going direct to ARIN/RIPE/APNIC etc have some stricter rules (IIRC, in RIPE you need a company or possibly business, plus a bank account in that name). by going for somone like HostUs, they are sponsoring the account, so they need to verify you and ask questions, then setup the ASN, etc. Also, going direct will provide you with V4/V6 space allocations. They might charge a yearly fee (IIRC, its like 50 per allocation) but v6 is "practally" free but V4 will be a in a wait list... Finally, going direct, there is some sort of "kick back"... if the RIR makes more money than it cost to run the place, they reallocate fees back to the LIRs... so, you some times get money back... I have been tempted, but for RIPE, its 1400 per year, plus 2k setup... ouch...
I have my personal LIR with RIPE and they do allow signing up as an LIR without being a company. As an individual you need to provide proof of identity via government issued ID and pay 17% Dutch VAT.
When I signed up I got a /22 of V4 space and /29 of v6 space, although for new signups I believe there's now a wait list to get a /24 and that's it for V4.
Yeah, AFAIK the LIR model is specific to RIPE. The ARIN team does seem to put a decent amount of work into vetting and support/etc with pleasant interactions, so I don't think the fees are too unreasonable (but maybe not the best idea as an individual).
It is the mentality not the thinking. In china no one trust anyone really. Hence security strangely is no 1 priority. Hence the cover is in Lenovo portable, but not apple. You are guilty somehow somewhere and to be checked out, and vice visa.
Like fish said to be the final species to discover water, one mainlander comes to hk and surprise to see us so relax about security. What the law even assume people are innocent until proved otherwise ...
the mentality of hermit in One of the largest population of ... hermits. You just put on your shell.
As now become one of the hermit by force and talked as a hermit, may I suggest they just do it away with the camera. Use a wireless or usb based one. No hacking possible.
Economically (if not ethnically) trust is important as it lower the transaction costs. Chicago school heritage I guess of pre NSO HONG Kong. I switch to my two mac Mini of intel and arm. Unfortunately still have the old 3 cable apple monitor (work well with both 2018 and 2012 MacBook Pro) that have a camera. Guess a cover is ok.
I think you'd have to pay extra to buy a laptop without an integrated camera and microphone, not to mention there likely being no options that are also actually high performance laptops.
And my first computer lecture many decades ago is really about how he hated fortran and why FORTRAN is still not dead (Mainly negative view due to haveGOTO that time). And it is still not dead.
Lisps were at the genesis of the original concept, it was called Lisp Machine, and the experience can still be replicated when using commercial Common Lisps like Allegro.
Fortran has been continuously updated, supports OOP, modules, and even generics.
Sadly, AFAIK, BLAS hasn't been updated to use generics. It would be so nice to have support for integer vector/matrix operations in there (not that it would require generics to have that, but it could be easier to implement integer support with it, though I suspect that for efficiency reason it might not be used in the end).
