rcbdev

In Vienna, where there is not a single automated check for public transport tickets (annual passes are analog plastic cards, one-way tickets are paper), there is consistently a less than ~2% fraud rate. So over 98% of users have a valid ticket at any time.

The City of Vienna has concluded that the cost of building such checkpoints combined with the reduced quality of service and the destruction of the city image could never be worth it. I wonder how other cities justify this without implicitly calling their denizens morally inferior to ours.

I think he is alluding to increased immigration from low-trust cultures. Many of these visitors who were granted asylum or student stays are by now fully Canadian. So yes, Canadians.

> Venmo code posted

This is the mark of a low-trust society masking its issues with technological band-aids. In high-trust countries, you still pay exclusively with cash at these unattended roadside stands.

This is not Reddit.com, neither is it SA or any other forum you confused HN with.

Yes, it is this way in most European countries where public transit infrastructure works.

The EU is losing around €50 billion every year to the fraud-scheme dubbed the VAT carousel (or MITF). The fix would be ridiculously simple, starting with an EU-wide VAT-ID scheme and a modicum of cooperation between financial ministries.

Not one policy maker has ever seemingly cared about this. But VPNs! That'll fix the budget and demographic crises of European nations, for sure.

I'm curious to see how the EU will maneuver it's new long-term financial plan when none of the members can even pay the membership fee soon.

And CumEx is still being gleefully practiced by some in the upper echelons with smaller values. Literally no-one cares if you're rich and connected, apparently.

What exactly is your issue? Please enlighten us on what qualifies YOU specifically to tell the veracity of any claim on Polish interior politics.

> profits matter more than safety

For all the big talk from U.S.-Americans on European 'overregulation', they sure seem to have much more dystopian societal failure modes materialize.

> Could their enterprising nature not provide for themselves without stealing?

Oh no, it could. Stealing is just easier, you see.

> This of course cannot be done with normal cash.

Yes, it can be! Just open a bank.

GMAIL in the web is so shitty, I literally switched over to another provider. I don't know how anyone can use them as their webmail client. You can't make sense of longer mail threads with forwards, answers etc. in between - it becomes an unreadable hot mess.

> "Replace outdated routers" yeah good luck with that, they're all banned.

Where on earth are routers banned?

It is just as easy to cook a meal from fresh ingredients. What exactly do you classify as "ready-to-make"?

I am incredibly allergic to the U.S.-American understanding of cooking as this unfathomably difficult task. No wonder there's an obesity crisis across the pond. The worst thing is, this unhealthy relationship to food seems to be exported all across the world these days.

> Most government sites [...] do a decent job at internationalization

This, I fear, is just a materially wrong statement.

This is great, your suggestion to replace our sovereignly hosted VMs is to run containers in the U.S.A.?

I don't blame people for being skeptical

These schools, at least here where I am in Europe, have to provide their pupils with devices. How else would it be fair?

If the quality of parenting is so bad that it harms societal well-being as is being argued here, yes. It ought to be a license that one can reasonably obtain, though.

One can link government benefits to it, like Austria does with the Mother-Child-Pass. You need to have it filled out by the doctors and hospitals to prove you took reasonable precautions to ensure the child's safety, only then are you eligible for government benefits.

Yes, it's 100% legal in multiple EU countries.

Just because the U.S.A. does it, it is by no means normal. We here are not used to such contradictory laws that arbitrarily strip us of our rights. This is also why it feels perversely inorganic and unnatural, as does all regulation that is shoved into our faces by U.S. lobbyists.

So introduce that license.

Yeah, in Austria this includes 5 weeks mandatory PTO, unlimited paid sick days, which you can actually take without getting fired, and paid maternity and paternity leave - a senior developer will get around €75-80k a year.

Consulting rates for SWE here are around €80/h - €120/h depending on seniority and customer, maybe this makes for a fairer comparison.

Would it be sadder to you if the family had lower numbers on their bank accounts?

Eating factory farmed meat is seen as very low-class and irresponsible in my immediate vicinity. I have a hard time imagining any of my work colleagues admitting to eating factory farmed meat, even if they do due to cost reasons.

But farmers also enjoy high societal standing here, maybe that helps.

> derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god

We already bet on the weather.

If Google really is stupid enough to send collectors for this, they have every right to be sued for obviously deceptive business practices.

Google is in dire need of more consumer protection lawsuits.

Where do you live that consumer protection is this bad? Of course you can cancel any gym membership at their physical location, as long as you can also sign up at these physical locations.

What idiot lawmaker would allow a system where you can sign up without a computer, phone or fax, but then need these media to cancel what you just signed up for?

Then ban McDonalds. Ban cigarettes outright for all. Give federal funding to healthy alternatives. Raise tax on sugar 200%. Alcohol 500%. Use federal funds to make cities walkable. Give police the mandate to enforce more action on violent criminals. Fund unions. Fine employers where people work longer than 8 hours per day on average. Fine employers who do not grant mandatory 5 weeks vacation per year.

This is the world where the interests of the NHS is what counts for making the rules. Many countries implement at least some of these measures, to great success.

What does any of this mean? Greetings from Europe.