bramjans's comments

That's really nice, thanks for sharing!

At least in Belgium we fixed that with "septante"

I can recommend "The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay" by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman for some concrete ideas on how to fix this problem.

Some ideas seemed a bit unlikely, but overall great refreshing read in my opinion.

Counterpoint here: I travelled for about 8 months about 7 years ago (already? damn!) and it even though it didn't change me directly as a person, it did instill an ever-present hunger to see more of the world. More importantly, it made me marry my foreign travel-partner which has without a doubt been very transformative ;)

A bit far-fetched to link this book to the current COVID crisis, but I actually read it a few month ago and really enjoyed it! It's obviously very specific from the point of view of an old European intellectual and filled with nostalgia, but a fascinating read nonetheless, with some great portraits of famous artists from his time.

His rant on passports feels very relevant in these times of ever decreasing personal freedoms and privacy. Hard to imagine the Habsburg empire was actually not that long ago.

Indeed, been using DDG for a couple of years now, and since Google's redesign I've been using a lot less "!g".

While educating the elderly can help in the short term, I feel like this shows structural problems such as personal data protection and phone carriers' unwillingness to fix these sort of issues.

I'm not saying phone fraud is non-existing in my home country of Belgium, but I've never received a single scam call, nor do I know of anyone who did, so the size of the issue in the US is surprising to me.

I do remember getting a lot more spam calls while living in Spain for a while, so it seems very linked to countries' law enforcement and carrier cooperation.

Some counter-anecdata, I was rather amused by the images.

Congrats with your fascinating article, really enjoyed it!

What service do you use if I may ask?

Nice! The last time I had that fast feeling was with https://changelog.com/, written in Phoenix (Elixir).

Having lived for a while in Chile (where according to the article financial literacy is below average), my experience very much agrees with this. I noticed many people struggling with basic arithmetic resulting in me having to check the change at small shops since it would often be wrong. It also leads to people making crazy decisions with respect to choosing to buy in cash or on credit (in quota). I'm not talking about household appliances that people need, but I've seen things like a person buying a 50$ blanket in 12 installments over a year. Many people would just fill up they're salary with monthly credit payments.

I've heard some people say this shouldn't be an issue with most supermarket labels including the "price per unit weight/volume". I agree this should be an obligation by law, but I feel like many people are unaware of these labels. I know it sounds crazy to a tech crowd but I'm sure many people don't compare the weight/volume with the price but instead go for the cheaper product price.

Great stuff, like all of Bret Victor's talks. My favourite: is "The Future of Programming (2013)": https://vimeo.com/71278954

(I also liked this satirical blog post about that talk: http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=797)

Wow! Didn't know this existed, thanks for the tip!

Great read. I've only been in the professional software business for a couple of years, but already many of his insights (especially the ones about terrible people management) hit close to home.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this down!

Very much this.

I was also part of Startup Chile (8th gen) and the demands of the program were very reasonable. Gaining the RVA points to foster the community was really a small price to pay for basically "free money".

The transparency into spendings was very understandable and additionally largely due to some pretty shameless abuses in previous generations.

I believe the increase in "phablet" users is also thanks to emerging markets getting connected.

While living in South America the amount of "big phones" really surprised me, as they seemed so impractical. When I realised after a while that many people used their phone as their only Internet device, it made a lot more sense.

Agreed. It seems to me that the problem is that it is easy to get condoms for free/cheap in many places in western countries.

However, my experience living in Chile is that in countries that often need it more, they are much more expensive to get. In Chile, they were roughly twice as expensive as in my home country Belgium. Add in the big difference in wages and we're at approx. 4x difference. The argument that they are available for free is a joke, since it requires people to go to a doctor instead of simply a pharmacy.

I also believe that for many people, the difference between cheap and free is a big one.

Clicking through on the article I ended up browsing through several of the projects on Zidisha and reading the founding story. Very impressive project!

Having lived the last year and a half in South America I really believe in the power of micro finance as a tool against poverty. It's really eye-opening to see from up close how difficult/impossible it is to escape poverty without access to credit.

Good luck with the project!

Very interesting read indeed, a very thorough insight into life in Egypt. I especially liked the relationship part, the female oppression and dominance at the same type. Seems almost like a paradox through the eyes of a westerner.