merek

...does it still display ads?

> The gambling industry produces no value.

Entertainment or "a thrill" is a form of value, and whatever gives one a thrill is highly subjective.

Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112657 (569 comments)

Thanks for sharing. Do you have any writing on your experience living and working in Tonga?

Don't Americans pay US tax regardless of where they live?

> Then, in April 1996 - by which time I’d expatriated to the Kingdom of Tonga and was working on various internet startup schemes

Why would an American working in software in the mid 90s expatriate to Tonga, a tiny island nation, population ~100k, virtually no tech industry, with little or no internet back then? (assuming Eric is American).

Maybe a govt IT contract, but it sounds at odds to "working on various internet startup schemes".

I walk 99% of the time. By around the corner, I mean a 10 - 20 min walk (5 min drive in good traffic), which will easily get you drenched in sweat depending on the weather. If I'm headed to a dinner or gathering that requires a bit of dressing up (shirt and trousers), walking isn't really an option.

> cabs are cheap

Everyone says that but I've had the opposite experience, possibly due to my location (near Orchard Rd). Can easily pay $15 to essentially go around the corner.

Actually your comment reminds me of this guy who travels to Vanuatu to try really strong kava. The village chief invites him to drink multiple bowls, which he can't refuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BtP_B4TBWs

Probably tobacco. The article mentions it was introduced to PNG in the last few hundred years, and the plant made its way into the highland tribes despite limited travel and trade.

Original footage of PNG tribe's first contact with white man in 1993, filmed by Jean Pierre Dutilleux, Belgian anthropologist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynx14JEYbyI

Set your calendars:

Europa Clipper, launched 2024, starts Europa flybys on March 2031

Dragonfly, hopefully launching July 2028, arriving on Titan 2034

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(Titan_space_probe)

Maybe I missed it but they didn't delve much into the TAM.

"Half of all flights in the world are under 2 hours." Then they give examples of Fjord-town hopping in Norway, or Island hopping in Hawaii, which seem very niche.

Will they be able to compete in any of the busiest routes? Could it take me Melbourne-Sydney in 1 - 2 hours for < $100? I'd sacrifice some time and $ for an eco-friendly option, but obviously there's a limit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_flig...

> Running own business is a sin

Shouldn't any wealth creation viewed positively due to tax, not to mention value to consumers/society?

Or is the view that people on average produce more value when employed by a large corporation?

> Google intended Project Ara to lower the entry barrier for phone hardware manufacturers so there could be "hundreds of thousands of developers" instead of the existing oligarchy of phone manufacturers

Someone has already reserved my very unique company name and a bunch of variants.

Without domain validation, what is this user's intention other than fraud/impersonation?

I've already got an active impersonator running a website under my brand name and confusing my customers.

I've come across a road like this in Singapore, although with a road barrier

https://maps.app.goo.gl/bEEvRkgGQPhfM7198

I call BS.

> We want you to tax us. We can afford it.

If you're so desperate to distribute your wealth for the greater good, then do it already. Why wait for the govt to mandate it, and over many years, eventually distributing it to causes which you may or may not align with? Bizarre.

> We're not talking about higher taxes on those who get up and go to work for their income every day

Of course not, because I'd wager the author fits this profile. This isn't about taxing "millionaires". It's about taxing people who have more money than you, but definitely not you. Let's draw the tax threshold at your wealth + a comfortable margin.

The linked site https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/ claims "80% of millionaires support a 2% wealth tax over 10m pounds". Ignoring how this was measured (and that's a big thing to ignore), I wonder what % support the tax over 1m?

My points aren't for or against the tax in question, they're intended to call BS on this org's claims. I cannot believe a group of wealthy individuals are begging to be taxed. Rather, a group of people with some wealth (of unverified amount) want people with much more wealth to be taxed.

What's the general process for the initial separation of unwanted dirt? I've worked in a zinc smelter a long time ago, the initial stage was roasting, heating the ore to 900C to burn off unwanted components (such as sulfur, which went on to become sulfuric acid), and to melt other components.

I guess I'm surprised at the absence of flue stacks and cooling towers at the facility shown in the video.

Perhaps the facility in the video only shows "cleaner" downstream processing for marketing appeal, or separation processes are fundamentally different?

Were there cases of finalized invoices and fund transfers while the error was in place?

The sudden loss of working capital while awaiting a refund would be extremely disruptive for even large businesses.

Why London of all places?

> Stripe advices to refund based on signal's they get that a disput is requested.

I think that's if you're lucky enough to receive an early fraud warning, in which case, you have maybe ~12 hours to refund the money, but who knows, it's completely opaque to the merchant. As a merchant, I've even had previously refunded payments become disputes hours after issuing the refund.

Most of the time, the charge back is sprung on the merchant without warning. It can be worth fighting some. I've successfully countered several, it feels like I win maybe around 50% of those that I counter. I usually counter when the reasons are nonsensical, such as "Subscription renewed after cancelling", yet there was only one payment for the subscriptions creation.

To add insult to injury, Stripe charges an additional fee to counter the dispute (which you might get back if you win).

The whole process is infuriating. Charge backs are a tiny % of transactions, but cause a large amount of distress. I can't see why Stripe / banks don't offer an early dispute window, in which the merchant has say 7 days to refund without penalty. If they ignore or decide not to, it becomes a standard dispute.

I can't find an official source, but I suspect the blast radius isn't limited to the AZ.

I have systems running in us-east-1, and over the course of the incident, I noticed unexplainable intermittent connectivity issues that I've never seen before, even outside of az4.

Related:

AWS EC2 outage in use1-az4 (us-east-1)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057294

For me, a long running and historically stable ECS service suddenly stopped.

Ordinarily this would result in failed health checks and auto service restart, but in this case, the service simply died without logs or alerts.

Nice shots of Australia on Apr 02, 6:41:23 PM (left = north) and 6:42:35 PM (down = north), including Tropical Cyclone Maila (I think).