Mama told me not to come.
She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.
police obviously won’t care
Unless you’re taking pictures of police vehicles, in which case they definitely care. Still not illegal, but they’ll most likely harass you for it.
But hey, you can make a living suing police departments, there are worse things to spend your time on.
Exactly. Cops hate plate obfuscation and will probably pull you over on that alone. Having a bike rack? They’ll probably let it slide.
Ours apparently does, but nobody follows that law, and I’ve never seen it enforced.
If you didn’t want to use a tracking sensor for tolls, can’t you just pay cash? Whenever I visit Florida, that’s what I do. It sucks when the machine is busted, but then I just chuck my change at it and go.
But is it illegal to intentionally always be ready to carry bikes?
Yup, CGNAT sucks. But STUN works fine for me, and most games support it, so it’s not a huge issue.
I could pay extra for a public IP, but for the same price I can get a VPS and do other cool stuff, so I just went the WireGuard VPN route. Same end result with a little more latency, but also more flexibility. I host a few static sites directly on the VPS, with everything else going through the VPN, so that’s nice.
It is if that charity uses the money to help people. So any accusation needs to actually look at the financials of those orgs to see where the money is going.
Yup, I’ve tried Twitter and hated it. I remember when Mastodon launched, and it was described as “federated Facebook” IIRC, and now people are claiming that it’s more like “federated Twitter.” I hate both Facebook and Twitter, so I use neither.
So honestly, I don’t really care about Twitter/X vs BlueSky vs Mastodon, because I don’t want to use any of them. Reddit/Lemmy is a much more interesting format to me TBH.
I’m not OP, but yes, that’s why I don’t use Mastodon or Twitter/X. I really don’t like the format.
I tried to give Twitter a fair shake several years ago, and I found it to be a complete waste of my time. So I don’t use it, or anything like it. That’s also around when I found Reddit, which I found to not be a complete waste of time, and that’s why I’m on Lemmy instead of Mastodon. I like following communities, not topics or people.
even if it’s a tad unfair.
I’m not shedding any tears for Google, but we shouldn’t be doing things just because we don’t like the person or group being impacted.
I absolutely hate Google and have spent a lot of time de-Googling my life. But when it comes to legal precedent, I think we should be very careful.
I don’t see a problem with F-Droid being available on Google Play, I just don’t think it should be a requirement to allow competitors’ app stores in their app store.
That said, it’s interesting that Microsoft Store allows alternative stores. I’ve avoided the Microsoft Store like the plague, so that’s cool. Maybe that’s a good argument for Google being required to follow suit. Idk, I just don’t like the idea of an app store being forced to support direct competitors, that seems like a conflict of interest and I honestly wouldn’t trust that store to be consistently up-to-date.
You as well.
And yeah, when someone asks for assistance with finances (almost always online), I definitely wait until I see the details before pointing the finger at where the issue is. But when talking about generalities, it’s really not something I can reasonably do, because there’s no hard data to actually look at.
this order requires Google to allow third-party app stores to be distributed from within Play Store
Honestly, I don’t really agree with that. I don’t think Google should be forced to allow any app onto its store, provided there’s an alternative way users can get that app.
I installed F-Droid from its website and I’ve installed other apps directly from their respective websites, just like I normally would on a PC. I don’t see any reason for Microsoft, for example, to allow competing stores to be distributed in their Windows Store (or whatever they call it now).
The whole concept of “sideloading” is just a marketing gimmick for doing the same thing people normally do on other devices. It’s stupid and unfortunately really effective, so maybe they should get fined for that as well. But I don’t think that means Google should be forced to accept any apps that it doesn’t want to distribute.
automatic updates
Not sure, but I generally disable them in any store I use anyway, because I like to be in control. So I’m not sure if it’s a technical limitation or a technical choice.
So it’s quite possible Google Play has elevated permissions to apply automatic updates. That said, I use GrapheneOS (on a Google Pixel device), so the Play store doesn’t have those elevated permissions (I only use it for a couple apps on a separate profile), so I think it’s not allowed to do automatic updates on my device as well.
I haven’t watched the YouTube video (I generally distrust what Reich says), but here’s what I see from the other sources:
currentafairs
Mentions Buffett once, and only when mentioning the pledge to Gates’ foundation. The article seems to mostly be about the Gates’ foundation taking credit for things they didn’t do. I’ll certainly read through the rest of the article, but it definitely seems to be a criticism of that org, not Warren Buffett.
inequality
Talks about The Giving Pledge (created by Buffett) and how those who have pledged aren’t donating their money fast enough (i.e. their money is growing faster than their donations). I don’t really see this as an issue, since the problem should correct itself when they die.
The article also complains about most donations going to foundations or DAFs, but honestly, when you need to move that much money, that’s probably the most efficient way to do it. So I guess I don’t understand the criticism.
apnews
This one is about wealthy people avoiding taxes generally. I don’t know how this applies to Warren Buffett, whose wealth is in the US and AFAIK isn’t being hidden in tax shelters like offshore banks or trusts. His tax bill is relatively low (this article claims 0.1% from 2014 to 2018), but I think that’s countered by his statements about increasing taxes on the rich (he is registered Democrat, if that matters to you at all).
So I don’t think the issue here has anything to do with Buffett himself, the issue is the tax law doesn’t account for unrealized gains. Or in other words, don’t blame the player, blame the game. The closest Buffett gets to tax shelters is his stock donations to his kids’ foundations, but my understanding is that those are charitable orgs, so I don’t see a ton of difference there vs donating to other orgs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he has donated way more to vs his kids’ orgs.
My personal view here is that any compensation above some amount (say, $400k) regardless of source should be taxed at the current rates, and those assets stepped up in basis appropriately. I don’t like Harris’ proposal though because it’s based on wealth instead of income, but I think Buffet himself would approve a change here. If we handled it that way, the income from stock grants and whatnot for extremely highly compensated employees (like a CEO) would end up being taxed as income (short term gains), and therefore would be functionally equivalent to a cash salary, which is what it’s intending to be.
Play Store
This is all about the Play Store though, it has literally nothing to do with competing stores. I use F-Droid today and there are no restrictions from Google about what apps I can install through that store, whether I can pay for apps through that store (some apps have donation buttons inside), etc. There’s nothing stopping Epic from distributing their own app store like F-Droid does even before this decision.
So I really don’t understand what “cracking open Android” means here. All that seems to be happening is that Google is restricted from certain actions within its own store, which is absolutely fine by me (I don’t use the Play Store), but I don’t see any actual changes to Android or third-party app stores.
The closest is this one:
Offer device makers or carriers money or perks not to preinstall rival stores
But Samsung already has its own app store, no? So is there any actual evidence that this was ever a thing?
They should place these restrictions on Apple, not Google, because Apple is the one doing all of this nonsense. Yeah, Google should be reigned in a bit, but they’re really not the problem here.
If you have better sources, I’m happy to review them.
That’s not a legitimate use; it’s an illegal use just like piracy is.
My understanding of the law (and yes, I read it) is that it’s not illegal. The law in my state is for service providers to authenticate the ID of any state resident, it’s not a requirement on the resident themselves. The service provider isn’t aware what state I’m a resident of, and state law doesn’t apply outside the state, so I don’t know what law would be violated here.
SNI is still better than what we used to have.
I absolutely agree, and I actually use SNI to route packets for my homelab. Without SNI, I would have to route after handling certificates, which would be annoying because I want TLS to work within my home network, and I mess w/ DNS records to point to my local IPs when inside my network. I could have everything routed through a central hub (so one dedicated machine that handles all TLS), but that’s a single point of failure, and I’m not too happy about that. Or I guess I’d have multiple IPs, and route based on which IP is being hit.
I’ll have to check out ECH. Hopefully I can eat my cake and have it too.
Without reviewing the structures, this is just a trust me bro
You can literally see the donation of $48B. The pledge itself isn’t legally binding, but he has been consistently donating. He’s 94, so I don’t think it’ll take long to see the proof in the pudding.
Here are some notes from his Wikipedia page:
In 2008, Buffett was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of approximately $62 billion. In 2009, after donating billions of dollars to charity, he was ranked as the second richest man in the United States with a net worth of $37 billion.
…
As of 2023, Buffett has given over $50 billion to charitable causes.
I will note that the last figure probably includes the money given to his kids’ organizations (not directly to his kids).
And a quote about inheritance for his kids:
“I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing”
He has a pretty consistent track record of philanthropy and statements about philanthropy, so I would be really surprised if he changed that in the last few years of his life. I guess we’ll see though.
why are you worshiping some gereatric nepo baby
Where did I say I was worshipping him? I’m merely saying I think what he’s doing is admirable and that he doesn’t qualify as a “nepo baby.” If you look into his history, he worked hard throughout his early life to save and invest, and I see no indications that his parents gave him a huge inheritance or kickstarted his career in any meaningful way. Yeah, his dad was a House Rep for 8 years (6 of those consecutive), and here’s a quote about him on his father’s Wikipedia page:
‘Unshakably ethical, Howard refused offers of junkets and even turned down a part of his pay. During his first term, when congressional salary was raised from $10,000 to $12,500, Howard left the extra money in the Capitol disbursement office, insisting that he had been elected at the lower salary.’ His wife said he considered only one issue when deciding whether or not to vote for a bill: ‘Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?’
That doesn’t sound like the kind of man to give his son an unfair advantage…
Sure, but he didn’t start with millions or anything to invest, he started with money that he, himself, had saved up. He certainly didn’t have a normal childhood (he bought his first shares at 11), but this timeline doesn’t show much financial assistance from his parents, it shows a lot of hard work.
That’s a very different story from people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump.
Yup, but these systems are a lot less sophisticated than many people make them out to be. It’s also not illegal to count cards, the casinos just aren’t big fans of losing money, so they’ll enforce their right to refuse service to anyone if they suspect you of counting cards.