Yes, and the point you quoted still stands, they are a starting point.

The always relevant XKCD comic explains it well enough: those laws in that order are essential as the starting point. Different order or missing entirely is guaranteed bad. But as pointed out through all kinds of science fiction writing, there are many ways we can understand they are insufficient.

Right now I'd agree they're exactly backwards, or as the XKCD comic described, on track to become a "killbot hellscape". We need even more rules and regulations than that, but as a set of fairly obvious first steps penned 80 years ago, they're pretty blatantly an essential first draft of baseline rules that are missing today.

I mean, he's nearly 60 years old, and been CTO of Azure for over a decade. Azure actually became a serious cloud provider (AWS had been outpacing for a while) in short order, and the Azure tools for Windows management are far better than the on-premise NT-era active directory solutions, lest anyone need to spend time in ADSI Edit again.

There are few people pushing 60 who made useful software in the 90s still "doing stuff," at least at the level of impact like he had in that era. It's like lamenting an Army General who won commendations for bravery in the Gulf War isn't manning the artillery or leading tank charges anymore. Even Linus Torvalds no longer writes code, he's effectively a manager.

Mark Russinovich is a GOAT and as an old grey beard you have probably used his software, like sysinternals and psexec. Before he joined Microsoft when they bought his company, every decent Windows NT etc admin in the 90s and 2000s used his third party software. There are few people on earth with such in depth knowledge of the Windows operating system or who have made such useful software for IT. I've been a Linux/posix guy most of my career, but I respect him and when I had to use or administer windows I used his software extensively.

Dude can you read? The total value is plus cash on hand. That said selling at 2.5x ARR is a fire sale.

I put a whole paycheck of about 4k after taxes in ethereum during 2016 and put it on a Trezor hardware wallet where it stayed until last year. I didn't buy more because of the chorus of voices on here and elsewhere talking about how dumb it was. It was the best investment I ever made. That single paycheck now looks like three years' salary (if I was still working). What originally was enough to buy a beat up old Honda can now buy a Ferrari.

Yes but also no.

The regulation isn't about "taking a cut", but primarily about financial crimes like money laundering and insider trading. Generally there are age requirements, as minors can't buy stocks or enter into futures contracts, though custodial accounts where the minor is authorized to use it are allowed. Every transaction is also associated with registered brokerage companies, every transaction tied to a taxpayer ID and account information. To participate the government requires documentation with a full legal name and government issued ID, and assorted other information to verify the person's identity.

In regulated markets every step has a paper trail can be tied back to a responsible human, the person who could potentially be jailed or fined for financial crimes.

There needs to be accountablity, but there almost never is.

The police and prosecution tend to get consequences casually dismissed, "you win some, you lose some", or "mistakes are human, live and learn." Sometimes lawyers have a professional repremand, very rarely fines, but not time behind bars.

If the man is lucky, he might get compensation for the time locked up, and maybe some of the legal costs. Most likely it will be only a small portion, if at all.

If there is any compensation it won't restore his job, his relationships with friends and family, it won't compensate for the negative experiences in the legal system nor behind bars, it won't compensate for the lost opportunities and missed experience in the time he was detained, and it probably won't be enough for the lifetime of therapy he'll need, and that his family may need.

That makes a lot of sense. Get peoples interest by posting a crappy CAM bootleg (not even telesync for good audio) and make them want to pay to see it in 70mm IMAX or whatever the highest end option at a theater near them is.

Ordinarily I'd cringe at Comcast, one of the most hated companies in America, owning anything...but it's currently owned by Musk. So that would be an improvement. Especially if Musk took a nice financial hit.

Every movie that comes out has multiple torrents and various other sites you can download it from. This has been going on since the 90s since CeNTRoPY used to hookup the telesync SVCDs sometimes before the movie was released. One could download it from XDCC bots on IRC or if you were connected on a topsite or relay site some courier used FXP to directly transfer it to from another FTP site. Not much has changed except it's on torrents, darkweb, or other bootleg sites. Is the point it was posted on X?

Yeah, on reading the links, it looks like his lawyers already have a lot of that covered.

The law they are using is 18 U.S. Code 2232, and it's on pretty shaky ground. If you're reading it at non-lawyer eyes, sure the law uses words that seem to fit.

For the current administration, that's all they need to make the accusations.

For the defense lawyers there's going to be a long list of reasons that law doesn't apply, and it's got all kinds of reasons the judge is going to dismiss it. The "Terrorism Response Team" has a rather high burden of proof.

I've yet to meet someone that preferred Microsoft Teams over Slack. People use it because it's bundled, but it can have poor UX and be a hairball to config and manage.

The laws are simple enough. The landline companies are given enormous public benefits, right-of-way access, monopoly access to customers, and more. They're also told as a responsibility they must provide services to certain groups, a relatively small cost in comparison to the tremendous benefits.

They're might quick to back out of the responsibilities when it has a tiny cost.

It would be interesting if the state were to counter-offer, yes they can cut off the few thousand customers, in exchange for being charged for every square inch of that is currently a free or low-cost easement for their cables, wires, boxes, conduits, poles, and towers, plus the adjacent ground cleared for them. And bills for billions of dollars in property repairs and damages done in the process, and an escrow account with funds to remove all the lines, conduits, poles, and towers when that eventual day comes.

That's pretty amazing even back then you could start so low, my understanding is only low-end fixers and entry-level condos sold for that much in 2002.

I would argue if you ran the calculations on your rental houses versus investing in the S&P500, the S&P500 would surely win by a significant margin.

Today though, or even since 2011, this strategy could not have replicated the same results. For most Americans, the ship has long sailed on leveraged real estate investments being such a great source of wealth accumulation. Gen X was the last generation able to enjoy this, for us Millennials and even worse for Gen X, it hasn't worked out.

While you did buy at a historically great time and great location, the numbers still don't work out in favor of buying a house with a mortgage. For myself, I was in high school in 2001/2002; the next best opportunity was 2008 when I was a fresh college grad, so no such market timing possibility has even existed for my generation.

That said, even with massive bay area home value appreciation (400-500% since 2001); it still doesn't beat investing the money. I understand for some a forced leveraged investment like a home might be the only way they have the financial discipline to achieve these results. But, if you did have Boglehead type discipline, the results are staggeringly in favor of not buying.

If you bought a $500k house with $100k down in 2002, you'd have a $2mm house today..with significant attrition on those gains based on property taxes and mortgage interest and maintenance paid in the interim. If you straight invested that $100k in 2002 in a low cost S&P500 index fund, and didn't add any more money since, you'd have about $1mm today. However, if you rented at $2,000 a month back then and invested the delta between the mortgage and the rent over time in the S&P500, you'd have about $3.16mm today.

Ultimately this comes down to financial discipline and behavior.

However, these results in Bay Area real estate could not be replicated in the current generation (at least since 2011 or so). If you invested the $100k in 2011 in the S&P500, you'd have $776k today. Even with the $500k house optimistically doubling, you'd have less equity than the S&P500 investment.