Readit News logoReadit News
steve_gh commented on AIs were left to build their own village, and the weirdest civilisation emerged   sciencefocus.com/future-t... · Posted by u/geox
steve_gh · 15 hours ago
Seems to be along the same lines as my PhD thesis many years ago. Societies of artificial agents exhibit metastability.
steve_gh commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?   english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
AnthonyMouse · 5 days ago
> Going after preferential treatment of unrealized gains categorically attacks every single one of these tricks. It nukes the hydra rather than trying to chop off heads one at a time.

Now think about how they're going to respond to it.

A major problem with taxing unrealized gains is how to measure them. For publicly traded companies that's pretty easy -- the stock is undergoing regular market transactions so you have a pretty good idea about the price. But what about assets that aren't? Closely held private companies that aren't listed on an exchange and haven't undergone any stock transactions in ten years. Art. The value -- or liability -- of a private contract for the future sale of goods at a defined price, when the market value of those goods might have since changed, or depending on what they are, be indeterminate.

It creates endless opportunities for playing games, and that complexity is exactly what allows the people who can afford fancy accountants to pay less in tax than everybody else. If you want to fix it you need to make the system simpler rather than even more complicated.

steve_gh · 4 days ago
IIRC one of the Scandinavian nations has solved this with property taxes: you self-declare the value of your property, but the state has the right to buy it at that price.

Keeps people honest (enough).

steve_gh commented on Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help   hey.paris/posts/appleid/... · Posted by u/parisidau
smakt · 6 days ago
>Banks are required to use Strong Customer Authentication

Not impressed by the pseudotechnical bullshit. The law provides several ways to authenticate. I tell my bank that I don't have a smartphone and they have to send me (at 0 extra cost) a code card: a piece of plastic with numbers on it that no one is ever going to hack. I routinely transfer tens of thousands of Eur between my accounts at real banks within the EU without a problem with my plastic card. When I have used up all the numbers on it they send me another one. I don't know in which EU you live in either.

>Revolut, N26 and co, are real banks

They are collectively known as "neobanks" for a reason. The official name is "e-money institution". Those are financial casinos, not real banks, operating with non-full banking licenses, peddling all the tech-bro bullshit: trading on memecoins, pulling out of countries when the regulations that real banks have to follow irks them, with a horrible track record of IT security: customer data leaks in the millions, horrible track record of staff abuse, unpaid hours, null customer support: exclusively in-app, where your customer support is "other customers that answer to your in-app post"; the staff shows up once in every 200 messages to write a one-liner and go into hiding again. I do not do business with bullshit "lean" business that operate at cost. Look at their wikipedia pages sometime.

>In many countries, you cannot pay with small coins the bus driver

Simply not true, not gonna argue this one.

>Shops can refuse cash

No, they cannot. Many businesses don't want to handle cash and they will make it hard and send you an invoice with a surcharge but they must accept any form of legal tender, no way around it. There are exceptions like you cannot buy a car with a truckload of coins, or give a 5000 Euro note to a taxi cab but those fall under "unreasonable" and it's a very high bar. Also, there is a long tradition of countries delaying implementing EU directives for many years, and then getting it wrong several times. The EU is very lenient, but accepting cash everywhere is EU policy. The fact that some wise-ass members drag their feet for decades is not news and doesn't prove your point. If you push back at the dentist, for example, they will send you an invoice with a surcharge, and you can pay that invoice with cash at your bank.

>If you want to use the Tesla supercharger

Lol no I don't finance retarded imbeciles - incidentally, all the other charging networks allow you to pay right there without subscription, smartphone or app. It's called "drop-in" payment, and it is there because the law says it must be an option.

>In Northern Europe...

No, you confuse the EU policy of allowing cash in transactions with money-laundering directives. Those prevent you from buying a house in cash, but you can buy anything, say, under 10000 Eur or equivalent NOK/SEK

steve_gh · 6 days ago
>>Shops can refuse cash

>No, they cannot. Many businesses don't want to handle cash and they will make it hard and send you an invoice with a surcharge but they must accept any form of legal tender, no way around it.

Not true in the UK. The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has been considering this issue (Apr 25): BBC News - Shops could be forced to accept cash in future,

MPs warn - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjwvgqz3vxzo?app-referre...

steve_gh commented on Big Tech are the new Soviets   unherd.com/2025/12/big-te... · Posted by u/saubeidl
steve_gh · 10 days ago
The problem with big tech is that it is actively sucking resources and capital out of the world.

For example, if I use Uber, a significant fraction of the fare (let's say 25%) is taken by Uber. That takes it out of the local economy. And because Uber has good tax lawyers, they pay minimal taxes in my country, so it leaves my country's economy completely.

With an old style taxi firm, the boss took a cut - but then he spent most of it in local shops, or his wife bought clothes at a local boutique and a nice haircut - keeping money going round the local economy.

Now, every time you use a cloud service, you take money out of a local economy.And people wonder why we have huge social and economic problems.

steve_gh commented on Greece is teaching Germany how to get government online   economist.com/europe/2025... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo
steve_gh · 12 days ago
Not sure that the 3 big takeaways are self consistent. Redesigning proceses for digital is generally not consistent with focusing on pain points, as the pain points are usually single steps in a bigger process.
steve_gh commented on A Very Big Fight over a Very Small Language   newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/mitchbob
steve_gh · 14 days ago
This is a really lovely long read.
steve_gh commented on Cartographers have been hiding illustrations inside Switzerland’s maps (2020)   eyeondesign.aiga.org/for-... · Posted by u/mhb
steve_gh · 18 days ago
The spider is a particularly subtle joke: The White Spider is the name given to a snowfield high on the N Face of the Eiger, crossed by the original (1938) Heckmair Harrer route up the face. Heinrich Harrer's book about the first ascent is called "The White Spider"
steve_gh commented on China's BEV trucks and the end of diesel's dominance   cleantechnica.com/2025/11... · Posted by u/xbmcuser
steve_gh · 22 days ago
Don't know about heavy trucks, but I can say this. I'm currently looking after a house being renovated in rural and hilly Northern England. There are a lots of trade folk coming by doing various things, all in the UK ubiquitous white vans. The decorator has an EV van. The sparky has an EV van. The groundworks folk have an EV van. When tradespeople are voting with their feet and buying EVs, then a shift is really happening.
steve_gh commented on Ruby Was Ready from the Start   obie.medium.com/ruby-was-... · Posted by u/thunderbong
Gigachad · 23 days ago
Ruby does have the best testing tooling of any I’ve tried. But I feel like it’s half to make up for how horribly unreliable the language is. The whole thing being untyped makes it borderline impossible to know the code is correct without unit tests covering everything.
steve_gh · 23 days ago
Ruby behaves sensibly through the principle of least surprise.

But it does have extremely powerful metaprogramming capabilities which are regularly abused by those not wise enough to know that just because you could do something doesn't mean that you should.

I regularly code in a variety of languages from C / C++ through Python and Ruby through to Haskell. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. All of them are capable of abuse by the sufficiently determined. And unit tests are helpful in all of them.

steve_gh commented on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright   bbc.com/news/articles/c1j... · Posted by u/YeGoblynQueenne
tikkabhuna · a month ago
Bear in mind that the UK has a “national speed limit” of 60mph for much of the countryside. This is very much a limit, a maximum, and you’re expected to drive to the conditions of the road. If it’s perfect weather conditions and twisting roads not wide enough for 2 cars, you shouldn’t be driving at the speed limit.
steve_gh · a month ago
Absolutely. The legal speed limit is 60 in the country - on any road not marked with a lower speed limit. This means that legally, you can drive at 60mph down a twisty single track road with 1.5m earth and rock banks topped with hedges.

You would be an irresponsible nutter with a death wish to try through! And if you crashed, "I was driving at / under the speed limit" wouldn't wash - you would be charged with Driving without Due Care and Attention, or Dangerous Driving depending on the consequences of the crash.

u/steve_gh

KarmaCake day760July 7, 2016
About
stephen.gooberman-hill@amey.co.uk
View Original