aries1980

Posting a link from a 240-year-old Western medium that was downvoted to -3 from the default 1 was the last time I wasted my time on commenting a HN post.

The excerpt speaks for the "quality" of this kind of journalism: headline says

I agree, just I couldn't find a better link to the National Grid announcement.

There were couple of days recently when almost zero energy was generated by wind: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blackouts-fear-forces-pow... (an excerpt without being paywalled: https://www.thegwpf.com/britain-faces-green-energy-disaster-...)

Afaik green energy has never meant to provide standalone, at least until the surplus energy generated at daily peaks can be reasonably stored for days.

This paper is a bit dated, but explains well some of the concerns: http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limi...

Anyone who bought the S&P and held it for 10 years made about 14% YoY (more like 10% if you take the last 30 years)

Anyone knows a study with other than US markets where they compare local index stock performance with housing cost? E.g. Switzerland, Eastern Europe, etc.

Indeed. In my hometown - Gyula, Hungary - there was a precision mechanics factory, for phones, faxes, communication relays called Integra. It wasn't huge, employed a couple of hundreds people. In '89, Olivetti bought it for peanuts to close it down.

This was quite a classic move during the "privatisation" in '89-90.

It was rather the result of the genital measuring contest over the fishing rights between France and the UK.

I think this is one of the reasons Python took off.

Python took off for data because the frameworks and libraries around it. Without IPython/Jupyter, dataframes, Scipy, it would have way less marketshare.

Yes, but the point of memorisation is you can much quicker re-learn the subject and you know there is a solution to a problem when you face it. If you have never learnt it, you don't know that there is a solution, or you start to optimise things in a way that is proven to be wrong. You might not able to recall them, but the knowledge is likely there in your subconscious.

There are many times that I need to rewrite my code because of non-adequate design.

Formal education won't give you the knowledge to get it right every single time. Your design will be always non-adequate because the circumstances always change.

The knowledge body of a CS and engineering can be obtained without enrolling these days. Engineering is about problem solving within the resource constrains and to a specification. Getting the specification right and fitting in the resource constrains are the biggest challenges that only experience will prepare for, because these are domain-specific.

CS and engineering studies can give you a toolkit to solve some problems and helps to give you to develop a "gut instinct" to pick a solution.

No ability for British firms to operate in other European countries with equivalent rights as a local company, will have to form subsidiaries instead in many cases.

This has never been the case.

To enjoy full rights, you have to have a local office. Tax forms e.g. Hungarian employment tax forms doesn't even accept the UK postcodes as administrative address, let alone grant application forms.

I hit up Sainsbury's this early morning. Only the expected stuff ran low (turkey, fishes, frozen side dishes), but everything else were on stock.

I wouldn't say healthcare in the UK is free, but rather it has a good balance.

If you have an accident or chronic illness, the system won't leave you alone. But they cover zero cost of prevention. E.g. regular check-ups, blood tests, therapies, unless you have noticeable symptoms are not covered, which is often too late to catch cancer, diabetes or cardiological illness at an early stage. My wife and I spend between £2000-3000 a year on these in various countries (to make it affordable). This number is not terrible, but far from free.

If you accept that you can’t prove your axioms, then your not accepting that all beliefs about truth are equally valid, you’re only accepting that all beliefs about truth are equally capable of being proven (as in, equally not capable at all).

Afaik this is related to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, so all you can say that within the axiom set you can't prove that there is no contradiction. (Note that this doesn't mean there is a contradiction, but you can't prove there is or there isn't any.)

I'm wondering how families or even just couples cope with relocating for a short while.

- What do you do with your belongings? Do you move them around?

- Does someone takes care about your home while you are away?

- What about pets?

- What do you solve administrative tasks, e.g. you receive an official letter from govn't that you supposed to reply within a timeframe? How do you get to know the content of the letter?

- What about your health insurance? Premiums that I encountered have a obscure logic on what is the procedure when you live at certain places for a longer period.

- How do you handle taxes?

The Name of the Rose is more creepy. Or the Highlanders.

Thank you for the clarification.

This doesn't stand for many legal cases, including copyright, work rights, taxation, etc. I don't see why this case should be an exception with having an effect outside the US jurisdiction.

I don't live in the USA, why should I be affected by the RIAA and DMCA outside the USA? If I ping github.com, it is resolved as lb-140-82-121-4-fra.github.com , so what is the rational behind the global takedown?

Wasn't that the NATO instead?

Let's not forget how Google enforced good accessibility practice on websites through SEO.

Employer NI is 13.8%, but rarely counted as a tax on the worker (crazilly)

It is a cost of the employment. As I wrote above, it goes to the treasury and proportionate to the salary. It doesn't matter how we label it. Doesn't matter neither to the company's, nor the individual's taxation.

Of course plenty of people earning big bucks don't do it via PAYE, just take their money as far lower capital gains

No, the people who earn big bucks do it in a non tax-resident way. They don't declare tax in the UK or any high-taxpaying region.

That would only affect the top 2.5% of income tax payers

No, 1.6M people, the top 5%: https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-propos...

"The top 5% of income tax payers contribute half of all income tax revenues today." With the current level of digitalisation, there is only so much weight you can put on the most performant segment of the workforce before they pack and leave.

Their tax rate would change from 45% to 46%, hardly an earth shattering change.

No, the former 45% would be higher than 50%, because it would have started from £125K, and they would introduce a 45% above £80K.

That sounds like capitalism to me.

Capitalism encourages private ownership and keeping the means of your labour. High taxation is the opposite of this, because it doesn't leave enough profit at the individual, which prevents private ownership.

Your post insinuates that these taxes are just taken with nothing gained.

That's not true. Just because to me the current and Labour-proposed level of taxation is not motivating to do more doesn't mean some level of taxation is not necessary. It is not all or nothing.

I have to accept that as a society we have to pay for those to do suffer because of it.

This is the fundamental difference from our point-of-view. I look at free and adult individuals as who are responsible for their actions and can be held accountable.

in fact if you earn 80k and spend ALL your takehome on 20% VAT goods, you still end up with the majority share.

Employment salary cost: 91.04K (gross salary + employer's national insurance) Gross income: 80K Take home pay: 55.04K VAT: 11K

The value you can get if you buy everyday items after your 91K salary cost is 44K or 48%, the rest, 47K goes to the treasury. My figures were wrong indeed.

We are talking about 1.6M employee/small business owner, who has families as well. So Labour supposed to punish the most ambitious, hard-working people and their families with even higher taxes (40+20+13.8+... percent) they already pay.

Some of us grew up in a mild socialist/communist regime, in where leaders thought they can more wisely spend the fruit of your labour than yourself. So we emigrated to a country that supposed to be free.

In the UK, a middle class earner already pays 40% income tax + 20% VAT + 13.8% NI, that's a neat 73.8% to the community already (not to mention the extra taxes, like the Council Tax or extra duties when you pour a gin). The labour wanted to increase this by 5-25 percentage point. What is communism, if not the political ruling that strips the common people to build up wealth?

...and because instead of lowering the govn't expenditure, they planned to increase the tax for the middle class: https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-propos...

I find ECS/Fargate and managed Kubernetes not a bit easier to manage than Kubernetes itself. On the other hand, the inflexibility or vendor-specificity of these requires as much learning as you'd use FOSS tools. Also those skills are not transferable to an other cloud vendor, which might happened to be required if your primary cloud provider does not cover markets you supposed to operate in.

Yes, these.

I have Cheaney, Barker (I know it is not high-end by pricing, but I'm very satisfied with their quality over the years) Paul Smith, Attila Shoes, Vass Shoes and some workhorses that are worn enough not to care to walk 10-20km a day or if I am on holiday.

I'm always surprised when people say these are not comfortable as much as a trainer. I have to disagree.

Is that not an effect of marketing though?

Above a given level, for sure. But you can tell the difference of a $20 shirt and a $100 from a distance. I am not sure about the $100+ range. If you check the brands I mentioned, they are not overly expensive (in London, UK you can find them at 50% now, at outlets even less), yet they are considered hard-to-beat.

Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.

The fabric, maybe, but the amount of time some workpiece requires can be vastly different and might require more experienced hands. This can be especially true for tricky materials, such as leather and wool.

Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.

Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)

I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do

Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)