donnacha

Famously, until his final years, he would fly into a blind fury when anyone mentioned the word "iPod".

 

3 hours ago, irishman25 said:

As a Irishman the UK is leading the way to quickly control and stop this covid 19 virus. they were right to lengthy the does;s to 9 to 12 weeks more people can get vaccinated and SAVE LIVES other country's should do the same   

Ireland and the UK are taking essentially the same approach. Ireland just has far fewer vaccines because, tragically, we were ordered to stop making our own arrangements and cancel the existing contracts we had made.

In both the UK and Ireland, the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) are mostly being allocated to older folks. They receive their second shot about 4 weeks later.

Most younger folks getting early access (frontline workers, care workers etc) are getting AstraZeneca and receiving their second shot 12 weeks later. It is a good strategy but, unfortunately, it does not make up for the ridiculous shortages. Ireland is at almost 11% first shot received, slightly above the EU average of 10%, while over the border in Northern Ireland half the population have received at least their first shot.

To put this into perspective, current projections suggests that any Irish citizen under 50 but not in a special job or health category will receive their first shot in November.

My hope is that the current hysteria on the continent  (which, under various guises over the past few months, has essentially always been about Brexit) will result in a million or so extra AZ shots being redirected to Ireland, allowing us to reach general availability by the summer.

The greatest pity is that Europeans will not simply be allowed to buy the shots privately. Some need to travel for family and business reasons. Many members of this forum are currently trapped outside Thailand. The various vaccination passport schemes will emerge over the coming months. Once the most vulnerable have been inoculated, people willing to pay €1000 or whatever to be able to get those shots and that certification, so they can travel without quarantines, testing, and special insurance, should be allowed to do so.

 

On 3/11/2021 at 1:02 PM, IslandLover said:

Are you the culprit by any chance? ????

No. If I was, the forum would not be back up now.

It has well over a dozen vulnerabilities. I would consecutively hammer them all, causing at least a couple of weeks of intermittent downtime to ensure that their Google rankings would never recover.

Such an action on my part is, however, unnecessary. They are perfectly capable of destroying this forum on their own.

Their current Cloudflare settings alone are going to decimate their traffic. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. They really haven't thought this through.

 

My guess would be that one individual, annoyed by his treatment, set up monitoring to alert him if a non-Cloudflare IP was ever revealed, even for a minute. He would then have set up his own server to bombard that IP or, more likely, paid a service a few dollars (probably around $50) to do it, most likely using a botnet of hacked servers.

None of this requires skill. Any idiot can find a tutorial on how to do it.

On the other hand, recovering from this sort of attack is relatively easy. You simply flip over to another server, as I described in an earlier post. Some sites even keep a second server running with the latest backup already running and automatically switch to it when their system detects a problem with the first server. The expense is justified because any downtime at all can permanently damage your search engine rankings.

An actual hack is far more damaging but requires far more skill to carry out.

 

33 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

It is more than printing money that is the driver for dollar weakness. 

Sure but, from my perspective, as someone with a vested interest in the collapse of the dollar, the money printing is a really useful culmination of all the other factors. This is beyond politics. What we are seeing in so many areas - for example, online commerce, working from home, the use of video conferencing instead of air travel - is a massive acceleration of beneficial trends that were already happening.

When all is said and done, despite the hundreds of trillions of dollars of damage to the world economy, we will have leap-frogged ahead by a decade in areas of key importance. One of those will be the widening of the selection of major currencies, with the reliance on a single currency (the US dollar) relegated to the past. Ultimately, that is even healthy for the US economy, because it will no longer be able to export inflation, and that will force future governments - both Democrat and Republican - to become far leaner.

It is also ideal timing for Bitcoin because, after a decade of existence, it was not entirely clear, despite the ingenious design, what Bitcoin was for. Now, both corporations and regular Americans will be able to use it to insulate their savings during a period of turbulent inflation. That will educate and prepare public opinion to insist that the next version of the dollar is designed to be more solid, robust, and limited in supply.

The next few years will be rough but, medium to long-term, I am optimistic. I believe the US has an excellent chance of remaining relevant throughout the coming century.

 

41 minutes ago, webfact said:

If the vaccine is given, it may state the condition to take care of the Chinese nationals in Thailand.

This is smart. Chinese nationals in Thailand are massively more likely (than random Thai citizens) to visit China in the coming years. Gifting vaccines to nearby countries is always about reducing the overall risk to the motherland.

 

Even composing

About foul Chiang Mai air

Virtue signal Trump?

I can speak for everyone heavily invested in Bitcoin when I say that Biden is doing a terrific job and I pray that he will not hesitate to print trillions more dollars throughout the rest of his administration.

The alarm today among businesses and corporations holding dollars was the boost Bitcoin needed to bring it back up to the levels of the all-time highs it hit around the end of last month. This consolidates Bitcoin's credibility and makes the corporations and funds who shifted into Bitcoin last month, as a hedge against dollar debasement, look like geniuses. That will be a tipping point for many more to convert a portion of their dollar holdings into Bitcoin. I hold tightly to my prediction that Bitcoin will hit 200k before the end of this unique year.

From a human perspective, what America is doing is also good for, and generous to, the world. By cashing in the credibility of the dollar for temporary political gain, it gives other major currencies the chance to become the default currency. We needed competition in this area but no one dared hope that the US would step aside like this.

It also takes a lot of pressure off the EU who had seriously messed up their vaccination programme by telling individual countries to not make their own orders and, then, failing to make any orders of their own for three months. The economic carnage of this unprecedented bureaucratic FUBAR was threatening to bring down the European Central Bank, but now the Euro suddenly looks like a viable replacement for the dollar as world currency. 

Of course, it does mean tough times ahead for any retirees in Thailand on fixed incomes denominated in dollars. Again, though, this is a generous act on the part of the American government that will allow expats in Thailand from other countries to snap up bargains as a certain portion of American retirees are forced to sell up and leave.

Overall, the end result is mostly positive, and I am more impressed with Biden (or whoever is actually making the decisions) than I thought I would be. As long as he is willing to keep debasing the dollar, he will have our fervent support.

 

The pollution might be affecting this forum.

I visit Lamphun sometimes because my partner is from there. I have often thought that Lamphun town (as opposed to the province) would a great spot for anyone on a tight budget who just wants a relaxed life. Foreigners are still somewhat exotic there, the pubs are fun because you have young factory workers from all over Thailand, and you can easily find very cheap accommodation, around 3k per month + electricity. There are a couple of big, modern shopping malls, lots of coffee shops etc. The Thai restaurants and food markets are significantly cheaper than anywhere in Chiang Mai. You've still got the same fibre Internet connections as Chiang Mai.

I'm not sure why anyone would consider it difficult in terms of transport. It takes 28 minutes to drive to Chiang Mai airport, there are always plenty of Grab and other taxis. It is, effectively, a suburb of Chiang Mai.

I reckon that relatively new expats get too tied up with the idea that they need to live on Nimmanhaemin or some other central spot, but the overall experience is often more interesting and more fun in areas less saturated with Westerners. Your chances of stumbling upon a real relationship are certainly higher.

My hunch is that Lamphun might become a lot more popular with American expats on fixed incomes if the current stimulus devalues the dollar relative to the Baht and, equally, for Europeans if the ECB collapses this year.

 

1 minute ago, lopburi3 said:

Money laundering regulations from Federal Government.  Many on this forum and elsewhere have had accounts ended when it was found they no longer lived in the US of A.  Banks cover there ...

I'm sorry but, even as a non-resident, I have over a dozen US bank accounts. Where you happen to live is irrelevant once you have established your identity.

Perhaps accounts are suspended if you fail to let them know that you have changed address, but roughly 50% of US bank accounts belong to non-resident, non-citizens.

 

6 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

I was mainly referring to US financial institutions severing banking relationships once they realize the client is living abroad.

Can you give any example of any Western bank doing such a thing?

1 minute ago, Ebumbu said:

I'd rather not have the agent deposit their money because I think it increases risks.

The agent doesn't deposit any money. They pay a fee to an immigration officer to ignore that requirement.
 

3 minutes ago, Ebumbu said:

In his state, there are ZERO appointments available for a vaccine shots. I tried online with the 20 closest locations to his home. USA is a nightmare, man.

 
The USA may be behind the most advanced countries such as Israel and the UK, but it is miles ahead of the EU. If you cannot get a vaccine appointment in your home state, catch a flight to Florida, the governor down there has been doing a great job.

In any case, Thailand has not yet dropped the quarantine and testing requirements. If your father decides to come, aim for the summer when those expensive requirements will be dropped in favor of a vaccination requirement.

 

1 minute ago, Captain Monday said:

I have the O-A from Usa. I think you can still come here on a tourist or exempt and transition to an O without a yearlyhealth insurance requirement. How long will that last? I hope for the best and plan for the worst. 

Sure, but I think plans regarding a 94 year old should stick to what the rules are today. If the rules change, and his father is still alive, they can deal with it then.

 

1 minute ago, stevenl said:

It is a few idiots only.

You would have to be an idiot to accept the imposition of a night-time curfew on the grounds that there was a virus going around.

 

Just now, Captain Monday said:

There is a risk in case insurance is mandated.

But is it mandated?