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Atomic_Torrfisk

81 karma · joined September 11, 2024

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Atomic_Torrfisk··on Norway's Wealth Tax Unchains a Capital Exodus
The article is misleading, and well propaganda. The official national statistical institute of Norway tracks wealth tax revenues per year. From 2022 to 2023, revenues moderately increased from around NOK 26 billion to NOK 29 billion.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Norway's Wealth Tax Unchains a Capital Exodus
Anyone who actually bothers to reads this article will know that it's blatant agenda pushing, nothing more. Here are some of the highlights:

a) The article is published by a company who's caters to rich individuals who want to gain citizenship in other countries by paying their way in. Morally dubious to begin with.

b) The 54B capital flight figure is unsubstantiated. They cite no sources, only a single hyperlink that redirects to their own completely unrelated webpage??

c) The lost tax revenue estimates also seem to be completely made up. In fact, they make no mention of the figures past the title and introductory paragraph. A complete joke of an article.

If you're interested to know the real numbers, the official national statistical institute of Norway (link below) tracks wealth tax revenues per year. From 2022 to 2023, revenues moderately increased from around NOK 26 billion to NOK 29 billion. 2024 statistics are only due to come out this year.

https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/10333

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Are We Doomed?
I'm not sure. I know a lot of people who want to have kids, but are not because of the current economic situation. Whether this is real or perceived I am not sure; I have 3 kids, but I am doing alright at the moment.

The simple answer is that our current way of life (in the west at least) does not accommodate kids. We USED to have kids because they were an economic benefit to agrerian cultures, but have since become a burden since our society does not make time or resources for them, least of which is physical space when you consider urban life.

IF we want to increase the birth rate again, we need to shift our lifestyles away from being as career centric as they are today. We could for instance, remove the stigma of working part time or having a stay at home parent. We could encourage people not to grind long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Actually fix the housing problem without bending to NIMBYists and investors and provide affordable/accessible childcare.

Since children are the future tax-base and labor force of a nation, pay parents for raising kids, like its a job. It is kind of gross to view children in this perspective, but if we are talking about economics, well-adjusted children are just as much an input just as much as energy is.

Technologically speaking, we as a species are basically magic at this point, so I reject the notion that strategically recovering the birth rate is impossible, rather there is no will to.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Radiant Computer
> RadiantOS is a single address space operating system.

But why? We use virtual address spaces for a reason.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Pomelli
This is just going to breed mistrust, possibly end up hurting businesses. Generally speaking, there are two categories of marketing when it comes to the products I buy.

The first is the quality mass produced products like laptops, cereals, frozen pizzas, etc which have enough revenue that they can hire human marketing to come up with unique content, packaging and ads. The other category, is _high_ quality locally produced goods, like cheese, meats, and some clothing (for example) which do not have enough revenue to hire dedicated marketing staff, but instead use informal marketing. Marketing beyond simple ads in the later case barely matters since there is a lot of trust that the product is quality.

Now there are a lot of garbage products out there, mostly from dollar/discount shops, drop shippers, online shops, and sometimes supermarkets. Margins on these cheap products is usually thin, so if they can save a few bucks with Pomelli they will probably use it.

I'd argue that most people today have become very sensitive and well trained to sniff out poor quality products, its easy to get ripped off. Cues of poor quality could be the design of the packaging including language and fonts, the weight and feel of the product or the brand name when it comes to amazon products sold by Mosptnspg, DSPEAE , Sdarming or whatever lol.

Is the cue to poor quality not going to become Pomelli-style designs? People are already sensitizing themselves to genAI content, and Pomelli is unlikely to produce designs time after time again which are unique enough to bypass a good eye.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Asbestosis
> retroactively penalise the builders that used so much asbestos

It is not the builders fault, they did not know, but the manufacturers of ACM did for decades! and they were penalized. Most were forced to set up trusts to cover certain expenses in the US, but I am not sure what their scope is.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Asbestosis
> problem isn't going to go away.

Yes, that is why when you test positive for asbestos you add a little "a" sticker to the material to notify anyone in the future.

I think you are missing the point. Many people like myself want to take care of it, and would hire a proper crew to take care of it, but we are not wealthy enough to just call in a crew without some financial planning. This is not just an annoying expense, quite a bit more than that.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Asbestosis
> current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK

Nope, same attitude here.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Asbestosis
Source? Usually it is just tradesmen who worked with it directly, or their wives.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Asbestosis
It absolutely does need balance. Many, if not most older pre 1980 houses in (Norway where I live) have some form of Asbestos in some form, e.g. Eternit, window putty, jointing putty, AIB around fireplaces, or textured paint. Usually these materials are fine if left in place, and it is tricky to avoid these materials when looking for housing since older homes make up a large fraction of our housing stock, especially in my kommune up north.

My own house probably contains some Asbestos, but getting an asbestos survey is very expensive, prohibitively so for people earning the average salary. Not to mention if asbestos is found, it is a further expense to get it removed and cleaned up. The best I can do is send a sample in for testing if I find something risky while renovating myself. Most contractors up here do no care at all if something looks like it may be ACM.

The best thing we can do for people is to provide balanced guidance on where asbestos may be and how much risk does it pose. AIB like Asbestolux is way more dangerous than Eternit is and depending on the location Eternit can remain in place.

Unfortunately if we were to take a zero tolerance approach it would cause more harm than good. How do people pay for remediation? do we all abandon our homes? what happens to the farmers who cannot move? I have no perfect answer here. Asbestos is a hazard no question, but what can we do other than common sense and balance?

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Diamond Thermal Conductivity: A New Era in Chip Cooling
> ugly synthetic diamonds

Not any more, their quality has increased recently. Not that I care, wife and I did without them during our engagement.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Programming with Less Than Nothing
I raise an eyebrow and speak, nervous of the down vote I just received But does it really? there is no explicit reference to academia vs industry, which is a fair game. Im just saying the presentation is superfluous.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Programming with Less Than Nothing
Im sorry, this is just bad. There are some neat tricks here, don't get me wrong, but the story is irrelevant/distracting and just feels like a "and everyone clapped" type post on Reddit.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods
The quality of food (and price) of grocery stores in France make grocery stores in Norway feel like a cruel joke. I visited a carrefour(?) in France and I swear the fruit and vegetables were so fresh they looked like wax stage food... honestly it was a highlight of my trip and selection of cheese made me feel a little unkultured.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on AI Is Too Big to Fail
Title seems misleading. The quote below implies failure on multiple levels.

> Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
Yes, but I think you are missing out on the part where it is close to free. I have a nice monitor for photos and other crap, but most of the shit I do is text. I do not need 4k.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Indefinite Backpack Travel
Of course you can. This is just crabs in a bucket mentality.

> Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism

false dichotomy. Of course capitalism and our indulgence in material goods has gone too far. That does not mean we have to be totally pious in life.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Anti-aging breakthrough: Stem cells reverse signs of aging in monkeys
> There is no inherent reason that there has to be a catch

We are consistently sold ideas that do not meet expectation, the catch is expected.

"Hey everyone we discovered X breakthrough!" It only has Y constrains or consequences which make it not so useful, or at worst, harmful later.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on How the AI Bubble Will Pop
> Not to mention, who are you to think the top tech companies arent fully aware of the risks they are taking with AI?

Well 2008 happened too and people weren't too concerned with risk either.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on How the AI Bubble Will Pop
> Calling this an “AI bubble” reads like pure sour grapes from folks who missed the adoption curve.

Ad hominem.

> ignores lagging enterprise procurement cycles

Time is long gone for that, even for most bureaucratic orgs.

> rapid glide path of unit economics as models, inference, and hardware efficiency improve

Conjecture. We don't know if we can scale up effectively. We are hitting limits of technology and energy already

> Habit formation is the moat

Yes and no. GenAI tools are useful if done right, but they have not been what they were made out to be, and they do not seem to be getting better as quickly as I like. The most useful tool so far is copilot auto-complete, but its value is limited for experienced devs. If its price increased 10x tomorow, I would cancel our subscription.

> We’re not watching a bubble pop; we’re watching infrastructure being laid for the next decade of products.

How much money are you risking right now? Or is it different this time?

Atomic_Torrfisk··on IP over Lasers
Hahah, I slipped down that rabbit hole about 2 years ago. We needed network access for testing devices on one of our production lines, but the manufacture did not allow wifi at the time. So we ended up tunneling over UART to access internal APIs on the device. It worked fairly well, and was even able to load more complex customer facing react based UIs.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Meta RayBan AR glasses shows Lumus waveguide structures in leaked video
I used to work in the hardware side of AR until recently when I took a step back for my family. I've had hands on experience with many types of hardware, wave guide, birdbath and laser beam scanning to name a few. Technically these are all really amazing, and I miss working in this space.

Unfortunately, while I want to see the technology succeed in the mainstream, it's never going to get there. Period. The AR use-case presented by tech giants to consumers fails to solve any real world problem that a cheaper and more accessible cellphone couldn't. Sure there are niche-use cases and cool demos for consumers, but until the hardware reaches the form factor and durability of traditional prescription glasses consumers will never adopt the technology in a meaningful way.

If we actually want to drive sales of AR devices, we will replicate usecases where AR currently drives value, such as HUDs for aircraft. The same concept can be applied to other high workload environments such as EMS, truck drivers, ATC, law enforcement and handful of military applications. However sales in these domains will be somewhat limited except for military applications which is bad PR for the most of the leaders of AR tech.

So for now its all essentially vaporware to generate hype for the stock market.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Recession Probability Surges to 93%: UBS
> UBS notes that it is not yet forecasting a recession at this time, but anticipates an extended phase of stagnant economic growth. Its own "credit metrics-based" recession probability, Fortune writes, has roughly doubled to 41 percent since January.

What is the point in a discussion if no one reads the actual article?

Atomic_Torrfisk··on Income Equality in Nordic Countries: Myths, Facts, and Lessons
rather than down-voting opinions you don't like. You could tell me why I am wrong.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on Income Equality in Nordic Countries: Myths, Facts, and Lessons
> Too many people nurse fantasies of the Nordics as some kind of socialist utopia.

Yes pretty much, and hello form Norway.

Atomic_Torrfisk··on ETFs Are Inflating the Everything Bubble
Care to explain?
Atomic_Torrfisk··on ETFs Are Inflating the Everything Bubble
Ok, rather than a personal attack. Do you mind explaining why this is not the case? finance is not my forte.
Atomic_Torrfisk··on The Drone and AI Delusion
> An autonomous vehicle, flying at 1-2 metres, very fast, hardly targetable and carrying either a small bomb or a device which projects shrapnel precisely at an individual soldier.

We already have that running in UA right now, loitering drones are very hard to shoot down, fast and carry anti-personnel munitions.

The article is wordy, but is ultimately correct. Wars are inherently complex and there is no one size fits all solution for supplychain and combat. Drones will be a feature in a modern military, but not the game changer the venture capitalists want you to believe.

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