WordSkill

British company.

They are rigging the results by not counting the new restrictions on UK citizens entering and operating within 27 EU countries, including the 5 countries they visit most: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Portugal.

No honest person would claim that the UK passport is equal to the Danish, Irish, or Dutch passport. Absurd.

I am not aware of even one country, anywhere in the world, that has made entry easier for UK citizens following Brexit. Certainly, nothing has happened over the past year to justify the UK rising in the ranks.

I have a UK passport but, even before Brexit, found it more pragmatic to travel on my Irish passport. British tourists have long had a somewhat tarnished reputation and, in some countries, resentments still linger from Britain's rather brutal past.

Since Brexit, over a million UK citizens have applied for and received Irish passports, giving them back the EU citizenship rights they had before Brexit.

"You can build an account where you mix and match the plan level to each user. For example, you can build a Fastmail Family by adding additional Standard and Basic plans for adults and children." - https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/

Only one of your accounts needs to be Standard tier ($50/y) to allow up to 100 custom domains. The other 5 accounts can be Basic tier ($30/y) and still use as many custom domains as you give them access to. Total undiscounted cost for your family would be $200/y.

Use the 25% 1Password discount to reduce your total to $150/y. You have the option to extend that 25% discount up to 3yrs and receive an additional discount for paying in advance. Your total for your first 3 years would be $420, then $560 for each 3 years thereafter.

Alternatively, you could consider allowing all your family members use the same Standard account ($105 for the first 3yrs) but with multiple email addresses. Use labels to surface each address for the relevant family member.

In my case, I created a family@surname address for any family business, and a name@surname address for each family member. Each family member has set their Fastmail app to focus on their own address. Yes, technically, they can see each other's email, but it hasn't been a problem. I presume they use throwaway gmail accounts for stuff they want to keep totally private.

We share a specific custom domain for our masked emails and love that feature, especially the 1Password integration although that has some rough edges.

My understanding is that, if you use their plugin, they only rebuild the cache when you add new content.

Any crawlers would be interacting only with the cached version of your site, hosted on the nearest edge location.

I'm surprised there aren't more comments about this. It is a brilliantly positioned service that takes some features that were previously only available at the paid levels ($20 and up) and bundles them into a $5 add-on for free users.

I have been working with WordPress-to-static on Cloudflare Workers for a while and am very curious to see how this solution performs.

After 3 years, I heartily recommend the Advantage2. Using it is simply more fun. I use mine with a trackpad sitting in the space between the two wells.

Creating those wells is, apparently, a tough engineering challenge, which is why so few commercially available keyboards have them, but they are what makes it so comfortable and effective. I consider the flat split keyboards to be pointless.

Standout feature for me is the claimed OTG via USB-C.

The videos show a guy using it with their own Bluetooth keyboard, but if this can be used with a good mechanical keyboard, such as the Kinesis Advantage2, connected via USB, that might make the Lumi ideal for distraction-free writing.

The Lumi uses Android 10. I presume there is some Android equivalent to the iOS writing apps Scrivener and Ulysses. Such an app, along with the far larger screen and an ergonomic mechanical keyboard, would make this a bulkier but far better writing experience than the $599 Freewriter device with it’s 6” e-ink screen and limited software.

The 15-minute launch video gives some good info about both the Lumi and the smaller Note Air, although the included promo videos for each product are somewhat exasperating.

https://youtu.be/KebhYxNBeJ4

It is a shame that, unlike many smaller e-readers, the Lumi is not waterproof. Reading in the bath is a fine activity.

I think that store ships worldwide, but shipping is quite expensive.

But shipping is $55.

Fine software, fine company.

Not enough.

Well, whatever he thought, Covid-19 has blown everyone's plans wide open.

Erdogan has to somehow keep his deeply indebted country rolling and his population of 82 million employed. It seems foolish to start picking fights with his biggest trading partner but, who knows, perhaps this is the sort of distraction that will keep his population focused on nationalism.

UNCLOS is problematic when it comes to islands

No, it really is not. It is exactly how 167 countries have agreed that maritime territory should be allocated. China's island-making shenanigans in the South China Sea are merely an attempt to hack that agreed standard.

What is problematic is Turkey's unique claim that islands should only be entitled to a 12 nautical mile territory rather than the usual 200 that Turkey and other countries are entitled to. Highly convenient for a country with lots of nearby islands inhabited by other people.

Cyprus should not have been admitted to EU before accepting the Annan plan

The invasion was illegal by any internationally accepted standard. Therefore, the invaded people were under no obligation to accept any compromise. They democratically rejected it. It would have been against the core principles of the EU to withhold membership until they voted "the right way".

Delaying Turkey membership on the basis of invading other countries, or its human rights record, is different. That is about getting them to align with those principles before joining. Ultimately, the government of Turkey decided that their own principles were better aligned to the fast-growing nations of the Middle-East.

About 15% of Turkey's exports are to the EU, and over two-thirds of their tourists.

Turkish industry heavily utilizes EU financial and consulting services.

Turkey also benefits from various infrastructural and knowledge-sharing schemes supplied by the EU.

So, quite a lot to lose.

Neither aunty_helen nor anyone else is suggesting an invasion of Turkey. They don't need to. Turkey's move towards isolationism is going to do more damage than any invasion could.

It does not matter if some unnamed EU diplomat thinks that letting Cyprus into the EU was a mistake. They have been a full member for 16 years now. That diplomat works for them. They are a participant in the world's biggest economy and federation of nations.

Turkey, meanwhile, under Erdogan, has been rapidly burning bridges and has become a real embarrassment to NATO. Everyone, on both sides, knows they are only kept in because the US needs somewhere to fly its planes into the Middle East.

20 years ago, just a few years before Erdogan became Prime Minister, Turkey was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership of the EU. It would have been the most populous nation in the EU, with its youthful citizens doubtless making a big impact on the evolving face of Europe. The future was bright.

Today, you would struggle to find an EU diplomat who believes that there is now any possibility of Turkey ever being accepted into the EU. Indeed, if Turkey does launch a military attack upon drilling operations within internationally recognized Cypriot waters, the most likely result will be a complete EU boycott on Turkish goods and a travel block. Again, they don't need to invade.

It was not left unoccupied for almost half a century by mistake. There was an actual UN resolution that ruled it could only be resettled by the original inhabitants. Tearing down those homes and building over them will be deeply consequential. It will make Turkey an international pariah and raise questions about other issues, such as their treatment of their Kurd minority.

For your cheap package tourist, money and convenience matter even if ethics do not. The international embargo means no direct flights from anywhere other than Turkey, so, your package tourist would be looking at significant additional travel time and expense.

Then you have infrastructure. The south of the island received significant grants and subsidies from the EU, had plenty of foreign investment, a thriving tourist industry, and a tourist-oriented population that can mostly speak English. The north was isolated, unable to export, and almost entirely dependent on meagre support from Turkey, meaning that the north fell far behind.

So, your package tourist will have fewer comforts, fewer food choices, and would be served by inexperienced staff with little English. The TripAdvisor reviews will be painful.

For the next decade or so, the supply of tourist accommodation all over the world is going to wildly exceed demand. The established destinations, with experienced operators, established reputations, and direct flights are going to utterly dominate a cut-throat market. The main Turkish tourist industry will, of course, survive but this self-inflicted damage to its reputation will make it harder than it could have been.

No, I had not been following it, interesting, thank you for drawing my attention to it.

Based on the relevant Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus%E2%80%93Turkey_maritime...) and a few other sources I briefly looked over, it appears that the nub of the argument is that, due to a different, earlier dispute with Greece, Turkey was one of only 15 countries (including Venezuela, Eritrea, South Sudan, and Kyrgyzstan) that refused to sign UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Under international law, Cyprus has a right to certain areas of sea around its internationally recognized territory. All 167 countries who signed UNCLOS agree with the principle of territorial waters.

Turkey's invasion and annexation of the north of the island was against international rules at the time and has never been recognized as legal by any other country. Even today, Turkey is the only country which recognizes Northern Cyprus.

Now that gas deposits have been discovered in Cypriot waters, the Turks have threatened military action against any equipment installed to extract that gas. No other country believes that this would be anything other than an illegal interference in another country's territory.

Again, I do not see how this strong man nationalism and isolationism is helping the Turkish people. If Turkey had not invaded Cyprus in 1974 it would probably have become a full member of the EU by the late 1980's, shortly after Greece. That would, I believe, have been of great benefit to the Turkish economy and the Turkish people, including better human rights and better relations with neighboring countries.

Idiotic move, driven by Turkish nationalism, that hands a massive PR win to the Cypriots and is likely to result in a significant backlash against Turkish tourism in general.

Pre-Covid, Turkey's tourist industry had been rapidly expanding. By 2019, Turkey was the world's sixth most popular destination, with over 51 million tourists. That's a lot of jobs, a lot of cash for a developing nation with low levels of education and skills.

The fact that their newly opened Istanbul Airport will, once completed, have an annual capacity of 200 million passengers indicates Turkey's ambition was to keep their tourist industry growing as fast as possible.

The national flag carrier, Turkish Airlines, with 315 scheduled destinations, was the largest mainline carrier in the world by number of passenger destinations. That's a lot of planes that are currently mostly grounded.

Now, just as the entire global tourist industry lies in tatters, the Turks are going to dredge up bad memories and alienate the valuable European market by moving aggressively against Cyprus, an EU member. Are German and Swedish tourists really going to ignore that and book their winter escapes in Turkey?

All that Turkey gains is a good but relatively small site for a tourist city, one that has to be demolished and built again from scratch. That massive investment, made in direct defiance of United Nations rules, could all be lost if they do end up having to hand that disputed territory back to the original occupants.

It is all so needlessly stupid, running directly counter to the long-term interests of Turkey as a whole. This is a good example of why "strong leaders" are not such a hot idea. The generals running Thailand, another country massively dependent upon tourism, are an example of the same thing. Even before Covid-19 came along, they were needlessly whipping up anti-Western sentiment, overcomplicating their visa rules, and pretending that tourism was no longer a significant part of "Thailand 4.0". Now that roughly a quarter of their economy has disappeared, they have to somehow do a 360 without admitting they made a mistake and losing face.

Site design is a direct rip from https://www.designjoy.co/

Requiring a credit card before any functionality is enabled breaks the WordPress.org plugin directory guidelines.

To be compliant, the 7-day free trial should be possible without having to provide credit card details.

That is, in any case, best practice, unless profiting from people who forget to cancel is an important part of your business plan.

Submissions to HN that link to content requiring registration should include, in the title, a warning of that.

The whole trans thing has become so politicized over the past few years, I suspect a lot of guys would worry that a trans colleague would be far more likely to construe innocent interactions as discrimination.

Not harassing women is not enough. >Now more than ever, we need men to support women–not overlook or avoid them.

They have got to be joking.

If you care about your career, your family and your reputation, you simply do not leave yourself open to even the slightest possibility of being falsely accused of anything, or having someone suddenly “remember” something in ten or twenty years time if you reach the top levels of your industry.

Like it or not, we are back to Victorian rules. At work, you never allow yourself to be alone with a female colleague. You do not strike up casual conversations that could be misconstrued. You do not offer them a lift home. Most importantly, you do not become their mentor, friend, emotional support, or anything beyond polite, respectful, professional interactions directly related to work.

I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but our culture has changed. There is an insatiable appetite for scalps, accusations are considered proof, and there is no sign of sanity or reason entering the equation anytime soon. With such potential to rip your life apart, the only sane move is to firewall yourself.

In the UK we don't tend to ignore kids broken bones if they have poor parents. No one goes bankrupt and ends up homeless for contracting an illness, or having an accident at work.

Kids with broken bones are at the easy end of the scale. Most people, before they have experienced serious, complicated, expensive health issues, have a series of relatively positive experiences with the NHS in which they present with a minor issue that is dealt with by in a satisfactory manner. The system is optimized for that. This maintains the illusion that, through your taxes, your health requirements are "covered".

This falls apart once you present with something more complicated. You might be surprised at the extent to which people in the UK are pretty much abandoned when they hit a certain point. I know of many cases in which people had to find the money, somewhere, to buy vital treatment that the NHS was not willing to allocate. This is no less brutal than what happens to the uninsured in the US ... but ... the big difference is that UK residents are under the delusion that they do not need to worry.

Again, my argument is not that the NHS is bad, or evil, or that it does not sometimes do a good job. What I am saying is that, over your lifetime as a whole, it costs more than good health insurance would while letting you down badly when, inevitably, you encounter more serious problems.

The best way to help the poor is to improve the economy. A massive, complicated tax system makes it particularly hard to hire people at the low-end of the skill range. It is simply not worth it, and this will become increasingly evident as workers continue to be replaced by technology.

The UK has ended up with a multi-generational unemployed class who are under the illusion that everything will be taken care of "from cradle to grave". Their personal agency has been almost entirely removed. Alcoholism, obesity, diabetes and depression are at epidemic levels among the unemployed. We have created the perfect storm and it is the poor who will bear the brunt of that.

Yes, it is available, but the high levels of taxation - not just income tax but, also, a 20% tax on purchases - means that most families simply cannot afford that.

My argument is that people are _already_ paying but in a mandatory, indirect way, that removes their power as consumers and creates a situation in which the health services' prerogatives often differ from those of the patients.

I lived in Scotland for a decade or so. On the surface, the provision of healthcare seemed good, and the media constantly tells you it is, but it tended to fall apart once you needed it for anything serious.

I heard of the experiences from countless others and, sadly, encountered it myself. As the patient, even though you are paying for the service through high taxes, you are not seen as the customer. This leads to a certain sense, when you do need a medical service, that they are doing you a favor, that you are somehow the recipient of charity and should be grateful for what you get.

Decisions about what medicines or treatments are available are often political, with certain high-profile conditions sucking up scarce resources at the expense of others. The focus is very much on managing public opinion.

There are many situations in which cost considerations have a horrific impact on lives. For instance, if there is a medicine which can prevent you losing your sight, but it is expensive, you will be offered it only for your second eye after you have lost sight in your first - the reasoning being that it is only worth spending that much money to prevent total blindness, but sight in one eye is enough.

If you think that your high taxes mean that your healthcare needs are covered, think again.

There is also a deep-rooted coverup culture that circles the wagons around bad doctors and poor processes. In my case, a ridiculous misdiagnosis had a real impact on my life for over a year. The other healthcare professional only came clean about it after the lead doctor had retired.

Again, you are not seen as the customer, as the one paying all their wages, so, you should just shut up and be grateful for what you get.

I often laugh when I hear inexperienced American talk about how much better the health system is in the UK. Sure, health insurance is expensive, but the actual healthcare is leagues ahead of anything available via any sort of national health service. Being recognized as the customer, with real rights, is of pivotal importance in receiving the care you need, when you need it.

In fact, you often come across UK citizens with a rose-tinted view of the National Health Service, but such opinions tend to change rapidly once you actually need something more than an occasional General Practitioners appointment. The whole thing is a cruel joke.

@eddiezane, recurrent billing/subscriptions would turbocharge the use of your marketplace for paid images. It would allow vendors to charge a lower upfront amount, which would lower the barrier to experimentation. Users could dive in and, if they like the software, keep the droplet + subscription going indefinitely.

A very DigitalOcean twist would be if you allowed the subscriptions, like the droplets, to be billed per hour.

For instance, a user could deploy a $5 droplet to test a $2 per month image. If the user terminates the image within one hour, the total cost would be 7c for the droplet and 3c for the paid image, totaling 10c. If DO takes a 30% cut, the vendor receives 2c (woo-hoo!). It would be, essentially, a free trial, but with the benefit of establishing the precedent, in the user's mind, of paying for good, supported, server software.

If, however, the user wants to continue using that image, they will pay $5 every month for the droplet and $2 for the image, of which the vendor receives $1.40 every month.

Another very DigitalOcean twist would be if the vendor had the option to charge a percentage of the droplet price, allowing them to charge less to users of the cheapest droplets but more to users of large droplets who are, presumably, deriving more value from their use of the image, and would be more likely to require support from the vendor.

For example, the vendor could set his price at 20% of the droplet cost, meaning that a $5 droplet would cost an additional $1 per month or 1.5c per hour (of which the vendor would receive one cent).

The vendor would make the money necessary for a viable business on larger droplets. For example, on an $80 (16GB) droplet, the image cost would be $16 per month, of which the vendor would receive $11.20.

An image with a hundred or so large users and a few thousand small users would become a viable business that the vendor could energetically promote outside DO, pulling more users into the DO platform.

My hope is that DigitalOcean will approach this marketplace with imagination, not make too many presumptions about how it should evolve and allow actual demand to shape it. While it is good to showcase the images that are going to be useful to a huge number of users, such as the generic WordPress image, your marketplace could truly soar by allowing a vast hinterland of lesser-used images, that, cumulatively, would result in far more usage. Let a million forks bloom. It would differentiate you from all the other hosts who offer one-click generic WordPress.

For example, imagine if thousands of WordPress plugin and theme creators decided that pointing towards their DO Marketplace image was the easiest way to get their customers up-and-running, and the most effective way to continue getting paid for their work. At a stroke, DO would be harvesting a 30% cut of the massive paid WordPress market AND attracting a vast number of new users to your platform.

Not just WordPress, of course, this applies to all forms of server software. DO is in a unique position here to create something akin to the explosion in mobile software development that the App Store sparked in 2008. It would allow thousands of independent developers to create thriving businesses that deliver real value to millions of users, while truly differentiating DigitalOcean.

There is a Linux version of VS Code.

Yeah, it is not about the $10 that the 5-domain company might save, it is about trust, about Cloudflare positioning itself as a fair dealer that is not out to nickel and dime you.

Of course, once that relationship has been established, Cloudflare is in prime position to eventually make hundreds or thousands of dollars per year from that company.