Fuck this place. Absolutely nothing wrong with my [flagged] comment. I’m giving my experience as someone who has attended a few protests over the last few months and linking to a USA Today article.
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Social media cracking down on leftist ideology is something that needs to be studied. They are very slick about it, and will usually find some way to make it appear legit (eg: deliberately interpreting obvious sarcasm as literally as possible and then hitting you with the content policy) but at the end of the day anybody can see that reactionaries can get away with calls to violence and war crime apologia while the rest of us have to be on their absolute best behaviour.
It really goes to show you that capital has no ideology and will adopt whatever shape it needs to as the political climate changes. The United States government is now fascist, and therefore the investor class is also fascist.
There's a lot of regressives here actively abusing the flagging functionality for censorship - ironically the same kind of people that'll tell you how much they care about freedom of speech (the unspoken part: but only if its speech they agree with)
In my experience everyone thinks “we’ve got a good thing here, let’s not ruin it.”
Indeed the bar is so low that even with all the bullshit in the tech industry, we seem to have it better than most- on salary alone. Throw in “full remote” (although that’s disappearing) and it really can’t be beat, even when your boss yells obscenities at you every day.
I think I agree. Objectively we do have it better than most and tech is generally an extremely cushy job.
Even here in Europe salaries can match Doctors and Lawyers but the barrier to entry is much lower and in my experience employment is still based on merit more than anything.
Perhaps there's some element of "don't rock the boat" but maybe some guilt too. We really have lucked out.
Not sure how comfortable I'd feel taking union action over my job that requires me to leave the house once a week but pays 3x a teachers salary.
As far as I can see, nobody said anything that could conceivably be interpreted to imply otherwise, so sure?
I am really unsure what your argument even is, gymbeaux - and how it relates to verisimi's previous point. You're not trying to argue that it was Google's masterplan all along to get the anti-trust ruling, right?
This has to be true in any country with anything approaching a free market? Even if it's not blatant and closer to Inversion of Control you see it reflected in national economic policy all the time.
Do you know how it compares to Dolphin for interacting with very large (100k+ files) directories? Dolphin is the only file manager I’ve found that keeps up with the large directories- GNOME (Nautilus) and Windows Explorer are dogshit slow, even after the file list populates. macOS Finder is somewhere in the middle but still very slow.
Lightroom 5 is miles better than what they offer today. Lightroom Creative Cloud is steaming dog shit. Adobe seriously gets to extort over $120 a year out of me simply for the privilege of reading raw files from a new camera. They provide zero positive contribution these days. All of these incumbent tech companies extract rents on algorithms written decades ago. This needs to end. I am very excited for AI to get advanced enough to whip up replacement programs for everything these companies maintain monopolies over.
> I am very excited for AI to get advanced enough to whip up replacement programs for everything these companies maintain monopolies over.
You are wildly off base. The algorithms aren't difficult or special. They were written by people reading text books for the most part.
They are able to sit on an on old algorithm for decades because the DMCA made interoperability and selling cheaper tools like that basically illegal.
Because of the DMCA, the work that was done to make IBM PC clones would have been close enough to illegal to kill all the businesses that tried it. They still tried with the liberal IP laws at the time.
Well that's a bit disappointing but i am aware that their are gaps in my knowledge. I had assumed it was the feasibility of competing with an entrenched firm, not lack of access to research texts. I will chat with Chat to learn more about how DMCA applies, thank you.
Back in those days it took 15 minutes for Windows to “finish” booting. You’d hit the desktop but the HDD was still going ham loading a dozen programs, each with their own splash screen to remind you of their existence.
If you've had the priviledge of running Windows 10 on a spinning drive, it never gets to disk idle. Who knows what it's doing, but by that metric it never finishes. It probably never gets to disk idle on an SSD either, but SSDs have so much more io capacity it isn't noticed.
> The thing is, all of these bad features were probably justified by some manager somewhere because it’s the only way their feature would get noticed. They have to justify their salary by pushing all these stupid ideas in the user’s faces. “Hey, look at me! I’m so cool!” After all, when the boss asks, “So, what did you accomplish in the past six months,” a manager can’t say, “Um, a bunch of stuff you can’t see. It just works better.” They have to say, “Oh, check out this feature, and that icon, and this dialog box.” Even if it’s a stupid feature.
On the other hand, I very much enjoyed going to Excel 97 cell X97:L97, pressing tab, holding Ctrl+Shift and clicking on the chart icon, because then you could play Excel's built in flight simulator
Underrated comment. People don’t understand global trade and logistics (understandably so- it’s all very complicated and there are multiple middlemen involved between the factory in China and the company in the U.S. buying the goods to resell - they of course being yet another middleman).
There’s a bill[1] sitting in the House of Representatives that would abolish the IRS and replace all tax code with a consumption tax. In typical fashion they’ve written it so it seems like the flat consumption tax will be something like 24% but it’s actually 30% (they word it as something like “24% of the total is tax” which really means “the tax is 30%”).
I’m curious when they plan on deploying this. It specifies a 3-year schedule so you think okay is this to be signed into law in 2025 so that the IRS is abolished during the next election year, or are they going to wait a year or two and have the IRS abolishment only “trigger” if Republicans continue to control the government beyond 2028? Or perhaps they will push it through if/when Democrats retake some or all of Congress in 2026?
One thing’s for sure though, the 1% will use cryptocurrency to dodge this consumption tax and it will (as usual) disproportionately affect the lower and middle classes, who aren’t as savvy in tax fraud/evasion/“loopholes”.
> FairTax is a fixed rate sales tax proposal introduced as bill H.R. 25 in the United States Congress every year since 2005.
An R-GA sponsors it every year and it never gets further than "introduced", with fewer co-sponsors on it now than ever AFAIK. Technically, if it did get into law, it could create greater chaos, it has a provision to terminate itself if the 16th Amendment isn't repealed, so enough incompetence could eliminate taxes entirely.
Either a Democratic Congress or president would prevent such a bill from passing. Sales taxes are inherently flat, which to them means regressive.
The idea that we would give up progressive taxes is pretty antithetical to their platform, given how many campaign on raising taxes on high income earners.
Given how slow even a single-party-controlled Congress is, I sincerely doubt such a bill would ever see the light of day.
> Either a Democratic Congress or president would prevent such a bill from passing
The Senate still has the filibuster, as well. This will not pass in the current Congress either.
The filibuster rule is vulnerable, but I don't think there's enough support from Senate Republicans to do so. If I'm wrong, it would be an escalation which would add more fuel to the 2026 fire.
I’m always hazy on how exactly that works. I know some bills require a supermajority (66) and I know filibuster can block some bills with fewer votes than that… but it doesn’t always work, because the 2017 tax reform bill was passed.
Also, I remember there being talk when the DINOs were voting with the Republicans of ending the filibuster…. So… I mean the current admin just ignores rules, why wouldn’t this be the Congress that ends the filibuster? This could be their one shot to implement the “Final Solution” (Project 2025).
I believe very few votes require a supermajority in the Senate -- impeachment votes definitely do, and also votes to override a Presidential veto.
All ordinary votes just require a simple majority, but the filibuster is sort of a special-case that can be invoked any time, requiring 60 votes to bring the vote to the table at all.
You're right -- if this Senate abolishes the filibuster, it will likely be for "budget votes only" or somesuch. The Senate isn't quite as full of short-term thinkers as the House is though. I don't think the Senate Rs will go for it, because it's the only thing stopping a future D majority from doing what majorities do, and smart Rs know they are a minority party under ordinary circumstances.
But if I'm wrong, it will mean that the Senate Rs are going for broke on a short-term play, and may be discounting future risks. That would be the behaviour of the very desperate, or of the very powerful.
If the Senate Rs believe they are one of those two things -- either one -- the consequences could be enormous.
This is all very dramatic of course. Normally I'd dismiss such ideas. But the temperature is very high right now, and this time might actually be different, this time...
It’s optimistic of you to think we’ll have a Democratic anything for the foreseeable future. In 2016 we could say “well a lot of people are tired of the status quo” but after 2024… Nah, this what America wants. This is what the people who couldn’t bother to vote, voted for when they chose to stay home.
Given that the lower and middle classes pay a disproportionate amount of income tax, with no mechanisms to avoid a tax before the paycheque even arrives, I think this is a net win.
Given that the lower and middle classes pay a disproportionate amount of income tax…
Not only is that not a “given”, I’d argue that you’re completely wrong. One doesn’t have to look very hard to find out how much income tax is paid by lower class: effectively zero.
A consumption tax would affect the lower class more than the 1% for two main reasons:
1. Non-discretionary spending as a percentage of income is much larger for the lower (and middle) classes, who spend 100% or near 100% of their income on “essentials” like food and shelter.
2. The tax itself is obscene- 30% or thereabouts. As others have pointed out, the poorest of the poor don’t pay any income tax, and many essentials (like unprepared food) are not currently taxed. I don’t recall if the bill would add a tax on unprepared food. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does.
There are about 10 that still charge taxes on groceries, but are considering phasing them out.
Shelter is always tax exempt. There is no tax on rent. Mortgages, if anything, come with a tax rebate, as amounts paid can be claimed against collected income taxes.
You did not read your own linked page: food that are already heated-up and ready to eat are taxable, but most foods are not. Whether it is a whole food or a processed food products with many ingredients does not matter. Also, NY taxes soft drinks and other unhealthy foods (but most states do not).
Also, you are wrong when you wrote, "Given that the lower and middle classes pay a disproportionate amount of income tax".
In fact, most Americans who earn under about $40,000 a year pay no federal income tax. I believe the vehicle that effects this outcome is mainly the earned income tax credit.
- Clothes
- Shoes
- Plumber/Electrician/Handyman
- School supplies (though some states have tax holidays)
- Gas/public transit
- Car maintenance
- Utility bills
He cares about it insofar as it’s a tool he can use and abuse to make money. Obviously he has no interest in or understanding of blockchains.
When the stock market (and confidence in the U.S.) falls, people typically flock to gold and bonds. If the U.S. is seen as unstable and at risk of not making debt payments, bonds are a bad place to move money into. That leaves gold (and to a lesser extent foreign stock markets).
With crypto though- that’s a con man’s wet dream. Volatile. No government oversight. Crypto pump and dumps are literally legal (though come close to being fraud, as people like Du Kwon have learned).
Tell me which rule I broke.