Just my two cents: don't chase happiness through work. It rarely works out that way. Work to live, don't live to work. I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but give it a try and see how it feels.
My online bank doesn’t support international wire transfers. I had to wire money to a local bank then go to the branch in person, twice, to wire money to my own brother in Europe.
He then had to schedule an appointment with his own bank, go in person, and justify why he received such a big transfer, mind you, it was 8k…
So yeah, it’s not about regulation. If crypto can help streamline all this, it’s a net positive
I wired approximately that much money internationally years ago with Wise (then known as TransferWise). Wasn't a hassle at all, didn't require any rigamarole, and importantly, didn't require crypto. What's the problem with using Wise?
It may differ depending on countries, but I tried sending $8k USD to Malaysia and it took some time. Can't remember if it was weeks or days but point being it wasn't as instant as crypto can be.
Also, I think you're neglecting to point out the rigmarole involved with making a Wise account — connecting your bank accounts etc. And the recipient might also need a Wise account for instant transfers (but I believe Wise becomes a custodian for your funds in that case).
Crypto wallets can be generated by the click of a button. I think I taught my mom how to make a crypto wallet at some point. She didn't understand how to keep her crypto safe, which is its own issue, but wallet creation is easy.
I'm far from a crypto maximalist, but nigh-instant transfers with very little fee is a very attractive benefit of crypto.
Creating a crypto wallet to receive is just the first step though. If your mom needs her local currency then the same as with wise she needs to create an account on some form of exchange or pay an extortionate rate to use a crypto ATM.
If she doesn't need that then wise without a linked account or PayPal or etc is the exact same outcome without the crypto wallet security risk.
That's a fair point, but creating an account on an exchange isn't too bothersome.
I personally use a Ledger device for my crypto. It was super easy to set up (though I wouldn't advise it to my mom, because she tends to misplace things). I linked my crypto wallet to my bank account fairly easily. So we can still get nigh-instant crypto transfers and fast selling of crypto into local currency (Speaking from US here, I think it usually just takes up to one business day). It's still faster than bank-to-bank transfer for large sums, which again, can take weeks for whatever reason they decide.
> wise without a linked account or PayPal or etc is the exact same outcome
PayPal without a linked account is actually pretty terrible. I did a Google search of PayPal frozen funds and this was the first result.
Wise may have similar issues, I haven't really dealt with them outside of the occasional transfer, but I never let money sit in my wise account.
If you have custody of your own crypto wallet (IE not coinbase), no one can freeze your funds.
Again, I have my qualms with crypto, but the existing shitty state of ways to transfer money makes crypto very attractive. I have trouble even transferring money between my wife and my joint bank account and my personal account (held at two different institutions).
So your setup process is the same as wise or PayPal. You still had to do the process so crypto is best case harder since you also had to setup and manage a wallet unless you're just using the exchange one.
Go look at the subreddit of any of the major exchanges and they all regularly have stories of locked funds. Given the scales it would be far more likely there.
That's not a natural state of banking though that's a issue with your country. I have accounts at 4 different banks in Australia and regularly transfer funds between them without issue(I think my cap for instant transfer is around $5k though above that is usually only a few hours). Canada had a similar system(interac payments).
> Go look at the subreddit of any of the major exchanges and they all regularly have stories of locked funds. Given the scales it would be far more likely there.
Yeah that's why I wouldn't suggest anyone keeping a lot of funds on an exchange, and having custody of your own wallet. "Harder" is irrelevant (and relative) because a one-time setup in order to send money instantly — something that I need to reiterate that if our country's banking systems allowed us to do, I wouldn't look twice at crypto — is worth it.
> That's not a natural state of banking though that's a issue with your country.
Yeah I think that's my point though. If my country ("the great US of A") prevents me from easily moving money from me to me, and I've also had nothing but trouble trying to manage joint finances with my wife because of the difficulty of transferring money, then yeah I don't wanna play that game. In countries where bank transfers are instant then yeah, crypto doesn't make sense.
On march 16th 2022 I sent $500 to my cousin in the USA, the transaction was completed on may 2nd 2022 after 9 back and forth emails with support. The first email on march 16th was asking me to confirm some information which I did same day, the other 8 back and forth emails was me asking when was my transaction going to be completed... at that time I had been an active wise user for 3 years...
I'm a Wise user. Transfers are mostly fine for currencies they support. The transfer is usually pretty fast. I tried paying for a guided Hike in Tbilisi, Georgia a few years ago, and the transfer took almost a week, so it's slow in some cases. For currencies Wise doesn't support, you need to look at other options, such as Western Union or crypto.
The limitations you're describing are only in place because the countries that are subject to these bank limitations present significant issues (money laundering, terrorism, etc).
flamebait gets removed all the time because there's no way there's going to be a productive, illuminating, curious conversation about it. doesn't mean there's a conspiracy to prevent discussion.
How is this flamebait? Is there another way to report on this topic that would be less inflammatory? Or should media manipulation by foreign governments simply not be discussed and we should just keep quiet less someone get upset?
Surely if Russia was manipulating BBC reporting it would be note-worthy as well no?
I think parent just means that it’s a divisive topic, which means on the internet, that inherently makes it flamebait (and not necessarily through any fault of the reporting).
Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN).
There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).
The problem with this logic is that it is very, very easy for even a small number of people interested in silencing a topic on any issue they're concerned about "divisive" just by intentionally flooding the comments with knowingly inflammatory responses.
This has already be used on HN to essentially silence any serious reporting on climate change. Anyone technical with an interest in data will find most climate change related studies interesting, but a small minority of people who are fearful of the consequences will make sure to create an issue and shut down conversation, organically getting posts "flagged".
It's not some theoretical 'divisive', you can read how these threads go yourself, including this one. The meta discussions also make these a lot worse so it's hard to blame this on some 'small number' of people.
A lot of the flagged posts look completely fine, to me. Basically the entire discussion is greyed out, which suggests a pretty intense unwillingness to talk about the subject on principles alone.
I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic, nobody would want to use the site.
>I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides."
The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:
>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.
It's better to link the things you want to use as examples because otherwise we aren't really talking about anything concrete. The thread on this submission is awful, for instance - so that's my first link.
I think the flag system in HN is unnecessary and prone to abuse in threads like these.
Some comments that clearly break the rules should be removed by the community. But that should take multiple downvotes.
The flagging just allows one or two people to remove a part of the discussion, and we rely on other users to view dead or flagged comments to “rescue” them
I don’t disagree. I’m just afraid it’s a hard problem to solve, at least an automated one.
At one point, I proposed a read-only option for (well-reported) divisive articles to help raise awareness without resulting in flame wars.
But there are downsides to that, too — either they can still get flagged away, there’s a risk of garbage remaining on the FP if you disable the flag feature, and/or HN gets accused of bias if they manipulate certain articles this way (by disabling flags and/or commenting).
I feel like it’s wrong to call this topic divisive. It doesn’t adequately address that one side of the divide seems to consistently advocate for condoning genocide in broad daylight.
not sure which side you mean. gaza and israel have had officials advocate for the destruction of the other. that's kinda what makes it an existential total war.
But I think, by definition, if an article draws a lot of flagged/downvoted comments (as this one has), it’s hard to argue that it’s not divisive, at least to this audience.
This rhetoric is delusional. If you’re a real person arguing in good faith, I beg you to stop pretending that American politics is a two-team sport. This is not a tactic worth employing.
I mean I almost flagged it: the headline absolutely does not match the letter, and it’s clickbait by a well-known polemicist. Israel’s continued actions in the West Bank are somewhere between apartheid and ethnic-cleansing, the civilian deaths in Gaza are beyond appalling, and there are genocidal maniacs in their current cabinet, but this article is trash.
Iran isn't an ally of any country in the west. The west says "Iran is an awful, oppressive country" basically daily. What's new to report there? They're already economically cut off from most of the world. There's not much else for us to do.
Israel is an ally of every country in the west. People say "stop criticizing them because you can't do that until you complain about every other problem on earth first!" and it's a very strange, conditioned behavior not seen when problems pertaining to any other country are brought up. And the big difference between Iran and Israel: Israel isn't cut off from the world economically, and in some places (many US states), boycotting them is even illegal.
None of my tax dollars or purchases fund the Iranian government. Lots of our money funds Israel against our will. That's why people get angry.
Most of the west is definitely not Israel's ally based on their lack of support.
The US does support Israel but this is a story about the UK. The UK does not support Israel and even partially boycotts Israel at the moment.
If you're American then your tax money e.g. funds Egypt. Egypt is a dictatorship, no human rights, involved in the Sudan civil war where millions are dying. Not a beep on Hacker News.
EDIT: Not to mention the billions of dollars, including indirectly to Hamas, coming from the west.
The Prime Minister of the UK recently said he supported Israel's attacks on Iran. The UK even helps arm Israel. [1] Not sure what the basis of your claims are but they're quite different from reality.
And I apologize in advance to any Egyptian readers out there, but Egypt has a very low reputation these days. I've not once seen a positive comment about the country in these past 10 years. Nobody is flooding in to defend Egypt when their problems are brought up and saying "Before you criticize Egypt, what about..."
And if you hold your country to the standards of, as you said, oppressive dictatorships that support brutal wars, that's a low standard and will attract criticism.
Partial arms sales ban is not an ally in my book. Many countries sell arms to other countries they are not even close to being allied with.
EDIT:
Also count for me how many anti-Egypt stories made HN front page over the last 2 (or 10) years and how many anti-Israel stories made it.
> I've not once seen a positive comment about the country in these past 10 years.
We are not talking about positive comments (even though I'm sure we've seen some) we're talking about Israel being singled out for attack and being denied the right to defend itself against Hamas.
A sales ban would simply be in compliance with international law, and the UK is a member of the ICC, so even a partial ban is failing to live up to their obligations. The US is not currently a signatory but it's own laws make it illegal to export arms to Israel, so I guess we're "more" of an ally, as we're willing to more flagrantly break the rules in this regard, but the UK is still pretty far in favor of Israel with their current stance.
If China had America by the balls half as bad as Israel does, we'd be watching Biden and Trump take turns kissing Xi Jinping's feet on live television right now. It's besides the point and doesn't contribute to better foreign policy choices, just gives justification to the wrong ones.
This is a valid point, and reminds me of those appalling scenes when Netanyahu received a standing ovation from the sycophantic US Congress, in the middle of his genocide of the Palestinian people [0]. And that scene in turn reminds me of old footage of Adolf Hitler being applauded by crowds.
If you’ve got 30 minutes, I recommend checking out the first half of this podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-detach-from-wor...
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