mb_72

There is an informative and balanced take on this on the ABC News (Australia) site:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-va...

NASA's budget is less than half of 1% of the USA total budget (2020 figures from Wikipedia). I daresay there are other areas (cough military spending cough) that would benefit from some examination as to where money can be saved through reduction / efficiencies.

BTW I'm not American, but have followed NASA projects for many, many years, and they almost always give me some greater hope for the future of mankind (not to mention admiration for the science and engineering people behind the scenes).

> The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots.

I would guess that your man-in-the-street can identify much more readily with another human doing 'something' in space than they can some 'robot', even if the latter might be more more productive. And what's wrong with some 'entertainment', not every aspect of life needs to be optimised and tuned for full productivity / efficiency.

$5 / month is still pretty close to $0 / month for many people. I transitioned from Gmail -> Fastmail a year ago, and I'm very happy with all aspects (reliability, features etc). Would be fine with paying > $5 month if that's what it took.

"The recruitment of students is predatory and eventually the saturation of subpar graduates from these university degrees would have eventually resulted in the fading of both cultural and brand name prestige of sending your kids to Australia for study."

I would argue that this has occurred already; my associates in China assume that many students in Australia cheat their way through their degree, especially the ones who cheated their way into their degree (regarding the English requirements). eg https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-01/chinese-students-paid...

Location: Tallinn, Estonia (currently) / Adelaide, South Australia (sometimes)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: MS ecosystem (C#, Azure, MS SQL Server), lots of other things (see LI)

CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeboth/

Email: mike@anodynesystems.com.au

----

I'm a late 40's all-rounder with 15 years of remote development experience, and a collection of past and current successful projects across many industries, eg I developed a logistics / transport application for the largest heavy transport company in the Baltic states. EU + AU citizenship. Interested in helping smaller businesses solve their problems or improve profitability.

There's not really such a thing as 'boosting' your immune system - it's either working properly, or it's not. A 'boosted' / over-active immune system results in auto-immune diseases like Crohn's (which is what I have). Funnily enough I'm being treated with Stelara which actually suppresses my immune system - so it's no 'live' vaccines for me and other vaccines might not work effectively or at all, and I need to be extra careful to avoid getting ill. Working 100% remote is something I am appreciating more and more currently.

I couldn't find any information on the unloaded weight of this thing - do you know what it is?

I've looked at lots of options for carry-on luggage, and most are heavy enough to significantly eat into the 7kg or 8kg allowed. Honestly, I can't imagine moving away from the simple backpack I used; it's light, and I can carry 8kg easily for any distance (covering laptop, Mac Air, and misc other items). By carrying everything, I can go anywhere I can walk, and don't have to worry about pushing / pulling some box on wheels around.

These kind of mega-expensive luggage 'solutions' mostly seem to be for people who like showing they can afford such things.

Bolt has fixed upfront pricing (at least in Estonia and Hungary). It's also NOT Uber, one significant factor I use Bolt (for all of Uber's past transgressions).

I would pay a bit extra to have 30 minute's worth of 'horizontal time' in a small bunk for flights over 10 hours in duration. However I assume that because this isn't a thing already, someone else thought of it, did the calculations and worked out it wouldn't be profitable for the airline.

It looks like it would have taken the driver perhaps 10 minutes to negotiate the town, significantly improving the imagery. I would be interested to know how Google determines what should and shouldn't be included at locations such as these.

I've made a list of similar 'one-horse'-type towns to visit during a future one-in-a-lifetime trip around my home country (Australia). Growing up in a country town there (population roughly 25k at that time), things are indeed different than in the capital cities, and I imagine even 'more different' the smaller the population.

> It claims that the islands have belonged to China for hundreds of years, and points to various old maps, historical use by Chinese fishermen, mentions in various treaties, and so on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-se... "... the tribunal rejected China’s argument that it enjoys historic rights over most of the South China Sea. "

> I mostly hope that the situation doesn't escalate, but many sides are capable of escalation - the US, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and others.

Only one of those countries has been building / extending artificially reefs / islands in this area.

Xi lost face over this decision, and just said "tough, we aren't going to abide by it anyway". Hardly the actions of a reasonable government as good world citizens.

> I can think of much more serious issues than some uninhabited islands and rocks

China has deemed it very, very important to seize this area. It's pretty clear why to most people.

> US military actions is the South China Sea could be viewed as highly provocative. I can see why China would respond by putting anti-aircraft batteries on the islands.

You think it's reasonable to respond to freedom of navigation operations (also conducted by other countries than the USA) by militarising islands that aren't even theirs?

Well, I at least try to be consistent, and do query my USA friends about the current administration and it's actions. Recent political changes in the USA have made it the norm to have similar populist leaders or parties gain strength all around the world, it's actually quite distressing for me to see.

> As a chinese, this kind of comment makes me hate the west even more. I have no control over my government.

That right there is exactly the response your government would want you to have. You already 'hate the west', and now even more because of what I wrote? That seems unreasonable to me, and there was not one racist mention in my comment either.

If 'my' government (in Australia) were pulling these kind of stunts in 'my' name, damn right I would be doing something about it. In fact, I already do something about my community's shabby treatment of the First Australians (financially and lobbying wise).

I feel we, the people, have a responsibility to ourselves and other humans, irrespective of country of origin, culture or background, to resist and oppose transgressions by the governments who represent us.

I'm not American, and don't follow what Trump says or doesn't say that closely.

Myself, I do criticise my own government, protest on the streets, and also donate money to causes that work in opposition, mostly, to the current government. I've also made business decisions that involve much less interaction with mainland Chinese businesses and customers precisely because I disagree with the mainland Chinese governments way of doing things. Maybe it's cost me some money, but I sleep better at night.

I've lived in China for some time, and have sources of information other than just 'Western media'. Are you saying the article I linked in, for one example, is not accurate? Are you saying the UN is wrong with their information? I have no doubt the Chinese have a different point of view; they have much less complete information on the subjects I mentioned, and others.

But, yes, of course the point is that the poster likely isn't doing anything as they are partially funded by the Chinese government, and also are benefiting from all the aggressive actions their government is taking inside and outside of China.

Curious as the way I see it it's very often China who is the 'initiator', eg internment of Muslims, stealing of territory in South China sea, debt-trap diplomacy, and so forth. Presuming that you are aware of these occurrences, do you agree with your government's positions and actions, and - if not - what actions, if any, do you take to make it clear your opposition?

The Chinese government is, IMO, massively over sensitive to any outside commentary or criticism, eg: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-31/china-warns-australia...

Good, perhaps, in a pinch but I and all musos I know already have their favourite looping / slow-down / EQ / song segment apps. I use Anytune Pro on an iPad, myself, and for one thing it has fractional speed adjustment - 0.5 / 0.75 / 1 etc is just too broad a range, especially as I like practicing things at 0.7 then 0.8 then 0.9 etc if they are particular tricky to get down.

> Our climate and ecology are certainly at risk, but I think the biggest threat in the world right now is the rapid rise of fascist China. They're challenging the notion that free speech and democracy are required for capitalism and economic gain.

That is exactly my main concern in the modern age also. Other countries are already interested in China's technology: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-23/sixth-world-internet-...

'Countries looking to crackdown on dissent and the spread of information — like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Laos, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — have already signed up to China's "digital silk road".'

Thank you for the extra information, looks like my info and hence opinion is not up-to-date.

Even prominent people can have a bad day or have other momentary hassles to deal with that might make them behave less than gracious on occasion. Trying to be generous here.

How many of those basic components still are manufactured in China? My argument was that it's impossible to remove China completely from the supply and manufacturing chain, not that it's impossible to move 'production' outside of China.

I'm not sure it's realistic for many or any countries to move manufacturing out of China. Say assembly is moved out of China, they still need to source the parts, and how far do you go with this? To the point where Apple is making, in their own factories, every resistor, capacitor, logic IC, ribbon connector, PCB etc? This would seem to require a reversal of the changes in manufacturing that have occurred over recent decades in a much shorter period of time.

I am no fan of China - in the news recently a couple of our politicians have been called out as having a 'cold war mentality' just because they pointed out there differences between Australian and Chinese values - but I have to keep using Apple devices to develop and support software for clients. Likewise, I bet no matter what Apple does there will be others who stick with them as a matter of commercial reality. 'Commercial reality' has been and will continue to be China's way to be a mandatory part of world events.

Same experience with me, except that the one who said no to chemo died, and the other who said yes is still alive and has recovered (yes, after hair loss and other side effects).

"Do the research" - research is what scientists do, not what is achieved by Googling. No medical treatment is 100% perfect, unfortunately, but I and others I know prefer to play the odds rather than not.

I 100% agree, but my mother made the decision not to teach myself or my brother any Estonian when we were young as "there was no point as at that time it seemed Estonia would be part of the USSR forever and you'll never go there anyway". My Dad disagreed with this approach, but went along with it; it's one reason they're still married. :)

I'm half-Australian, half-Estonian, but don't really speak any Estonian yet still live here (sorry, nationalistic Estonians!). My wife is Estonian, and our nieces speak English to each other quite a bit when I'm around (and, I suspect, some significant part of the time besides that).

People like me are definitely 'part of the problem' with the Estonian language being not as used as it should be, however outside of Estonia the language - as beautiful as it is and as significant a part of my heritage as it is - is almost useless. I've done some courses + read some books, and can understand the language a reasonable amount, but I cannot speak it. Time-wise, I find it hard to justify over learning more skills for my software development trade.

I remember copying the code out for a Snake variant from a Commodore 64 magazine in '83 or '84 - back in the days when they would publish source code for things in each issue - and it made Snake a craze at my country Australia Primary school where we had 8 '64s sharing a single networked floppy drive. It also made me, the biggest nerd at the school, the cool guy... for a few days..

Better build two; a backup of a special cable is always nice to have and it's much more convenient to order the parts and build both at the same time.

Plenty of non-rookies are using Behringer gear these days, and plenty of Behringer gear has been built just fine; I have a Behringer mixer from the late 90s that is still in use and 100% functional, and I've got a new XR18 digital mixer that can't be beat for bang-for-buck.

Want to help rookies? Steer them away from the $500 tube-screamer or dual-blues-breaker clones that you need to be on a waiting list for 2 years before you can even buy one! :)

Any time 'analog' is used with reference to boutique guitar FX it's because they want to try and convince you to pay more money than other equivalents. Same goes for 'hand-made' etc etc. In a crowded market where 90% of the companies are making more or less the same pedals with the same circuits you need to try and stand out in some way.