bhelkey (u/bhelkey) - Readit News

bhelkey commented on 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c... · Posted by u/donpott

oblique · 4 days ago

Banning VPNs seems effectively impossible. Any ip address can act as a vpn. There are also zero identity providers like mullvad.

bhelkey · 4 days ago

In the UK, ~55% of traffic comes from mobile [1]. The UK could approach Apple and Google and ask them to remove VPNs from their respective app stores when opened in the UK.

I imagine this would curtail a large proportion of mobile VPN usage.

Blocking desktop VPNs would be a bit more adhoc but it is possible to make it much harder for many people to download VPN clients.

[1] https://www.digitalsilk.com/digital-trends/mobile-vs-desktop...

bhelkey commented on Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big eidel.io/exit-tax-leave-g... · Posted by u/olieidel

trallnag · 19 days ago

Did you miss the Russo-Ukrainian war? Or are you suggesting that we (Europeans) should have continued pumping cash into Russia for a bunch of gas?

bhelkey · 18 days ago

I think what they were referring to Germany phasing out nuclear power.

In 2011 Germany had 17 active nuclear power plants. They closed their last one in 2023.

bhelkey commented on UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/azalemeth

jjani · a month ago

> Apple did not respond to a request for comment. “We have never built a back door or master key to any of our products, and we never will,” Apple said in February.

This must be some "technically correct" weasel words bullcrap, as without at least equivalent access there is no chance Apple would be operating in China.

bhelkey · a month ago

Apple stores Chinese users' iCloud data and encryption keys to that data in China in a datacenter run by a state owned firm [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

bhelkey commented on FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores axios.com/2025/06/23/fico... · Posted by u/cebert

thomascountz · 2 months ago

Banks are required to prove their loans are affordable. They can only lend someone an amount that they can prove the borrower can afford.

In my experience, rates are not low in the U.S. They are high because high risk loans are able to be granted.

The availability of debt for things like housing and cars is very complicated, but high taxes, a high degree of education, livable minimum wages, and realistic employee rights helps increase stability and decrease risk. I don't say it to be flippant. It is more complex than even I understand. It's only to say that, given that these systems are designed artificial systems, there are multiple implementations that work under various constraints and incentives.

bhelkey · 2 months ago

What country is this?

bhelkey commented on Launch HN: Vassar Robotics (YC X25) – $219 robot arm that learns new skills · Posted by u/charleszyong

bhelkey · 3 months ago

How dangerous is this? If I buy/print one of these arms, how cautious would I need to be to prevent the arm from hurting me or other adults?

bhelkey commented on See how a dollar would have grown over the past 94 years [pdf] newyorklifeinvestments.co... · Posted by u/mooreds

lootsauce · 3 months ago

now do purchasing power of the dollar

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R

bhelkey · 3 months ago

The linked graph includes inflation.

bhelkey commented on German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal politico.eu/article/germa... · Posted by u/Tomte

mschuster91 · 3 months ago

It's the other way around, he was US-based and went for a vacation to Germany.

bhelkey · 3 months ago

Do you have a source for this?

CNN reports that he was on vacation to Florida and was arrested in the airport awaiting a flight home to Germany [1].

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/17/news/companies/volkswagen-e...

bhelkey commented on German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal politico.eu/article/germa... · Posted by u/Tomte

jillesvangurp · 3 months ago

Deutsche Welle has a bit more detail and also discusses the CEO:

https://www.dw.com/en/4-ex-vw-managers-guilty-of-fraud-over-...

Apparently he has some health issues which caused the case against him to be suspended. That might resume later but unclear right now. He's 78 at this point.

bhelkey · 3 months ago

The VX emission cheating scandal came to light a decade ago in 2015. If a 78 year old is too old to prosecute, Germany should have prosecuted him a decade ago when he was 68.

Instead, Germany refused to extradite him to the US to stand trial in 2017 [1].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

bhelkey commented on German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal politico.eu/article/germa... · Posted by u/Tomte

Drunk_Engineer · 3 months ago

The headline says "execs" but I don't see any Board members getting prison terms. Martin Winterkorn, the CEO, has basically escaped prosecution altogether.

bhelkey · 3 months ago

The US indicted seven senior executives including Martin Winterkorn in 2017 [1]. None of these seven were extradited from Germany to the US to face trial.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

bhelkey commented on German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal politico.eu/article/germa... · Posted by u/Tomte

johnklos · 3 months ago

I don't think software engineers were independently looking at emissions data and unilaterally decided to "fix" the emissions shortcomings in software. I think they were told by others to do that. It's good that Germany is going after the people who decided that fraud was the answer.

bhelkey · 3 months ago

> It's good that Germany is going after the people who decided that fraud

When the VW scandal broke, the US indicted seven senior executives. None of these seven were extradited to the US to stand trial [1].

The VW scandal was made public in 2015 [2] and involved cheating since 2009. Sentencing only two executives to jail a decade after their wrong doing made international news does not send a strong message.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772

u/bhelkey

KarmaCake day1050March 22, 2017View Original