Leif24

Ok, fair enough. To focus on one line item I mentioned ("What about the fractional cost of the machine that actually puts the water and beans together to brew the coffee (you could do some sort of analysis based on purchase price / total number of coffees made over useful lifetime)") - my understanding is a capital expense like this is typically handled by amortizing it from revenue over the course of a few years (super easy, just cost of machine / useful lifespan). Just need to rework the formula to solve for fractional cost per coffee brewed instead of per year. The same process can be used for, say, the "royalty and license fees" Starbucks UK was paying. Just convert from fee per year to fee per coffee. So, the net effect of your big change is just reworking all the accounting from "per year" figures to "per coffee" figures? How does that improve anything about the world (other than giving accountants some more work that they will charge handsomely to do)?

What do you mean by "make profit from that cup of coffee"? A cup of coffee is hot bean water in a cup - is profit simply the price Starbucks charges minus the cost of (water + bean + cup)? What about the cost of energy to heat the water? What about the fractional cost of the machine that actually puts the water and beans together to brew the coffee (you could do some sort of analysis based on purchase price / total number of coffees made over useful lifetime)? What about the small fraction of time the barista spends making and handing the coffee to you? What about the wear and tear on the machine (e.g. it breaks down X% of the time and costs $Y on average to fix) - does that factor into this "profit" you keep talking about? What about the rent on the building? If none of that matters, then you should spin up a competitor where you simply stand on a street corner hand your customers a cup, cold water, and some raw beans - I don't think you'll take too many of Starbucks customers.

All of these factors, and many more play into the "profit" of an operation like Starbucks, so how do you determine what the real true profit of that one cup of coffee is? It is much simpler to simply say "Hey, just hand over x% of profits at the end of the year" with some reasonable guidelines as to how accounting should be done (see stuff like GAP for example) than to sit down and determine what the individual "profit" is for every single individual cup of coffee sold at every single Starbucks location.

>Otherwise you could simply: Buy expensive stuff -> even out with profits, buy expensive stuff again, even out with profits and never pay taxes.

Yep, you could do this. Only problem is, uh, you never make any money. If you're running a hobby or something, that's fine, but most people owning business want to realize some profit...

If course there are still shenanigans you can pull between different tax districts, but someone somewhere needs to realize a profit at some point - otherwise they are running a jobs program and not a business.

> Just because you lost money doesn't mean you dont make profits until you earned back that money. Taxes should be paid every time you make money in the country your business operates in.

Over what timescale? For instance, if the first month I operate my business I have a loss of $50,000 (have to buy initial supplies and equipment, hire employees, etc.), but in the second month sales start taking off and I net $20,000 do I (a) have a total loss of $30,000 and pay no tax or (b) owe taxes on the $20,000 in month two?

This can be extended, e.g. profit and loss can be calculated on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. In the extreme case, this is no longer a tax on profit but on revenue (which essentially runs any business that has a smaller margin than the tax rate out of business since every dollar of revenue coming in results in more tax liability than the business actually nets).

Before you say "obviously profit and loss should be calculated in a yearly cadence" I would note that the choice of a year is fairly arbitrary and this taxation scheme would greatly disincentive any sort of capital allocations that would take more than a year to payoff (as a small example, would incentive leasing equipment annually vs. buying outright).

It works if you only allow incoming calls from your contacts (e.g. whitelisted numbers) on friends/family/work line. If that number leaks, who cares? The random numbers will be blocked anyway. Probably would want to set it up so the 'public' line is silenced - just periodically check the VM box for anything important.

Wow, the UX kind of sucks. I just wanted to browse the devices - no way to do that, only option is an 'ai' search. Ok, I type in "Show All Devices" and it canoodles for about 30 seconds (great use of compute resources) only to apparently come up with the phrase "Browse all devices available in the directory without specific project-based filters." that it then seems to feed into the actual search tool... which then shows no results.

Two thoughts - (1) is your device list some state secret that you have to hide behind a search functionality? Because it would be nice to be able to browse through it without needing to engage in some sort of 'search'. (2) can you provide another option besides an ai search that is so intelligent that it has superseded the ability to do wildcard searches?

Edit: same feedback, but for the projects section as well.

>> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball?

>Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too.

Not something I've commonly seen when driving, but certainly as a kid out in the country I ran around in the dark near the road.

>> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on.

>Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over.

>I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time.

I've seen all of these multiple times (tbf the trash cans were in the city, not the country) out in upstate NY and rural Indiana and Kentucky. Maybe trees don't drop branches over in the UK, but over in the US that is certainly a hazard to be expected during and after severe weather.

To be clear, I agree that excessively bright running lights and people who can't seem to properly transition between hibeams and lowbeams are problem. I just don't agree with the sentiment from the gp that "[o]ut in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights."

> If someone is interested in draw over a period, e.g. over one hour, you'd say it used 5Wh in that period.

Wh per hr? Let's just cut through the confusion and say it draws (J/s)Hr / Hr. :P

More seriously, if you are interested in energy the "correct" SI unit is J although in electrical applications [k/Mega/Giga]Whr is common. If you are interested in energy draw over a period, aka power, the "correct" and common unit is W. While 5 Wh per hour might seem simpler, it is equivalent to say this thing draws as much energy per hour as a device that that draws 5W would draw over one hour - needlessly redundant.

If you aren't fussed about galvanic isolation there are many SMPS topologies that don't use transformers. Cheapest step down converter would be a simple buck regulator - no transformer needed!

At least with American currency it varies, e.g. one dollar is $1 while one penny is 1¢.

A great many people when they see a open straight road with little obstacles or pedestrians will go 45-50 MPH. A great many people when they see a 15 MPH sign will go 20 MPH. Pair that low speed limit with a "fast" road and you will end with many people going 45 MPH and many people going 20 MPH. This variance in speed, with some people going much slower than others can be more dangerous than if most went the same speed - e.g. if the limit were 45 MPH.

You are correct that people driving too fast make the road dangerous, but so does people driving too slow. Generally, from a safety point of view, you want the slowest speed at which almost everyone will actually drive at, as large variance in speed between drivers is dangerous. I think this is what the parent post was getting at: a speed limit too fast OR too slow will increase the number of accidents, keeping in mind that there will always be at least some drivers speeding.