lasftew's comments

lasftew | 2 years ago | on: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

The fallacy is that organizations as a whole can only do so many different things efficiently. Capital allocation becomes less efficient if a single hierarchically structured entity has to decide on how and where to invest its capital, compared to the alternative of free market competition for capital (as usual ceteris paribus).

lasftew | 2 years ago | on: Windows on Btrfs

It might be convenient, but it is also more complex than just being able to read file systems. External disks or partitions containing data in particular will / should always be fully encrypted nowadays, so you'd need interoperability of disk encryption schemes as well (dmcrypt, bitlocker). NAS can handle that transparently.

lasftew | 3 years ago | on: Google Drive does a surprise rollout of file limits, locking out some users

It sounds like these problems are related to their end-user backup solution - can't comment on that as I've never used it.

However, when referring to Backblaze, I think most people here refer to their nice (and cheap) S3-like cloud storage solution, which works perfectly with the likes of restic, rclone and friends. That's probably what you should use if you care about control.

lasftew | 3 years ago | on: Cashless society in Switzerland? People to vote on keeping cash forever

I generally agree with you. I believe it is all about the culture and by extension the systems which have evolved over time to govern the political process.

I took objection however with "people do not fall prey so easily to misinformation like they would in other countries [...]". People as individuals are as prone to believe anything they read or hear as they are in any reasonably developed and educated country.

The key difference to me seems to be that the political system offers fewer incentives for political actors to act destructively. Proportional representation and multi-member districts mean nobody can assume they will win a majority alone, and a strong pull towards consensus (multi-party governments) means no party will ever govern alone. Everywhere, including in Switzerland, any political party will use information for a certain benefit or advantage, and "misinformation" is just the derogative term for that process, usually from the vantage point of the political opponent. However, there is less to gain from it when you need other parties to find an acceptable compromise and bring forward your objectives.

lasftew | 3 years ago | on: The integrated timetable of Switzerland

I don't think this is true. There were massive investments into the Ticino regional rail network over the last 10-20 years, partially driven by the NEAT extension, which shortened travel times between regional centers (Lugano - Locarno - Bellinzona) dramatically.

What doesn't seem to work well are interconnections with neighboring Italy, but that is likely not due to underinvestment on the Swiss side. Road traffic is therefore still a huge issue in Ticino, as many Italian workers cross the border twice per day by car due to the lack of adequate public transport options.

lasftew | 3 years ago | on: The integrated timetable of Switzerland

> second class citizen

As far as I know, investments in particular in local and regional trains is heavily driven by cantonal investments. For example ZVV (Zürcher Verkehrsverbund) contracts the S-Bahn network from SBB and finances a good part of its operations. While Zurich's network is therefore quite excelent, I am not sure other cantons invest at similar levels and therefore enjoy a worse experience.

lasftew | 4 years ago | on: LXC vs. Docker

My home server runs Nixos, which is an amazing server operating system: every service is configured in code and fully versioned. I also use this server for development (via SSH), but while Nixos can be used for development, it's relationship with VS Code, its plugins, and many native build tools (Golang, Rust) is very complicated, and I prefer not to do everything the Nix way, which is usually convoluted and poorly documented.

LXD is my perfect fit in this scenario: trivial to install on top of Nixos, and once running, allows for launching some minimal development instances of whatever distro flavor of the day in a few seconds. Persistent like a small VM, but booting up within seconds, much more efficient on resources (memory in particular), and - unlike docker - with the full power of systemd and all. Add tailscale and sshd to the mix, for easy, secure and direct remote access to the virtualized system.

lasftew | 4 years ago | on: Good Riddance, TurboTax. Americans Need a Real ‘Free File’ Program

Not in Switzerland. Bank accounts and salary information are not accessible to either level of government (communal, cantonal, federal), due to strong privacy legislation and a traditional distrust for central data collection and authority.

But nevertheless the yearly filing process is rather straightforward, as the tax authorities provide their own free web app for this purpose. It hasn't always been great but it improved significantly over the last few years.

lasftew | 4 years ago | on: The Swiss reject key climate change measures

There are ways to implement such a scheme in a way that does not increase the overall tax quota, by either reducing other taxes (VAT, income tax) or directly giving back to the people (tax credits).

One key argument of opponents of the proposed law was indeed that it would have resulted in an overall tax increase, with a lot of money being channelled into a dedicated "green innovation fund", outside of regular parliamentary control.

Unsurprising, many MPs on the pro side were affiliated with the "clean tech" and construction industries, who would have received most of that money.

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