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Search - "stupid politicians"
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Got pretty peeved with EU and my own bank today.
My bank was loudly advertising how "progressive" they were by having an Open API!
Well, it just so happened I got an inkling to write me a small app that would make statistics of the payments going in and out of my account, without relying on anything third-party. It should be possible, right? Right?
Wrong...
The bank's "Open API" can be used to fetch the locations of all the physical locations of the bank branches and ATMs, so, completely useless for me.
The API I was after was one apparently made obligatory (don't quote me on that) by EU called the PSD2 - Payment Services Directive 2.
It defines three independent APIs - AISP, CISP and PISP, each for a different set of actions one could perform.
I was only after AISP, or the Account Information Service Provider. It provides all the account and transactions information.
There was only one issue. I needed a client SSL certificate signed by a specific local CA to prove my identity to the API.
Okay, I could get that, it would cost like.. $15 - $50, but whatever. Cheap.
First issue - These certificates for the PSD2 are only issued to legal entities.
That was my first source of hate for politicians.
Then... As a cherry on top, I found out I'd also need a certification from the local capital bank which, you guessed it, is also only given to legal entities, while also being incredibly hard to get in and of itself, and so far, only one company in my country got it.
So here I am, reading through the documentation of something, that would completely satisfy all my needs, yet that is locked behind a stupid legal wall because politicians and laws gotta keep the technology back. And I can't help but seethe in anger towards both, the EU that made this regulation, and the fact that the bank even mentions this API anywhere.
Seriously, if 99.9% of programmers would never ever get access to that API, why bother mentioning it on your public main API page?!
It... It made me sad more than anything...6 -
Official declaration: I am a fucking moron.
Last year, I acted stupid (as suual) and didn't invest enough money into some tax saving instruments.
I also picked the wrong taxation method and ended up paying more than double taxes.
Thankfully my country has an option where you can claim a refund by filing a return form.
And so I go ahead and I hire a finance guy who can help me do my taxes.
We sit at the table and do the math. It turns out my savings mindset prevented me from not investing enough and now it is difficult to claim the tax as refund.
I legit had no issues in investing more. Rather I was looking for ways to do so but I didn't. If I had done it, I'd would be paying zero taxes as my earnings would fall below a certain threshold.
Only trick is to evade by unethical means. Should I be the Jeff Bezos of my country and save my hard earned money from going to corrupt politicians?
Either way, I am a moron. Fucking hate my stupid decision.17 -
I see Amazon taking a lot of flak and being called a monopoly, but they aren't. Sure, Amazon sells branded items, but the majority of items are sold by small mom-and-pop businesses that have access to markets that they would not have without Amazon. Case in point, I've ordered items that have come not just from the US, where in live, but Europe and Asia. I just ordered some 4711 cologne, and was sort of expecting that it would come from Germany. Nope, it's coming from a small seller in Japan. Amazon is a global equalizer that enables people from all over the world to sell to people from all over the world. The politicians messing with that are going to remove that ability, and we will all be the poorer for it. Maybe this is a rant after all.4
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TIL indians live on the "satisfaction" plane hence saying yes to things they can't do to satisfy you, but also dissatisfy people as a form of attritional warfare, which is their specialty.
I was watching the trump v Kamala debate and was reminded of a bunch of tactics I've had used against me by an Indian lead dev, who I ignored the behaviour of and didn't think she was actually hostile to me until it was too late. but it made me feel so bad for him and I got an epiphany. it seems like the tactics are the same, so I got curious if there was an Indian art of war
Interestingly the AI said yes but directed me to the wrong book. I did find the right book eventually. it exists. the Chinese stole ideas from it to write their sun tzu art of war, but it's basically a Machiavellian manual before Machiavelli was alive. very cool
also turns out China is behind everything. I remember ages ago I got in a fight with a schizoid programmer friend of mine because he knew China was taking over everything and he wanted them to win, and I was rooting for team India because they were far less miserable than the Chinese. don't make a deal with the Chinese. guy was stupid. they treat people like irrelevant meat
China seems to be connected to everything that's going on right now.
- they're infiltrating Canadian politics, get international students to change Canadian election outcomes (200k/30m people who weren't citizens but got bussed to voting centers and just used proof of address to vote. they changed outcomes of 4 elected officials in one province, and local Chinese people are saying they get threats about their family back in China if they don't do what China tells them to -- but our elected government just keeps quiet on it and then goes to China for new orders during "climate conferences" and uselessly gives them a bunch of our fucking money)
- there was issues with the Chinese buying up real estate in Canada and just leaving them empty. it's probably still happening even though Canada eventually imposed a tax on leaving empty real estate around that you're not renting out. they're still buying up properties, and we have an increasing housing shortage as a result. one of my old apartments a white guy, who was suspicious and shifty, bought the unit and forced us to move out citing code violations (you can't kick someone out otherwise here because of very strong renter's protections). they never introduced who bought the place, but they did have 7 ALL CHINESE SPEAKING IN CHINESE people come in and measure everything at the apartment. so they're definitely still buying up real estate
- are behind the green agenda (our politicians seem to take orders from them under this guise)
- seem to strangely have had camps where they let migrants pass through the South Americas to get into united states, were very closed off and hostile to anyone snooping so it was up in the air what they were doing there. after people came to snoop the camps up and disappeared
- are who USA is competing with in the AI race, the whole AI narrative is literally a fight between the west and China
and there's a super smart systems guy who thinks they were behind the world economic forum and I'm increasingly starting to believe it
all electronics coming from China should be a concern. it isn't
there's tons of Chinese trying to enter open source software to install backdoors. they're nearly successful or successful often. same with that DDoS on DNS years ago
there's rumours they've been running Canada since the 80s, via infiltrating Canadian tech companies to steal their software and are the gatekeepers for a lot of underground stuff
I'm starting to believe even the COVID virus was on purpose. I didn't before. there was a number of labs that had that virus, a lab leak happened around Ukraine 6 months prior to the "Olympics outbreak" (seriously that was PERFECT timing for a lab leak if you wanted to do a bioweapon on purpose -- you would hit every country at once!), but there was also a lab in Canada that had it and some reporters were upset about it because the lab didn't seem to care about our national security and was letting suspicious Chinese nationals work at it, and for some reason there's been discovered a BUNCH of illegal makeshift Chinese labs in California with super vile stuff in them
and what the fuck was that Chinese spy balloon fiasco anyway. you can't shoot it down? I think that was a test to see how fast and readily the west would defend itself. or maybe they wanted to see the response procedures
and then on top of it many people think the opioid epidemic is all china. china makes the drugs. it would also fit perfectly, because in the 1800s or whatever the British empire had entirely decimated china for decades by getting them addicted to the opioid trade. eventually the British empire merged with USA and now USA is basically the head of the new British empire
I think we're at war with China and literally don't fucking know it13 -
Fuck external stake holders, like politicians, those know-nothings, that pump their ego by finding multiple "issues" with our software like how we display the privacy data agreement and impose their stupid fucking nonsense rules on our software. Even if it is not part in any official law or GDPR
So there is the request that one needs to scroll down the whole data privacy crap nobody reads until you can press "Continue" and we *have* to implement that shit. Although it is completely out of line with Apple's usual installer handling. Nobody will understand it. It cripples the workflow.
But some Mr. Important demanded it, as if he is protecting users with this and makes a great contribution to the data privacy in our country. Yeah! And guy is so high up, unreachable for us through all the layers of other people, leaving us no time and means to dissuade this shitty request. If all your 'ideas' are so great you should not be allowed to do jack shit.1 -
Darn Wednesday! At my work we finish half an hour later on Wednesdays than on other days of the week. I often remember this halfways out of the building and then turn back. What a waste of time! I like regularity, same work hours every day, please. This added half hour is not my employer's fault though. It's because of some stupid twits in the Finnish government who decided that everybody in Finland including Åland Islands has to work half an hour extra every week - without getting paid! Why? To "make the nation more competitive". Those braindead Finnish politicians seriously believe their own crap? How the hell can any country be more "competitive" by pissing off their workforce? I mean, if a country is competing about anything, that should be citizens = tax payers and successful companies = also tax payers.