skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Presented as a gift in 1848 to Thomas Francis Meagher from a small group of French women sympathetic to the Irish cause,[3] it was intended to symbolise the inclusion and hoped-for union between Roman Catholics (symbolised by the green colour) and Protestants (symbolised by the orange colour). The significance of the colours outlined by Meagher was, "The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between Orange and Green and I trust that beneath its folds the hands of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood".

And

> Gandhi first proposed a flag to the Indian National Congress in 1921. The flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya. In the centre was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi's goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing, between a red stripe for Hindus and a green stripe for Muslims. The design was then modified to replace red with saffron and to include a white stripe in the centre for other religious communities, and provide a background for the spinning wheel. Subsequently, to avoid sectarian associations with the colour scheme, the three bands were assigned new meanings: courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry respectively.
AMT still applies to illiquid gains and can bankrupt people. They still haven't fixed this.
Let me tell you what was fun - trying to explain to a former boss why Facebook ads showed one number for amount of traffic sent, Google Analytics showed a different number for traffic from those ads, then lastly our server logs showing an entirely different number!
Your choice can literally kill multiple someone elses during a pandemic.
I recommend anyone with Synapse use your firewall to block all of their services from interacting with the Internet. I noticed Synapse was consuming a lot of CPU/network. I'm definitely never going to buy a Razer mouse again, I'll probably get a Zowie.
Anonymous account...

I am actually in the process of moving because of a wealth tax so I wanted to chime in :)

Spain
Spain has a wealth tax that is very frustrating. It was designed when savings accounts were paying 5% interest and has not been updated since then. What does this mean in reality?

My family would pay ~75% of our income to live here. Not only because of the wealth tax but also because of the dividend/income taxes on top of it. Part of this is because I am American and America forces dividend payments where as Spain does not on stock ETFs (long story). Due to a loop hole we can stay for a few years, but we plan to leave in 6 months to Portugal.

It is also frustrating as if you do any angel investing you have to pay taxes on the assumed value of that investment (from talking to lawyers/accountants). So if I have a 0.5% stake in startup that is valued at $500k, I pay wealth taxes on that every year, but if it fails I don't get anything back or anything to write off against future capital gains.

It is def impacting investment in Spain.

All the rich people in Spain live in Madrid, as the city zeros out the wealth tax. But it is hampering entrepreneurship in all the other regions. And, because of some of the loopholes in the design of it, it boosts property ownership and lowers returns there because you can stash money in real estate to avoid it.
*And, because of this Madrid has huge concentrations of wealth.

Switzerland.
I also wanted to move to Switzerland so my wife could get her PHD. Had to skip it as it was going to cost ~$250k USD to be there for that period. In that time I would have started a company in Switzerland and so they lost that and taxes from the eventual exit on that.

----

I do not like wealth taxes. I think they are supremely flawed and hard to pull off right. A few countries have. I understand the tax challenge, but I think you are better off taxing dividends progressively and taxing inheritance heavily.
There are a few ways to get involved in private rounds like this...

1/ Someone is allocated a certain amount and they farm it out to their "fund" of friends and family who invest through an LLC or some other method (I have a modest investment in a few bigger companies this way)
2/ You become an accredited investor yourself, which doesn't require a ton of work but does require some proof that you have capital and then network your way into the raise. (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092815/how-b...)

I think generally speaking there has to be SOME protections in place or investors who want to get a small piece don't get swindled. This is why public companies have so much compliance, disclosure requirements, etc. associated with them so that the government can step in if they are breaking the law or deceiving investors. Likewise with the increased scrutiny on the company, anyone can open a brokerage account and own stock.

I assume you know some of these things and I also share the pain of "how do I just get in with a small stake on some of these big or small private companies"
If you're logged into the account on your computer, sure. Just make sure you either make all purchase on-device, or log into Oculus in a private window.
What a trip this has been from the Kickstarter to its acquisition to this situation.
User-Agent for nice bots, and client ASN for naughty bots will get you pretty far. Fake chrome from residential IPs is hard to detect though.
Interesting, thanks. Do you think the information in it is trustworthy? Not sure if I can trust Putin to tell his own story truthfully.
I’m struggling to understand why the “boss” would call after the dismissal. This is a major HR protocol no-no.

In any case, why ditch Apple? Set up an alternative support lane for people with machines out of warranty and clean up $$$
It is indeed the tragedy of the comments. That's why we need regulations, sanctions etc. This needs to be the number one issue for all international negotiations.

I say that as someone who cut down on 95-99% of meat consumption to reduce my carbon footprint and because I feel terrible for the animals
Same here, but here's the deal. A lot of these companies are looking for direction, are looking for leadership. Every unicorn I've worked for already had enough financiers behind the scenes. Sure, many of them risked impossible amounts like 10 million to seed the business. Who are you? What do you have to offer?

They get a bad rap but I hold an opposite view. I'd like to know what companies I can hold an activist position in. Surely, there are businesses around town that would take a 200k check for x-percentage.
When I took exams in England (admittedly a decade and a half ago) there were indeed different questions based on what you had learned, but you were instructed to only answer one of them (if you answered more it didn't count), and they were all worth the exact same number of points. It's possible some schools taught two texts to let their students choose whatever was easier on the day, but I doubt this was widespread and I don't see this system as being unfair.
Every year startups get a 409a valuation from an audit firm that determines what their company and shares are worth. The IRS requires that stock options have an exercise price that is equal to or greater than the share price that comes out of the 409a valuation. These are laws, not decisions made by founders/investors.

If you grant stock options with an exercise price that is less than the fair market value (share price from 409a), then that's considered income by the IRS and employees owe tax immediately.

With ISOs, the 90 day exercise window is required by the IRS. With NSOs, it can be longer, like 7-10 years. 7-10 years is obviously way more employee friendly.
So they're effectively saying you can't use Oculus gear if you don't have any friends (on social media).
> we've spent over $17 billion on the SLS program so far, and it probably isn't as far along as Musk's SuperHeavy/Starship is.

There is a nearly complete SLS core stage awaiting testing at Stennis Space Center. How far along is Starship?

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/08/sls-green-run-verify...
That was my de facto setup for the occasional (once a month or less) remote work. When lockdown happened, within a week, sitting in the same spot all day started feeling bad. I realized that I moved into a house last year with spare bedrooms, so I got my work stuff up there (picked up peripherals from the office) along with a table from the basement, just so I could sit in different places throughout the day.
It's not public, and no companies issue non-voting shares. It's not even clear they would be allowed by the SEC.
The example given is drawn from immediate experience and illustrates my own slow-dawning awareness of the gulf and its implications from my heady days as a 1990s Linux & free software advocate. I still think they're great tools. I no longer think most people, certainly not most present adults, will profitably use them.

Most people do not have a functional model of how things work, they have a process model, possibly more accurately a ritualistic model, of action and effect. "I do A and B happens." There is no "because C" causal explanation, or any such notions are hopelessly inaccurate, often mythical or animistic.

Population-level computer literacy has been studied, and the results are frankly gutstopping. Usability expert Jacob Nielsen wrote on this in 2016:

Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

He's referencing a 216,000 participant OECD study:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en

"Below level one" describes 14% of the adult population, for which typical skills are "Delete this email message". "Level one" (29% of the population) can assign categories or use search features, say, in email. "Level 2" (26%) could accomplish a task such as "You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year". Level 3 is the highest skill level, representing 5% of the population.

If you've been noting totals you might have twigged that we're only to 74% of the population. That is because fully 26% of adults have no effective computer literacy.

And 69% of the population in total (none, <1, 1) have at best extraordinarily limited skills and understanding. Whilst there's some variance among OECD populations (Finland does better, Turkey poorly), the shifts aren't that great. Human cognitive distribution is something we have to live with: all the children are not above average.

You may be tired of this fact but it remains the best interpretation of the evidence.

I'm certainly frustrated by this, on multiple grounds. It means that general-population digital tools must be targeted to the minimum viable user. It means that the advanced-user community is a very minor market segment, at least by units. It means that consequences of poor technical literacy are born by all of us. That's wrapped up in an essay "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User":

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

But no, really, it's not as bad as I portrayed above. It's far worse.
I'd gladly trade all the relationships I have for the ability to never work again.

If I ever finish work, it's going to be a complete reboot of me anyway.
Apple phone are super simple to physically brake accidentally.

My definition of premium includes "it's robust so I don't have to worry", their definition of premium excludes robustness.

My definition of premium includes straight forward sustainable repairs theirs includes hampering anyone who tries to provide such (they don't).
Why? It's a mental trick to help separate work from home. Work = shoes; home = slippers (or barefoot).

Obv doesn't work if you're a "no shoes in the house" person (we are, I go barefoot or slippered at home). But, putting on "dress" clothes, or your work badge, or other things can do the same thing.
I would argue that he was and still is lying. He had the power to make good on his promise in the form of contractual terms during the sale, but didn't.
America’s canned tuna industry went belly up
You’re comparing the battery degradation of a phone that almost always works disconnected to a battery in a laptop that almost works connected?
You are right that if you stop testing then the R0 goes back up. That is why you test everyone every time there is a new breakout. If keep a breakout from spreading among the community, then the R0 goes to 0. The R0 is probably not very high to begin with in cases where there is a breakout in China because they do very strict lock downs, wear masks, and are in general very careful.

It also helps that anyone visiting China has to undergo 2 weeks of quarantine before going among the community. If you have the disease under control in your community the only threat is outsiders.

Also, you are right that the positive rate needs to be somewhat low for pooled testing to be effective, so that's why you do it at new breakouts before there has been much spread. I had heard that there are, at least in the US, issues with proper swab and reagent shortages, or at least there were delays due to supply chain issues. I thought there were issues with a lack of PCR machines could be wrong. I don't know what the case is in China, though it is clear that pooling is what they did to test people with lower risk of infection (it's in the last article linked in tristanj's comment).
Most of the folks on this thread are commenting from the perspective of 2020, but Facebook had pretty significantly different reputation in 2014, especially around M&A. They had recently brought in both Instagram and WhatsApp without meddling in either their product stacks or their leadership teams. It's easy to claim now that this was all naive, but at the time it was plausible that these organizations and brands would remain fairly independent and autonomous within the Facebook umbrella.
I've done a lot of reading on salmon farming over the past 6 months, as the tech consultantancy I work for has been investigating approaches within the industry, primarily in Norway. I look forward to reading your thesis :)

The feed conversion rates that Norway is achieving are, frankly, incredible. But the thing that troubles me the most is welfare. Sea lice remain a huge problem, and the mechanical and chemical treatments that are used hurt, damage and kill fish. There are also a shocking number of accidents that can kill millions if fish at a time - for example, chemical treatments gone wrong, or pens not deep enough so millions die from overheating. Then there is the welfare of cleaner fish, with reports of mortality rates over 40%.

Outside of Norway, I've seen some absolutely horrible cage conditions, with the netting completely fouled and the water thick with waste, and damaged, dead and malformed fish everywhere.

While there has been a lot of investment in offshore farming technology, the capex costs are huge, and it will still be some time before we see success at scale. It also comes with it's own risks - I think it was perhaps Havfarm that recently had an incident where the whole platform tipped to the side.

I also find the recent investments into land-based farming are troubling. For all the problems, at least with sea-based farming the fish live in part of their natural environment and have some semblance of space.

IIRC, for land-based farming to even be viable, they need something like 5x more biomass per cubic metre than sea-based farms. Thousands of fish are packed into a tiny area, and literally swim round in circles all day and night, never seeing anything other than the thousands of other fish that surround them, and if they're lucky the occasional glimpse of the side of the raceway.

How do you feel about welfare of farmed salmon, and in particular land-based farms?
> I've been using Linux for a couple of decades now and I can't remember the last time I saw a project that relied on Makefiles to build.

Makefiles, at least in my corner of the industry, are exceedingly common for projects with a build process of medium-to-low complexity.
I've found it fairly easy to do on a new account with Okta and Terraform. Was probably a pain the first time (don't remember anymore) but it's been 99% automated after that.
It's also an argument for retro games.

Plug in a cartridge and go from power on to playing the game in a matter of seconds, with no privacy invasion.
I'm not convinced any of these things will be caused by demand shocks and material scarcity due to overpopulation, but rather, if at all, through coordination and resource allocation failures (politics, war, corruption).
I think also that, although the lighting may often be on in empty offices, the computers (and body heat) are lower, or missing entirely, so the offices aren't having to work very hard. However, all that load has shifted back to WFH, not gone away, so now the same amount of heat is being handled by less efficient A/Cs, in smaller buildings.

All speculative, though, and probably not the main driver, I admit.
Was it just a verbal agreement or written in the contract though.
“ Large corporate labs, however, are unlikely to regain the importance they once enjoyed. Research in corporations is difficult to manage profitably. “

The easy fix is to classify the work as a net positive for a community, and provide tax incentives such that it becomes by definition profitable, since society can cost-in the scenario where the lab doesn’t exist.
I even like in the article how Jobs said it wasn't a big deal.
Nothing in this world is risk-free, because the world is inherently uncertain. Holding cash is also risky. We can calculate a risk free rate of return however, and we can also look at historical returns and rates wealth growth to estimate what a "fair" rate might be.

But since this is really a "should" question (aka about values), theres not really a right answer. We can mostly just talk about fairness, of which there are many different conceptions.

My take: Society has to work hard to preserve the billionaire's wealth. You can't be king without an army, and billionaires exist because of laws, police and a social fabric that lets them keep owning so much stuff. You would otherwise have to be a warlord to keep your hands on so much, and that has its own costs and risks.

Perhaps we could look at it as a fee or compensation for the aggregate social guard labour required to preserve the social order that ensures the safety of the billionaire's assets.
> In places like apple doing password resets / account unlocks to allow data transfer, even if you do that for free on the clock, is very commonly prohibited off the clock and/or for "friends".

Yep, that sounds like it could be more clear cut -- you're using employer resources/tools without permission.
It's a sadly common view.

One thing I'd tell your wife is that down ticket races are very important, particularly state legislatures. I know my district will be carried by a dem, but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions between which dem I want.
I see little bit of difference between man killing weapons and food
Our Bodies Process Medicines Best at Certain Times of Day
User name checks out.
> I would feel the same way if this was an issue though

It was:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/razer-synapse-3-removes-lo...
Shorter timescale than generational. Once anyone becomes a billionaire incentives push them towards extracting rents rather than creating wealth.

Rich founders who get pushed out often start new companies (Pixar, SpaceX, Square, etc..)

Rich founders who stay waste their talent & access to capital on moat digging.

Why did Gates, after inventing personal computing, spend the 90s killing Netscape and stagnating browser standards?

The trend of wealthy founders leaving their companies to become mentors/investors for the next batch of startups is likely the biggest contributor to the ongoing success and prosperity of Silicon Valley.
Two reasons we have anti-moonlight.

Insurance is very concerned about claims resulting from off the clock / third party work related to day time work. So if you are a doctor working in a practice group, and then do freelance work, that is going to absolutely freak an insurance carrier out.

Security - people don't realize that a lot of stuff on-premise / on-network is tracked and logged. So if you "help" someone out off-site / off work people get nervous. T-mobile employee doing a sim swap with customer in store on video - sure. T-mobile employee logging in off hours to do a sim swap - maybe sketchier even if they are "helping a friend".
I have exactly the same problem. I had two older ladies in my building that I thought are the same person. Fun fact: their native language was not the same and months later (after I realized my mistake) I've heard that one of them got offended because I kept greeting her in the wrong language.
So they have to behave so they can continue to lord it over us.

In reality it takes a huge amount of propaganda from the British media to keep them in place. If there was anything resembling an objective assesment of them then they would be gone.
It is pretty strange to blame the "more relaxed antitrust environment in the 1980s" when it was the 1982 anti-trust breakup of Ma Bell that destroyed Bell Labs and ended the monopoly profit flows that subsidized the telecom labs.
I don't buy it. You're comparing the energy inputs required to support large-scale tissue engineering operations with those needed for grazing cattle on pasture. It's not even close.
Facebook has historically be truly crappy in this regards. The Instagram founders had a similar story, but rather than publish a half-apology, they left the company (walking away from quite a bit of money in the process.

It's gotta be hard to be a founder in a situation like this.
Starship has done test hops to half a kilometer multiple times, and they're on prototype... 7, 8?

SLS hasn't moved an inch off the ground, ever.
And because a part of renting your next place often involves a letter saying you were a model tenant from your last place, asserting your rights can lead to severe difficulties and potentially homelessness.
You mention CS education is not efficient way to learn to be a developer, the other problem it is expensive, maybe Europe is different it is certainly a major factor US and many other countries.

As you point out your strong background in CS helps a lot, which is why tech interviews want to filter by that skill, it is however not essential to be a good developer.

To be a good mechanic you don't need to know engineering, knowing engineering certainly helps and give you an edge over someone starting the same time as
you, but not much for senior skilled hiring. I would rather have my car serviced by experienced high school dropout mechanic than MIT graduate out of college.

Personally, I have a background in electrical engineering, I started hiring tech startup right out of uni, neither knowing tech or hiring. It is been 7-8 years and we are now 150+ strong. My brother has PhD in CS and multiple post-docs, studied in top universities and now teaches at one. Between the two of us, you would hire me any day to build a real application. If both of us started careers as developers at the same time perhaps he may have become a better developer, however today my experience would count lot more than foundation knowledge his education will bring.

tldr: The background in CS helps early on as fresh grad, but it should not be a factor for senior hires, that is problem in FAANG hiring.
Valve is also private. Theoretically they have more leeway to make short-term unprofitable decisions without having to answer to public shareholders.
The effective tax rate has been on a downward trend for the past 50 years, so if renouncing US citizenship is a growing trend, that doesn't make a good argument for a strong positive correlation between the two.
Thats definitely one-half of the equation - Las Vegas couldn't easily exist without the Hoover Dam. But you also need to have an economic draw, whether that be some large employer or industry, or proximity to a trade route of some kind.