenship at all. Not even permanent or temporary residency. You will become a tax resident of a state even if you have just a tourist visa. You don't need to own the property either, a rental apartment is just fine. Even living in a hotel would work if you can prove it was your "base of operations" during that time.

Not sure what's the distinction between rich and wealthy, sounds the same to me.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "If You Double-Park and You’re Rich, Should You Pay a Higher Fine?"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:51:15 +0000

Here's how you do it if you're rich:

Every European country (even Finland) has harmonized rules about "tax residency". The rules are simple: If you actually and honestly live there at least half a year and one day of a calendar year, that place becomes your tax residency for that year.

The rich person buys a property in Monaco and goes there for half a year + 1 day. That year Monaco is their tax residency. They take out dividends from their off-shore (or Netherlands) holding companies. Boom, perfectly legal personal income taxed at super-low (or 0) rate that Finland has no idea about.

Then the person returns back to Finland and again accumulates their income into the holding company for a few years until they run out of whatever they got as a dividend.

Repeat until...

New comment by throwaway60607 in "UFOs exist in the low information zone"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:37:12 +0000

Humans, animals, plants, microbes, etc are that technology. Life is self-replicating nanotechnology machines. If synthetic biology works - and we know it does, we have already created a synthetic cell - it's perfectly possible. Not to mention it could evolve on its own. Humans are Von Neumann probes in our environment.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "UFOs exist in the low information zone"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:19:29 +0000

Why trolls? Maybe they just want to learn about us. I don't see the reason to assume they have godlike sensors with unlimited range - they need to come closer to see detail.

Them being able to travel here doesn't imply they have significantly better technology than we do - it just means they had more time, perhaps their civilization is older than ours. 100k years older would be enough to send out a probe from some nearby stars. 1M years older would be enough to travel from thousands of not-so-nearby stars around.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Ask HN: What CAPTCHAs can beat GPT-4?"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:06:40 +0000

A person vouching for another person. If they vouch for a bot and it's uncovered, they and all the others they vouched for lose access forever. This creates a powerful social dynamic wrt. choosing who vouches for you and who you vouch for.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "UFOs exist in the low information zone"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:04:41 +0000

To see as much detail as possible without confirming they are here. Sensors aren't unlimited, aliens would be constrained by the same physics as we are.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "UFOs exist in the low information zone"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 09:37:04 +0000

You don't need to be much more advanced than we are. You only need time - perhaps the alien civilization is millions of years older than ours. That would allow them to use peer-level technology to travel here.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "UFOs exist in the low information zone"

throwaway60607 — Thu, 04 May 2023 07:15:09 +0000

To be able to observe their reaction to unknown without confirming I am there.

And maybe I don't have unlimited sensors - so I want to see as much detail as possible.

New comment by throwaway60607 in "Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer (2011)"

throwaway60607 — Wed, 03 May 2023 21:21:08 +0000

Given how big telecoms usually behave, I really don't think so. Remember the fight for usable mobile internet... Ever tried WAP and developing on it?

They set the whole thing up to control it and charge extraorbitant fees for it both to the user and to anyone publishing on it. Minitel as well as WAP. Apple's 30% is peanuts compared to the fees I'm talking about - I mean contracts with minimums in millions.

Good thing Apple kicked their sand castle down. People don't give them enough credit for that.