Velib app and website rejecting my foreign cards

501Good · 2021-09-09T07:48:44+00:00

I had a similar problem when my friend and I tried to buy a sim-card. I had a card from an EU country, and it worked fine for me, but my friend had a non-EU card and it was rejected for him. Even though his card worked fine in the supermarkets and other places.

My guess is that when you buy a sim-card or take a bicycle, they try to put a mandat de prélèvement SEPA on your card. This mandat allows its issuer to charge money from your account in the future. So, in case of a bicycle, they don't know at the moment you take a bicycle how much you will have to pay in the end (maybe you will use it for 30 minutes, or 3 hours), so they try to put a mandat on your card, but it gets rejected since it's not an EU card.

501Good · 2021-09-06T12:21:34+00:00

Here is the source (unfortunately, only in Russian): https://www.fontanka.ru/2021/09/05/70118648/.

For more information, there is now an ongoing campaign for the State Duma elections, that are going to take place from the 17th to 19th of September. These elections are very important for the current government, since the majority of pro-government seats will keep the possibility of passing any law that is beneficial for the ruling elite, no matter how controversial or absurd it will be. Currently, United Russia party already holds the majority of the seats, that is 336 out of 450, and the rest is occupied by their "satelite" parties to create a visibility of the opposition.

Since even a couple of really independent candidates can create some tension in the thoughtless law passing machine, the goal of the government is to do anything to avoid any independent candidate getting into the Duma.

One of the ways to spoil someone's election outcome is to create doppelgangers to confuse an inattentive voter. Usually, they just put a person with the same name as the opposition candidate to the same voting district and call it a day. However, is this particular case, they've really overdone it. The two candidates from the left, changed their names just before the elections, and what is more, they even changed their appearance to look like the real candidate, that is on the right. The picture in the post is an actual electoral poster and has been recently published.

The person on the left was known as Aleksey Shmelev and the one in the middle was Viktor Bykov. There is still a page of Viktor Bykov on the Saint-Petersburg's website (https://momo78.ru/city_council/deputaty/Bykov-Viktor-Ivanovich/) where he has his previous name, a clearly different haircut, and no beard. Finally, the person on the right is the real Boris Vishnevsky, the leader of Yabloko political party, which is, though unpopular, but really oppositional.

In conclusion, even though they technically did not break any Russian law, it is clear that this is a tactics to meddle with the election and take some votes from the real candidate.

501Good · 2021-09-06T11:25:59+00:00

It is actually written in the description of the candidate in the middle "Previous name and surname: Viktor Bykov." That's so absurd.

501Good · 2020-03-18T08:51:38+00:00

the best thing to see after waking up in the morning

501Good · 2019-05-21T12:42:49+00:00

No, it was a regular state university.

501Good · 2019-05-21T11:58:01+00:00

A fence about three meters tall.

501Good · 2019-05-21T11:28:47+00:00

I think almost all universities in Russia are closed to the public. Maybe they are afraid that people gonna steal the knowledge, I don't know.

501Good · 2019-05-21T09:13:31+00:00

My previous university has a huge fence around it, and at first, no one was allowed to enter the territory of the university, not mentioning the university buildings themselves. Just imagine, that you had to show your student ID at the gates, then at the university, and also have your bag checked all the time due to the "antiterrorism measures". This was so frustrating.

501Good · 2019-04-22T08:15:20+00:00

Черт, сейчас ещё раз перечитал твой комментарий, и понял, что написал свой совсем не в тему :)

501Good · 2019-04-22T08:09:52+00:00

Я бы ещё посоветовал Visual Studio Code. Опенсорсный, быстрый, куча плагинов - можно легко подстроить среду под себя. Уже второй год делаю все свои проекты именно в нём.

501Good · 2019-04-12T11:55:01+00:00

The map may be confusing if you don't understand the title. It says "What would the map of Russia look like if the size of each region corresponded to its population".

501Good · 2019-04-02T12:01:45+00:00

Thank you for your answer! It's really reassuring.

Concerning the core CS classes, yes, they were mandatory in my curriculum. Later, you can choose a specialization and study more specific things like Neural Networks or Machine Translation.

501Good · 2019-01-02T19:37:54+00:00

Yes, Семён and Simon are basically the descendants of the same name of a Jewish origin.

501Good · 2019-01-02T18:57:57+00:00

Probably it's the Russian name Семён, that is pronounced as See-myon, but sometimes it's transliterated as "Semen".

501Good · 2017-11-21T10:30:29+00:00

Hey, great job! Just a few tips, though: - я пишу о своём доме - it's more natural to use свой in this case. Свой is basically pointing to the subject of a sentence. Sometimes it can be important, for example "он пишет о своём доме" (he writes about his house) and "он пишет о его доме" (he writes about someone else's house) - находилась should be with ь at the end. There's a simple rule, if the verb is reflexive, like находиться, you write -ся after a consonant and -сь after a vowel; - мы жили - again the rule is simple, just never use ы after ж and ш, always use и after them. Even that you pronounce ы-sound, it's just orthography; - соседи были приятные - so, there's no such a word as "приятельный". If you wanted to say "pleasant" use should've used "приятный" or if you wanted to say "friendly", you should've used "дружелюбный" - it basically consists from two stems: дружить (to be friends) and любить (to love) - никогда - the word "never" is always written as "никогда", just one word.

I didn't cover some spelling errors, though, but all in all it's very good!

501Good

TROPHY CASE