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Comment Re:Two Bits Of Bad News... (Score 1) 92

I guess you missed this part:

The firm’s findings still contrast strongly with those put forward by three Australia-based academics, who estimated in 2019 that based on transactional data from 2009 to 2017, one-quarter of all 106 million Bitcoin users engaged in crime, and that by 2018, illicit finance accounted for around $76 billion a year, or roughly half, of all transactions in bitcoins.

Cryptocurrencies have transformed drug trafficking by enabling crime syndicates to cut out street dealers and sell directly to customers around the world through darknet markets, as well as peddle higher-quality narcotics, said Sean Foley, a finance professor at Macquarie University in Sydney and one of the report’s authors.

“Chainalysis is trying to tell us about the total consumption of cocaine in Australia by telling us about how much cocaine has been seized,” Foley said. “It’s very difficult for me to meaningfully comment on the methodology because they don’t really tell you what they do.”

Comment College was always this expensive (Score 3, Informative) 90

we just used to subsidize it more. When we were kids the government paid 70% of tuition, most of it was money given directly to the colleges who passed that money on to you and me via lower cost tuition.

In the early 2000s Bush Jr and the Republican party slashed those subsidies, which is why the cost shot up. It's got nothing to do with administrative costs or fancy dorms (the dorms literally are paid for by rent paid by students, I know, I put my kid in one of the prison style dorms in college because the nice ones were too pricey).

As usual we're all being lied to.

Comment This was better covered (Score 1) 39

by the greatest rap channel in YouTube history

These are canaries in the coal mine for the collapsing economy. There's a ton of money in Wall Street chasing meme stocks and trying to extract value without offering it. But they can only survive while the economy at large does and can absorb their losses.

When the broader economy collapses various ponzi schemes go with it. Usually we prosecute the crooks and clean things up a bit, but I don't think anyone is expecting that this cycle.

Comment You're being flippant and dismissive (Score 1) 90

A six-figure income today is enough to rent a decent apartment and maintain a okayish car.

I can tell you're an old man because you say six figure income when six figures isn't a lot of money.

I saw a joke that has really stuck with me, it's a wonderful Life is a timeless movie because it has the the line "do you know how long it takes a man to save $5,000"

Basically we have been screwing over the kids and they're feeling it. Pretty soon they're going to take away old people healthcare and social security. If only out of spite

Comment Re:College education is still worth it (Score 0) 90

Yeah you can read the studies but basically jobs that don't involve a college degree require that you build up over time to a higher income and when you lose those jobs you're starting over because without that degree employers do not value your experience.

Furthermore college educated employees tend to be more productive because they are not doing the work of one person but instead building out systems that due to work of multiple people. In the cases where they are doing individual work it's typically very high skilled specialized work which limits the number of people who can do it and competitive forces kick in keeping their wages high and keeping them employed longer.

Basically think of it like this. In the old days you didn't need any school you just worked the fields. Then we started to automate farming and improve that so we started to have to educate people up to about third or fourth grades so they can work factories which were much more efficient and productive. Then we started to automate those jobs so we started to require high School level education in order to maintain the kind of productivity we demand from workers. Now we've automated most of the jobs involving a high school education so that if you want to earn a living you need a college education.

Basically we demand increased productivity from workers every year and the only way to get that is with more education for more advanced workers.

Comment The French revolution didn't work (Score 0) 90

The monarchy was restored and the only reason it eventually fell is that the merchant class overtook monarchies as the ruling elite.

We basically traded one set of Masters for another.

Violent revolutions don't really work because people who are good at violence don't usually give up power and will set themselves up with power following the violence.

I'm not sure what the solution is but it's not going to be a revolution. I don't think we actually have a solution and I think we are eventually going to trigger world war III and hand the launch codes to religious lunatics but assuming we don't do that it's going to be slow steady progress through education.

Comment Re:Saturated market (Score 1) 106

There's a million homes in the UK alone that demonstrate you're wrong. The vast majority of them didn't need any renovation. I know this, because the average cost of an install in the UK, including supply and labour, is between 500 and 1000 quid, and that wouldn't be enough to pay for renovations. That said, a consumer unit that's full hardly counts as renovations. A bigger one will cost about 100 quid! Not that most people have needed it.

I shall be generous-minded about this and put it down to Canadian homes being more likely to need some form of upgrade than UK homes, because your homes are larger, your heating already strains your 100A supplies, your breaker boards tend to be older and more crowded and less likely to be near the front door, and your garages can more often be detached.

Comment College education is still worth it (Score 1, Interesting) 90

Studies still clearly show that you will earn more money and have a more stable career regardless of the major you pick.

Everything is going to shit so there are no guarantees like there was for the boomers. Nobody is going to build you a house with government money like they did for the boomers.

But if we are talking about probabilities you should still go to school.

A whole bunch of very rich assholes want you to think that you don't have any use for an education because they are tired of paying for it and because they don't want you to learn critical thinking skills. That's why you get at least two stories a week attacking education in your feed.

Keep in mind those wealthy elites think you're too stupid to figure that out. It's up to you whether you want to prove them right or not.

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 1, Interesting) 44

I don't do anything that sophisticated and I have to admit even I noticed the performance difference between OpenOffice calc and Excel...

I suspect that is because Microsoft is withholding software libraries and techniques from the open Office team which would very much be in antitrust violation but we don't enforce those laws so that's kind of a moot point.

I cannot imagine what it would be like using OpenOffice for one of those really really huge spreadsheets that are basically poorly implemented databases. And I know we all just want to say don't do that but it fills a need that a lot of businesses have.

Comment Re:18 Inch Tsunami? (Score 1) 28

You misspelled "flood a road away" The height of moving water is quite insignificant to the speed at which it moves. An 18" tsunami may get your feet wet, or may take you and your car across the suburb destroying quite a lot in its path.

The question is one of momentum. Very shallow water can be insanely destructive depending on how it moves. Just a few inches of expected moving water is required to have engineering considerations for foundations to prevent them being undermined.

Comment Re:Dumb journalism (Score 1) 60

1) Depreciation is unrelated to market value. Real estate is depreciated over 30 years, whether or not the value is increased or decreased.

Providing you don't double dip there's nothing wrong with that. The concepts are different for an asset disposed of at end of life vs an asset that is kept for its value. You'll find that in the accounting world no one (who isn't committing fraud) is depreciating real-estate. They are depreciating the value of the buildings (39 years, not 30 years), while the realestate itself is kept as an asset on the books. The IRS would have some very interesting things to say for you if you attempted to depreciate the property as opposed to the things built on it which do in fact wear out over time and require renovation.

2) Annual depreciation _could_ be taken (but usually isn't) as "book value - salvage value" / useful life. Using the numbers in article, if 2.5 years in, value of asset is 45% of purchase price, annual depreciation is ~55%/2.5 = 22%

You've missed the point. They are pushing out the depreciation time beyond the usable life of the product. That is fine as long as they take an impairment charge, but the whole point being made is that it artificially inflates their profits *today*.

If you don't understand why this is a problem in a time of an AI bubble where tech stocks are trading at ludicrous values then I can't help you.

Comment Re:Three years is too short nowadays (Score 1) 60

Just because an asset is fully depreciated on the books does not mean a business has to throw it away.

What you're talking about is the opposite of the problem at hand. What is being discussed here is pushing out depreciation cycles despite replacing hardware with new cutting edge stuff to spread out the tax benefits. I think businesses should be forced to use equipment at full capacity for the duration of their depreciation period.

If they want to give it up early, fuck them let them take an impairment charge.

Bonus points if for every piece of hardware that doesn't meet the estimated timeframe an accountant's pubic hair is plugged out with tweezers.

Comment Re:Three years is too short nowadays (Score 1) 60

Why throw away hardware that is still working and performant?

Working and performant is relative to the task at hand. You may not need cutting edge, but when cutting edge is the difference between making money in a new market and not making money in a new market then the hardware ceases to be usable long before it is end of life.

By all means keep your server from 2012 if it works for you. As long as my painfully slow laptop is replaced next year when it's 3 year cycle is up.

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