Repaying student loans makes a lot of people a little richer. The current initiative makes a few people a lot richer. If you ask some people, the former is a very communist/socialist way of thinking (bad), while the latter is pure, unadulterated capitalism (good).
That and a lot of people do not have the means to convince current power centers ( unless they were to organize, which they either don't, can't or are dissuaded from ) to do their bidding, while few rich ones do. And so the old saying 'rich become richer' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That was the implication indeed. Money is like gravity, the more you have the more you can pull in. This will give a person the power to do anything to make more money (change the laws as desired, or break them if needed) but also the perfect shield from any repercussions.
One of the more destructive situations in capitalism is the fact that (financially) helping the many will increase inflation and lead to more problems.
When a few people get really rich it kind of slips through the gaps, the broader system isn't impacted too much. When most people get a little rich they spend that money and prices go up. Said differently, wealth is all relative so when most people get a little more rich their comparative wealth didn't really change.
you can redistribute real resources - every person spending their life working on a rich persons yacht rather than helping educate the next generation due to the price system, for instance, is a real distribution of resources. this is why consumption taxes are modern and valuable
If we have to have taxes, I'm very much in favor of a consumption tax. It doesn't work for our current system though, capitalism kind of hits a wall when spending money is disincentivized (compared to saving money or simply not trying to earn more).
Redistribution of wealth is tricky and almost certainly runs into the same wall I mentioned in my last comment. When everyone competing with each other (financially) see a similar bump in income they didn't really change anything. Redistribution is more helpful when targeting the wealth gap and not very useful when considering how wealtht the majority of people "feel".
That said, I 100% agree people shouldn't be working their entire life on a rich person's boat. That's a much bigger, and more fundamental, problem though. That gets to the core of a debt-based society and the need for self reliance. The most effective way to get out from under someone else's boot (financially) is to work towards a spot where you aren't dependent on them or the job's income.
The most effective way to get out from under someone else's boot (financially) is to work towards a spot where you aren't dependent on them or the job's income.
100% this but entire system is setup to make sure this doesn't happen at scale. even here on HN if you post something along these lines but in real terms you will get downvoted like crazy and get even crazier comments.
the system is setup to make sure there are workers, w2 workers. this is why there is student loans and this is why schools do not teach you to be an entrepreneur, to be a salesman, to hustle for yourself and not for someone else. I see so many people here talking about leetcode and faang and I think to myself that is just modern day slavery. if you are LXXX at say Meta making say $750k/year, I think the same - you are a modern-day slave. if Meta is paying you $750k/year that really means that you are worth twice that, if not more. no company is going to pay you more than you are worth to them and they won't even break even with you so-to-speak so you can bank on this fact whoever you work for and whatever you bank. though there is a big difference between working on someone's yacht and making $750k the principles are the same but system is working hard and succeeding in making sure it stays as it is...
I am very sympathetic to your point about barriers. I feel like California has been waging war on 1099 contractors and small businesses for decades. Hell, they have a $600 minimum business tax on unprofitable businesses. They want stable W-2 union workers with state regulated compensation, not free wheeling contractors and businesses succeeding or failing on their own merits.
However, I think it is worth clarifying your following point.
>if Meta is paying you $750k/year that really means that you are worth twice that, if not more.
This is far from slavery. You are worth that to Meta. You might be worth significantly less without Meta. If you can make 1.5 mil/year alone and quit, meta wont send the slave patrol to bring you back in shackles. Instead, it is the golden shackles of greed that keep people making $750,000 instead of opting out.
> but entire system is setup to make sure this doesn't happen at scale
This has been getting less and less true since the Industrial Revolution. We’re not quite at the point where we don’t need menial labour. But we can sure see the through line to it. The alternate future to the despairingly unemployed is every person being something of an owner.
> if Meta is paying you $750k/year that really means that you are worth twice that, if not more
Whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Also, if you’re being paid $750k/year, you’d better be worth more than $1.5mm to your employer, because taxes and regulatory costs are typically estimated around 100% of base up to the low millions.
This has been getting less and less true since the Industrial Revolution.
how so? what do you think is the breakdown between say working people in the USA (excluding gig-jobs cause you know…) who are W2 vs. 1099 and/or business owners? 99.78% to 0.22% roughly?
Automation. Consider the number of jobs today that one can do singly today that didn't even exist then.
> W2 vs. 1099 and/or business owners? 99.78% to 0.22% roughly?
There are about 165 million workers in the American labour force [1]. There are 33 million small businesses [2]. Given 14% have no employees [3], we have a lower bound of 5 million business owners in America, or 3% of the labour force.
Add to that America's 65 million freelancers and you have 2 out of 5 Americans not working for a boss. (Keep in mind, we're ignoring every building, plumber or design shop that has even a single employee in these figures.)
there are lots of redistributions that are net beneficial even when you account for the incentive hit. marginal increases in the estate tax, for instance, almost certainly fall under this umbrella
Totally fair, by no means is that a settled issue. Debt is just my opinion of a likely root cause.
> there are lots of redistributions that are net beneficial even when you account for the incentive hit. marginal increases in the estate tax, for instance, almost certainly fall under this umbrella
That requires a lot more context to answer. The costs and benefits considered are important to lay out. Without that context I really can't say if it's a net benefit or not, I would assume that two average people would have a different list of factors they'd consider when saying whether its a net benefit or not.
Personally I don't see estate taxes as net beneficial. I don't agree with the principle that death is a taxable event, and I don't prefer the government to have in incentives to see people die (i.e. when someone with an estate dies the government makes money). Financially, to stick with just the numbers, I don't consider $66B in annual revenue worth the bureaucracy or legal complexity required to manage the estate tax program.
Transfers are taxable, either as gifts or income. Not sure why we would exempt inheritance flows. $66B seems like a pretty good haul, that could easily be much larger given the massive portion of wealth that is inherited, and is 5x the budget of the IRS.
And the disincentive effects are much smaller than taxing the equivalent in directly earned income.
I get that today's laws do allow for taxing estate transfers as a taxable event. The personal concern I was raising is that I don't thing it should be taxable, not whether today's laws allow for taxing it.
When my parents die, assuming they go before me, I don't see why the government should be involved. To be clear, my parents are well below estate tax thresholds, but the underlying premise is the same. Someone's relative dying and leaving them an estate shouldn't by a taxable event as far as um concerned.
$66B should be a lot of money, but our federal government doesn't know what it means to balance a budget. We could easily cut $66B in current spending if we cared.
Transmeta also has 130nm CPUs [0] but they were all meant to be low power. The 130nm TM5800/5900 were ~9W at their highest 1GHz rating including the integrated northbridge. Clock it down to 800MHz and it was a measly 5-6W. That wasn't much power to work with, especially for a CPU that was doing the extra work for the code morphing abstraction layer. The similarly clocked Pentium IIIs going around the same period were ~30W.
I had a Compaq TC1000 for some time and I while I loved it for it's exotic nature and interesting approach, it was slow as molasses.
Maybe some things shouldn't be about bragging but about getting the job done, and cutting edge isn't the only way to do it. If anything, the problem here isn't that it's "just" 16nm but that the EU isn't developing a end-to-end (research to manufacturing) true home grown industry and still relies a lot on external partners like Intel to do it from the outside.
But a good first step to develop enough talent locally that can later flow into domestic alternatives.
Agree with this take. Additionally it brings geopolitical stability by not putting the onus on just one-to-two countries (Taiwan, US) to produce the majority of the worlds info-tech infrastructure. A 16nm process is still very very modern in the grander scope of things.
Be interesting to see if there's integration with research environments within the EU.. otherwise it could fizzle in terms of it's true potential positive impact.
> but only accusing an inanimate object (the money itself), constitutional protections don't apply.
The loophole is that money, unlike most other inanimate objects, isn't considered "property".
Any fine should have the option of a court date attached in order to follow due process, like a traffic fine. But many types of fines don't have the presumption of innocence, or the day in court prescribed. Civil forfeiture is an extension of that process, also relying on the fact that money isn't property so taking it away doesn't violate the "no person may be deprived of property without due process of law" constitutional article.
I think so but then again so is a bank card. The card itself your property. And the money it gives access to are with the bank which means the concept of civil forfeiture no longer works (the police can't just frisk the bank and take the money).
As safe as you can be with a million dollar necklace around your neck... But you're safe from legal civil forfeiture. Abusive forfeiture is a whole other matter entirely and (IANAL) I'm willing to bet the ones committing the abuse will get the presumption of innocence and you will have to prove the abuse.
not necessarily; If the police recently busted a <gun ring/drug deal/insert generic illegal activity> paying for goods with that same style necklace(or any mental gymnastics to link the item type to a crime) then they could seize it as surely it is part of illegal activity.
The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date". My old Android with whatever Photos app came with it (not Google's) shows this despite being disconnected for so long.
There's nothing stopping either Apple or Google from giving users an option to just disable these connected features, globally or per-app. Just allow a "no cloud services" toggle switch in the Photos app, get the warning that $FEATURES will stop working, and be done.
I know why Google isn't doing this, they're definitely monetizing every bit of that analyzed content. Not really sure about Apple though, might be that they consider their setup with HE as being on par with no cloud connectivity privacy wise.
"memories" constantly given me notifications about "similar shots" at random, so I'm assuming it is trying to analyse the content of the photos. I managed to disable the notifications, but not the actual analysis
> The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date".
It’s more. It also can create memories “trip to New York in 2020”, “Cityscapes in New York over the years”, or “Peter over the years” (with Peter being a person added to Photos)
According to Nvidia [0], DLSS4 with Multi Frame Generation means "15 out of 16 pixels are generated by AI". Even that "original" first out of four frames is rendered in 1080p and AI upscaled. So it's not just 3 extra frames, it's also 75% of the original one.
I went that route for my account which I wasn't using anyway but only because I realized it's not "my account" and my control over it is way too limited.
I logged in after many years of inactivity only to realize that despite only having a few friends, my feed was exclusively Musk and Tesla stuff. No amount of "don't show me this" helped. On one hand I found it exceptionally pathetic that any person would need to stroke their own ego to this degree at the expense of everyone else. But worse, it's clear that Twitter/X/Musk control my feed more than I do so the only way to win the game is to not play it.
> if the ICO actually just went after the companies doing fingerprinting directly, instead of being angry at Google for not enforcing things for them
Google isn't just a hapless bystander here, they are enabling and profiting from the practice. Big tech companies all build these billion people villages and heavily tax every person inside but when "outside law" is broken then "outside authorities" should fix it for free.
The rules could be simple: you have a problem in your village, either you enforce the laws there, or national authorities will do it and charge you (the company) for the service.
When Amazon allows any of the millions of ephemeral clone-storefronts to sell shady or illegal stuff, would you rather have the authorities spend years chasing ghosts or have Amazon change their rules to make sure such illegality and abuse aren't possible in their marketplace?
> When Amazon allows any of the millions of ephemeral clone-storefronts to sell shady or illegal stuff, would you rather have the authorities spend years chasing ghosts or have Amazon change their rules to make sure such illegality and abuse aren't possible in their marketplace?
I'm fine with a law saying Amazon is liable for fake storefronts etc. Sounds reasonable. I'd also favor requiring e.g. Uber or Airbnb to provide authorities with data to prevent tax fraud from operators in such marketplaces.
But to me saying Google's advertising product should enforce how the individual websites work [fingerprinting], is to me more in the direction of "an electricity provider should enforce how people live their lives in any home provided by such electricity…"
> Google's advertising product should enforce how the individual websites work
"Google's advertising product" should do no such thing, the websites can go right ahead implementing whatever they dream of. Google "the company that develops the OS for my phone and the web browser" on the other hand is responsible for what tools and features it gives to those websites or apps to use on my device and without my explicit permission.
For example Google doesn't allow them to have root on your device, or covertly activate your microphone or camera. Why aren't you asking "who's Google to police what websites can do with my device, camera, and mic"?
> is to me more in the direction of "an electricity provider should enforce how people live their lives in any home provided by such electricity…"
Quite the opposite, Google or the electricity provider should enforce nothing on you or me. The analogy is more like the electricity provider allowing anyone to access information about what you do using that electricity. Why would the electricity provider have access to that information in the first place, and why would they be allowed to create interfaces that share that info with their partners?
If you're fine with Google allowing sites to collect this information from you, would you also be fine if your electricity provider allowed sites to collect info about how you use the electricity?
> But to me saying Google's advertising product should enforce how the individual websites work [fingerprinting], is to me more in the direction of "an electricity provider should enforce how people live their lives in any home provided by such electricity…"
That's a wild analogy.
You're talking there about what I do in my home without impacting anyone else.
With google here we're talking about companies tracking users in a way likely to be illegal.
> But to me saying Google's advertising product should enforce how the individual websites work [fingerprinting],
I completely disagree, and I'm someone whose interests would be best served by agreeing with you (my marketing agency spends a lot on advertising, and if the ad platforms don't have to enforce this sort of bad behaviour from other advertisers then prices could potentially fall as their expenses would)
Google's ad network isn't just dumb pipes for information like an ISP or an electricity provider, they're actively charging companies money in order to send whatever information to be displayed and code to be executed those companies want them to onto the screens of people that they're actively targeting. It should absolutely be Google's (or whatever ad network's) responsibility to not allow bad actors to use their services to spread viruses/malware, nor to allow even worse privacy evasion that they're already doing themselves such as allowing fingerprinting.
Isn't Google's relevancy here a result of their connection to the Chrome browser? The analogy vis-à-vis electricity is more like a vacuum cleaner manufacturer than power provider, although even that's weak because this is fundamentally about personal information being miscategorized as a commodity.
Google literally added all of the random APIs into Chrome that fingerprinting depends on.
If you trust Google then they are a bystander. If you don't then they orchestrated this entire situation over the last decade or so in order to cement the dominance of their advertising business.
Most of those "random APIs" have good reasons for being there that have nothing to do with fingerprinting. For instance:
Your browser needs to be able to render text in different fonts, which means that without paranoid design (and maybe with it) code running there can tell what fonts you have installed.
A web app may want to tell you when something happened in your time zone even though it happened somewhere else. So there's value in having code running in your browser be able to tell what time zone you're in.
Different browsers, and different versions of the same browser, have different bugs. So there's value in letting code running in your browser know what version of what browser you're running. (Note that this information has been exposed by browsers, though not always very honestly, since before Google even existed.)
Browser/device fingerprinting has been possible since before Google ever shipped a browser.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Google has made design decisions in Chrome motivated by not making fingerprinting too difficult. I also wouldn't be surprised to find that they've done the exact reverse. Maybe they've done both. But the possibility of browser fingerprinting isn't the result of some galaxy-brained conspiracy by Google; that was there all along because when browsers first gained the ability to run code the people building the browsers never thought of the danger, and by the time someone did it was already too late.
> from the evidence, you need to be a highly skilled photographer with expensive equipment and perfect photos to get responses on those apps
I don't know, I'm not in the market... But if you want to learn what it takes to "score a date", going to a website called "killyourinnerloser" where a guy describes how he has all the sex and threesomes and foursomes and knows how to please all women, posts a bunch of erotic/pornographic material, and literally asks for $1 to change your life is very much like going to an actual porn site to learn what it takes to satisfy a woman.
Not showing your dirty dishes or toilet in the background, and not taking pictures in the dark is common sense. No need for macho photographer to tell you how to sex the ladies.
But let me put your mind at ease further. I needed a chuckle and read the mistakes to avoid, together with his own fine example of nine winning pics. In no particular order:
- Don't wear the same clothes in multiple pics. Proceeds to wear the exact same sweatshirt and gold chain in no less than four pics in different settings, even restaurant and gym because it's his "everywhere" sweatshirt. Then wears the exact same overall outfit in another two pictures. Then the same cap in two pictures.
- Don't be too far away or bad angle. Posts a picture with his back to the camera in which he is ~1-2% of the whole frame.
- No staged or stiff pose and definitely no static posture. Posts three pics with the exact same blank and stiff facial expression and static posture. All but one picture look extremely staged poses.
The attacker must be able to fake any pre-boot drive unlock screen and OS login screen to look exactly as the user's real screens but accept any password.
Legend goes that security oriented people will visually customize their machines with stickers (and their associated aging patina) and all kinds of digital cues on the different screens just to recognize if anything was changed.
MS chose to impose TPM because it allows encryption without interactive password typing (BitLocker without PIN or password which is what most machines are running). That's it. The users get all the convenience of not having to type extra passwords when the machine starts, and some (not all) of the security offered by encryption. Some curious thief can't just pop your drive into their machine and check for nudes. The TPM is not there to protect against NSA, or proverbial $5 wrench attacks but as a thick layer of convenience over the thinner layer of security.
> Legend goes that security oriented people will visually customize their machines with stickers (and their associated aging patina) and all kinds of digital cues on the different screens just to recognize if anything was changed.
Maybe I am mistaken, but I feel that the people going to such lengths to ward off an attacker and the people who’d want to rely on fTPM with Bitlocker over FOSS full disk encryption with a dedicated passphrase are two entirely separate circles.
> The TPM is not there to protect against NSA, or proverbial $5 wrench attacks but as a thick layer of convenience over the thinner layer of security.
I agree with you there, it is convenience, not security, but as such, should it be any more mandatory than any other convenience feature such as Windows Hello via fingerprint or IR? I’d argue only for newly released hardware, but don’t make that mandatory for existing systems.
Especially since I had one case where fTPM was not recognized, no matter what I did, despite it being enabled in the UEFI and showing up in Windows 10 and on Linux, I could not install 11.
> the people going to such lengths to ward off an attacker and the people who’d want to rely on fTPM with Bitlocker over FOSS full disk encryption with a dedicated passphrase are two entirely separate circles.
Bitlocker + PIN/password (hence my mention of a pre-boot password) is a good combination that isn't any worse than any "FOSS full disk encryption". Beyond the catchy titles of "Bitlocker hacked in 30s" is the reality that it takes just as many seconds to make it (to my knowledge) unhackable by setting a PIN or password.
Adding the (f)TPM improves the security because you don't just encrypt the data, you also tie it to that TPM, and can enforce TPM policies to place some limits on the decryption attempts.
> it is convenience, not security
It's convenience and (some) security by default. Not great security but good enough for most of those millions of Windows users. The security was the mandatory part, encrypting the storage by default. The convenience was added on top to get the buy-in for the security, otherwise people would complain or worse, disable the encryption. Whoever wants to remove that convenience and turn it into great security sets a PIN.
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