mrbabbage (u/mrbabbage)

mrbabbage commented on OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO wsj.com/tech/ai/openais-p... · Posted by u/badprobe

polski-g · 4 months ago

But aren't non profits a federal thing with rules dictated by the IRS? Why is California involved?

mrbabbage · 4 months ago

Corporate law is overwhelmingly state law. Every federally tax exempt entity is a state (or foreign) corporation or other kind of entity, and states (or foreign governments) impose rules on corporations registered in their borders.

Plus, many states levy their own corporate taxes. A nonprofit corporation needs to secure tax-exempt status from states as well as the federal government. This is a necessary implication of America's dual-sovereignty system.

mrbabbage commented on The European VAT Is Not a Discriminatory Tax Against US Exports taxfoundation.org/blog/tr... · Posted by u/dzogchen

beejiu · a year ago

No, only the end consumer pays VAT in the country of consumption. Everything else nets out, because as a supplier you either you claim back the amount of VAT you've been charged from your local tax authority or you are subject to a "reverse charge" where the cross-border supplies are effectively treated as domestic for tax purposes.

mrbabbage · a year ago

this is correct. the main advantage of a VAT is incentive alignment. every intermediary producer must collect and remit VAT if they want to claim their VAT refunds for inputs. i.e., a seller of a good in Europe must collect VAT if they want to claim a VAT refund on whatever they paid for the good.

compare to American sales taxes, where sellers have no economic incentive to collect sales taxes beyond the probability of being caught and fined.

mrbabbage commented on Is Iceland getting ready to join the EU? mikegalsworthy.substack.c... · Posted by u/mariuz

bognition · a year ago

Iceland effectively has free electricity. I believe they are one of the biggest producers of refined aluminum. Could use it as a way station to process raw material that require a lot of electricity.

mrbabbage · a year ago

When you're driving the highway from the international airport at Keflavík to Reykjavík, the first big building you see is a massive Rio Tinto aluminum smelter: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ATHxAWRLKLMf8Gbh8

mrbabbage commented on Apple Passwords’ generated strong password format rmondello.com/2024/10/07/... · Posted by u/tambourine_man

riquito · a year ago

> There is a special place in hell for anyone who creates a maximum password length limit

People abuse everything, you can be dossed trying to compute <pick your hashing algorithm-of-choice> of a password as big as the maximum body size your webserver accept (which is a limit btw, so remember to dress light :-p )

mrbabbage · a year ago

bcrypt has a built-in 72 byte limit, which helps with the DOS issue

mrbabbage commented on Brazil Is on the Brink twitter.com/shellenberger... · Posted by u/hu3

mrbabbage · 2 years ago

Here's another link, from a source that's less personally invested in the ongoing controversy: https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-challenges-brazils-o...

mrbabbage commented on Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging theatlantic.com/politics/... · Posted by u/slapshot

Alupis · 3 years ago

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is

Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get.

This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a hole.

We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days.

It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.

mrbabbage · 3 years ago

> We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days.

Is this unique to CA? The street level suffering you see in CA cities is overwhelmingly related to fentanyl, an opioid. Infamously, the US is in the midst of the opioid crisis, with deaths continuing to rise unabated [1]. Places with harsher drug policing are also seeing rises in opioid deaths.

And while San Francisco is a top location for opioid deaths, the other top counties by death rates (Mendocino, Trinity, Alpine, Lake, Inyo, Humboldt, Nevada) are all very rural [2].

[1] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...

[2] https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA

mrbabbage commented on New study reveals most classic video games are unavailable gamehistory.org/87percent... · Posted by u/coldpie

bearjaws · 3 years ago

It's going to shift to 87% don't even start due to connectivity requirements to servers that are not running anymore.

mrbabbage · 3 years ago

For what it's worth—the Library of Congress published a DMCA exemption for video games that require a use of a no-longer-available verification server.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/expanded-dmca-exemptio...

mrbabbage commented on The U.S. Copyright Office requires libraries to lie about fair use rights scholarlykitchen.sspnet.o... · Posted by u/colinprince

mrbabbage · 3 years ago

I realize the headline is designed to be attention-grabbing, but "lie" is pretty strong given the warning's actual text.

Could the warning be better phrased? Almost certainly—it's a four-sentence digest, designed for a lay audience, of an incredibly complicated area of law (copyright fair use). But the warning itself is completely accurate: There are conditions where reproducing a copyrighted work (which otherwise infringe's the owner's exclusive right of reproduction) is acceptable. And "one of these specified conditions" (quoting from the warning) is for scholarship. It's not the only such condition!

To me, this feels like the author is making a mountain out of a molehill.

mrbabbage commented on U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high text.npr.org/1184034017... · Posted by u/rntn

S_A_P · 3 years ago

I understand the sentiment, but is it these assault vehicles at fault here? I tend to think that the real problem is distracted driving, since EVERYONE from the smallest Kia on the street to the biggest lifted truck seems to have trouble staying off their phones while driving.

mrbabbage · 3 years ago

How does distracted driving explain increasing pedestrian death rates in America while death rates are flat or down [1] in other industrialized countries? Unless there's a reason why distracted driving particularly affects America, I don't think it can explain this trend.

[1] https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/Table?IndicatorCode=59