navidfarhadi

It’s possible to (mostly) avoid political stuff on those websites if one wants to, instead of refusing to use the sites completely. Just as an example, I rarely visit r/all, but I do visit specific subreddits that I’m subscribed to like r/privacy, r/pihole, and r/thinkpad. On Facebook, I never browse my newsfeed, but I am a member of a group for my apartment complex in the Stockholm area which lists local events and people selling stuff or giving away stuff in the community.

My point is that is that it’s possible to filter out a lot of the political garbage on those sites if one wishes, but it does appear to be getting more difficult since political stuff is appearing more and more often in places that I personally wouldn’t expect.

I use prisjakt regularly as well but mainly for the price comparison feature between retailers. The reviews on the website are decent as well though but there are typically a couple orders of magnitude fewer reviews on products than on Amazon DE/UK/US.

I actually use Amazon DE/UK/US for to look at reviews but I more often than not end up purchasing from a Swedish e-tailer. There are some exceptions though, like when the price is just much lower on Amazon DE. I had to buy a label maker last week and the price on Amazon DE for a specific model was almost 40% cheaper than buying it from a local store in Sweden.

I'm very interested to see how Amazon's entry into the Swedish market plays out. I used to shop a lot on Amazon back when I lived in the SF Bay Area and thought I would miss it when I moved to Stockholm but honestly that has not been the case. I get 1-2 day shipping from other online retailers in Sweden anyway (like CDON and Webhallen) and there is quite fierce competition between a few of the bigger names in the game which keeps prices low. The only thing I miss about Amazon was their very generous return policy and same-day shipping on some items, but I think the latter is limited to larger markets.

> My company’s suggested implementation made it to the second round of proposals.

If you don't mind me asking what company do you work for? I am actually studying computer science (security and privacy emphasis) at KTH in Sweden and I have been interested in CBDC for some time now. If your company offers master's theses I would love to connect on LinkedIn or via email.

> the other one is how to live up to the requirement from the government that the currency needs to be liquid also during a crisis (what if electricity or telecom doesn’t work?)

This is the first thing I thought of when reading the article. Since you seem to have some knowledge about the field, what are some proposed solutions to this problem?

The article mentioned something that I find particularly interesting:

> Sweden is the least cash-dependent country in the world, making it a litmus test for how central banks can react to people using less of the money they print.

To be honest I had my suspicions that this was the case. Anecdotally, I have lived in Sweden since August of 2018 and I cannot recall a single time where I have carried cash in my wallet or used cash for a transaction in Sweden. If I am not paying with a credit/debit card I usually just use Swish (similar to Venmo or Cash app for US readers, except it's operated by several Swedish banks and I believe the Swedish central bank).

If you are looking for an alternative I highly recommend Bitwarden (not affiliated with the company). I switched over from Lastpass around a year and a half ago and am very happy with the service. All of the clients and the server are 100% open source plus you can self host if you want to.

As a child in Sweden in the late 90s and early 2000s I recall that my dad had a hardware token to access his bank account. Though nowadays people in Sweden use BankID for the most part which is 2FA in the form of a mobile app. BankID is also used to login to most government websites in Sweden which is nice.

Meanwhile, banking security in the US is stuck in the Stone Age. Last I checked Wells Fargo, one of the largest US banks, still does not allow passwords greater than 14 characters in length and passwords are not case sensitive.

+1. I migrated to Bitwarden from LastPass last year and haven't looked back. The desktop apps and browser extensions are fantastic and the UX is wonderful.

I have experienced the same behavior when trying to complete Captchas in Tor Browser. However the vast majority of the time it just says "Your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now." so I cannot even attempt to complete the Captcha.

Thinkpad T series and Dell Latitude 7390/7490 are good choices around that price.

You can do this on their mobile web app as well which is why I use that over the mobile application. The mobile web app experience is actually quite nice.

Thinkpads have already been mentioned but I also highly recommend the Dell Latitude, especially the 7490. They have fantastic keyboards, great battery life, and absolutely amazing displays (among the best 1920x1080 displays I have seen on a laptop). Plus they run many Linux distributions out of the box with minimal configuration.

If you live in the US or Europe I'd recommend the US/UK Dell Outlet. You can get a Dell Latitude in great condition (often like-new condition) for a nice deal, especially when they have their laptop promotions. I've had a good experience with their onsite service as well.

I ended up doing this last year. I bought a Sintech adapter and a Toshiba XG4 SSD for my 2015 15” rMBP. It works just fine but the battery life ended up being terrible compared to the stock SSD. I was getting around 60% of the battery life of the stock SSD with the XG4 + adapter combo.

There is no tuition fee if you are an EU/EEA/Swiss citizen.

No. Almost every MS program and course at KTH is in English, even for Swedish students. Swedish students who are doing their MS are typically in a 5 year degree program where you do your BS and MS combined. The first 3 years (BS portion) is in Swedish and the last 2 years is in English.

I just had an onsite interview at their HQ in Stockholm this morning. The recruiter I spoke with in person mentioned their employee growth percentage in the last couple of years and it was staggering. They absolutely are not a startup anymore.

This is a fantastic list. Thank you for sharing.

I moved from the SF Bay Area to Stockholm around 6 months ago to do my MS in computer science at KTH and I am still surprised by the amount of tech startups here. At the KTH career fairs I have met with developers from some very interesting startups that are eager to hire EU-based developers.

This was a very interesting read. I’d love to see a similar write-up for a developer laptop.

This is a small nitpick but the battery should be listed as 42 Wh, not W/h.

This website is one of my favorite resources for traveling. I travel in Europe quite often and I always visit this website when I need tips on how to get from point A to point B. I just used it a few weeks ago to figure out how to take the train from Krakow to Warsaw.

I’m a fan of Firefox and I use it when I am docked at home or near a power outlet but the battery life hit is enormous on Mac OS compared to Chrome and Safari. The performance is fine, I just wish I had better battery life when using Firefox on the go.

I’d recommend taking a look at https://www.privacytools.io. It has quite a few recommendations for different services that respect your privacy, many of which are FOSS.

For e-mail, calendars, and contacts I’ve migrated over to FastMail. In my opinion the web client and help articles are far superior to Google’s offerings. You can even use your own domain along with 100+ aliases.

For cloud storage I have migrated from Google Drive to iCloud Drive. Obviously this is not FOSS but it gets the job done for me.

There are some Google services that are irreplaceable for me though so I continue to use them. These are Google Maps, Voice, YouTube, Translate, and Docs.

They could always try charging 1 USD/year for the service /s

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade

Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitely a living wage in Stockholm, especially considering that you can live in affordable student accommodation (as long as you have been on the waiting list for at least a year or so for a student dorm). Sure, you can definitely make more money working in the industry, but at least you will not be living in poverty while pursuing your PhD degree.

As far as I know the public schools in Norway and Denmark operate very similarly to this, but I am not sure about other schools in Europe.

[1] https://www.kth.se/en/studies/phd/student/employment-1.52704...

It definitely looks like a nice machine and probably the best competitor to the 15" rMBP right now (alongside it's twin the XPS 9570) but do a search for all of the QC issues on the Precision 5510/5520/5530 and XPS 9550/9560/9570 and you will quickly see that there are a huge number of problems with this computer. That said, you can configure it with Dell's "Next Business Day" international onsite service (which is more like service in 2-3 days, at least based on my anecdotal experience) which is a nice touch.

I've spent a very long time researching 15" mobile workstations for the last year or two since I will eventually need a replacement to my 2015 15" rMBP and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much every one of them has some sort of huge deal breaker for me. At this point I'm just hoping that my 2015 15" rMBP can last for another couple of years while we await some design refreshes from Lenovo, Dell, and Apple.

Hi Scott. Thank you for doing this AMA.

In your opinion what are some good universities across the world to look into if one wants to do graduate or post-graduate level research in quantum computing?

While I think there is a 0% chance we will see a Macbook Pro redesign similar to the 2013-2015 15" rMBP that is so coveted by a lot of devs, I would certainly love it if Apple released a proper mobile workstation (which will not happen).

If Apple released a mobile workstation with the same (or similar) form factor as the 2015 15" rMBP with the same keyboard (and obviously get rid of the touch bar), same 99.5 Wh battery, same port selection (except replace TB2 ports with TB3), same Magsafe charging port, updated internals with non-proprietary, non-soldered RAM, SSD, and wireless card, I would pay whatever the hell they would want. It won't happen, but a man can dream.

To add my own anecdotal data point, here in the Mountain View and Palo Alto area it used to be 95% MacBooks in coffee shops 6-7 years ago and now it is more like 80-85%. Pretty much every laptop that isn't a MacBook is either a ThinkPad, Dell Latitude/XPS, or Microsoft Surface.

Maybe Apple will offer a $29 bumper to install around the rim of your 2016/2017 MBP that just blocks the port since you are most likely using it "the wrong way" /s

I'm interested to see a few other people test this out though to see what happens. I'd test it myself but unfortunately I don't have access to a 2016/2017 MBP. Hopefully it isn't a widespread issue.

Apple hasn't released a product with an NVIDIA GPU for years. Also, driver support for NVIDIA GPUs on MacOS is not very good compared to AMD GPU driver support on MacOS.

You will need to buy a TB3 eGPU enclosure. These range anywhere from $200 to $500 and typically come without a GPU. There are some more expensive options (like the Aorus Gaming Box with a GTX 1070/1080 or RX 580) that already come with a GPU installed.

Here is a nice comparison of the eGPU enclosures available today: https://egpu.io/external-gpu-buyers-guide-2018/

My personal recommendations are the Akitio Node Standard/Pro or Sonnet Breakaway Box 350/550/650. These companies are reputable companies in the Thunderbolt hardware realm.

Note that I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned above.