beejiu

Isn't the point of regulation to set the bar you must prove you meet, rather than a bar you must prove others haven't met?

But access to medical treatment, particularly drugs, should be "paternalistic", so I strongly agree.

Yep, they confirm it here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967/?locale=en_US

"This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service."

Re: "we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging"

From https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967/?locale=en_US:

> In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them. Additional information about WhatsApp's security can be found here.

Note specifically "information about how some users interact with others on our service", which contradicts their claim they don't keep logs of which people are messaging each other.

Servers are things on other sides of networks. An electron app running locally is all client, whether it contains a database or not.

> "Personalized" advertising isn't good for anyone except the ad networks.

According to Meta, their personalized advertising alone generates over $0.5 trillion of economic activity per year.

As much as the Hacker News crowd hates on ads, it's indisputable that it's good for businesses and the broad economy.

https://research.facebook.com/economiccontribution/

True if you assume we can't change the (societal) reward environment we live in.

The study says none of the machines reached 60C, and 2 out of 6 only heated up for 5-13 minutes. No doubt this is so manufacturers can get the Grade A "energy rating" mandated under EU/UK regulation. (It's even worse for "Eco 60" - that only heats up to about 30C).

As well as the "cell memory", the total number of fat cells you have in your body is set during adolescence, then it remains constant for the rest of your adult life. (https://www.nature.com/articles/ncpgasthep1189).

During adolescence, if you gain weight, you create new fat cells. During adulthood, the fat cells themselves just get larger. Arguably the best thing you can do is avoid obesity during childhood and adolescence at all costs.

Yes, it's true, but digital services tax was only supposed to be temporary and the UK agreed to move away from it once a global tax system was negotiated at the OECD. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-agrees-transition-towa...

I think those talks have ultimately stalled, so the right solution is getting back on track to a global tax system.

(Interestingly the deal struck in 2021 exchanged the promise of no US tariffs with the transition away from DST. It's no surprise this is a hot topic again with Trump's tariff regime.)

Google Ads specifically.

Businesses are traditionally taxed on their profits, not their turnover. Being a turnover tax, DST acts more like VAT does for consumers. Mathematically it has to be passed onto the customers, it just makes Google the collection agent on behalf of the government. This is why turnover taxes are such a bad idea.

That was the intent, but in reality the tax is fully remitted to Google's customers. I'm a small UK business and it appears on my invoice, so I'm effectively the one being taxed. This is why I object to the campaigners calling for 10% DST. They don't realise the tax is mostly remitted back onto UK businesses, not the trillion dollar giants.

The UK already does and so does Canada. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introduction-of-t...

"The provision of a social media service, internet search engine or online marketplace by a group includes the carrying on of any associated online advertising service. An associated online advertising service is an online service that facilitates online advertising and derives significant benefit from its association with the social media service, search engine or online marketplace."

Google Ads for instance invoices the tax to their customers. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9750227?hl=en-G...

Ad blocking happens on your own computer, which you are authorised to make changes to. But simulating a click, therefore making an entry in another person's computer is what makes it unlawful.

Computer Misuse Act 1990. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer;

(b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and

(c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies.

(2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act—

(c)to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data;

Using this would be unlawful in the UK.

People don't want to pay a monthly subscription to watch 5 good shows (all drama, btw). Apple TV lacks breadth for the average consumer, at least relative to the competition.

If em dashes were uncommon pre-2022, they wouldn't have ended up in the LLM training sets.

Don't forget to backup those keys, though :)

I suspect, when the specification was created, "_" was already popular for private/reserved members in many programming languages. In C++, for instance, you can only start an identifier with a letter or an underscore. So it seems like a natural, intuitive choice. Whether anyone can find any corroborating evidence would be interesting.

That's kind-of the point in B2B transactions, it moves VAT all the way down the chain until it hits the consumer.

It's actually less paperwork, because you don't have two companies filing separate VAT rates with two tax authorities. On the surface, the reverse charge sounds complex but it actually simplifies things for the importer.

The Polish company invoices the German company under the "reverse charge" regime. The German company treats the parts as if they were supplied by another Germany company, charging itself German VAT and refunding itself an equal amount of German VAT. There's nothing collected in Poland.

For almost all B2B cross-border transactions between two VAT registered entities, the reverse charge is mandatory, not something that you can choose to opt in to.

Businesses don't "pay" VAT, they collect and remit VAT on behalf of the tax authority. A business (supplier) that doesn't sell to end consumers pays no VAT, even though they collect a lot and reclaim a lot. It fully nets out.

No, only the end consumer pays VAT in the country of consumption. Everything else nets out, because as a supplier you either you claim back the amount of VAT you've been charged from your local tax authority or you are subject to a "reverse charge" where the cross-border supplies are effectively treated as domestic for tax purposes.

Even if you accept those figures (and the report itself says they are underestimates), in what other industry do we allow 10% of your topline revenue to directly result in suicide and depression?

£14 billion is the industry revenue. Gambling taxes to the state are £3.3 billion. Gambling harms are costed at £1.77 billion, of which £1 billion is death from suicide and £0.5 billion for depression. Those costs are conservative estimates (the government "expect that the true costs are higher because the lack of evidence meant that it was not possible to cost all types of harms or the wider harms to individuals or society")

In what other industry are those societal harms acceptable?

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-...

Waste water heat recovery, which heat exchanges with inlet water, would probably be more effective than heat exchanging with a fridge. Realistically both options are too costly for the limited benefit.