An oppressive regime will just make crypto illegal if they want to, make even possessing cryptographic keys punishable, etc. And crypto transactions make it easier to trace spending to you anyway, especially when the regime can unabashedly MITM any traffic within or into/out of their country, etc...
There are semi-competent oppressive regimes, like china, and incompetent ones, like many in south america. Still useful on a spectrum, and significantly more useful with low-tech or poor oppressive regimes.
Also large orgs run on percentages, economics and so on. Anything that makes it more expensive to be oppressive or change the balance of things is useful. It doesn't have to be a %100 solution to be helpful.
It can get a bit impossible. I recently wanted to watch Don't Look Up with Croatian audio (am Croatian, I know it's stupid but I thought it would be funny) and Chinese subtitles (because that's my GF's first language), but it is not possible. If I am on my Croatian profile I can use Croatian audio but not Chinese subtitles. If she is on her profile she can use Chinese subtitles but not Croatian audio.
I get that it's a UX thing because most people aren't interested in Swahili subtitles, but it would be nice to have an option to expand the list since I know they have the data.
Sorry if I assume too much, but I think you'd be thinking quite differently if you had to consider buying your first home on the French riviera now, on something like a 60.000-100.000 euro pre-tax salary.
I just did (although not my first, that one I bought 10 years ago)… sold may old apartment (still in the French Riviera) and with my wife we bought a very nice house 100m from the sea! Mortgage interest rates are great at the moment… 0.9% ain’t bad!
I literally sold my old apartment last year for almost the same price I got it for… so no profit. And my current home was bought this year… therefore considering the current housing market.
Roughly how much did you spend on the home, if you don't mind me asking? I'm curious how expensive that area is.
Most homes that are near the sea are pretty damn expensive in the US. Or if not, have significant flooding, hurricane, and/or will probably be underwater thanks to climate change in 10-15 years.
Here homes are all built using either brick ore reinforced (like my home) and the climate is mild. Over the years there are hardly any damage… mine might only need to fix a bit of paint on a couple of corners… but 10 years old and no maintenance required so far (for the previous owner was a second home he barely used)
Homes in that area are about 10x that salary - so no. Reasonable ends at 3-4x your salary. I would be surprised if you could get a loan if you're taking a mortgage out that is 8x+ your salary... but maybe you can in France? Not in the US!
That is not true… only sea view apartments and houses do have incredibly high prices… otherwise you can find an apartment of 100m2 for prices ranging from 200k euros to 500k. Many homes with garden in the area range from 450k to a million (depending on the location). If as a couple the household income is 100k or more a year it is not difficult at all to get a mortgage. In France is very hard to get fired… there is a much higher job security… and since we have universal healthcare we don’t even risk to not be able to pay due to a medical emergency! For a bank is less risky to lend you money! Life here is good!
Just as a counter-point, I live and work in London. I can't imagine ever being able to buy a home here unless something drastically changes, house prices are close to 10x my annual salary.
And historically houses have always been hovering around the same 20x multiplier for desirable places, except for a few small blips like the postwar boom.
And of course stuff like the American westward expansion, because land was dirt cheap as were materials (everything was forested so you just had to start chopping, more or less).
This is kind of overstated. From what I remember, it only makes addresses vulnerable after you spend from them, and in all likelihood the network would migrate to a resistant algorithm.
IMO that's a problem with Uber's pricing model. If the destination doesn't have enough people requesting new rides, the price to that destination should be higher.
If the price accurately represented the drivers' costs, they wouldn't refuse the rides.
Can you name a few such countries. I live in the EU, but when you have a business in my country you are always breaking some rules no matter what, and a lot is up to the discretion of the tax people.
But a lot of details are missing in them. Countries like Romania, Ukraine and Georgia have single-digit % tax for sole proprietors, but IIUC it applies on revenue, not income.
Estonia has 0% corporate tax, but 20% on dividends, which should go well with technique discussed in the OP.
For self employed devs Slovenia has 80% expense flat rate, so final tax is like 10% under 100k with zero administration. Bulgaria has LLCs with 10% income tax. If you have to buy property to get residency, there is Greece, Cyprus, Portugal...
If anything, this is a classic example of "we're going to build our own platform, with blackjack hookers and insurrection", and seeing how far that gets you.
There's a line where continued operation becomes aiding and abetting, and it's also clear the content of that site represented a clear and present danger in the short term.
This isn't a theoretical discussion. This is a direct consequence of an attempted coup.
> If anything, this is a classic example of "we're going to build our own platform, with blackjack hookers and insurrection", and seeing how far that gets you.
You got it backwards. The Internet was build in such a way everyone could easily host their own platform. However due to companies like Amazon using questionable and monopolistic tactics the Internet is now build in such a way it's going to be very hard to go around these companies.
> This is a direct consequence of an attempted coup.
While a disgrace, riots and pillaging can hardly be called a coup. Read about the 2016 Turkish coup attempt to see what a real coup (attempt) looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... . Just like hard wind is not a hurricane, this wasn't a coup.
The President of the United States has spent the past several weeks trying to get anyone and everyone to: throw our legitimate votes, conjure new illegal votes, getting the Vice President to reject electors, getting the Senate to reject electors, sharing doctored videos, telling his supporters that they need to hold traitors accountable, telling his supporters to March in the capital and show strength.
Yeah, those rioters did not effect a coup, or even come close. But it is definitely true that someone is attempting a coup.
I think you didn't read the article mentioned by the poster above.
Basically to have a coup you need some kind of force and I don't mean thousands of guys with pitchforks I mean a large part of military with real soldiers that have experience and are trained to use guns.
Just because Trump is not capable of seeing that he lost doesn't mean he tried a coup, like the gp said, it is just a stronger wind, not a hurricane.
One police officer was murdered and congress had to stop their work. Why don't you tell us where the line should be drawn. If they had murdered 100 cops would that be enough? 5 senators? The vice president?
> A "coup," shorthand for "coup d'état," is broadly characterized by Merriam-Webster as a "sudden decisive exercise of force in politics," but particularly the "violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group."
Civil unrest definitely does not qualify as "sudden decisive exercise of force". Now if Trump had declared a state of emergency because of the unrest and then use the emergency laws to arrest political opponents, now that would have been a coup.
What do you call it when a bunch of idiots get brainwashed by Trump and social media echo chambers into believing the election was stolen even though republican officials and courts have clearly show there is not enough evidence to overturn a single state include Georgia that only had a 11k vote difference and those people commit murder and obstruct government work?
There are many bloodless coups that are also military coups [1], the possibility of using a force has almost the same power as using a force.
Revelotion != coup.
Coups is done by a small but capable force, they would need to take both Capitol and Pentagon at least (and I mean not just shoot everyone there, but persuade those in control to give it up or turn them).
How do you envision those that raided capitol could take power of US? All they could do is just sit there and wait for special forces shoot them one by one.
Coup wasn't even considered, most probably what they did is plant malicious software on laptops/servers there and I think the real threat will be seen only few months later.
They built a noose, went in with zipties and were chanting "hang pence". That it was botched doesn't make it any less of a coup. And there was a clear and present threat from the services that have been closed down.
But sure, ignore all the stuff that contradicts your argument to minimise the impact of an assault on democratic institutions.
Why would you bring zip ties to pillaging? Were they prepared to fix the lectern in case it slips from their hands? Or more likely they were prepared to take hostages? The crowd was chanting their wish to hang the vice president.
You are right. It was a disgrace and a very unserious attempt, but the aim was clearly a coup.
Winds don’t have aims and goals. That crowd went there to stop the process of congress affirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. That’s what makes it a coup attempt. If only successfull and well organized coups would count what would be the meaning of the term “coup attempt”?
There's room for some nuance here. A bunch of fairly confused people with fairly confused goals, and no clear plan to achieve them, wouldn't normally count as a coup. There may have been actors who had more of a plan. It's not a 0-1 binary thing.
While I agree the physical attempt was weak. Parler was literally hyping up about killing multiple politicians ( eg. Planting the head of the VP on a tree).
Additionally, they got really far, up to the chamber where they hid. If they would have breached that chamber, the coup could have succeeded ( eg. No Pelosi/Pence/Biden/..)
I severely underestimated the talks on Parler until I saw the evidence and Amazon banned them.
Also, the 50 lawsuits without any sufficient evidence to throw out legitimate votes and trying to win by in person peer pressure doesn't belong in any western democracy.
And I disagree, platforms are not monopolies. Your public utility is a different category because they are PHYSICAL infrastructure - you can't easily compete among providers for service due to real world physical limits.
But you can make your own software stack, from the ground up if needed.
I mean this is HN, where people think dropbox is easily cloned over a weekend (it's just rsync and tftp), twitter employs 10 times as many people as needed since it really only take a few dozen, etc. And, the free market plus private corporations are part of the natural order of the world, why weren't they the 11th commandment God etched on the tablets given to Abraham?
Quit moaning on a web forum about how a non-government entity must accommodate your chat needs, and actually make your own. Or go old school and print all the crap you want to distribute. Last I checked the Constitution didn't guarantee your access to social media. Can't really say the Founding Fathers original intent was that you can hit the like button on some post hosted by a private corporation, no matter what.
Without water you die. You will be totally fine even if you no longer can post insane conspiracy theories about microchipped pedophiles who want to eat your brains on Twitter. Because you can still make a sign and stand outside city hall to protest it.
Just like you need water, you need to participate in society. For instance you need to know that there's a virus out there that experts think is quite serious, and you need to know what everyone else thinks the right response is.
You're not answering to his point, though. Anyone can know all this without posting "...insane conspiracy theories about microchipped pedophiles who want to eat your brains."
No, you can't. Someone's gotta make all that news for you to read, and they have to be able to disseminate it in a way that makes it louder than all the conspiracies, or else you will also not know the truth from the lies.
Without water you'll die. Without the facts that lady got herself killed the other day.
The first COVID news spread over wechat, while the chinese government was still claiming that there was nothing to worry about. So yes we needed twitter and its alternatives to know about it.
Tarring all news outlets with the same brush isn't helpful here. Twitter, Facebook, HN, reddit, you name it, have all had their fair share of sending an unjustified angry mob at someone.
It depends on how you count: 1 unborn, 1 miscarriage, 2 legal adults still here, and 10 others. That could add up to 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14. All are from the same mother.
Car seats go in rows 2 and 3, since those are easiest to reach from the side door. It helps that our state hasn't totally caved to the car seat industry lobbying.
