pwg

> because once you reach a certain (very high) level of wealth, there’s the “buy, borrow, die” strategy that avoids realizing most of your capital gains

If that is what is being targeted, then why not actually target that. Apply some percent taxation on the current value of all assets transferred because of death. And, if they want, only apply it to estates over some X threshold in size.

Performing the taxation at time of probate makes the valuation easy (unlike a 'wealth tax') because the valuation could be one of "value at time of death" or "value at time of transfer". And, if the ultra wealthy are using this angle to avoid taxes, then this taxes some of that transferred value.

Of course, just like with subscriptions, to the politicians a yearly wealth tax is far more valuable than a one time tax on the total value of the estate.

> Why didn't they just put a higher amp breaker in the box?

1) note the word "apartment" -- they rent, not own, and doing so not only would likely be illegal, but might also get them kicked out of the apartment.

2) Unless the wiring on the circuit drop, and all the end points are rated to handle the higher current, doing so would be an electrical code violation (and therefore trip into that "illegal" arena that might result in getting kicked out of the apartment).

Most residences are wired using the minimum size wire rated for the installed breaker (because doing so saves costs). So a 15a breaker in the box would mean 14gauge (the US NEC minimum size for 15a circuits) wiring in the walls and 15a rated outlets/switches. Installing a 20a breaker in the box would be a code violation, and in many jurisdictions also illegal.

And all the above is without considering that installing a 20a breaker on wires rated for 15a increases the fire risk tremendously if those wires are now asked to actually carry 20a for any length of time.

The article stated that this was dismissed because the author lives in a rental apartment and he was not certain the landlord would agree to making this change.

I did not see any indication that the landlord was ever actually asked, it appeared to be the author's "sense" that any answer would be "no" from the landlord.

> If it is an electronic payment, I'm not sure how completing the transaction in front of a police station will help any.

That's not the point of going to the "police safe exchange zone".

The point is to hopefully prevent the possibility of the buyer showing up with a .38 in hand, and demanding to be given the easy to fence "item" unless the seller wants to get a .38 slug embedded in their gut.

The risk of a "hold up" increases with dollar value and with items that are easier to fence.

The same way you prevent yourself from engaging with trolls. Be alert, pay attention, when you get the sense you are engaging in fake content (or with a troll) then disengage.

You have rediscovered steganography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography). Nothing new here on that end.

> How will we know in the future that what we are replying to is not some bot with alter motive?

How do you know today that you are not doing the same? How did you know last year you were not conversing with some bot? Absent some tell to indicate "likely a bot" you have no way to know with certainty.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...)

$5M is not nearly large enough (assuming Disney lost) of a dollar figure to make a company like Disney even notice that cost. That's "pocket change" for a "Disney", they could just pay out $5M as a cost of doing business with no one noticing anywhere. So unless the loss also enjoined them from performing any facial scanning, nothing will change at the parks.

The solution there is to not bother with "streaming services" and just download the readily available alternative captures, which include the original music.

Actually, the "key" to soldering is finally buying oneself a very good iron. I learned soldering years ago (going on 50 or so now) but always used basic "wood burners". But I did enough that I got good at it with the rug burners.

A couple years back, I bought a low end no-name temp controlled iron, and it worked ok. A little better than the wood burner, but nothing great. Then about three years ago I bought a used Metcal SP200 Smartheat off of eBay for about $120. The tips are pricey (although Thermaltronics makes clone tips that cost less than genuine Metcal tips) but the difference in soldering performance is like night and day, even when one already knows how, but has just never used the really good systems.

The entire article reads as an excellent example why piracy continues to exist.

I.e.: https://xkcd.com/488/

Once you have the .mkv on your local computer system, then only actual hardware failures will prevent you from watching it whenever, wherever, and for as many times as you want to do so.

> Why were these sharp edges not discovered in UAT?

These kinds of sharp edges should *never* have made it as far as UAT. All of these should have been caught in the first prototype and never made it beyond that point.

The fact that they made it all the way to the shipping product shows that too many responsible parties were asleep at the switch.

> > My recollection is that most CP/M programs were configured via patching.

> Huh. That is interesting, it was before my time, and I never heard of this :D

Yep, it was a thing, and for /some/ programs that were originally CP/M programs (i.e., WordStar 7.0 for DOS) it continued for a long time. The WordStar 7 documentation included patch locations to use (this time, IIRC, for DOS debug.exe) to change various behaviors of the program.

Removing "huge" from the title to make it fit destroyed the meaning of the title.

And entire article to say: "gold is fungible".

> Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set.

Which is why all of my accounts mail a physical statement each month. Yes, just about every time I log on they beg me to switch to electronic only, I say no and move along.

> My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.

Yep. If they had implemented it just like the mail, they'd just email me the PDF (encrypted if necessary). But they don't, so I don't ever agree to "go electronic statements".

Terrible choice in name, since LILO has been in use as a Linux bootloader for a very long time (since June 29, 1992 per Wikipedia below):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LILO_(bootloader)

Yes. And if you turn on "I am an advanced user" mode, you can selectively enable JS just for sites that need it that you want to allow to run arbitrary code on your machine, while still initially blocking everything from every new random site you encounter.

And for many sites, their main content is in their html and the ads are delivered via JS, so blocking the JS blocks all the ads.

> Microsoft’s core product, the BASIC interpreter, ran on almost all popular personal computers at the time1, including ... Atari machines

The blog author is incorrect here. Atari BASIC was not from Microsoft. I think the history was that Atari approached Microsoft, but Microsoft's interpreter for the 6502 was too large to fit the ROM space Atari had in their cartridges. Instead Atari contracted with Shepardson Microsystems to create a new basic interpreter for the Atari machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATARI_BASIC

Same experience here. The one "monitor" employee is busy nearly full time helping out with some issue some customer is having, such that they simply can't be monitoring that everyone's items are ringing up as the actual item instead of "bananas".

But every terminal also has a spycam hanging above it to either "give the appearance" of a big-brother overlord watching to encourage honesty, or is recording everything so that someone can review footage later if some issue is discovered.

Using UblockOrigin, in default deny all javascript mode, the article is fully readable with zero adverts and zero popups.

I had no idea the article even contained any of those until I read your comment.

> Having lived through this era, living in the UK, Byte always seemed more commercially orientated than hobbyist, but I would buy and read it all the same.

The hobbyist arena tended to fall more towards magazines like Popular Electronics, and the focus was much more the lower circuit levels. Byte dipped their toes into that arena via a few of the regular columnists, but that was not their target (despite the fact that many of us subscribers were "computer hobbyists" by most any definition of that term).

> and found that most of them block the use of curl

Try again, but have curl provide a user agent string from one of the real browsers. You'll likely find that the request goes through.

That fact does not change the point of the individual to which you replied. Regardless of whether the clauses in the EULA are 100% legal, some mixture or 100% illegal, the entire EULA is a "one sided rule-book dictated completely by one side". You, the person held to the EULA's rules, do not get to negotiate on the individual points. You simply have a "take it or go away" set of options.

> is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this

Very likely, given the legal liability they are already facing from the "addictive" court cases that are turning against them. Moving the liability for "age verification" away means they will not also be facing a huge number of court cases accusing them of showing an underage person adult age content provided they followed the law's proscribed "ask the OS for the user's age" requirements.

Also, note that only a few months ago Zuckerberg was in court testifying that the single best place to perform "age verification" was in the operating system of a device. Now, like mushrooms after a long rain, at roughly the same time up pop bills in nearly every statehouse, Congress, even Brazil, that all read nearly identically and that all are so broad as to require "the OS in anything with a CPU do age verification". The nearly identical text in each highly implies a single lobbying entity is behind all of them (it would be quite the coincidence that 50 state houses, plus Congress and Brazil, all write nearly identical bills independently). And the connection back to Zuck's court testimony of "age verification is best done in the OS" highly implies that the single lobbying entity is Meta, or funded by Meta to obtain this outcome.

> Whats the normal stockpile?

For jet fuel? The article does not say, but if they are correct in predicting shortages in six weeks, then the stockpile (if any) is not terribly large.

> Isn't the entire US national strategic oil reserve only enough for like 1 month of US usage?

In any case, whatever it is, crude oil is not yet jet fuel. The crude has to be refined to output jet fuel (and other oil byproducts), and some amount of gulf refinery capacity is also offline due to one or both of damage or inability to export via sea through the strait.

I use ConnectBot (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.connectbot/).

It will require you setup ssh access, and as I have no Mac I can't offer any suggestions on how to do that with a Mac.

"Don't be evil" was dropped after the DoubleClick acquisition completed their internal takeover of the old "Don't be evil" Google (Google purportedly purchased DoubleClick, in reality they 'did' purchase them, but then the old DoubleClick advertisers slowly took over old Google from the inside out).

What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.

That "component" was the shadow mask: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask.

The problem is that when the lobbyists are pitching these builds to the local town councils, the "create X jobs" part of the marketing is very carefully worded to heavily imply "X long term jobs will be created" while also not actually directly saying "X long term jobs will be created". They want the council members thinking X long term jobs, but want to avoid legal liability for lying later when the reality of X was 99% temporary jobs lasting 6-12 months and 1% long term jobs for the community.

And few council members seem to have been snookered enough yet that they know to ask the marketing lobbyist the pointed question: "How many of those X jobs are long term and will persist after construction and build-out is completed?".

> plus they get to point the finger at someone else for age issues.

This is the real benefit to Meta/FB/etc. that many seem to overlook. Meta/FB/etc. are already staring down a lot of court cases related to "addicting youngsters" to their product (and potentially a lot [i.e. billions of dollars] of payout for settlements or penalties in cases that side against them).

But, if they can get the government to mandate that the operating system is responsible for verifying a user's age, they get to avoid liability (i.e., more billions of dollars) for serving anything from their properties to an underage user if the OS tells them that the user is "old enough" for whatever they served. So long as Meta follows the law and asks the OS "is this user old enough" and if the OS replies "old enough" then the liability for mistakes in the age identification shifts to the OS provider and away from Meta/etc.

The part that is odd here is why Microsoft, Apple and Google (the "OS providers" truly being targeted) are not massively lobbying against this due to the legal liability risk that Meta is trying to shift over to them.