7steps2much

Austrian checking in, the problem with the "high income" logic is that most stuff offered over here is just pretty crappy.

The libraries of streaming services are tiny compared to international offerings and some don't even offer anything in Austria at all because it's a small market.

Pirating is still alive and well, not necessarily because people can't/don't want to afford the alternatives, but because they just aren't as convenient.

> I would reframe that as: "if you're ok with buffer overflow malware injection, then C is the language for you!" Nobody has yet figured out how to stop that.

Write manual bound checks and good code in general? Granted you won't be able to catch every vulnerability, but at some point other vectors are so much easier to exploit that you won't have to worry about these anymore.

The real question is, does the US provide all the consular services to its citizens for free because of the taxation?

I know that a lot of other countries levy fees on their citizens for some services, especially those that are "nice to have" but not all that important.

But wouldn't animals be able to adapt to a single, predictable light source that illuminates a certain area more easily than to an arbitrary number of individual light sources in an arbitrary number of configurations/angles moving around?

That said, maybe one could equip street lights with a sensor so they don't need to run at all times?

I have had a few appointments where they didn't ask me about what device I wanted to use at all, just send me a webex link and had me join in a browser.

Works for (almost) all devices.

> private and secure

the meaning of both words being defined by their provacy policy and ToS

Do you mean f.e. using "die" or "eine" instead of "sie"? If so then I can chip in with similiar observations down in Austria and southern Germany, though overwhelmingly with males, using "der" instead of "er".

Though of course I may have missunderstood what you are actualy referring to.

This isn't even a government design standard (or government website for that matter). If looking into the impress you will find that it is run by a Verein that's promoting tourism. To quote:

> Promotion of Austria as a holiday destination.

There is a corporate design guide available [0] but from what I can tell it's more of a guide for "everything" not just websites.

[0]: https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/service/corporate-design....

The thing about science or math is that people do in fact not pay for those things. The government does most of the times (Universities) or cooperations do (research labs). I do not know a person that funds research themselves.

By the way, at least in my country (Austria) the government also spends money on artists, though I will admit that I am not aware of how big that part of the budget is. Most likely smaller than R&D though.

But in general most people also indirectly fund these things. Want a better camera in your phone? For that you will need better sensors, for that you need better factories, etc. At some point you reach the mathematicians or other scientists that are somewhat far removed from the product.

In that case use your company provided account. Just like all tools I would expect that to be provided by the company and as such availability of these tools wouldn't be my problem.

Also, use a private account for private stuff, if that wasn't obvious

Not sure if the German Gewährleistung applies to video games, but if it does you might be able to wield that since not being able to play the game anymore definitely is a major defect.

> renounce citizenship.

Isn't the US one of the few (the only?) countries which makes this really hard?

Like, if I wanted to get rid of my citizenship (European country) all I need to do is get another one, it is void the second that happens. And even if it wasn't, I do have the right to get rid of the citizenship at any time, no reason or justification needed.

If I remember in the US it is not only expensive but also they for some reason have this system where they can deny you renouncing your citizenship.

I am pretty sure that a court could order your backyard to be excavated if it believed something important buried there.

That said, hiding evidence from law enforcement/money from the tax authorities is a crime anyways, regardless of where you hide it.

> What about company Y that you haven't even heard about that got the data from somewhere else, you wont call them.

You are correct obviously, the hope is that Y will no longer get the data from "somewhere" as every X will no longer share it, but this is a naive though of course.

> What about the complications about GDPR and trading/using products from overseas, seems like everyone is breaking the law, because there are so many laws.

This is somewhat intentional. The EU is speculating that, because they are such a huge markets, manufacturers will either produce a EU version of their products or produce one version that complies with GDPR as it is cheaper than maintaining two different versions.

And to be completely honest, my personal opinion on this matter is that they probably don't mind too much. If companies now need to use European suppliers/Service Providers and you can fine them for using external ones? Sounds like an easy way to boost your economy.

In Austria at least we only use the comma for the fraction part of a number. So we would write ten million and 75 cents as:

10.000.000,75

F.e.

You could argue that they are providing the same value as the city is (housing). It's not like this is some kind of either or situation.

The city is providing value, approximately 500.000 housing units worth of value. Private landlords provide value, the remaining one point something million units worth of housing.

You could of course replace either provider, it doesn't make a practical difference whether you are renting from the city or a private landlord, at least not if we are looking at this from a top down perspective with hundreds of thousands of units.

But the whole point of the city buying into the market was to create competition and ensure that the property market isn't used as an investment/doesn't pay as great as another investment. So with that in mind the current system is actually kind of what they were aiming for.

I would be surprised if they did, a website is essentially a representation of the company after all. Most wouldn't want anyone to be able to copy them that easily.

That said, you can usually look at the html code, but they would probably not license it to you.

Essentially regular certs, but handed out by governments/authorities and including detailed data about who the cert was issued to.

Think like EV-Certs, but now with more legally binding power cause you don't get them from some random private company but the government. Though admittedly that legal power is more of a thing when signing documents.

Can't speak for the UK, but at least in Austria a company bank account is no different from a personal bank account, at least as far as technology is concerned.

That said, I know at least a couple of (admittedly rather large/corporate) companies that explicitly opted out of instant transfers for some reason.

> Let me ask you another question. What do people do who are not happy with the housing provided by the govt in Vienna?

Rent from another landlord mostly. Vienna has close to two million people (give or take some), however only around 500.000 of those live in buildings owned by the city [0]. Those are 1800 buildings by the way, definitely a lot but not unbelievably massive.

Compared to some private companies, such as Vonovia the city of Vienna is just another big player, but by no means massive enough to actually be a monopoly or anything.

It is true that they of course hold a lot of the supply in Vienna itself, housing a quarter of the population, but that still leaves three quarters not living in any of those buildings. It's easy enough to not live in apartments owned by the city if you don't want to.

[0]: www.wienerwohnen.at/wiener-gemeindebau/wiener-gemeindebau-heute.html (Source in German)

When it comes to big providers like them you can assume that all numbers are either used by other people already or blocked.

If you just don't want to give out your number you could get a second one? Nowadays with eSim it should be easy to get a "pay as you go" number and only ever receive sms.

Well, not necessarily. In terms of raises/salary increases that's more of an issue for the unions than the Betriebsrat, since it usually concerns a whole industry and not just a single company.

As for the "valuing workers over shareholders" stuff ... Well, maybe? To be perfectly honest this isn't really what a Betriebsrat is about. I mean sure, they do have some influence, but in general their territory is more in terms of company operations, less in terms of how much is paid out to shareholders.

To be perfectly honest the Betriebsräte are facing much of the same problems that most other elected bodies are facing in the western world (or at least Germany). Sinking voting share, less and less people caring about it and as they kind of loose some soft power.

They still have the hard power guaranteed by law of course, but their soft power is essentially waning.

I am not sure if it is still handled that way, but in my experience these are not supposed to be used to create new receipts, but to replace receipts that were lost or document things that occured but couldn't be put on receipts for whatever reason.

While it might be possible to use them this way they might be scrutinized and the additional work of justifying them might not be worth using a service that doesn't provide receipts.

Also, there is this section:

> Soll die Ausgabe vom Finanzamt anerkannt werden, muss dies ein Ausnahmefall bleiben.

Meaning, roughly "Even if accepted by the authorities, it is to be treated as an exception"

So i assume that they would not be a fan of you trying to use this too liberally within your accounting.

Those aren't manufacturing defects. They are all changes of dependencies that should be made clear in the contract anyways.

I have to admit that i am not too familiar with how Linux versioning works (more of a windows environment guy), but if I buy software that was developed for windows 7, that stops working on windows 10 then it's obviously not a manufacturing defect. That's me changing to OS to a none supported one. I believe that "System Requirements" is a fair section for software to have.

And assuming that i was informed before hand that the software depends on Twilio API version X.Y i won't see those changes as a manufacturing defect either.

In my opinion, manufacturing defects are things such as:

- the software corrupting data during normal operation - the software behaving differently than specified in the documentation - the software not handling edge cases correctly

> easy to use extensible API for all SMS providers

Don't ever use that language within your technical/legal documents. It's fine for marketing, but when it comes to specifications always be specific. If you write something like this, but not what Providers/API in particular you are using/offering then don't be surprised if I am annoyed when your software stops working. After all I literally had no way of knowing what you supported, you didn't give me that very specific information.

Develop split personality disorder and begin trading with yourself

> I think you've now answered your "is this hard to do?"...

Did i buy the product "as is"? If it is an open source product then i agree with you, the product is provided as is. However, in my mind this is not the case with a commerical products.

When I buy something, whether it is software, a car or a a washing machine i have a contract that outlines what i am buying. If the product contains bugs/manufacturing defects/etc. then i expect the manufacturer to either fix those or refund me. In many countries this might even be legally required (Look for Gewährleistung/Produkthaftung in German speaking countries).

I am not asking for features. I am not asking you to make the product better than what I bought. I discovered a defect that was caused by the manufacturer, not obvious at the time of purchase and as such the product does not match what i ordered from the manufacturer. I am asking you to provide to me exactly on what we agreed upon in our contract. If a developer cannot handle that and wants to distribute their software "as is" that's fine, but that will result in my willingness to pay being lower.

If I buy a product I expect that product to perform as was promised. If it does not and the manufacturer refuses to work with me then it's a breach or contract.

I wouldn't expect feature updates at all. In my mind it works like this:

New features are adding value. This is something that the developers should be paid for! Releasing a new version for features is justified.

Security updates/bug fixes on the other hand are "fixing" things with their product. In my opinion those should be provided because developers should strive to develop good products.

But to give you a somewhat more clear answer: I don't expect new features. I expect Security and bug updates until the next version+a bit of time.

If there is a version released every year i would expect Security/bug fixes for at least one year. Two years would be the developers be great, three years would have me surprised. Anything beyond that would be far more than I ever expected.

> Does it magically then not become "rent seeking" any more?

The difference is that i can just stop buying the new stuff once the software does everything i need though. That way i might miss out on shiny new features, but as long as the thing i bought the software for gets done I really don't have a need to purchase new versions.

> or even that banner offering a website visitor to use the native app.

This is something that works just fine for me over on Android, in Firefox mobile. Actually, i assume that the mobile browsers would offer all of these capabilities, assuming apple allows access to, and documents their apis appropriately.

Why is it that we somehow defend apple having proprietary/exclusive Apis that nobody else has as good? It's essentially the same game as it was with internet explorer.

I think if apple just opened up their eco system the other browsers would support these features before long, or app developers would include them in their apps instead of relying on browsers.

It's not like apple is the only one with capable engineers, they just stop everyone else from using their stuff to the fullest

Actually, isn't a bank an escrow agent? As in, historically it was a banks jobs to escrow your money. Then to act as an escrow agent for transactions/etc.