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jayalpha

609 karma · joined August 21, 2018

https://news.ycombinator.com
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jayalpha··on “I lost my inheritance with one wrong digit on my sort code”
"The banking industry promised that from mid-2019 name checks would be carried out when customers sent money to other people"

Wow. So far behind.

"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to return the money, but he refused."

There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.

jayalpha··on Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires
This is in my opinion the best book about modern history. You can easily catch up with stuff you missed:

https://www.amazon.de/Rise-Fall-Great-Powers/dp/0679720197

This book was written in 1989 and was already skeptical about the stability of the soviet union and also thought what might happen to Ukraine if the the USSR disintegrates (attracted to EU/EC).

jayalpha··on Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires
You can buy this in most of this countries legally.

I love coca tea and coca wine.

jayalpha··on PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
Astrill. Not the cheapest but I am very happy with it. Also to circumvent GFC
jayalpha··on Belarus’s Soviet Economy
I don't see the insult. I should have recommended the poster this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit
jayalpha··on Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips
ICs and computers may have been a huge part of the downfall, especially if you consider how important they are in warfare.

"1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure"

The USSR had a good economy for some time. During Stalins brutal industrialization, growth rates may have even outclassed Chinas. E.g. 13% p.a. over 12 years, the numbers are controversial. I have a paper about it. Fact is, in WW1 and WW2 Germany faced a very different country.

The later decline may also correlate with declining oil production. The USSR sold a lot of Oil and Gas to the west.

"The soviet union failed, because centralized, collectivism, and having all the output owned by the state is a failure as a model...."

This is also true fro China and the last word, if the system is sustainable or not, is not spoken in this regards.

I tell you a secret: The western market oriented, capitalistic system is also bound to fail.

1. Due to the inherent feature to use debt to prefinance production, the economy has always to keep growing. It is not possible to use our current capitalistic system in a steady state economy.

2. Since wealth and economic growth are interlinked and energy is more or less limited, the system has to come to a stop sooner or later.

jayalpha··on It’s not a zero-sum game for Apple TV+, Netflix, and Disney+
"I'm not an economist but I've never heard of competition described as "negative-sum.""

It is obvious that, if competition is strong for a cake with a given size, that costs, e.g. for advertisement, may actually decrease the profits. While the size of the cake stays the same, the market players have less profits due to increased costs. So in the end everybody has a smaller slice. If I remember correctly, this has happened in a stagnant cigarette market where one player decided to increase his share. They spend a fortune on advertisement, as did the other since they don't want to lose their share. After some years the war stopped and everybody had more or less the same share as before, while having lost a tremendous amount of money on advertisement without gaining any benefit.

This may also be a funny example: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/nyregion/in-manhattan-piz...

"It's zero-sum because the consumer wins."

A zero sum game has nothing to do with consumers in this example. It means, the cake has a given size. If you want to increase the size of your slice, you have to take something away from another player.

A non-zero sum game would be were the cake (market) is growing. Every year you have a bigger cake. Then it is possible that you can increase your slice without reducing the slice of another player.

jayalpha··on Belarus’s Soviet Economy
It is well known. VEF, Eletrotehnika, Tondi Elektroonika and others. Also big biotech hub in Soviet times. AFAIK. Even the first soviet atomic bomb was partly build there ("Sillamäe").

I spare you the details for the Czech republic since this should be well known. They were always an industrial and manufacturing hub, even during German occupation in WW2. Airplanes, Tanks, guns, cars (Skoda!), machinery etc. Don't forget, they are a comparably small country.

jayalpha··on Siberia: 18,000-year-old frozen 'dog' stumps scientists
Check out this little doggy:

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-severed-wolf-head-from-...

jayalpha··on WebOS OSE 2.1
To sack it may have been one of the stupidest decisions ever by a CEO (Apotheker).

After the blow out sale they had something they were lacking before: huge customer base. But the idea to make money with software and apps instead of hardware may not have been compatible with HP business culture.

jayalpha··on The trouble with VPN and privacy review sites
Just a SEO blog post that posts something obvious.

They mention ThatOnePrivacySite.net but criticize him:

"Here's the difference. They include virtually every provider — the good and the bad — and present them at equal value to sort through. Instead of providing their readers with answers, they provide them with information that can be used to deduce their own recommendations, based on their values as an individual. "

1st: providing them all guarantees that there is no conflict of interest

2nd: "Instead of providing their readers with answers" You can not provide this answer since there a tons of reasons to use a VPN

"Your VPN provider should not be hiding away in Panama controlled by anonymous leadership."

This is also bullshit. In fact, some of the most resilient VPN provides provide no legislation at all. They only exists in Cyberspace. "Sue us!"

I actually have written the ThatOnePrivacySite.net guy and asked him to put this VPN on the list: https://www.rapidvpn.com/setup-vpn-softether-ubuntu

It is the only VPN that I am aware of that works out of the box with softether. I have not tried it yet. I currently use Astrill. Astrill is not cheap but works pretty well to circumvent censorship. A disadvantage of Astrill is that it often leaks DNS like a motherf....

This should prevent DNS leaks on Linux if UFW is installed.

ufw default deny outgoing

ufw allow out on tun0

ufw allow out on tun0 to 84.200.69.80 port 53

jayalpha··on The trouble with VPN and privacy review sites
The question is: What are you trying to achieve?

Access the internet via an anonymous SIM card (tethering), then use TOR to access your VPN (paid in Bitcoins, money order or whatever). This gives you a decent level of anonymity, if need be.

jayalpha··on The trouble with VPN and privacy review sites
"Does not claim to provide anonymity or censorship avoidance"

Well, a VPN provides privacy, not anonymity. But setting up a VPN is trivial. In fact, I could do it with a one liner on the Shell.

"censorship avoidance"

This is the tricky part. You may want to look into Softether.

jayalpha··on Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin
"If a whole other continent joins, it will be the biggest?"

Yes. The biggest free trade zone. Read the news from time to time. The EU-Mercosul FTA is supposed to be signed but may not due to Austria and partly also to France.

It may be the biggest already: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2177749/eu-...

jayalpha··on Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin
You will win this bet since zero cars are produced there.
jayalpha··on Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin
Best place to store the Boeing 737 MAX airplanes.
jayalpha··on Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin
I don't understand your post at all.

"so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's."

Who is "stifling"? And many companies work on autonomous cars.

"This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations"

What AI regulations in Europe? And what is Europe? The EU?

"and basically removed Customs tax"

This is not how custom taxes work. The EU is one of the biggest free trade zone in the world. If Mercosul joins, it is the biggest.

"I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries. Here in Israel we don't have Teslas and it's an extremely innovative place"

Because Tesla is burning through cash like a motherfucker. And Israel is a tiny place. This is also why, to my knowledge, nobody build cars in Israel. I mean, why not Dubai?

jayalpha··on The Morality of Quantum Computing
You may want to read "the industrial society and its future". As a philosopher, underrated.
jayalpha··on New York Fed Adds $115.14B in Short-Term Liquidity to Markets
Yes. Sure. If they don't come with a loan or a city taxing your asshole away with property taxes.
jayalpha··on New York Fed Adds $115.14B in Short-Term Liquidity to Markets
Big farm. No kidding.
jayalpha··on New York Fed Adds $115.14B in Short-Term Liquidity to Markets
so? What could possibly go wrong? :-)
jayalpha··on Falling Back to an Older MacBook Pro
16GB. Interesting. Is this the magic threshold?

My Dell XPS has 8GB. Definitely not enough!

jayalpha··on Congolese doctor discovered Ebola, but didn't get credit until now
So why did South Korea rise but Ghana did not? Ghana was richer in 1957 than South Korea.
jayalpha··on Congolese doctor discovered Ebola, but didn't get credit until now
>> But would the Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian colonialism?

> Probably yes.

Probably not, if you understand how "non integrating gap countries" work.

jayalpha··on Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers
It meant a quick and dirty fix.
jayalpha··on How to Buy Drugs
AFAIK Drugs are not available anymore on Alibaba.

You should not buy such important drugs from a dubious source.

Drugs from an official Chinese Pharmacy are probably very safe. If someone sells sugar instead of antibiotics be assured that he might face the death penalty.

Most raw materials are produces in China anyway, even if the medication is obtained from a western company.

BTW, was the cancer medication for injection?

jayalpha··on Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers
It is gypsy code and works for me. Use macchanger instead of adopt the script for your purposes.
jayalpha··on Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers
macchanger

Also extends time limites wifi.

Or use my gypsy code

import random

import os

mac=''

os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop')

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 down')

os.system('ifconfig eth1 down')

os.system('ifconfig wlp8s0 down')

os.system('ifconfig wlp7s0 down')

for i in range(0,3):

__r=random.randint(16, 256)

__mac=mac+":"+str(hex(r))[2:]

mac="00:07:E9"+mac

print mac

os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop')

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig wlp8s0 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig wlp7s0 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig eth1 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 up')

os.system('ifconfig eth1 up')

os.system('ifconfig wlp8s0 up')

os.system('ifconfig wlp7s0 up')

os.system('/etc/init.d/networking start')

os.system('ifconfig')

print "echo 'MAC changed..."

print "new random MAC "+mac

jayalpha··on SoftBank Reveals $6.5B Loss from Uber, WeWork Turmoil
What is a "real economic loss"?

A real economic loss is a realized loss. As long as Uber and WeWork are not closed down, their future performance is hard to predict. Uber especially is not a bad company. I love them. And if you have used Uber you ask yourself, how could you have tolerated the taxi clusterfuck so long.

jayalpha··on Passivhaus Detailing and Design
It comes with several disadvantages. Like no air circulation (except air condition, what is probably a must in such a house), mold problems etc. ...
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