coconut_crab

The usual story here (Vietnam) is that the victims are often promised a job with high earning prospect in Cambodia, or they are in debt after playing in casinos over there. Since Vietnam economy isn't in a good shape, there is no lack of potential victims. They don't really get killed either as it will cost the kidnappers, they will just get sold to another scam center. Oh and the victim can buy their freedom back if they scam enough people (my friend lost 10k USD in one such scam), not that there is many people who can do that though.

  - settlements on river banks will be swept away
  - the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, ZNPP, won't be restarted due to lack of cooling
  - Crimea will lost access to fresh water
  - First line of defence for both sides are swept away.
  - it will be harder for Ukraine side to mount an amphibious assault

So it's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

I really love my Steam Deck, until it suddenly died a few days ago. Couldn't even get to BIOS menu and just a black screen with CPU fan and haptic on, tried everything from reseating battery, putting in battery storage mode, replacing the NVME or even running fsck on another linux machine, nothing works. It seems to be a common issue with the Deck :( Now I have to find a way to RMA it, which will take months as they don't sell it where I live.

As someone who have learned a lot from ih8mud, thank you for helping such a great community! I live in a 3rd world country where it's very hard to get proper maintenance services like in America, ih8mud is the reason why I picked the FZJ80.

(now, if only I can find the emission manual for the 1fz-f...)

OEM parts can be really expensive, but there are also choices of buying aftermarket ones (mostly made in China) or salvaging from another ones. Near where I live there is a guy who salvages Land Cruisers for a living, he has more than hundreds frames lying around in his yard. Since most of the Land cruisers here have 3rd world spec (carb-ed and detuned engine, part time 4WD, mechanical gas pump etc...), the used parts are often in very good condition. Take the dreaded blown head gasket for example, I rarely see that here because 1FZ-F doesn't run as hot as 1FZ-FE. Or the Birfield, most people just run on RWD mode so they are often pristine.

(of course for something critical such as brake booster I would only use OEM).

I'm not sure how can it spill brake fluid in my vacuum line since they aren't really connected together (the booster has a push rod that connects to the master cylinder). But yes, I will get it replaced soon for my safety.

I get around 12.5 l/100 km (19 mpg?) if I got easy on the throttle, and around 18L/100 km (13 mpg) on a rough road. There is no feedback loop since it uses on carb, so as long as I keep the throttle steady it isn't that bad. Of course it can't compare with modern SUVs but not too terrible either.

Economically wise, a 2 years old mid sized SUV here costs around 40000 USD, meanwhile I bought my FZJ80 with 6000 USD (with 200000 km on the ODO). Even if I drive 1000 km a month it will take me more than 30 years of driving to start losing money compare to buying a modern one.

This is why I love my 80 series Land Cruiser (carb, not EFI), it's really simple that a lot of maintenance can be done with just wrenches. And the charm of having almost no electronics[1] on the car control is that if something is wrong, you will know it by the sounds it makes, and you will have a lot of times to fix it before it's completely toast. I have heard of horror stories about newer cars with electric ABS accumulator that stopped working on the high way, not with my FZJ80[2].

[1] The so called 'emission computer' unit on the car is a simple pulse counter/comparator that activates a VSV on the carb to reduce backfire while descending downhill with the foot off the throttle.

[2] My brake booster is leaking a little bit, but at least it won't suddenly gives up on me while I'm riding, still looking for a replacement.

Several of my friends were targeted by these scammers, and one of them even lost 10000 USD (a big sum in Vietnam) to a fake prosecutor. They even cloned the website of the Ministry of Public Security to scam him. Out of curiousity I took a look at their website source code, found an url to some kinds of a gateway for scammer where they have tools for scamming people, and also an android app that aid them. After finding that the whole operation is based abroad I told my friend that there is zero chance he will get his money back.

Instant noodle gives me pretty bad reactive hypoglycemia so I avoid it as much as possible. And when I have to eat one, often after coming home at night after a long trip, I often eat it with a eggs, a lot of frozen vegetables or wakame. That seems to fix the low sugar blood problem afterward.

It's not entirely true. Some banks only issue credit cards if you receive salary via their bank account or have a deposit there (mostly state owned banks) but other have no such requirement. Also they already have a credit score database up and running (CIC).

Vietnamese here, we totally trust the number because:

  - Every cases are documented and published on the medias (yes, I know that's not a good thing for privacy) to make contact tracing easier.
  - Vietnam is an authoritarian country with extensive public security apparatus so tracing and quarantining is easy. There have been cases that someone got quarantined because her friend who lives in other country tested positive, and that's after she returned to Vietnam.
  - Also the Communist Party of Vietnam has everything to lose if they can't handle this, so they are serious at containing covid 19. They even used cyber attacks on China to gain intel on how serious Ncov is back in December last year.
  - Most importantly, wartime like mass mobilization helped a lot. Every people did their part, the military set up quarantine camps and check points, disinfecting hotspot. The people cooperated with the guideline: avoiding going out, wearing mask or stay in quarantine if their areas has positive cases (the government will provided food and other necessities).
  - They do everything to keep the number of deaths at zero: The worst case, patient 91, was recently detached from ECMO after 2 months, his lung recovered from 10% to 40% capacity and he has woken up from coma. The cost for his treatment is $200k and counting, and he isn't even a Vietnam national!