HeavenFox

There's also the Ford vs Chicken Tax; basically U.S. import tariff for passenger van is 2.5% and cargo van is 25%, so Ford, which manufactured their Transit van in Turkey, installed seats in factory and stripped the seats once they arrived in the U.S.

Now looks like they are in trouble for this scheme.

https://jalopnik.com/ford-faces-potential-1-3-billion-fine-f...

(And why it's called Chicken Tax is another fascinating story...)

There have been two theories:

- Since China controlled the pandemic via strict lockdown, where one cannot leave their apartments / housing compound for ANY reason, couples would be bored and get busy in bed to pass the time, resulting in a surge in birth rate.

- Also because of the strict lockdown, couples would be wary of having babies in such uncertainty. For example, if a woman gets pregnant and their compound goes into lockdown, she would have trouble getting prenatal care. Even if they can go to the hospital, they are afraid they will get COVID there.

So far it seems the second theory is closer to truth.

NJ resident.

Being able to refuel your car without stepping outside is really nice, especially in winter. There has been attempts to repeal that law to no avail.

The only drawback is if there aren't enough employees you may need to wait a while. This is especially annoying at Costco where there's always a line.

You don't take off with 30 degrees of flaps though, fortunately.

I once watched a video about exotic car rental business, where they mentioned that if you rent a car and fail to return it, it's technically not theft, but conversion. As a result it's difficult to get the cops involved.

Not sure how Hertz managed to do it.

Greed is such a powerful motivator. OP managed to save $100k in five months, a healthy sum for even the most expensive areas in the country. But no. He wants more.

Not OP but I bought their humidifier recommendation and it wasn't great. Barely made a dent in the humidity level of my small studio apartment.

Turns out I was not alone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25993512

There are signs that is already happening.

- Last year Tesla got in a huge PR storm when a customer complained of unintended acceleration. It later turned out the customer was making it up. However the government didn’t intervene and let the situation got a lot worse, whereas they routinely “stop the spread of misinformation” on other hot topics.

- Many government and academic institutions banned Tesla from their campus, citing security concern from their cameras

Also in general anti-American sentiment is extremely high in China right now, making it harder for Tesla to do business

I got the L2740DW. Granted it's by no means small, compared to the old HP monstrosity I'm used to it feels tiny

My family printer was bought in 2008. I parted with it when I left for college. After getting by with school printer, office printer and public printer in my apartment building, I finally bought my own after the pandemic. Oh boy are modern printer marvelous. Compared to my old one, the Brother laser printer I bought

- Is super compact and can be left anywhere

- Connects to home network by WiFi and supports AirPrint etc

- Supports automatic duplex printing

- Has an automatic document feeder that supports automatic duplex scanning

- Has a large touchscreen so I don't have to navigate four levels of menu just to copy something

- Can print from and scan to my Dropbox

- Has never jammed

All for just $160 refurbished.

While I am a big fan of reducing e-waste, if I had an old printer and use it with some frequency, I would seriously consider upgrading, now that I know what I am missing out :)

Fortunately encryption does not need to work forever. It just needs to work long enough until the information it's protecting ceases to be valuable.

It's part of the HTTP standard for `Authorization` header, and there is the possibility of some HTTP client / server breaking if you don't add it.

Also, speed. Can you imagine how long it would take to print out 150 pages on an inkjet?

a) Canada has 4x the population of Israel

b) Israel agreed to the extraordinary term of sharing their data with Pfizer, in exchange for getting doses early, something Canada almost surely won't be willing to do

c) The Israeli PM Netanyahu was facing significant electoral challenges and desperately needed a win, so there was a lot of political will

That's too harsh for Hu.

Hu didn't start holding all three senior offices together. His predecessor, Jiang, did. Not that it matters anyways - China's paramount leader before Jiang, Deng, was neither head of state (President), nor head of government (Premier), nor head of party (General Secretary).

Hu is generally considered not to be power hungry. He is well-known for collective leadership (by the Politburo Standing Committee where he is the top ranking member) and is praised for stepping down from all positions voluntarily at the end of his term (Jiang kept his position as the head of military well into Hu's term)

True, astrophotographers like monochrome camera because you can prioritize gathering brightness signal over color signal, so you get more detailed photo; you can also use narrowband filter and image under full moon or in inner cities.

However, astrophotographers also complain about the price premium of monochrome camera. Given the same sensor, the monochrome version is typically 20% - 30% more expensive than the color version, which is counterintuitive - you don't need to put the Bayer filter on! So if we can perfect the technique to debayer color sensor, the astrophotographer community would be elated.

English sources are scant but here you go: https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/entertainment/tech-gaming/a...

A few years back some enterprising merchants in China were selling these to kids in elementary school to do their homework. After all a significant portion of homework is literally copying characters / passages over and over again. They came with software that allows you to train it with your own handwriting so teachers cannot tell. It was amazing.

Backblaze has S3-compatible API and they have free data transfer to Cloudflare

It is very useful in the context of Chinese grade school. There are a lot of exam problems that require factorization, and calculators are banned. Having a list of primes memorized comes really handy.

When I was a fifth grader in China, we were required to memorize all prime numbers below 100.

Curious if that is common in other countries?

A dose of Moderna has significantly more genetic material than a Pfizer one to begin with.

It's a problem of phrasing.

Back then, for an average person, there wasn't much to do on the Internet, except online games and chatting with friends, both of which are considered a waste of time. As a result, Internet itself was demonized, and Internet addiction was considered a problem, even a mental disorder.

Nowadays, China has a booming tech sector. Everyone is using the Internet all the time to browse TikTok videos, stream TV shows, order food delivery and shop deals. And people stopped talking about Internet addiction, because suddenly they realize they themselves fit the clinical definition, which was to be online for more than a few hours a day.

About ten to fifteen years ago, “Internet addiction” was perceived to be a big problem among the youth in China. Kids would skip school and play video games in Internet cafes.

Someone opened an “Internet addiction treatment center”. Parents would pay to send their kids there, where they are deprived of their freedom, be indoctrinated about their “sins”, and even subject to electric shock. [1]

The state official television network, CCTV, aired a documentary endorsing the practice.

I am not making this up.

Obviously nobody cares about this anymore because literally everyone is an Internet addict.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yongxin#Internet_addictio...

It is cultural.

In Confucianism, the relationship between a father and a son, a superior and their subordinate, a state and its citizen are considered equal. Therefore it is considered normal for the state to be paternalistic. Also, collective responsibility takes precedence over individual freedom. Each person is supposed to conform to its role in society. Children’s role is to study, rather than play video games all night.

Together, you get a video game ban, enforced by the full power of the state.

Until a few years ago, video game consoles are banned in China for the exact same reason.

I thought so too; isn’t it part of Near East? However Wikipedia suggests people have began to use the term Middle East to cover that part of the world too apparently

If you have a management company chances are they don’t allow you to Airbnb your apartment in the first place

Tone aside, she is not wrong though. At this point, there are only two groups of people who are clearly incentivized for the Olympics to happen: the IOC, which would lose all the revenue; and the athletes who would "age out" for the 2024 games. Why should an entire city, even an entire country, bear the cost for just a few?

One of my pet peeves is that Coursera uses .org domain. A YC-backed billion-dollar-valuation public company.

This seems like the worst outcome for Japan and best outcome for the IOC. Japan incurs all the cost of hosting the Olympics while reaping none of the tourist yen, while the IOC gets paid the broadcasting fee. At this point the optimal outcome for Japan is probably to cancel the game altogether.

Is it an example of the political pull of the IOC? The Asian culture of face-saving? Or plain old sunk cost fallacy? I honestly don't know.