Microsoft wants to structure its business to encourage additional sales of products, and lock companies into being long term customers. It's a choice to buy additional services, and they try to make it an attractive choice.

Apple, on the other hand, blackmailed me yet again, earlier TODAY, forcing me to agree to a new revenue sharing contract with them, even though my brick and mortar business does not sell digital products and my app is free. Fuck Apple. Every couple of months they force a new "legal" agreement on me. I have to agree to their new offer, no matter what terms they give, or I can no longer continue to have an app on Apple devices.

I hope the justice dept obliterates Apple, because they are extortionist scumbags, worse than MS ever was at its peak.

The examples are all from overseas, but there have been at least 49 instances of a Covid infected person attending a movie, that was occupied by other people, with social distanced seating. In those cases, where the rest of the audiences were tested as part of contact tracing, there have been no confirmed infections.

The three c's to avoid are closed spaces, crowds, and close contact. Theaters have spacious rooms, and usually have pretty good air conditioning and turnover of the air, with the seating spaced out, making it easier to avoid close contact and crowds. Are theaters totally safe? Definitely not, because its an indoors environment.

But...
Are they safer than bars? Absolutely
Safer than hair salons? Yup
Safer than grocery stores? ...Maybe, depends on the store

Strangely, most people prefer a temporary loss of freedom over death. I especially worry about the possibility of being asymptomatic and unknowingly spreading disease to the people I care about, and I'm willing to sacrifice some of my own joy to protect those people.

It's super wierd that you think isolating and spending extra time staying on the couch and watching TV is the equivalent of surrendering to Hitler. I would encourage you to take care of yourself, this pandemic has been tough on mental health and there is no shame in needing a little help.

I understand the skepticism with their business model. But, at the end of the day, all of their revenue comes from selling security and privacy services. Their entire mission statement is centered around trust and transparency. I'm confident they would be caught and go out of business if they started stealing customer data as a side gig.

I thought the GP was engaged in trolling when I read it. The evidence is pretty easy to find, that he said one thing behind closed doors, about how dangerous the virus is, and said an entirely different to the public. It's all on tape. If you cared, you could very easily listen to the recordings.

During the exact same time frame, he encouraged his supporters to "LIBERATE" blue states from their lockdown.
He said that people who wear masks, "dont like him", discouraging his supporters from wearing masks.
FFS, he held an illegal indoor rally, just a few days ago!

I honestly don't understand how anyone who has a basic understanding of science, can look at his actions over the past year, and think he acted in the best interest of public health. You could certainly argue that the cost to public health is lower in the long term than the economic destruction. But to say you don't even understand how his actions cost lives, indicates a lack of awareness so incredibly profound, that I thought the GP must be engaging in distraction and trolling, and not interested in a good faith discussion.

You should tell that to the democrats. https://openstates.org/ca/bill... [openstates.org]

I see you've provided affirmative action, which is an attempt to fix systemic racism, as your example of democrats promoting racism, and I guess, losing their minds? Affirmative action is certainly a controversial solution, and while I think it does more good than harm, it's a reasonable topic of discussion that could have a lot of good points on both sides.

As a counterpoint for the Republican side, I'd like to bring up the concentration camps in Georgia, where asylum seekers are currently being housed and undergoing forced sterilizations according to headlines today. Now of course, these are acts of genocide under international law. If true, then this is happening right now under the executive branch, and neither Obama nor Biden are president. Does pointing that out mean I've "gone crazy"? Being anti-affirmative action is just a viewpoint, but being pro-genocide is something else...

I suspect your real problem with my argument is that I'm using the word genocide in the first place, even though these examples are textbook definitions of the term, as defined by OUR legal system. Is genocide one of the evil words in the dictionary you don't like? (For the record, I think you can be against illegal immigration, and also against using genocide as the solution. I would presume like most decent people, you are against genocide, and it must be quite challenging ethically and morally, to defend a president who is so openly pro-genocide! Good luck grappling with your conscience.)

By your logic, having 2 men on the ticket, would be less sexist than a man and a women, because the outcome is unimportant, and the process itself is the only thing that counts in defining sexism and bias. It's a ridiculous position. In the real world, outcomes matter too. Ask someone in your HR department, since I am pretty sure you don't have any experience in this field and have never been involved in hiring employees.

You seem to believe the intentional diversification of the ticket, by having an old white man choose a woman as a running mate, is sexist against men, and a bad thing, because he did not consider other men as a running mate. Even though I would point out, there is already a man on the ticket, and he is in the more important role. Nevertheless, you keep repeating this idea that by excluding men, he is excluding the best possible choice. Regardless of how you see yourself, you keep repeating misogynist talking points, and the basis of your entire argument hinges on the idea that women MUST be inferior.

Did I say I was voting for Trump?

I don't like it either, but in the system we've got, voting is a binary choice. Non-voters and third party voters inherently and mathematically favor the incumbent. You've stated you won't vote for Biden, you are trashing him and his running mate online, promoting misogyny, and trying to change people's opinions so they vote for Trump. Take a long look in the mirror friend.

But since you aren't taking the risk you shouldn't get the benefit of my investment gains either.

"You didn't build that".

Do I have to bring up Somalia? Businesses aren't built in some kind of vacuum. As a taxpayer I've already invested in roads and education, and myriad other elements that are critical to the success of any given business, and taxpayers invested way more money, decades earlier, than the capital gains crowd. So yes, taxpayers absolutely deserve a piece of the pie that they helped bake.

This is your opinion. I can't stand Harris and won't be voting for the ticket due to this pick.

If Biden picking a black woman as a running mate is your line in the sand, you should just be honest with yourself, you were always going to vote for Trump.

37% of a $622k income is $230,000 in federal tax alone.

Do you understand how tax brackets work? The top tax rate is applied to income ABOVE the $622k level. Income below that level gets taxed at the lower rate, for everyone. Your other response shows you understand perfectly well how tax brackets work, and are intentionally creating a strawman to argue against, because you are also conflating capital gains taxes with income taxes.

If you lost money you can offset gains, or deduct up to a big $3000 a year. That's the extent of the downside risk your "partner" Sam is shouldering.

Another way of putting it, is that Uncle Sam is me, and every other taxpayer. The government isn't some magical group of other people, it's society at large. So you are describing a situation where wealthy individuals are gambling their money on the stock market, and if they lose money, the rest of us collectively, have to cover their losses and give them money. And you seem to be implying that taxpayers aren't great partners because they don't cover a higher value of gambling losses?!? Crazy idea, but maybe people shouldn't be gambling their money if they can't afford the losses?

This situation has been a problem for years. At my previous company a few years ago, I encountered this exact problem, and it burned a half million dollar hole in our credit card fee budget before I could get it resolved (and yes, we did sue the credit processor, because they did engage in fraud). The issue is, that while certain interchange fees have been capped, other fees that are assessed as part of the credit transaction can be added on well above the cap, particularly around card not present and security based fees, and more specifically for debit brands.

Essentially boils down to, online transactions DO historically have a higher percentage of fraud, so processors charge higher rates based on how many security protocols are followed to discourage that fraud, and encourage retailers to follow more secure practices. Shifting a ton of transactions to online because of the pandemic will absolutely result in billions of extra dollars getting collected through these unregulated fees, but the amount of fraud isn't going to follow suit at the same rate. According to credit card company logic, my choice to buy groceries online is the primary cause and motivation for other people to commit a crime. So, the end result is those extra billions of dollars in "fraud protection" are pure gravy for the richest bankers in the world, paid for by struggling retailers.

I want to see heads roll beause this is the lives of our Americans we're talking about. It's not something to be used as a political tool.

Interesting... What do you think should be done in response to Russia putting bounties on American troops? Ignore it? Maybe call the evidence a hoax?

The problem is, Trump presents himself as a compulsive liar. He's been catalogued and recorded telling 20,000 lies. Certainly not all of those lies are meaningful, and certainly some are projections of wishful thinking. However, a vast swath of those lies are deeply important. By simple objective measurement, he is the most well documented liar in the history of the world. In the thousands of years of recorded history that we possess, no other human has ever achieved such a vast record of falsehoods. That is simply a fact.

That in turn means he has no credibility. Zero. None. He's been repeatedly proven to use his office for personal gain, and promoting his campaign. Just this week he violated ethics rules (yet again) by shilling for beans, of all things, from the oval office, for a campaign supporter (personal gain, yet again). Why would I believe anything he says? Why would anyone choose to believe him over scientific experts? He is the living embodiment of the boy who cried wolf, somebody who has lied so flagrantly and so pervasively, that his words no longer hold any value or meaning.

The basic components of a PCR assay are just a few dollars per test. That can be stretched even further with pooling. $5 in parts + $5 for labor, and everything else is markup. Testing isn't free, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the cost of the disease spreading.