operation_moose

Netherlands is €60,000 single / €120,000 married before it kicks in; implemented as a 36% yearly tax on assumed 6% returns (e.g. married; have €200k in investments; you owe something like [200-120] * .36 * .06 = €1728). I think there's some nuance for bad years.

In practice its basically an additional 2% "drag" on market returns as its a yearly tax; not capital gains on sale.

Sole reason we turned down a job there. I don't hate the idea of a wealth tax, but having it kick in at €120,000 is nuts. IMO it's not even functioning as a wealth tax, its a barrier to the middle class accumulating even meager non-property wealth.

(I'm sure I have some details wrong, but broad-strokes this is what I remember from when we turned it down a few months ago)

I've had a fairly similar issue recently:

Something related to directly copying a file from inside a zip file on the c: drive to a network samba drive. The file will copy to about 40%, transfer drops to 0 kb/s, the .zip file gets corrupted, and I have to restart Windows to exit the file transfer.

Not 100% repeatable and I'm not sure how many of those specific details are required to trigger it. Extracting the .zip file before copying does seem to prevent it though, which is as far as I've gotten debugging it.

Most frozen pizza crusts aren't even squished flat, its a large continuous sheet of dough which gets circles stamped out of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-2gdkOe3A

The waste gets cycled back through.

I wonder how many compromises of quality go into a robotic pizza?

You're not getting a robot to stretch out a 16" New York style crust; you might get it to crudely roll out a ball of dough into a thick disk. I'm sure there are certain toppings that are easy to lay out (sausage balls) and some that are difficult (onion slices) so those might get left off.

At a certain point you're adapting a good pizza recipe into a pizza that can be made by a robot, and at that point you're basically just making a frozen pizza on-the-spot and charging a lot for it.

Even on 1), the first day of the week being Sunday (US) and Monday (Europe) screws me up constantly, as someone who is in both worlds now.

I often pick the wrong date for meetings because I'm assuming next Monday will be in the first column, not the second. As dumb and simple as it is, when something has been drilled into you since about age 3 its tough to get in the habit of double checking it when it starts becoming inconsistent.

As of today it won’t allow me to access my account at all or new Reddit in any form without providing age verification (face scan or gov ID). AI faces, video game create-a-character, and IDs off of Google all failed.

Strangely I can still access everything in incognito on old.reddit.com; but can’t login.

Think I’m done with them.

Great way to get someone to create a bot that swears in the chat every 10 minutes and 1 second to permanently shut it down.

One thing that's absolutely shocking is how "hard" it is to actually play games these days. Sit down with anything modern and between software updates, EULAs, load times, network congestion, etc. it can easily be 15-20 minutes before you actually do something; especially if you're an infrequent player.

Pop in a game on N64/Gamecube and you're controlling the character within 10 seconds every time.

The modern upgrades for those generations really make them great - the 8BitDo kit to make an N64 controller wireless, N64 Summercarts, replacing the optical drive in Gamecubes with a memory card reader...

Disappointing lack of "Why" in an article that starts with it.

Are they actually doing something new and novel, or are they just absorbing that "a=b as was proven in transcendental hyper-circular group theory; and b=c was proven in universal quantum superposition"; and they're the first to find the connection that a=c? And several of the problems are counterexamples, not novel proofs of correctness?

Its fascinating either way, but it'd be nice to actually understand more of what is happening.

Also of note the income data is combined household income (2 incomes for a married couple) and over the entire population (including 40+ later-career incomes).

It's likely significantly over predicting how common $100k yearly income is among the 20-35 year old "dating pool". Though probably balanced out some by being 10 year old data by now.

I finally had to give up my SE2 about a month ago (battery life gone, and with it nearing EOL it didn't seem worth it to get a replacement).

I still miss it so much. Perfect size, and touch ID is so much better than faceID.

Unsurprisingly, the "Who's Hiring" almost perfectly tracks the "Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States" data from the fed, though it doesn't go as far back.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

Most other industries follow a similar trend, but didn't fly quite as high in 2022 and aren't in as bad of a trough right now.

Electrical Engineering: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPELECENGI (actually up slightly)

Accounting: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPACCO (more seasonal noise)

Marketing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPMARK

AI feels to me like having access to someone who got a D in literally every single course offered at a university. If you don't know anything about the subject they are smarter than you. If you do know the subject its unsettling how bad they are. Basically the Gell-Mann effect:

> The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing the newspaper as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about.

They've improved from someone who failed every single university course a couple years ago. Maybe they'll get to a C or even a B in the future; maybe not.

I've been replaying a lot of Gamecube (emulated) games recently and its kindof shocking just how quick you can get into the game.

From hitting run Run to first Player Input is seconds in most cases. No console bootup, no system updates, no game patches, no agreeing to game EULA version 5.129912342, no denying the game access to online content on every third screen, etc.

I'm sure its loading slightly faster emulated, but 90% of it is just not having the junk that has accumulated over the last 20 years.

AKA "we just passed the 8th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls 6 announcement trailer"

Also worth noting Skyrim first came out on the 360; an honor shared by GTA5, but at least they have an imminent release.

Isn't this just Pollarding and/or Coppicing, which have been practiced for at least 2000 years in Europe (and probably many other cultures as well), with a healthy dose of orientalism added on top?

"Free" as in our electric bill was basically unchanged before and after it; and we still get 10-15% lower humidity on average which has taken care of our (minor) mold problems.

Another "recently Irish" here -

Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year.

An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.

> The desktop speed and responsiveness are significantly improved compared to whatever was before. This is the first time EVER that I feel Windows 11 has a normal desktop behavior, and isn't just a total flop.

> The battery doesn't last as long as it should. Strangely, it ran out in about an hour or so while I was fiddling with the system, trying to tame it

Is this the new "low latency" mode in action, where they didn't actually fix anything, they just boost the CPU clock?

https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11s-big-performance-boos...

> The so-called "Low Latency Profile" is a special performance mode that aims to make Windows 11 snappier and more responsive. It boosts the processor clock speed to its maximum for a brief moment when rendering user interface elements or launching apps.

We've found they're surprisingly good if everyone on the call is using a decent headset.

The problems start when using conference room audio or someone is on their laptop mic. If they miss a word they never do unintelligible, they just start playing madlibs based on the rest of the sentence.

We just went through a round of 100+ (non-sensitive) VoC interviews and they really cut down the workload of compiling all of the feedback. If the audio was a little shaky though, we pretty much had to throw away the transcripts and do them from scratch like we used to.

I've ordered 2 sets off of AliExpress (the Stargate BC303 and BC304 MOCs) and was quite impressed. No box, digital instructions, and a few minor color swapped pieces; but complete and everything went together very well.

Same. I'll probably try to run it out for another year and end up with the 18e. Its been a great phone, but its days have to be numbered.

I've had the same experience. I do a lot of automation of two engineering software packages through python and java APIs which are not terribly well documented and existing discussion of them on the greater web is practically nonexistent.

They are completely, 100% useless, no matter what I do. Add on another layer of abstraction like "give me a function to calculate <engineering value>" and they get even worse. I had a small amount of luck getting it to refactor some really terrible code I wrote while under the gun, but they made tons of errors I had to go back and fix. Luckily I had a pretty comprehensive test suite by that point and finding the mistakes wasn't too hard.

(I've tried all of the "just point them at the documentation" replies I'm sure are coming. It doesn't help)

It wasn't terribly difficult, you just have to find a company to hire you. Weirdly the biggest issue I ran into was companies not believing I was willing to relocate and assumed I was just some idiot looking for a remote role. The paragraph about it in my cover letter didn't seem to matter.

Apparently I was initially rejected for that reason, but my boss dug me out of the file for a potential discussion about a US based role. He told me that 6 months later over pints.

Once you've got an offer the critical skills employment permit (CSEP) is quick and painless.

All in all it was basically a lateral move lifestyle-wise. "Federal" income taxes are high-ish, but there isn't another level of state and local taxes eating away more; and property taxes are practically nonexistent (€280/year I think?). There are a handful of schemes which will shield a decent chunk of income from the highest tax rates, and the company benefits are fantastic (medical 100% paid for for my entire family, good bonus, 2:1 "401k" match).

As mentioned, housing is absolutely horrible right now, especially for renters. Luckily home prices are still somewhat reasonable compared to the US - we made enough selling our US home that we could buy an Irish property outright. Can't get a mortgage or any sort of credit until you've been in the country for 6 months. Probably won't stay in this place more than 2 years (when I get permanent residence on the CSEP route) but its a comfortable enough spot to get settled.

I wish it was a bit less car-focused, but there will be a train that drops me off basically at my office door in ~2 years, so they're trying and improving pretty quickly.

Ireland is solid, especially for any sort of biotech/medical. Strong critical skills immigration path, good wages, pretty much every major company has a facility there (many rivaling the US sites in size), friendly and welcoming place. Housing is a bit of struggle, mainly for renters.

I made the leap this year. No regrets.

I don't see any way we're not heading back to the multipolar world. They've managed to burn almost all of the goodwill and soft power that took 80 years to accumulate in 373 days.

Even with a "return to normalcy", the trade and military agreements being forged are permanently diminishing America's influence. Especially given that we're never more than 4 years away from this happening again.

Well, cooperation with one specific player.

Cooperation among the rest of the world is rapidly progressing in response.

The single superpower thing was an anomaly which was mostly a result of one specific country being largely untouched by WW2; we're more likely heading back towards multiple regional powers with varying levels of cooperation, e.g. EU+Mercosur+India agreements that just happened.

The lines are still being drawn, but its doubtful one single power will emerge.

And he couldn't get E (the original intended name) because Ford had it trademarked.

This could have been designed in CFD in an afternoon. Building it in real life is always somewhat cool but the amount of hype they're putting on this is crazy.