NopeNotToday (u/NopeNotToday)

NopeNotToday commented on Leaving Freenode for a new network kline.sh... · Posted by u/4ad

marcan_42 · 5 years ago

Apparently London Trust Media, the company founded by Andrew Lee and which purchased Freenode, has now rebranded under the name "Imperial Family Companies". londontrustmedia.com now redirects to https://imperialfamily.com/ and it lists Freenode under Technology.

Andrew Lee also claims to be the crown prince of Korea, which was no doubt the inspiration for this move: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-12-0...

Lee also hired Mark Karpelès (of Mt.Gox infamy) as CTO of London Trust Media. and he is still listed as CTO of Shells.com, which is also owned by Imperial Family Companies: https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team

Edit: Comment was moved, reworded to make it work in its new context.

NopeNotToday · 5 years ago

londontrustmedia.com

I read that as "I on don't trust media" the first time.

NopeNotToday commented on Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020) singhkays.com/blog/how-sp... · Posted by u/dede4metal

tshaddox · 5 years ago

I recently gave Spotify a try for about 8 months but just switched back to Apple Music. My reason for switching back had nothing to do with podcasts, it was simply Spotify's terrible interface that makes it impossible to just browse all the music in your library. But I had also started to notice podcasts infiltrating UI that used to be only music playlists. A few times I even mistakenly clicked on a podcast thinking that it was a music playlist that sounded interesting.

NopeNotToday · 5 years ago

I dont think Spotify cares about the 0.1% of users that bring their own MP3s. It's a shrinking market. The growth is all the people who never even heard of an EmPeaThree.

I think back when I ripped my 350+ CDs to FLAC. In retrospect, it wasn't worth it.

NopeNotToday commented on Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged apple.com/in/shop/help/re... · Posted by u/tumblewit

sillysaurusx · 5 years ago

I disagree with categorizing this as abuse. The company was offering a refund policy. The customers were using it.

My friend Kevin used to test out different GPUs when he was writing a game engine. He'd buy one, install it on his computer, run the engine, then return it a few days later. They often had a 10% restocking fee. Was he abusing policy?

It's the same sort of logic banks use to justify "identity theft." Ah yes, it's the fault of the customer, not the banks' poor verification methods.

That said, it's true that when large amounts of people do a thing, you'll have to adjust policy. But it's not their fault for taking advantage of policies they're legally allowed to use, and that the company freely offers.

NopeNotToday · 5 years ago

A return policy is not a rental program. Yes, this is abuse.

NopeNotToday commented on Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of Less Than 1 Percent itep.org/pandemic-profits... · Posted by u/lurtbancaster

b112 · 5 years ago

Yes, but...

Decades and decades ago, corporations paid most of the tax. People paid very little.

Then things shifted. Instead of taxing corporations, people were taxed. Said people, with less money in their pocket, required raises. And so, over time, tax shifted from corporate to personal, but with people in the end taking home approximately as much as they had before.

For example, you have $60k pretax, $50k take home. Tax rate goes up. You have less, demand a raise. You now make $65k pretax, yet have $50k take home.

Of course, the numbers are merely there for example.

Why all of this? Why a reduction on corporate taxes?

Well, because now corporations can exist anywhere on the planet. If you tax a corporation too high, it can move, and you have nothing to tax. It used to be that this thing called 'tariffs' and 'duties' were an equalizing factor.

If a car manufacturer moved off short to save corporate tax, why then you'd add import tariffs. The point being, the tariff was there to replace the lost corporate tax.

Of course, tariffs are 'bad', and the goal of international trade now, seems to be to lift the third world out of poverty. Which is a laudable goal, however, with no import taxes on many things, and with corporations able to move at whim?

You must keep corporate tax low, or you lose out to competing regions. This is doubly troublesome in a new economy, in which many goods are entirely virtual, and fly across borders on the Internet.

Thus, taxes remain at the personal level -- for people cannot easily move.

Right or wrong? Well, you have to get tax somewhere. And under the current model, it is hard to get it from corporations, squeeze too much, and they're gone. And this model is enabled by most 1st world governments world wide, which have decided that import tax, tariffs, are a bad thing.

The only alternative to more corporate tax, and less personal tax, is to re-enact import taxes, duty, that sort of thing. Else, how do you prevent corporations from moving?

Of course, it's not entirely as simple as all of this, but nothing at a 10000 foot view is. It's just an overview.

NopeNotToday · 5 years ago

National Sales Tax - tax the purchase of goods at services. Then it doesn't matter where the corporation has their HQ. No import tax needed.

NopeNotToday commented on Justice at Spotify unionofmusicians.org/just... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

Cthulhu_ · 5 years ago

According to one source [1], Spotify users stream on average 25 hours a month. Assuming an average song is 3 minutes [2], that's 500 streams per month. Going with the $9.99 per month rate, users pay about $0.02 per stream. Currently, the artists see only $0.0038 per stream, or less than 1/5th of what Spotify makes.

I think that with a 50% profit margin, Spotify should be very happy. Of course, it's not that easy / straightforward, all conditions and caveats apply, etc etc.

[1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/ [2]: https://www.music-jobs.com/uk/article/news/news-pop-songs-ar...

NopeNotToday · 5 years ago

How much of Spotify's revenue goes towards songwriters, labels, distributors, publishers, as opposed to the artist?

NopeNotToday commented on Intel in Macs (2007) apple.com/sg/intel/... · Posted by u/cjv

jeffbee · 6 years ago

While true, spectacularly so for Apple. If you had bought shares of the company instead of a new base-model PowerBook G4, you'd have over $700k today.

If instead of a "founders' edition" Tesla Model S you'd bought shares of Tesla, you'd have enough money for fifty Teslas today.

If you'd bought NDVA shares instead of Nvidia's best GPU in 2009 ... you still would not be able to afford Nvidia's current best GPU. Hrmm.

NopeNotToday · 6 years ago

I'm guessing the NVDA part was a joke.

In 2009, NVDA was around $10. It is trading 40x, over $400.

NopeNotToday commented on The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box blog.plover.com/2020/06/2... · Posted by u/fanf2

caf · 6 years ago

I quibble with the description of the shapes bounded by 10 degrees of longitude and latitude as "rectangles" - they're not even planar shapes, and their adjacent sides certainly aren't at right angles. Some of them don't even have four sides.

This bears considering when looking at the map, because some of those regions are much, much smaller than others.

NopeNotToday · 6 years ago

He's not making a mathematical definition of the areas. 'area' or 'box' is a simple description that everyone can understand. And the map projection used does form squares.

NopeNotToday commented on A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal sloanreview.mit.edu/artic... · Posted by u/sarapeyton

NopeNotToday · 6 years ago

> Culpability lies with China for covering it up

Sure, China did some bad things and shares some blame. That said, we did figure out China was lying in January, but did nothing nothing for the next six weeks (besides an ineffective travel "ban"). We have some culpability as well.

NopeNotToday commented on Fed to buy junk bonds, lend to states in fresh virus support bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

jmcqk6 · 6 years ago

>There's one more stage to go: buying equity ETFs, like the Bank of Japan has been doing for years.

People keep saying this, but what is the chain of logic for the fed getting into equities? They aren't in freefall. They've been rallying for the last two weeks.

NopeNotToday · 6 years ago

> but what is the chain of logic for the fed getting into equities?

People are still dying. The government has to take action. /s

NopeNotToday commented on Americans are underestimating how long disruptions will last, health experts say statnews.com/2020/04/03/a... · Posted by u/hhs

NopeNotToday · 6 years ago

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