Can't comment on all European jurisdictions obviously, but a 1 person LLC/Ltd. is not a great shield in Germany. Usually they'll still consider the owner/director liable because they were making those executive decisions.
In Spain we pay the "tasa de gestión de residuos" (residue management tax) to our city, for all recycling in general. doesn't matter if it's paper, plastics/packagings, organics (many cities now collect those separat from non-organic) and other residues. It also includes the "punto limpio", a place to take larger electronics, batteries, car fluids and other stuff you can't just throw to the bin. Old medicine is collected at pharmacies though, it's a separate thing to avoid animals or people looking from the trash from getting medication, that could be dangerous.
How is recycling free but you've got to pay for organics? Don't you just pay a tax (or pay it indirectly through income tax or VAT)? And you've got the whole returning the plastic bottles on the supermarket thing too, right?
It's mad not to keep the recycling costs at the point of recycling collection, though. Why would the EU need to be involved, when it's either a private company or local government procuring the recycling service?
That's correct. In Germany we pay "indirectly" via the end price. Meaning whoever has to pay the afforementioned EPR fee is free to add their cost to the price of the product.
Depends on the app and security setup. If it's using old school Symantec VIP Access, it will not survive a restore. If it is using TOTP from 1Password, it will. Not sure about other options, those are the two I am most familiar with. Thankfully I only have a single app these days relying on VIP Access.
My banking app required to log again to the bank account to bind new device and that's it. iOS is way better in this regard than stock Android. You pretty much get 1:1 copy on new device in an instant with the exceptions such as banking apps but that's kinda understandable.
Unfortunately Moreta disabled Thai PromptPay QR payments recently except for US KYC'd people due to some compliance dispute. There's also lbank.com but I can't confirm if they currently work in Thailand (lbank has an... interesting reputation, I can only use it via TestFlight, but works for my daily food spend needs)
Otherwise you're stuck with AliPay+ merchants (easy via Wise) or TAGTHAi which should still work but is expensive and sucks.
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I forgot about https://p2p.me - they're taking the regulatory arbitrage 'personal travel payment concierge service' approach, basically "work around the problem, not with it" as the founders realized the people making the regulations neither know nor care about on-the-ground practicalities.
> the limitation of tourist wallets is that they can't be utilised for P2P payments - exactly what UPI is most used for across the country
Same issue in a lot of Southeast Asia. After jumping through all hoops to get the correct app, id verified and paying a hefty fee, it was still a gamble if the restaurants would have a business QR code or a personal one.
One time in Laos I was on an island that didn't have an ATM, almost no cards were accepted and I had run out of local currency. So I ended up asking for the QR code before ordering at the restaurant to make sure it would work out.
In India it's super annoying when taking autos because the drivers won't have change and in 99% of the cases they have a personal code. So I just ended up using Uber with credit card, much less hassle.
I don't know, central banks seem super afraid of money laundering somehow. But just allow me to spend $100 or what, I just want to buy a quick coffee or a fruit from a street vendor, not a Rolex.
Maybe they hired someone to get a website and they were sold this AI slop?
I've seen a lot of SMB in my area get terrible AI slop websites recently. After looking at the footer some "web agency" sold them. They claim to sell "hand crafted, no framework" websites, but it looks super terrible.
I would love to, but no official Kindle publishing exists and at least the open thingys out there kinda suck. It's okay, but I don't like the formatting.
Maybe write a better Economist->Kindle transformation with Claude or something to make it better.
> The deal, with SpaceX, is that Elon Musk runs it however he wants, and he does weird stuff, and you have to trust him, and if you don’t like it you can’t complain.
> When SpaceX acquired xAI a few months ago, did a special committee of independent directors approve the transaction? Did Musk recuse himself from negotiations? Was the price set by independent valuation experts using a rigorous process? Did outside shareholders sue to block the deal? Stop. Musk wanted SpaceX to buy xAI, so it did.
> [...] Surely SpaceX has created all that shareholder value more because Musk does what he wants than in spite of Musk doing what he wants; it is hard to accidentally create $1.75 trillion of value. SpaceX’s shareholders signed up for this deal — letting Musk cook — and have been rewarded;
Facebook is still a Delaware company, with lots of established case law for what Zuckerberg can and can not do, voting majority or not. SpaceX is now some Texas corporation with a state legislature ready to enable whatever Musk wants.
Though (at least to my knowledge) Zuckerberg doesn't have a history of abusing his authority to make deals that advantage other companies he owns at the expense of Facebook.
E.g. SpaceX buying up large numbers of Cybertrucks Tesla couldn't sell at MSRP, not even negotiating a good fleet sale deal.
It seems like a fine offer to have exist, but one that a pension fund with low risk tolerance wouldn't want to take. So everything seems reasonable with the world.
Similarly I don't understand why indicies are rushing to change their rules to allow SpaceX in. People accept a certain risk tolerance and changing the rules to ramp up the risk seems questionable at best.
The ones in Spain often market themselves with their Chinese-ness: "Hyper China", "Panda Bazaar", "Maxi Barato (super cheap)", etc. would be some representative names & signage you see outside.
They range in size from small shops to things with huge floor space.
One thing I've found is that they seem to sell very low quality stuff: e.g. on aliexpress you can buy a flashlight which is built out of metal, has usb-c charging, for $10, whereas in the physical shop, you get the plastic one that takes AA batteries for $2. So they're not a replacement for AliExpress, Temu & co.
Most of the ones I'm thinking of are just corner stores - it's not a brand or chain to my knowledge. An example might be Bazar Gran Puerto, El Puerto de Sta Maria, CA, ES.
