Domain name for sale?
Readit Newsphiliphodgen commented on "Google Reader" in the AI Age: Receive AI Summaries of Podcast Episodes podsnacks.com... · Posted by u/siruva07
Two questions to ask yourself:
1. Why am I hearing this?
2. Why am I hearing this NOW?
Try to drop your pre-existing beliefs about the topic for a moment (rich people bad, FedBots evil, etc) and ask why this attempt at persuasion has been brought to your attention.
Who benefits from the agitation that occur in your mind when you read this?
philiphodgen commented on Ask HN: What is the longest amount of time you've read in one sitting? · Posted by u/sujayk_33
Canticle for Liebowitz. I was at a beach rental on vacation and it was on the shelf. Started about 7 pm and didn’t stop until I was finished, about 4 am.
Certainly. Put the home in a trust with an address at a law office. As long as you never tell anyone that is your address, and as long as you never have any of your billing or payments, or anything under your name connected to that address, it is certainly possible. Of course, everything would have to be paid for/billed to etc. a shell essentially at the law office
I have seen this not work most of the time.
Source: am a lawyer.
Extreme privacy is extremely expensive and permanently lifestyle-altering.
Take your strategic and tactical cues from Cold War-era spycraft and from current-day hyperparanoid internet security practices.
philiphodgen commented on Tax Treatment of Capital Gains at Death crsreports.congress.gov/p... · Posted by u/NavinF
Tax lawyer here.
I was in DC on a boondoggle maybe 15 years ago and had a meeting with an old-time staffer (and lawyer) for the Senate Finance Committee. Attached to the Democrat side of the SFC for what it’s worth.
He had been on the tax policy scene long enough to see the pre-1976 carryover basis days and the post-1976 step-up basis days.
He was adamant that a return to carry-over basis would be a shitshow for IRS administrative purposes and fervently argued for the current step-up at death law.
This is a Chesterton’s Fence situation.
The collective “we” seem to forget that many of these ideas have been tried before. This “soak the rich” idea (look at the CRS report and see the reference to an exemption for the little guy so we can tax the billionaire) is one such idea.
The other idea — floated by our current president — is to crank up the capital gains tax rate. This one has been tried (and reversed) before. It would be instructive to find out what those politicians Back In The Day were thinking when the capital gains tax rate went up and why it went down again.
A little bit of humility and history might save some optional wounds.
Opportunity is everywhere. Talent is not.
philiphodgen commented on Ask HN: How to add money to my own bootstrapped startup? · Posted by u/moezgholami
If the amounts are small, don’t bother lending to the company. Just make a capital contribution.
Loans must be interest-bearing. This makes your life as an entrepreneur more complex. Your tax return and the corporate tax return will cost more to prepare.
Optimize for simplicity in legal structure, bookkeeping, and tax return preparation.
(1) Why corporation?
(2) Why C corporation?
(3) Unless you’re injecting multiple millions of your own money into your new venture, whatever perceived tax benefit you can imagine will be dwarfed by the overhead and cognitive opportunity cost of getting clever.
(4) If you add investors, the first thing they’ll want to do is clear all the bullshit off your balance sheet. Why add it in the first place?
Just contribute capital, unless you can think of a damn good reason to do otherwise.
You need real tax advice. Go get some.
philiphodgen commented on · Posted by u/pg_1234
Interesting to watch propaganda/PR waves in action.
Is this sudden oh-so-close-to-libel wave of stories coordinated? Or is it a viral pile-on sparked by someone, somewhere?
Truly, these stories say more about the storyteller than they do about Elon Musk.
Cui bono?
philiphodgen commented on uBlock Origin rules for HN: removing MSM news sources reduces systemic stress · Posted by u/h_o_o_t
Thank you.
philiphodgen commented on Ask HN: Is it worth trying to get status on an airline? · Posted by u/technosophos
It's worth going to https://flyertalk.com and reading the forums. These are the people who play the airline status games.
Status with an airline is useful for (a) free upgrades, (b) lounge access, and (c) better phone service when you need to fix things.
I have Diamond status on Delta. (Top tier before their invite-only tier).
Upgrades. The only value I get out of it is that I can book a generic economy seat and immediately get upgraded to Comfort+ for free. I rarely get upgrades to First Class since Delta sells out the seats to real people for real money. I'm frequently #1 of a bunch of people on the upgrade list for nonexistent First Class seats.
Lounge access. I have the Delta Reserve Amex card that gets me into the lounges anyway.
Phone service. This is really an indictment of the shit service that airlines give. For a while, even with the priority phone service I would be on hold for an hour or so. It's far better now, admittedly.
Delta is making it drastically harder to achieve status in 2024. In all probability I am going to go free agent and fly any airline that gets me where I want to go, when I want to go, at a reasonable price.
The airline miles are useful. I don't think I've paid for a flight for my kids with money once in all the years they've been at university in other states. But that's just a "charge enough money on a credit card" thing. It has nothing to do with status.