coconut_crab

The usual story here (Vietnam) is that the victims are often promised a job with high earning prospect in Cambodia, or they are in debt after playing in casinos over there. Since Vietnam economy isn't in a good shape, there is no lack of potential victims. They don't really get killed either as it will cost the kidnappers, they will just get sold to another scam center. Oh and the victim can buy their freedom back if they scam enough people (my friend lost 10k USD in one such scam), not that there is many people who can do that though.

  - settlements on river banks will be swept away
  - the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, ZNPP, won't be restarted due to lack of cooling
  - Crimea will lost access to fresh water
  - First line of defence for both sides are swept away.
  - it will be harder for Ukraine side to mount an amphibious assault

So it's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

I really love my Steam Deck, until it suddenly died a few days ago. Couldn't even get to BIOS menu and just a black screen with CPU fan and haptic on, tried everything from reseating battery, putting in battery storage mode, replacing the NVME or even running fsck on another linux machine, nothing works. It seems to be a common issue with the Deck :( Now I have to find a way to RMA it, which will take months as they don't sell it where I live.

As someone who have learned a lot from ih8mud, thank you for helping such a great community! I live in a 3rd world country where it's very hard to get proper maintenance services like in America, ih8mud is the reason why I picked the FZJ80.

(now, if only I can find the emission manual for the 1fz-f...)

OEM parts can be really expensive, but there are also choices of buying aftermarket ones (mostly made in China) or salvaging from another ones. Near where I live there is a guy who salvages Land Cruisers for a living, he has more than hundreds frames lying around in his yard. Since most of the Land cruisers here have 3rd world spec (carb-ed and detuned engine, part time 4WD, mechanical gas pump etc...), the used parts are often in very good condition. Take the dreaded blown head gasket for example, I rarely see that here because 1FZ-F doesn't run as hot as 1FZ-FE. Or the Birfield, most people just run on RWD mode so they are often pristine.

(of course for something critical such as brake booster I would only use OEM).

I'm not sure how can it spill brake fluid in my vacuum line since they aren't really connected together (the booster has a push rod that connects to the master cylinder). But yes, I will get it replaced soon for my safety.

I get around 12.5 l/100 km (19 mpg?) if I got easy on the throttle, and around 18L/100 km (13 mpg) on a rough road. There is no feedback loop since it uses on carb, so as long as I keep the throttle steady it isn't that bad. Of course it can't compare with modern SUVs but not too terrible either.

Economically wise, a 2 years old mid sized SUV here costs around 40000 USD, meanwhile I bought my FZJ80 with 6000 USD (with 200000 km on the ODO). Even if I drive 1000 km a month it will take me more than 30 years of driving to start losing money compare to buying a modern one.

This is why I love my 80 series Land Cruiser (carb, not EFI), it's really simple that a lot of maintenance can be done with just wrenches. And the charm of having almost no electronics[1] on the car control is that if something is wrong, you will know it by the sounds it makes, and you will have a lot of times to fix it before it's completely toast. I have heard of horror stories about newer cars with electric ABS accumulator that stopped working on the high way, not with my FZJ80[2].

[1] The so called 'emission computer' unit on the car is a simple pulse counter/comparator that activates a VSV on the carb to reduce backfire while descending downhill with the foot off the throttle.

[2] My brake booster is leaking a little bit, but at least it won't suddenly gives up on me while I'm riding, still looking for a replacement.

Several of my friends were targeted by these scammers, and one of them even lost 10000 USD (a big sum in Vietnam) to a fake prosecutor. They even cloned the website of the Ministry of Public Security to scam him. Out of curiousity I took a look at their website source code, found an url to some kinds of a gateway for scammer where they have tools for scamming people, and also an android app that aid them. After finding that the whole operation is based abroad I told my friend that there is zero chance he will get his money back.

Instant noodle gives me pretty bad reactive hypoglycemia so I avoid it as much as possible. And when I have to eat one, often after coming home at night after a long trip, I often eat it with a eggs, a lot of frozen vegetables or wakame. That seems to fix the low sugar blood problem afterward.

It's not entirely true. Some banks only issue credit cards if you receive salary via their bank account or have a deposit there (mostly state owned banks) but other have no such requirement. Also they already have a credit score database up and running (CIC).

And let's not forget Singapore's strategic location in the center of world's busiest shipping lane too. That's why Singapore is strongly against the construction or Kra canal, which could shorten the route by ~1200 km bypassing Malacca straight:

http://theindependent.sg/the-real-threat-to-spore-constructi...

This is a photo I took at one of Vietnam's jam packed airports a few days ago:

https://imgur.com/a/9dn5AJh

Not many people will believe that a poor country like Vietnam, led by a single party in authoritarian style, can suppress Covid-19 with zero deaths. But for people who live here, being able to travel freely is the greatest proof that the approach worked.

(still I find it weird that covid-19 seems to be much weaker in South East Asia, even Laos or Cambodia aren't being hit that hard).

Vietnamese here, we totally trust the number because:

  - Every cases are documented and published on the medias (yes, I know that's not a good thing for privacy) to make contact tracing easier.
  - Vietnam is an authoritarian country with extensive public security apparatus so tracing and quarantining is easy. There have been cases that someone got quarantined because her friend who lives in other country tested positive, and that's after she returned to Vietnam.
  - Also the Communist Party of Vietnam has everything to lose if they can't handle this, so they are serious at containing covid 19. They even used cyber attacks on China to gain intel on how serious Ncov is back in December last year.
  - Most importantly, wartime like mass mobilization helped a lot. Every people did their part, the military set up quarantine camps and check points, disinfecting hotspot. The people cooperated with the guideline: avoiding going out, wearing mask or stay in quarantine if their areas has positive cases (the government will provided food and other necessities).
  - They do everything to keep the number of deaths at zero: The worst case, patient 91, was recently detached from ECMO after 2 months, his lung recovered from 10% to 40% capacity and he has woken up from coma. The cost for his treatment is $200k and counting, and he isn't even a Vietnam national!

Vietnam formed a task force called GK1 to research how to safely detonate those mines during the war. According to them the mines at Hòn La were detonated due to lightning stroke nearby.

Source: all 11 members of GK1 were from my university. I still remember the first day at school and they were talking about how they provided engineering effort for the war (bazooka clone, sea mines clearance, 2nd Mig pilot to downed a B52 etc..) but I'm sure some of them are just propaganda.

I work for a Japanese companies, and more than half of the developers here have non-IT backgrounds like marketing, sales, design etc... All of them started with scala from zero and 2~3 years later they start talking about monad, final tagless or writing concurrency helper libraries... Our brain is quite malleable so having non IT background doesn't prevent you to be a good developer.

(I am not a professional, so what I write below might be wrong)

Having more time to develop a vaccine or effective treatments is essential, it doesn't have to be herd immunity. Plus in countries where covid19 rate is low enough, social distancing can be helpful for finding and isolating clusters to suppress the epidemic.

My N95 mask smells like burnt plastic after 7 minutes under UVC (254 nm), I wonder if that means the mask is damaged.

The 32nd patient here caught ncovid-19 and started showing symptoms on the the 2nd of March whole staying in the UK. But the hospital refused to test her and told her to self quarantine at home instead. Six days later her condition got worse and her family which is very rich rented an airplane to fly her back to our third world country for treatment. The girl now has damaged lung and is in serious condition. I just don't know what is wrong with the hospitals over there, why did they refuse to test her? It's very irresponsible and the situation seems much worse than it seems in the UK.

Oh and nearly half a dozen new cases here recently are all Britons too.

(Google for 32nd covid-19 patient in Vietnam if you want to know more)

I have read that normal soap (or any kinds of detergents) is more effective than hand sanitizer in killing corona virus. The reason is that corona virus is enveloped in a lipid coating and the soap 'pops' it like a ballon, destroying the virus. So just washing your hand is enough.

Still 25 times more expensive than 3 layers surgical masks, which costs like two dollars for 50 pieces.

Oh yeah and I don't live in the US so my definition of 'expensive' can be different.

But N95 masks aren't cheap and AFAIK must be disposed after one day of usage. So they must be reserved for the medical workers, while the other can use 3 or 4 layers surgical masks, which should provide adequate protection.

Google has more than one hundred thousands employees, so interviewing is a very hard problem at that scale. So is there a better way of hiring for giant companies? One that doesn't involve forcing interviewee to farm leetcode for months?

I believ the sanction put on Iran by the Trump administration is of the main factors for very high mortality rate of Covid-19. This has caused suffering not just for the Iranian people but the whole region as now Iran lacks the equipments and medicines to put the epidemic under control. But I doubt the current President cares about that...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/29/maximum-pressure/us-ec...

> That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why most people should panic more than they do about flu season.

This is my thoughts why Covid-19 is much more dangerous than seasonal flu: first it is much more virulent, and hard to detect, many of the infections in Korea were due to one 61 years old woman alone. Secondly the mortality rate is higher too, estimated at 2-3%, with the serious cases at around 10% (please correct me if I am wrong). Those two above combined means if left unchecked, Covid-19 can easily overload our medical system, as what is happening in Wuhan*. So I will most likely won't perish or suffer any long term health problems from Covid-19, but our society as a whole might be devastated if we can't contain it. There is no need to succumb to irrational fear (like what's happening some countries), but we should all be prepared.

Actually I am worried about Iran, the embargo from America means their medical system are lacking all essentials. That's why they have so many deaths, second only yo China.

My anecdote: 2 weeks ago I have a conversation with the a C level in Japan about policy for work from home in case of Covid-19 outbreak. At that time there were less than 10 cases in my country (Vietnam) but I want to have a plan for the worst case: the whole company gets quarantined. The answers from him were disappointing, he didn't think much of that, that there is no work from home policy in our group and I should ask somebody else, it's not his problem. The answers from the local director was worse, he made it sounds like a crime to work from home ('checking email at home sneakily' = kinshi/forbidden). In short they didn't care about it, and had no plan for it either.

Now two weeks later and Vietnam has basically gotten the outbreak under control with only 16 cases despite being right next to China while Japan has more than 100 cases. And out group is scrambling to define a policy for working from home while stopping all the recruitment meetings. And I have told them all about that 2 weeks ago...

> There is a cottage industry springing up around passing interviews

This, a million times.

I was told to practice solving dynamic programming problems to prepare for the interview[1]. Looking around the web I found out that people spending months solving thousands of dynamic programming problems, just for getting a job. This strongly reminds me of the rote learning I had to do in order to get into university, which includes thousands and thousands of integration, derivatives, series, lense placements etc... A nightmare I thought that ended decades ago.[2]

Now dp is all nice and cool, but I think most jobs don't involve solving dp problems on a daily basis. Just like most mechanics don't need to solve Lagrangian mechanics problems or civil engineer with continuous girder (the interview for those those two don't have those either)[3].

There must be a better way to measure problem solving ability of a candidate, isn't there? Something thay requires more dedication from the company instead of blindly followingbthe practices of Google.

[1] The position is EM at a offshore branch of a medium sized non IT company, way below the likes of Google.

[2] Typical Asian problem.

[3] I started as a mechanics, and then doing some civil engineering job, building bridge and such.

Back in the 60s, my father went to China to continue his study (our country was being ravaged by B52s every days). Just after he arrived, he and his classmates were put under quarantine for 1 month as a Meningitis epidemic was spreading. They spent the every days locked in the house, with a serving of guanzhong medicine in the morning. It was a shock to all the Vietnamese there, as it's basically house arrest. China has been using quarantine as a tool to prevent epidemic spreading for a long time, ignoring all the hardships of the people inside.

Oh and it was during the Cultural Revolution too, so they were executing counter revolutionary people behind the school every afternoon (this was after the epidemic). Needless to say it left a very bad impression of China gov on my father.

I'm sorry to hear that. It seems that we are still not used to deal with foreigners yet, especially outside HN/SG.

> Local hospital refused to take us, sent to a special hospital "for foreigners".

This was the red light, Hue central hospital is actually very good (I have been there myself). It would be better if you had a local to guide you, maybe I should develop a website to help expats in Vietnam... Still what was the name of that hospital 'for foreigner' you mentioned?

Long ago it was a river, the French made it that way in the early 20th century.