uqual (u/uqual) - Readit News

uqual commented on CBP says it can't comply with refund order cnbc.com/2026/03/06/trump... · Posted by u/DivingForGold

uqual · 8 days ago

The CBP seems to be asserting that they lack the technical resources to issue the refunds in a timely fashion. Thus, when they finally comply, they (well, the US taxpayer) will end up paying more interest - probably around $20M/day (assuming 4% and $175B in illegal tariffs collected).

Perhaps this Administration should ask Musk to bring in a team to revamp the systems involved to get these refunds "in the mail" quickly. The DOGE team must be done with the Social Security system rewrite by now so may be available for this task. Maybe Big Balls is free this weekend to take care of this...

uqual commented on This system can go fuck itself and burn in hell shawnfromportland.substac... · Posted by u/SirensOfTitan

mmh0000 · 13 days ago

Wow. It’s scary to think this person votes.

A dude makes a series of terrible decisions. Decides to not learn from any them. Then blames society. Okay.

But my early story is eerily similar to his. Expect instead of just my dad dropping out to do drug, so did my mom. I grew up constantly moving between women’s shelters, random peoples couches and storage units.

And while he was in rural Oregon, I was in rural Idaho.

I ditched my parents as soon as I could. I worked basic non-silicon valley tech jobs. Moved from help desk ticket closer to actual IT career. No college, no money or time for it. Did alright.

Yeah life would have been a fuckton easier if I had supportive parents. But I’m in a good place and what I did wasn’t magic or luck. It was simply get basic job. Get shit apartment. Get slightly better job. Repeat.

This dude is deep in incel territory, which you can tell from the incel words he drops throughout his rant.

This dude says he never expected or needed any hand outs but several paragraphs earlier was complaining that the food bank didn’t provide vegan food. Ooohhh Kay. I have a lot of thoughts about both those statements. But dang dude. Maybe if you’re starving you should take any food you can get and deal with the rich people virtue signaling once you can afford to eat.

(To clarify on the above, being vegan is fucking great. It’s good to not kill animals… but you gotta take care of yourself before you take care of a cow.)

Yeah parts of the system are screw up. Yeah some people get a really unfair hand. But this guy was in generally good health, should have had health insurance through these crap jobs he was complaining about for his skateboard thing. (Which is another wtf that shows total lack of risk analysis. Who choses skateboarding as a hobby when you can’t afford a doctor. Jeez. Take up running.)

uqual · 13 days ago

You, especially as someone who has "been there", nailed it.

And congrats on taking personal responsibility rather than blaming others and society for your bad decisions (and I'm betting that you, like most of us, have made some bad decisions from time to time - but try to learn from them rather than wallow in them).

uqual commented on I'm not worried about AI job loss davidoks.blog/p/why-im-no... · Posted by u/ezekg

qgin · a month ago

You don't need AI to replace whole jobs 1:1 to have massive displacement.

If AI can do 80% of your tasks but fails miserably on the remaining 20%, that doesn't mean your job is safe. It means that 80% of the people in your department can be fired and the remaining 20% handle the parts the AI can't do yet.

uqual · a month ago

In reality that would probably mean that something like 60% of the developer positions would be eliminated (and, frankly, those 60% are rarely very good developers in a large company).

The remaining "surplus" 20% roles retained will then be devoted to developing features and implementing fixes using AI where those features and fixes would previously not have been high enough priority to implement or fix.

When the price of implementing a feature drops, it becomes economically viable (and perhaps competitively essential) to do so -- but in this scenario, AI couldn't do _all_ the work to implement such features so that's why 40% rather than 20% of the developer roles would be retained.

The 40% of developer roles that remain will, in theory, be more efficient also because they won't be spending as much time babysitting the "lesser" developers in the 60% of the roles that were eliminated. As well, "N" in the Mythical Man Month is reduced leading to increased efficiency.

(No, I have no idea what the actual percentages would be overall, let alone in a particular environment - for example, requirements for Spotify are quite different than for Airbus/Boeing avionics software.)

uqual commented on If you tax them, will they leave? theatlantic.com/economy/2... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

mlhpdx · a month ago

I don’t want to believe for a second anyone would walk away from Silicon Valley because of being taxed. The impact on the calculus of reward simply doesn’t make sense. On the other hand I am always surprised by people and the strange things we do.

uqual · a month ago

Most people, by count, of course would not leave because of the wealth tax currently being proposed in California as it targets just a tiny segment of the population - current estimates are that less than 250 Californians, or less than 0.001%, would pay the currently proposed statewide wealth tax. The other 99.999+% would not (yet) have to pay a wealth tax. However, the <0.001% that (esp. the wealthiest among them) who would pay the wealth tax would be motivated to move.

Unfortunately for California about 40% of the total state income tax collected (which accounts for about 65% of the state general fund) is paid by the top 1% of income earners -- which includes those 0.001% who will be motivated to move by a wealth tax (or even merely the threat of one).

The <0.001% number appears to be based on population _before_ several billionaires moved out before Jan 1, 2026 - likely at least partially motivated by the small, but real, risk of the "billionaire's tax" qualifying for the ballot and passing (and that proposed tax is only "temporary" and is only a total of 5% over three years so isn't nearly as alarming to the wealthy as a "permanent" tax would be). If it looks like this measure will end up on the ballot and have a chance of passing, expect many more to leave. This will, even if it does not ultimately pass, erode the income tax base.

California has rebelled against wealth taxes in the past - most notably by the passage of Prop 13 almost 50 years ago (a property tax is a wealth tax). They are not popular except when the hit "the other guy" -- but "the other guy" is the one most able to avoid the tax.

Wealthy people are typically very flexible as to where they live. They often already own multiple homes and often spend a lot of time out of the state they "live" in. When they move, they are not packing and labeling their own boxes or are likely even present on "moving day". They also are more likely to set up HQ and shop near where they spend a lot of their time. Even if they have family in California, they can still get together with them for Thanksgiving dinner -- either by flying the family to them on their private and chartered jets or by themselves flying to California for the weekend on one of their jets. They can conduct most business very efficiently remotely and often do so now to a significant extent.

It only takes a few to leave to tank the California budget - likely causing the progressive income and wealth taxes to reach deeper and deeper into the upper middle classes as California desperately tries to balance their budget without cutting yet more programs.

Other states are loving this though and will cut tax deals to attract these very billionaires that California are encouraging to leave.

uqual commented on If you tax them, will they leave? theatlantic.com/economy/2... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

shrubby · a month ago

Local wealth tax works to some extent, but some will dodge as long as this is not universal.

But universal is what we need as humanity.

The will seems to be building up, even in the UK (Polanski) and US (Mamdani, AOC, Sanders).

I'm betting that the success will be replicated in other countries soon and after that its only a matter of time for this to go global.

But this will be interesting show.

uqual · a month ago

IMHO "this seems to be building up" in the US is a bit of an overstatement.

Mandami, AOC, and Sanders are the laughing stock of much of the electorate in the US. They are fairly popular in progressive population centers but not elsewhere. There have been activists promoting much the same ideas for my entire life (and I'm not young!) and they rarely if ever get national traction.

The "silent majority" in the US is just that - they don't make the news because they, in most cases, don't go out and protest and engage in battles with law enforcement. They have jobs, go to work, go home to their families, and vote - but they rarely are seen in the news any more than the fact the sun came up in the East and set in the West yesterday is "newsworthy" enough to be promoted in the media. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the criteria for being newsworthy.

uqual commented on If you tax them, will they leave? theatlantic.com/economy/2... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

jermaustin1 · a month ago

Or better than that, loans backed by assets above some "jumbo" threshold ($10M?) triggers a capital gain on those assets in the collateral.

So if you get a $150M loan off of your amazon shares that on paper are worth $150M, but you paid $100M, you have a cap-gain of $40M, and at 20% tax, $8M fills the IRS's coffers.

uqual · a month ago

This is something I've been in favor of for some time.

Obviously the tax basis in the assets would also be stepped up by this action.

The US should also get rid of the step up in basis at death. The recipient of an illiquid asset such as a family business should have a period of time (perhaps five or ten years from the triggering death depending on the type of asset) to "pay up" the tax basis "to market" at the time of death. Gains in liquid assets (such as publicly traded stock) should be taxed at the market value at the time of death by the estate or trust and passed on to beneficiaries with that adjusted tax basis.

uqual commented on Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams missionlocal.org/2025/12/... · Posted by u/rwoll

kylehotchkiss · 3 months ago

They have massive steel bumpers, pushing them away slowly seems mostly harmless (not at maximum velocity lol)

uqual · 3 months ago

Although it would be amusing for them to do it at high velocity if the cars (and surrounding cars if any) were "dead heading" or had no humans in them for other reasons (perhaps because the humans had fled the vehicles upon seeing the fire truck headed their way!).

uqual commented on Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams missionlocal.org/2025/12/... · Posted by u/rwoll

MBCook · 3 months ago

From John Ripley on Mastodon:

“Thought of the day, and I wish there were a way to get this to legislators:

Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos.”

I’m AMAZED they’re not designed to handle this better. This does indeed seem like a massive problem. “Oops we give up” right when things get the worst? How is this OK?

I’ve been very impressed by Waymo’s more cautious approach. Perhaps they haven’t fully thought through the ramifications of it though.

https://mastodon.social/@jripley/115758725115731454

uqual · 3 months ago

Waymo may discover that heavy equipment (large fire trucks can easily push Waymo out of the way if it can find somewhere to push it to) WILL move the cars (at least if there is no one in them at the time) in such cases. I recall the scenes during recent wildfires where abandoned cars were blocking roads and a skip loader was just picking up the cars and dumping/pushing them to the side of the road/over the edge - causing extensive damage to some of them.

Decades ago I recall talking to a fireman expressing a question of what happened if there was a car blocking their access in an emergency and he made it clear that the bumper on the front of the truck and the truck's healthy diesel engine would usually take care of the problem very quickly.

uqual commented on Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams missionlocal.org/2025/12/... · Posted by u/rwoll

uqual · 3 months ago

Interestingly in one of the videos online there are several (five I think) Waymos blocking the right two lanes entering the intersection (along with a few others around the other parts of the intersection). While its hazards are still blinking, one of these vehicles moves forward (admittedly just a few feet).

Is this a violation of the California Vehicle Code? Generally it seems to disallow non-emergency vehicles from traveling with blinking lights except for turn signals (and brake lights responding to a braking action).

uqual commented on HP SitePrint hp.com/us-en/printers/sit... · Posted by u/gjvc

brudgers · 5 months ago

The concern is not the course, but the ability to adjust a layout due to deviations from the plan due to normal construction errors.

For example a pipe might not be in the location shown on plan for many reasons ranging from simple human error to a delta between the plan location when the pipe was layed and the time the robot got its data…keep in mind that when the pipe went in there was only dirt, not anything to accept ink.

uqual · 5 months ago

And it's good to catch that error ASAP.

But at that point it's back to engineering to figure out what to do (leave the pipe where it is and adjust around it _or_ move the pipe - possibly cutting concrete and perhaps untensioning/retensioning post-tensioned cables at substantial delay/cost) or move the piece of equipment that the penetration is serving.

One nice thing about automation like this is that the "as built" plans are more likely to be accurate because the only way to get "the computer" and "the robot" to stop squawking is to change the plans they are operating off of.

If this can't handle dirt surfaces, future generations/models probably will if there's demand. Perhaps such models would use spray paint/stencils or driving pins into the ground for marking purposes (or something more practical - I'm a software guy and this sounds like a hardware problem!).

My experience is with small residential builds but I would hope on large projects the location of each "unmovable" pipe/conduit etc that will end up penetrating a slab is already carefully verified before the next step is taken (such as placing concrete). Hopefully this is done with a total station rather than guys with chalk lines and tape measures. But a solution like this could reduce manual checking mistakes (of course, it's less likely to result in an experienced subcontractor noticing that the plan must be wrong because there's no reason for a conduit for 1KV electrical cables to come up 2cm away from a toilet trap in a multi-stall public bathroom - GIGO).