PokedBear

The step up basis makes sense in a world where you still have to pay substantial inheritance taxes. But with minimal to no inheritance taxes, the step up is a giveaway.

The bigger difference between an income tax and a wealth tax isn't the numbers. A wealth tax, for better or worse requires some realization of paper gains that very wealthy folks normally go to great lengths to avoid because their wealth is largely based on a broadly shared polite fiction. So imposing some realization of that wealth requires accountability that doesn't always pan out.

Business PBX folks really like being able to forward calls off to a cell phone while preserving the original caller's caller ID. And making that work requires allowing arbitrary spoofing. There is some work being done to append the stir/shaken signature from the original caller in a different sip header so the call can still be traced, but ultimately caller id is just too limited of a data framework to relay all the info.

The problem with people invoking and using the castle doctrine is that while they might be right to engage in self-defense in that situation, they also would very likely be dead at the end of the encounter.

It will be interesting to see how they handle packages from the various f-droid repos. F-droid builds and signs all their apps themselves, so will all of f-droid be covered by a single signing key and developer account? Or will the fact that they take apps from lots of folks bar them from an account?

It doesn't need a lot of speculative value in order to be useful. It just needs enough value to make the transactions meaningful. And that means people are a lot less likely to drive up the price via speculation.

Relevant XKCD - https://xkcd.com/243/

If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior the feds allow) is plenty.

This is kind of mind blowing to me. The linked xkcd is a fantastic (if exaggerated?) illustration of this effect.

Objects in mirror may be further then they appear.

"Risk" has mutliple dimensions. But by over-optimizing on one kind of risk they completely dropped the ball on other risks. They also whiffed on the kinds of risks that come from building a business based on the flywheel effects of a social network. Works great when times are good, but disastrous when tbe same effect works against you.