interfixus

I live in a country with - so far - only two reported cases. And I consider us to be at that point. So, I take basic precautions and have done so for weeks.

Of course, we need never reach the point if everyone would act with just a basic level of thought and consideration. Sadly and infuriatingly, hardly anyone does.

Okay, this is news to me. But then, my bank is not a US one. There is no money in my account that I cannot immediately withdraw as cash. That is sort of the whole point of my bank account, except of course it's mandatory if I wish to receive wages for the job I perform...

Anyway, call me poor all you like. I actually am.

>>You may soon discover (depending on your jurisdiction) that topping up is no longer an option, because your actual bank starts treating these transactions as cash advances, 3%-4% fee (and trashing your credit rating too)

I may not. In fact, I have no idea what you mean by 'cash advance'. By HN standards I am pennyless, but wouldn't ever dream of spending or withdrawing money that I haven't got.

I have kept a paid Revolut account for the last nearly two years, and it has performed flawlessly. The one time when I needed support, reply was prompt, polite, professional, and to the point. This is service I use for day-to-day business. I never keep large sums there, so if the whole thing goes belly up one day, it will cause a shrug and not much more. Topping up from my 'real' bank - or wherever - is easy enough to do on the fly: I sometimes do so while queueing in the supermarket. Features I like, and which are apparently beyond the ability of my regular bank to offer: Virtual and diposible cards. I use these for all web transanctions. No need to spread the details of my physical card around, and I can temporarily lock any card number, should I feel the need. Also, the physical card is discreet of appearance; just a grey piece of plastic, not screaming my banking preference for the world to see. And a handy ability to instantly create a payment link where anyone can pay me via credit card. I happily pay my monthly fee. Service well worth it.

Ha! When I need to take some idea apart and try to understand it, I often find myself explaining it to a highly perceptive Charles Babbage who has had his wish to see the future granted, albeit without having to sacrifice the rest of his lifespan. There can be others, but Babbage is the most frequent visitor by far. I have no idea whatsoever why.

As for the rest of perl4ever's comment, there is not a single word or thought or sentence in it which I do not completely recognize and relate to.

I have my Calibre library - and lots of other stuff - autosynced to the much maligned but actually superb MEGA service where some small fee gets me 8 TB to play with. So stuff is instantly retrievable on various phones and secondary PC's.

If I really need sync of progress, I either rely on something called memory, or work from Calibre's built-in webserver.

I wasn't really aware of cockroaches possessing spinal cords.

Flippancy aside, rats are sophisticated mammals with basically the same set of higher order functions as ourselves, although of course in different quantities.

Same here. One of my cats will do that if given the chance. All of them know where the laser is kept, and order breaks down whenever I touch that drawer.

rhetoric, noun: political views espoused by people one does not agree with.

These presentations are from decades before Darwin, and about a century before the Scopes thing.

Don't don't.

My note app hopping days ended the moment I first encountered Joplin, which I now use for almost all my writing.

Killer feature being the encrypted sync via more or less any kind of storage back end (where presently I use Box via WebDav, but that's easily switched). Seemless work across all my devices, all data in nice and portable markdown.

It fits my needs so well that I have taken the extraordinary step of allowing the desktop version on my pc's, even though it is Electron based.

https://joplinapp.org/

For what it's worth, the linked page is itself running on Fossil, which has of course build in forum facilities and several other suchlike goodies - being a complete solution, packed into a single smallish executable with no significant dependencies apart from SQLite. The Fossil site runs on very moderate hardware, and gets no hiccups from hitting the HN frontpage.

I like this kind of untroubled minimalism, and so far have never encountered a reason not to run every personal project on Fossil. The real world will occasionally force me onto Git territory, but I can't really say I have ever enjoyed the experience.

Git is here to stay for any foreseeable future, of course. And while I do understand points often made about the benefit of one de facto standard to rule them all, monolithic dominance always tends to unsettle me. My SE friends in general simply use 'Git' as a given synonym for 'version control'. And it does annoy and somewhat worry me that they've never even heard of Fossil until I roll out my sermon.

Tech- and designwise, very neat.

And then there's the occasional sourfaced old party pooper like myself. Two seconds in, and I no longer see the sweet wizardry or the polished black surface; I only see @gmail, internally translating to "someone who doesn't really care".

Maybe it does, but this is a somewhat ill-considered underhand jibe at the Germans and something that a small percentage of their grandparents were involved in more than 75 years ago.

True, but still a dizzying feat by any standard. World's in-a-class-of-its-own largest rocket, so far only tested in two unmanned launches, one of them a near disaster, stability problems now theoretically fixed, but fixes never tested in actual flight. Sure, let's improvise a new kind of missio in four months time, strap people on top of that thing, and shoot them to the Moon for the first time ever.

I don't believe that's quite how things are done these days. Wildly successful things, mind you.

> I recommend people learn a second language, but I recommend they find one that they'll either consume a lot of media in, or have a lot of people they can talk to daily and will actually use

This is, of course, exactly what many of us did, and what you daily see us doing here.

The ferry was at quai on the island. It was actually sent across to the mainland on Breivik's request. Anyway, even if hijacked at gunpoint, consider that 600 people would have had 5 to 10 minutes warning that a lone gunman was approaching on a small vessel with only one possible point of entry.

A far, far deadlier variation of the Köpenick caper: In Norway, 2011, Anders Breivik got himself ferried to the Utøya island solely on the strength of convincing demeanor and a homemade pastiche of a police uniform.

There was a real policeman in charge of security on the island. After the bombing of government headquarters in Oslo an hour earlier, everything was on top terror alert, and Utøya had beeen put in quarantine, the connecting little ferry ordered not to sail.

Despite all this, Breivik was instantly ferried across, no questions asked, heavily armed and politely assisted with the carrying of ammunition boxes both onto and off the the boat.

Upon landing, he almost immediatly shot and killed the police officer, who despite apparent doubts had not taken up any countermeasures. And then of course killed 68 more, plus wounded about twice that number.

With a phone call and a modicum of due diligence, everyone would have been safe.

Interestingly, I drive old, cheap, used cars, and have a professionel license for every imaginable kind of vehicle under the sun.

Also, I live in a somewhat decrepit house from around 1890, in a postcode area of no prestige whatsoever.

In 40 years of driving, I have not been in any collision, and have never filed an insurance claim.

Oh yes! I live in a mostly rural area with lots of roaming fauna. Deer, hares, hedgehogs, cats of course, martens, rodents, foxes, all kinds of birds. Both when driving privately and when at work as a bus driver, I am observant and conscientious about all this wildlife: The roads are full of roadkill, which both saddens and angers me - but none of it is mine; I keep my eyes on the road, and I slow down for everybody.

Except for the crows and the rooks. I keep an eye on them, and keep a foot poised for braking, but I never have to. They stroll, as you describe it, quite nonchalantly out the way, sometimes leaving a walnut for my vehicle to please crush. And here's the thing: They happily stroll into the opposite lane, if - and only if - no cars are approaching from the opposite direction. Complete grasp of the traffic situation, and they hardly ever fail - during the last year, I have seen one dead crow at the roadside; I'm gessing he took cool one step to far.

Happy to see Lunanode rated Really Good. My exact experience during more than three years as a completely happy customer. They don't stock any Alpine Linux, but fetching the install image and setting up is a breeze, and not once, ever, have I had an issue with any of my instances. And highly appreciated: I can clone an instance, download the qcow2 image, fiddle with it locally, upload, and put it back in production. Flexible, easy, clean, no nonsense, reliable, cheap, and absolutely recommended. Don't know about support, though, since so far I have had no cause to call them.

It's quite a bit of a stretch to call anyone from after the 11th century a viking. But for some reason the epithet often gets bandied about when talking of the Norse in Greenland.

Did me some hitch-hiking back in the day. Sydney-Perth, Melbourne-Perth (and the corresponding return trips) somehow always neatly approached four days, or 96 hours if you like.

Once got a ride from a trucker who did Adelaide-Perth-Adelaide once a week. Alternating with a colleague, that is, so he had 3½ days exactly to complete the round trip, including on/off loading at both ends. They never really stopped once they got the truck moving, and I do believe a lot of the driving was pill-fueled. Completely bat-shit, of course, but apparently not that uncommon a practice back in the eighties.

I utterly fail to see the point. In all likelihood I would take offense and cut short any further communication, should someone attempt to talk to me through Google [or whatever] Translate (but then, I can barely stand plain Gmail).

For what it's worth, Danish actually is my native language.

Western society?

I wonder which venues such implicit denigration of non-eurocentric culture could get you banned from.

> Gödel was a child when the theory of relativity was formalized

Relativity does away with the concept of simultaneity. Your statement may be true but unprovable :)

Not really surprising. From what I have seen of rats, they are very good at spatial perception and physical manipulation of their environment, where they easily outperform most cats and dogs I have had the pleasure of knowing. A smart rat clearly enjoys exploration and challenge, and likes to be in control - it would appear more unexpected if these joyrides didn't relax them.

At least we are not a minority of one, then.

Except that 'dislike' is probably too neutral a description of my views on the phenomenon.

I drive buses for a living. Believe me, when reversing some 15 meter monster into a parking slot, I trust and use my mirrors more than I do the very fancy rear-view camera.

A mirror I have a lifetime experience worth of knowing what is, no perceivable extra layer of processing required. A camera, not quite so, although of course it's a nice enough extra to have.