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Comment Re:Yes, please! (Score 1) 46

by cayenne8 (#66239968) Attached to: Stripe, Advent Offer to Buy PayPal For More Than $53 Billion

My past dealings (mine and others) have lead me to think of PayPal as a criminal enterprise,

I've seen a lot of hate thrown at PayPal over the years.....and not quite sure why?

I've used it a LONG time for eBay payments, sending money to friends and the odd small merchant.

I wouldn't say I've used it a TON, but some.....and never had any problems.

What problems have ya'll had that you dislike them so badly? Genuinely curious....

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 103

Am I one of the only people that do NOT like talking to machines?

I mean, I still can't stand the voice menus when you call support...I''m constantly hitting "0" or saying Operator over and over to get to a real person asap.

Don't get me wrong, I like my AI...ChatGPT can be fun and helpful...but, I don't wanna hold a fscking conversation with it, especially not in public.

Hell, that's one of the reasons I hate the voice support calls, when in public or sitting in Cube Land where everyone has nosy ears....

Comment Re:They should do the same in The Netherlands (Score 5, Insightful) 242

by cayenne8 (#66239678) Attached to: House Votes For Permanent Daylight Saving Time

Most of the world doesn't have DST. It's really just Europe and the US. Somehow they manage.

I"m in the US...and I don't care which one they make permanent .....just pick one and stick with it.

I hate the hour changes....messes with me twice a year fairly badly at times....gets my pets off schedule too which is a PITA.

Comment Re:Let it burn (Score 0) 75

by cayenne8 (#66238536) Attached to: States Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Bros Merger, Defying DOJ
How do you figure?

CBS along with the other main 3 broadcast (ABC and especially NBC) are heavy left leaning....CNN is very left leaning, but not so much as MSNOW (used to be MSNBC).

So far, it appears the new lady in charge of CBS has indeed tried pulling them to at least center left rather than far left.

She herself is NOT a right leaning person....

We need some balance....everyone LEFT with Fox New being the sole Right leaning news in the US just doesn't work....I'd rather them all be center but at least balance out the left and right if that's the only option.

Comment Re:Let it burn (Score -1, Troll) 75

by cayenne8 (#66237890) Attached to: States Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Bros Merger, Defying DOJ

The non-Fox-News viewpoints of CNN seem to me to be worth preserving. And it's doubtful they would be if Paramount takes over Warner's portfolio, which includes CNN.

Look at what happened to CBS, in particular 60 Minutes, when the Ellisons' Skydance Media took over. One of the most venerable investigative-journalism shows in history has been run into the gutter.

Yeah..sad to see a lesbian liberal take two networks of "news" and try to make them more center based and less left leaning and try to report all news fairly....how dare they.

Comment Re:whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also rea (Score 1) 247

by cayenne8 (#66236864) Attached to: America May Soon Be Facing Largest Labor Shortage in Its History

Well, we didn't have childcare provisions or maternity leave laws forty years ago when things were booming, so those aren't likely to have any causal bearing. It's also the same healthcare system; the difference is that there have been 30 years of legislative attempts to make it "more affordable". Interestingly, the only sector of the economy where costs have increased at a similar rate to healthcare is higher education, which has seen over forty years of "affordability" action. And please note the distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

Wish I had mod points....spot on everything.

Submission + - Satya O'Nadella? Microsoft Defends its $47B Irish Pot of Gold and Low Tax Rates

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The NY Times reports on a new required EU country-by-country compliance report released by Microsoft this week, which provided a rare look into how tech giants shift profits out of the countries where they have many employees and significant sales and into low-tax havens that help them cut their tax bills by billions of dollars. Like other big companies, Microsoft uses transactions between subsidiaries to shift profits around to reduce its tax bill. The report revealed a consistent pattern: high returns in low-tax jurisdictions and slim margins in higher-tax ones.

Among the sometimes absurd results, Microsoft said it had generated almost 40% of its pretax income in tax-friendly Ireland, where it employed about 3% of its global work force. In higher-tax Germany, the largest economy in Europe, Microsoft earned barely half of 1% of its global profits, it said. Excluding Ireland, the company said, it generated less than 2% of its worldwide pretax earnings in Europe. For its 2025 fiscal year, Microsoft reported profit margins of 24% in Ireland, where it paid taxes at a rate of just over 14%, and $47+ billion in pretax profit on revenues of $196 billion (the entire population of Ireland is about 7 million). Microsoft employs roughly 6,600 in Ireland. In Luxembourg, Microsoft claimed profit margins of 142% and a tax rate of just 3%. The company said it had $283 million in pretax income and only 34 employees in the tiny country. But in several of Microsoft’s biggest markets — where tax rates exceed 25% — it reported tiny profit margins. In Germany, France and Italy, the company claimed single-digit profit margins, sometimes barely 5%.

The report still gave only a partial picture, because it lumped in the U.S. with other countries. Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying the report that it followed all the laws in every jurisdiction where it operated, and that the reporting standards created some inconsistencies among countries. “Microsoft is committed to a tax structure that reflects where our people work, where we invest, and where functions, assets, and risks occur,” wrote Jeff Bullwinkel, Microsoft’s top lawyer in Europe. Bullwinkel said Microsoft’s capital expenditures in data centers, its corporate work forces and its work through local partners were also key investments in local economies. “Tax is one important measure of contribution, but it is not the only one,” he wrote. The IRS is challenging profit-shifting transactions used by Microsoft, and is seeking back taxes of nearly $29 billion. The company has said it disagrees with the IRS and said in a securities filing that it “will vigorously contest” the proposed tax bills.

Hey, say what you will about former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but at least he didn't try to blow smoke up the public's butt about why Ireland held such a special place in Microsoft's heart. "Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland," Ballmer told journalists in 2005 while in Dublin on a tour of the company’s Irish operations. "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise."

Submission + - AP CS Exam Participation Fell in 2026 as AP Statistics Continued to Grow

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In a series of Twitter/X posts, the College Board provided a high-level look at this year's AP exam participation and test scores by the nation's high school students. Both AP CS courses saw declines this year in participation to below their 2023 levels, with the Java-based AP Computer Science A exam taken by ~81,500 students in 2026 (with a 66% pass rate) — down from a peak of 98,136 in 2024 — and the 'more approachable', language-agnostic AP Computer Science Principles exam taken by 163,000 students (with a 63% pass rate) — down from a peak of 175,261 in 2024. Meanwhile, the 2026 AP Statistics exam saw an increase in test takers to a record 281,000 students (with a 62% pass rate), up from 266,791 in 2025 and 242,929 in 2023.

One wonders if some of the AP CS participation decline may represent a reaction to AI-driven job displacement fears and visible tech-sector layoffs, factors which have been blamed for depressed college-level CS enrollment. The College Board is already reacting to how AI is changing the K-12 CS narrative, announcing an AI-focused AP CS Principles Course 'modernization' effort in June, just days after tech-backed nonprofit Code.org — a College Board-endorsed AP CSP curriculum provider that bills itself as "the leading provider of K-12 AI and CS education curriculum across the globe" — announced it was rebranding itself as CodeAI, a pivot hailed by The College Board. It's probably worth mentioning that AP exam participation can be lower than AP course enrollment, since students can and do opt out of testing (e.g., students unable to pay for exams or who don't want to pay for exams they think they will fail); The College Board does not publish data on AP course-to-exam gaps.

Interestingly, the College Board identified certain exam questions that AP CS A students struggled to use Java to answer, ironically some of which a non-CS student equipped with Excel could likely easily solve. One of the Free-Response Questions (FRQ) the College Board noted students wrestled with in particular was the following: "Given a username that may contain hyphens [...] return a version with each hyphen and the character immediately preceding it removed, so that 'Amy-Marie-Lin' becomes 'AmMariLin'." Students receiving AP CS A exam scores of 1, the College Board explained, were 'typically unable' to earn any points for their attempts to solve this problem with Java (sample FRQ solutions). Meanwhile, a student who skipped AP CS A could open Excel and use a simple formula — REGEXREPLACE(A1,".-","") — to solve the problem that vexed their Java coding peers after a year-long college level CS course. Perhaps this helps explain why the UK is moving back towards a model that promotes digital literacy for all students and away from the narrow 'rigorous' CS path that the tech giants convinced the UK to adopt more than a decade ago.

Comment Re:Yes. This is how you keep housing costs down (Score 1) 126

by cayenne8 (#66218188) Attached to: New Florida Law Bans Local Net-Zero Emissions Policies

What the fuck is a "net zero" HVAC?

A window. The top models come with a sunscreen.

Fuck that.

Living in New Orleans...with easily avg temps in the mid to high 90's with mid to high 90's % humidity too....AC is a necessity.

That's been long known here....can't fathom why EU is having such a problem simply using AC when needed.

This isn't rocket surgery , this isn't NEW.

Comment Re:Yes. This is how you keep housing costs down (Score 1) 126

by cayenne8 (#66218184) Attached to: New Florida Law Bans Local Net-Zero Emissions Policies
Natural gas is common in many southern states....TN, AL, MS, LA, AR and TX.....I've lived and visited there most of my life and it is common.

I've only lived in one apartment ONCE didn't have gas and I will not do that again.....I prefer gas to cook on and is cheaper for heat and water heating than electric by far....

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