galvin

MFA is a requirement of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU and many banks use their apps for authorising online card payments. Its also common to use apps as 2FA for logging in to online banking or making bank transfers.

There can be alternatives in some cases (some banks offer code generating card readers, for example) but for personal accounts in particular, it would probably be difficult to operate without banking apps.

The point obviously isn't to give grocery stores more money for no reason, it's to support products that have higher quality standards.

Take poultry as an example, standards vary by county, but the differences between quality labels can be stark. Cheap poultry is often raised in tiny indoor cages and they need to be pumped full of antibiotics due to the unhealthy living conditions. On the other end of the spectrum, organic poultry is free to roam in fields and the coops are regularly moved or kept clean, avoiding the need for antibiotics in the first place.

Even if you disagree that the latter provides a better quality product, it's pretty clear that supporting brands with higher standards results in better living conditions for the animals.

Somewhat tangential, but the EU has a directive mandating electronic invoicing for public procurement.

One of the standards that has come out of that is EN 16931, also known as ZUGFeRD and Factur-X, which basically involves embedding an XML file with the invoice details inside a PDF/A. It allows the PDF to be used like a regular PDF but it also allows the government procurement platforms to reliably parse the contents without any kind of intelligence.

It seems like a nice solution that would solve a lot of issues with ingesting PDFs for accounting if everyone somehow managed to agree a standard. Maybe if EN 16931 becomes more broadly available it might start getting used in the private sector too.

The CFA franc is used by 14 countries. Until 2020, those countries were required to deposit half of their foreign exchange reserves with the French Treasury. France also maintains a military presence in several of its former colonies.

Colonialism may have ended, but France continues to exert influence in Africa.

The issue isn't necessarily the form of the agreement, it's verifying the identity of the signatories.

If you can't see the other person signing the agreement, you need to verify that the right person is signing it. It's much the same issues that exist with simple passwords versus 2FA; shared accounts, piracy, identity theft, etc.

eIDAS is a set of standards for verifying identity that is backed by law. It allows businesses to follow protocols (some similar to 2FA) with the assurance that it will be held up in court.

It takes at least 10 years to build a latest generation nuclear power plant such as Flamanville 3 or Hinkley Point C.

According to the IPCC, we can't wait that long to reduce our emissions.

When 90% of the "content moderation" decisions lean towards one end of the political spectrum that's hardly a mere disagreement at the adjudication stage.

Which end of the political spectrum do you mean? I've often heard of them being criticized for leaning too far to the liberal-left but the examples you gave are a little confusing.

The Chinese government is authoritarian left-wing so that kind of aligns with the anti-right sentiment but it goes against liberalism.

Parler is conservative/authoritarian right-wing, so that holds up but the Iran example is also conservative/authoritarian right-wing which contradicts that?

The biggest bias I see for the English language with foreign languages being poorly moderated. It is a business after all, so they probably only invest as much in moderation as they need to to keep their advertisers.

I believe it means the airline. It's phrased that way to prevent the use of leased planes.

Flamanville 3 in France was started in 2007 and is due to be launched in 2022. It's the first of its generation (in France at least) so the delays and cost overruns are not unexpected. Even so, if more are to be built they will not come into service until the mid 2030's at the earliest. I don't think we can wait that long.

The EU does not have a standard VAT rate, each country sets their own rates.

Most reactors in France are 1st gen whereas the new one being built is 3rd gen and the first of its kind in France. The increased safety has made construction more complicated than previous reactors but a lot of those issues are being worked out so future reactors would probably be built more quickly and cost efficiently.

We use Calendly to let users book appointments for calls. They submit their number and we call them at whatever time they choose within our availability hours.

If you know when you'll be available in advance maybe a similar setup could work for you.

Pricing is definitely an issue, I think one of other big issues that is often overlooked is that countries with some form of national or regulated health insurance have an incentive to encourage preventative care.

When everyone including healthy people are insured it makes sense to optimize for long term costs and that means keeping people healthy and dealing with health issues as early as possible to avoid letting them get worse and more expensive.

As an example, I've seen insurance proactively provide assistance to help people quit smoking. They don't have to pay for patches or whatever but they do because it's a lot cheaper than cancer treatment.

Medical practitioners and private institutions are not required to follow the state set prices in France. It's the limit of how much the social security will cover so essentially anyone who sets prices above those limits is competing with "free".

Technically social security covers 70% of the state set price and insurance must at a minimum cover the other 30% but that's the general idea.

You probably don't need to test Edge on Windows if you are already testing Chrome since it's the same engine.

If you really want to you can test Edge on MacOS¹ or you can use the Windows virtual machines² that Microsoft provides for free.

1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge 2. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

The engines field is generally used for package consumers so when you do an `npm install` you know if the package is compatible with your local node version.

Pinning the Node.js version for tools like nvm is used by developers of the package or app developers who want to use the same version of node locally and in production, for example.

Democracy requires an informed electorate and publicly funded broadcasters are a means to achieve that. The government must have as little control as possible over their funding to ensure their journalistic independence.

That's the guiding theory at resulted in most European countries having some variation of a public broadcaster funded by TV (formally radio) licences.

There are many implementation differences between countries and none of them are perfect but I would argue that those I'm familiar with serve their purpose.

I know a few people who put tape over their camera so I can see some market for this. One friend in particular had an ex install some sort of remote access software on her laptop which he used to access her webcam.

Personally I like to think I'm careful about who has access to my hardware and I trust the webcam light. Theoretically someone might be able to hack the firmware but if I was being directly targeted by a sufficiently capable and motivated actor my webcam would not be my biggest concern.

In the context of the census that certainly makes sense and there are obviously strong links between religious backgrounds and political beliefs.

The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are. I realize it's entirely based on my personal experience but I've seen it too often to ignore!

There are reduced rates of VAT for certain categories of products and services so payment processors would need to know what the charge they are processing is for.

It's not uncommon for invoices to include multiple VAT rates in certain industries so that would add another level of complexity.

A grocery store will charge different rates for essentials and non-essentials, a builder will charge different rates for materials and services, and there are probably other examples that apply to online sales too.

Plan is a big word in the context of Brexit! There has been very little consensus on what the referendum actually meant and much of the delay in the process was down to the UK government's collective indecision.

One incident which highlights this is the first indicative vote in 2019. Almost three years after the referendum, Parliament voted to see which option was preferred and none of them had majority support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_votes_on_Brexit#...

Thanks for pointing that out, it's an important detail.

I worked on a VAT system for an online store but I never looked into the regulation so my knowledge is limited!

Most countries have exemptions for small businesses. In Ireland for example you do not have to collect VAT if your revenue is below 72k.

Presumably you should be able to afford an accountant by the time you reach that figure.

It's worth mentioning that you can't deduct VAT on your purchases if you don't collect VAT so if you have low margins that might be an issue.

Edit: The thresholds in Ireland are actually 75k for goods and 37.5k for services. The figure I remembered is out of date.

With the EU scheme the Dutch company doesn't have to register with the German or French tax offices. So while the Dutch company in your example would have to charge 19% VAT to its German customers and 20% to its French customers it only has to report and pay those taxes to the Dutch tax office.

So beyond the fee there is also an additional bureaucratic burden with this UK scheme.

This looks like a poor attempt to compensate for leaving the VAT MOSS scheme.

As I understand it, vendors in the EU have to charge tax rates based on the customers location and transfer those taxes to the customers country. For example, a shop in Germany that sells to a customer in Italy has to collect Italian VAT and send that VAT to the Italian tax service.

VAT MOSS simplifies this by allowing vendors to send those taxes to their local tax service which handles the international transfers so while vendors still have to charge multiple tax rates they only have to register and pay taxes in a single country.

Apparently the UK wants to continue collecting VAT from EU vendors but since they have left the EU they must invent their own scheme to do so.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...

The SNP's majority and the remain vote in Scotland certainly give credence to that idea. Given how close the last referendum was the Brexit issue could easily be enough to tip the scales, granted it's always difficult to predict what other factors might be in play.

I must admit that part of me likes the irony of the UK "forging it's own path" resulting Westminster losing power and it's states gaining independence.

As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists. The division is due to the partition of Ireland and not religious beliefs. The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. You don't have to be Catholic to be in favour of reunionification and vice versa.

Could you describe those chains? Specifically, which EU regulations have been holding the UK back?

The comment you replied to is the source. What other type of source would you like for what something "seems" like to an individual?

It seems to me that asking for sources is a common technique for discrediting opinions on HN. It looks like a legitimate question but obviously if they had a source it would be a fact rather than an opinion.

If you are actually interested in how that opinion is formed ask a relevant question or point out what they are missing.

Personally I find that opinion entirely reasonable given that there are no problems I have that Bitcoin would solve better than the alternatives unless I was inclined to buy something online anonymously or to speculate on Bitcoin itself.

Outside of the population changes the republicans also seem to be gaining popular support for their progressive agenda. Their positions on issues like marriage equality and women's rights make them more aligned with younger voters than the unionists.

For those who are not familiar, in the Irish context republicans are republican in the sense that they want to reunify the Republic of Ireland, unlike the US GOP they are largely democratic socialist.

While the official reason for the border closure was unrelated to Brexit, stockpiling before the deadline certainly worsened the situation.