ptaipale

39 ms·

361.
by ptaipale 8y ago
If you know anything about the GULAG, you know that people sent there as "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activists" very often did not have anything to do with counter-revolutionary activist, or Trotsky, or anything. Very often
362.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I find it odd that someone downvotes your comment. It's not snarky, or trivial, it just states an opinion. It appears someone doesn't like the opinion.
363.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Perhaps it does, if you remember that rape is not necessarily about sex, but about violence and power.
364.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I guess it depends on whether one thinks that democracy and freedom are good things as such. They are not necessarily universal values, even if many in the West tend to think so.
365.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Some gas is renewable, though, so definitely low carbon. And over here it's even fairly cheap (for vehicles, considerably cheaper than gasoline).
366.
by ptaipale 8y ago
There are texting packages in European contracts as well, particularly in the more competitive markets in North Europe, but one reason to prefer WhatsApp is roaming: in the US, you can use your texting package all over the continent, but in
367.
by ptaipale 8y ago
That was extremely annoying, although you can work around it by accessing mbasic.facebook.com with a mobile browser. Also using mobile Chrome in desktop mode enables one to read messages, although it's quite awkward to use. Facebook&#x
368.
by ptaipale 8y ago
These are all Indo-European languages. But interestingly, this has been transported even to Finnic languages, which are grammatically entirely different and unrelated, but still have plural forms for the same words: pants -> Finnish &quo
369.
by ptaipale 8y ago
In Finland, it is still correct to treat V and W as equivalent when sorting (e.g. phonebooks). This applies both to Swedish and Finnish language and context. However, now it is more common to treat them as separate letters, which is also ac
370.
by ptaipale 8y ago
No, it stays reasonably OK. A keep-warm plate in a coffee maker is definitely worse. Still, it's best to let the coffe get cold immediately if you don't drink it right away. Keep it in fridge, and when you want hot coffee, heat it
371.
by ptaipale 8y ago
The patent bonus at Nokia was just that, a patent bonus; the purpose of the program was to systematically collect a large portfolio of patents; such a patent mass is used in IPR negotiations with other technology giants. Those patents were
372.
by ptaipale 8y ago
All in all, GDPR reminds me of how legislation and regulation was constructed in USSR and now in Russia. The rules are such that it is practically impossibly to comply; it is then left to the powers-that-be to decide which ones of those in
373.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Not necessarily. They may even be required to store access information, due to legal regulations in some countries. Also, providing service may become practically impossible if it is not possible to keep logs and similar data.
374.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I actually think one is not very wise to go and fight fascists when it is quite obvious that if you contribute to a win, the harvest will be collected by stalinists. Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges
375.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Stalinist Communists, controlled by NKVD, attacked them. Trotskyists were Communists too.
376.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Of course airlines optimize it, but still, boarding alone takes a significant portion of the total time needed for a long-haul flight. If I look at the latest long-haul flight I took, the flight time was 11 hours, turn-around time at airpor
377.
by ptaipale 8y ago
> If your flight time is half, you can run twice as many flights per day with the same plane Certainly not. Planes don't spend all their time flying. A significant part of the time they are being boarded or people are stepping out,
378.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Likewise. It's not because my wife can't read a map - she's an orienteering enthusiast and can handle it, but alas, orienteering competitors tend to hold their paper map with the direction of their line of running on top.
379.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I don't need reception to use a cell phone map. I often load up PDF maps of the area where I am, as well as public transport route maps. Of course there are situations where cell phone or similar devices don't work well -- particu
380.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I didn't know Clarkson said this (though I know he said many other things). Here I've been taking his advice without even knowing he said it.
381.
by ptaipale 8y ago
First time in Southern hemisphere (RSA, in late July i.e. winter): come from the airport, settle at the Jburg hotel, take a bit of a walk and find a nice restaurant, decide it's warm enough to sit down and have a beer at the terrace. C
382.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Absolutely it was valuable. I'm Finnish, lived in China for a bit over one year (almost 20 years ago). It certainly changed the way I look at the world, was an invaluable experience, and I recommend anyone to take a bit of a leap. Most
383.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Area FI1D, Northern and Eastern Finland, is the largest NUTS2 region by land area you see on this map. It covers about two thirds of Finland (>200 000 km², about 3 times the size of Republic of Ireland), and has a population of 1.29 mill
384.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I would expect that the discrepancy that matters - wages vs. cost of living - has much bigger difference if you go from East Germany to Poland, Czech Republic or Slovakia, rather than in comparison to West Germany. I.e. purchasing power dr
385.
by ptaipale 8y ago
But for this it is probably good that the services do fingerprint us - so that we understand how well it can work. Otherwise we'd assume that cleaning cookies is enough and wouldn't know how well that tracking works, not only when
386.
by ptaipale 8y ago
I guess this isn't typically based on cookies but device/browser fingerprinting.
387.
by ptaipale 8y ago
Disproved what? The previous commenter explained cases 1 and 2, I just mentioned the example in case 3 where loss is not deductable (I'm Finnish so I do read that fluently).
388.
by ptaipale 8y ago
The third example lays out a situation where the loss is not deductable even though it is a real loss. What worries me more is that this is an "instruction", but the tax authorities are not bound by instructions. And they are know
389.
by ptaipale 9y ago
They were indeed impressive navigators - I think the most amazing feat is that they were the ones who first settled Madagascar , and just look at the distance from Southeast Asia - but I think they lacked most of the technological and soci
390.
by ptaipale 9y ago
And in fact there are a number of Taiwanese languages, or Formosan languages, as Han Chinese settlement of the island is a fairly recent thing. The Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian people - and in fact many historical linguists conside

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