anon98356

I'm not sure it is objectively marginal. At Circuit of the Americas where they have both raced recently the difference in lap time is about 10 seconds. That doesn't sound like a lot but is close to 10% of the lap. The F1 race is 56 laps so by the end an Indycar is going to be 5 or 6 laps down. Throw in the fact an Indycar can't do 56 laps without refueling and it might be closer to 7 laps. In motorsport that is extreme

In the context of the issue that doesn't really make sense. The issue is that the home office think you left and didn't come back. How would an exit check tell the home office you have come back into the country?

very true, although in relation to OPs point I was talking less about the why of expiring laws/taxes and just pointing out that creating laws that expire can have its own less than desirable knock on effects

Isn't that a big part of the issues the US has with passing a budget? Some of their tax breaks etc. have expiry dates so keep needing to be renewed. I think part of the current shutdown is related to the debate about renewing the obamacare tax breaks which have/are due to expire

It covers the impact of fuel quite thoroughly but it brushes over the time element which I think is actually a bigger factor in why they don't really do it. Passing on the fuel cost to the customer they could probably get away with but given how tightly packed the flight schedules are (particularly short haul) the cumulative extra time across even a day could be enough that they have to drop a flight from the schedule.

When you consider that RyanAir don't have seat back pockets specifically because of the extra cleaning time to clear them between flights, you can see why the extra 2 minutes flight time might matter.

Because Iceland is a member of the Schengen zone. It's possible to travel between countries in the Schengen area without going through border control (although I don't know about the specifics of travelling to/from Iceland).

From my understanding of the article, the BoE aren't concerned about their own infrastructure.

They're concerned about all the major retail banks using the same cloud provider and then that provider having a major outage.

Individual banks having an outage is an issue but one that can be handled. Three or four of the main banks all going down at once could be catastrophic.

Firstly, never and never in your lifetime are two very different timespans.

Second, just because those houses from 2008 recession are now worth more than in 2008 doesn't mean they have been steadily increasing in value since 2008. There have definitely been downturns in the property market. One in particular that springs to mind is the impact of Brexit on house prices in London. Sure, eventually the price might recover to the point that homes are worth more than pre Brexit. But if you are trying to sell in the meantime that drop can have a significant impact on your ability to move.

If I wanted to create a market in trains I wouldn't hold a bid to run a specific line or route. I would hold a bid to operate specific times on a given line. e.g. Operator A would run the 7:00,8:00 and 10:00 and Operator B would run the 7:30, 8:30 and 10:30.

There are still limits on how much competitiveness that brings to the market (Operators have very little control over delays) but it would encourage the operators to compare in terms of on train service (and potentially ticket prices as well).

This is something that actually really frustrated me about the Brexit referendum. I remember reading an opinion piece in the NZ herald from a women who explained why she was voting in favour of Brexit. What it basically boiled down to was that she was jealous that EU citizens had freedom of movement with the UK and she didn't.

But conversely during the time that she was allowed to be in the UK, she had the right to vote while EU citizens didn't.

Like you I don't think commonwealth citizens who voted for Brexit were being racist, I do think it was sometimes vindictive though which doesn't really make it much better.

One thing I would say on claiming health reasons is, from the employers perspective it might be taken more as "I'm not ready to return to the office" instead of "I don't want to come back ever".

They are still going to expect you back at some point so this may result in just kicking the can down the road.

Yeh I'm sure 220k is a great salary for NZ. But in terms of purchasing power, how does it compare to $70k-£80k in the UK (I don't know, as I said haven't lived in NZ for 6 years)? I'd also be interested to know how common it is to be on 200k+ as a dev in NZ

(edit: spelling/grammar)

Does that figure take into account cost of living? When I left NZ 6 years ago it wasn't a cheap place to live.

My reading of GPs comment was more about the cause and effect of any corresponding price increase, not whether Netflix would actually increase their price in this scenario.

For a physical good, if you have a surge in demand as more people can afford you're product you start running into supply issues. This will likely result directly in a price increase as you can't increase profit by just selling more when you don't have anymore to sell.

In the example of netflix, the supply issue almost completly disappears. They don't HAVE to increase the price to increase their profit. Yes Netflix may decide that with the flood of new customers they can put the price up and maintain or increase their profit.

The point I think that is being made is that their isn't a physical supply issue in effect "forcing" them to increase the price. They are doing it because they want to, not because they need to.

From the article:

"The organisation then tested it out by getting a number of ads mentioning winning prizes, or cocktails, or asking teens if they were “summer ready” approved for advertising to those targeted demographics."

So it sounds like they could go further than just identify who the target audience based on under 18s who are interested in alcohol.

I was recently in France and was told by a local this was actually an issue with the covid outbreak. There is a department that decides on the gender of new words and they determined covid (or some variant on that) to be feminine.

So call me skeptical if after a decade or so they will all go back to what we had before.

The implicication of the article is that they won't have a choice. If your product doesn't meet the repairability standards then you won't be able to sell in the EU.

Currently it costs $400 to repair. If products become more repairable it also becomes cheaper to repair them (in theory at least).

This kind of legislation is likely to push up the initial purchase price but the overall cost should come down. So the $1000 Miele now costs $1200, but only costs $50 to repair.

I believe they do use their own ad platform. But I would guess that the pricing of ads on Facebook and Google mean that even if they could charge a premium, it wouldn't be enough to sustain the business.

There is only so much of a premium you can charge before no is willing to pay for your product.

As I said in my second line, in the case of Netflix, I don't think this applies. Their business model has always been to charge users for content.

However when looking at the rise in the number of papers going behind a paywall like the NY times, there is an argument to be made that this is being driven by the fact it is no longer viable to run an ad supported business because Google and Facebook have control of too much of the market

I think you have your cause and effect the wrong way around there. The argument put forward is that Netflix is forced to use a subscription model because Facebook and Google have almost complete control of the advertising market.

In the specific case of Netlfix this probably isn't true as their business model is an online version of a business that already charged a subscription (cable TV).

However in businesses that traditionally relied on advertising e.g. the New York Times as mentioned in the article, the transition to the internet is leading to more upfront charging i.e. Paywalls because they aren't getting the ad revenue required to offer their services for free.

My personal take from the article isn't that all content use to be supported by ads (although I would suggest that a lot more of it was than most people realise). The issue is that the near duopoly Facebook and Google have on web advertising, mean those producing the content can no longer rely on advertising to fund themselves.

As a result we are seeing more and more paywalls being put up to fund these businesses. The potential end result of this is that finding content will continue to be free and probably even get easier. Finding content you can consume for free however, is likely to get a lot tougher.

I can actually see self driving making this worse. If the cars can drive themselves there is less need for parking in the city. Cars can drive themselves out of the city for cheaper parking. So on top of the trip in and out taken by the passenger to get to/from work, there is a second round trip for the car to park all day while it isn't needed by anyone.

I can bet that in most big European cities, relying on public transportation + renting a car whenever you need is cheaper than the maintenance costs of car ownership (parking + insurance + gas).

That's already the case though. Having self driving cars doesn't really change the equation on that.

Creating something without the intention of making money is different from creating something without the prospect of making money. The former is already covered by the likes of Creative Commons licensing or just not enforcing copyright.

But if I create something without expecting it to be successful why shouldn't that be protected on the off chance it does end up being successful?

IANAL but the judgement seems to saying, you can't just use prepned an actualy allegation of fraud with "It is my opinion" to claim it is opinion.

My argument isn't that, it's to challenge the idea that calling something a scam can ONLY mean I'm accusing them of fraud.

First, the defence of honest opinion. The Claimant submits that the defence of honest opinion cannot succeed in circumstances were the words used convey an allegation of fraud.

The foundation of this argument is to challenge the assumption the words actually convey an allegation of Fraud.

It would get pretty deep into the evolution of language/multiple meanings and slang and probably isn't worth fighting, but I still think it's a valid (or at least interesting) defense.

MLA is a standard, not the only standard. Just becase a significant portion of universities/academic instituitions have adopted it as their standard doesn't make it the worldwide standard at all. It doesn't even make it the standard for all academia.

Further Esquire is not an acadmic journal so should probably conform to a more widerly used understanding of how quotes are recorded/put in context.

I believe opinion is a defence against libel even in the UK. Accusing them of being a scam strays close to being a claim that requires proof. But I wouldn't have thought it would be that hard to lodge a defence that it was an honest opinion and the wording in question is used in the context of common language/slang where scam can also be considered to mean not worth the money.

Is that the standard syntax? I've always been led to believe square brackets are used to insert words that don't exist in the quote.

"go home and bite my [his] pillow."

To me makes way more sense. If I was to read "go home and bite [his] pillow." I would assume the person being quoted had said ""go home and bite pillow." which makes almost no sense.

I am unable to get certain credit from my bank because of my employment contract (i.e. rolling yearly contract) even though I have a good income and savings.

That's purely a risk appetite decision by the bank. If you looked around you would probably find the type of credit your after. You just might not like the interest rate.

In terms of frozen accounts/money, I don't really see a fully developed DeFi helping much with this. Your transactions would have triggered KYC/AML warnings in the bank who are then obliged to freeze your account (and not actually tell you why). If a DeFi were to be big enough they would fall under similar legislation or quickly become an avenue for money laundering or terrorism finance.

Middlemen have been completely removed from lending and exchange via DeFi and it can't be undone now. Even with strict KYC/AML and regulation at crypto off-ramps it can't be undone.

I get the concept, I don't really get the business model. Are we talking P2P lending? If so how many people are comfortable with doing the risk analysis required for lending in this scenario?

From my perspective that is what the middlemen are for. I could loan money to someone who needs it (locally at least) right now. But I don't have the time or the skill set to gauge 1) How likely they are to just cut and run with my money. 2) How long it is likely for them to pay it back. 3) How realistic it is that what they need the money for will produce the required income to pay me back in full. I have to use these factors to then calculate an interest rate on the money I lend but also make sure said interest rate isn't so punitive they don't want the loan. Or I could provide my money to someone else (the bank in this case) and they can do all of that analysis and deal with collection/enforcement, legal contracts.

As to making it a global function, that just ramps up the profile even more. I now need to research what, if any, rights I have to recover my potential losses in another country.

You can lend/borrow stablecoins (USDc), even if you're in the developing world. Sure, but what advantages does this have over the existing solutions in the developing world e.g. M-Pesa.

Or you could use a standard card machine that has an included transaction buffer. I remember having these in my retail gig 15 years ago for the odd time the network went down (happened pretty much every christmas season)