Did you assume I was defending Putin on this?

Putin’s a piece of shit and I hope all his crap gets plundered and the proceeds transferred to the Ukrainian drone fund.

I’m guessing what you’re suggesting is that Google’s proposal is the same as requiring all packages be signed and accompanied by an Extended Validation or Oragnisation Validation X.509 certificate.

While that would technically work, the problem with using the existing PKI is that it’s still very expensive to get EV/OV certificates. And the most common of these certs (those for TLS purposes) will soon only last 47 days which is, to put it mildly, would be a pain in the ass to use for package-signing.

When the US did this, everyone was quick to call it piracy. Which, to be fair, it practically was, although I can’t say I have any sympathy for Putin.

While AI obviously is not perfect and is flawed in many ways, having AI sift through the torrent of comments and then flag problematic submissions for human review is likely going to be extremely effective with minimal false positives. Though I do say this as a person whose Reddit account is currently banned for 3 days for “inciting violence” because of a knife-based joke.

I’ve had some people complain about not being able to easily park a large car which made me want to ask why they are driving such a high-difficulty car if their driving skill is low.

I think this gets discussed in the context of the European Union whenever Poland or Hungary uses their veto power to block something important. Basically, the idea is to start “EU 2” and then not invite the offending countries. Then say that EU 2 replaces EU 1 and refuse to let anyone else tell you otherwise.

I read it as “Let’s end anti-consumerism” and thought “Well that’s a brave thing to post on Lemmy of all places”

The Venezuelan government might. But according to some DW reporting and footage earlier today, the actual reaction of ordinary Venezuelans is mixed, and mostly concern and confusion rather than anger or fear. Maduro is generally not popular in Venezuela but I doubt many people really wanted the US to come and kidnap him. And understandably those who supported him are in the streets calling for his release.

Major news organisations in general are really scared when it comes to pointing out things which are extreme, because they believe describing those things as extreme will lead to accusations of sensationalism. The reason they think that is because sensationalist outlets are indeed more likely to describe everything as extreme and make unjustified comparisons to extremities, so major media outlets often think that to be “unbiased” is to refuse to acknowledge that an action is extreme.

Vox described this as the “this is fine” bias.

In America, €120 million could buy half of Congress.

I don’t think this is at all a valid counter-argument as all of these powers can equally be given to civil unions, if they aren’t already. In my eyes, if you propose to someone and “get married” and want to give your spouse the legal powers associated with what was previously marriage, you would register a civil union.

No civil marriage doesn’t mean that people can’t connect themselves legally; it just means that you have to register a civil union to do so. All of the points you raise are easily defeated by just defining civil unions to replace marriage in all respects. The system is already very close to how I describe. You can “get married” at a church or wherever else and in most countries that does not mean anything until you have registered it with a local registrar. I’m just saying that the thing that happens in a church is “marriage”, and the thing that happens with the legal paperwork at the registrar’s office is called “civil union” regardless of the genders or sexualities of the parties involved.

Honestly I don’t know why the state is still in the business of giving out marriages. Who gives a shit what other people want to call marriage. The state should not even have the authority to perform marriages at all. It should be left as a cultural or religious institution. It has no right to legislate what is and is not marriage. The only thing that should be available is civil unions, being defined as a financial and legal union of two or more consenting adults.

That way, anyone can “get married” at their local church, at a secular ceremony, or piss-drunk in a pub by a barmaid. It would be legally vacuous and has only the meaning that the parties ascribe to it, or that is given to it by the religious authority they choose to follow. But if they want to be legally joined together then they would go register a civil union at the local registrar’s office.

If you’re a bigot and don’t consider two men in civil union to be married, cool, whatever, the law should not care about your opinion. You can privately think “those two are not married” all day, and be right in your mind. The only people whose opinions matter are those who want to call themselves married. There is no institution of “marriage” to defend, because you’ve already won. You can consider marriage to be anything you want and be right. Now you can leave other people alone.

The hater becomes the hated

I have not been paying much attention to this. What are some examples of AOC and Mamdani defending Jeffries?

I guess we are in agreement then

No, it is not.

Suppose I am a billionaire intent on paying as little in tax as possible. I own or control a huge company (or some other investments) whose profits I want to benefit from. Under current US tax laws, I could purchase a citizenship of a country with lenient tax laws, move there, and then renounce my American citizenship. All the shares of American companies I would sell to an American holding company, which I register in Delaware (which has very low corporate tax). That holding company would then be owned in full by a company which I register in a tax haven country like the Cayman Islands. I have the American company give ownership of things like the company’s intellectual property to the holding company, which it leases back to the original company. When the original company makes profit, the holding company then charges the original company for use of intellectual property, equal to the amount of profit I want to take. This money then flows to the Cayman Islands company, free of tax as it is a business expense. The Cayman Islands company then pays this money to me as salary or as dividends, on which I pay an extremely low tax rate as a legal citizen of the tax haven country.

Under a system where the ultimate beneficial owner of money earned in the US is subject to tax, all this holding company nonsense would be meaningless because it would actually not evade any tax liability at all. This could be enforced by taxing the flow of money leaving the US (e.g. funds transferred from the American company to the Caymanian company would be taxed as if the Caymanian company were myself).

One idea might be to tax based on where the money is earned rather than by where the taxpayers live. If you move from Country A, but still make money from a business which operates in Country A, invest in Country A’s stock market, and keep your money in Country A banks, you will be subject to Country A’s taxes. But by all means, feel free to abandon your real estate holdings in Country A and move to Shittistan if that’s more your drift.

If I had to guess this guy (or girl) is a Bitcoin millionaire or something. But that’s just based on the vibes of his speech with no concrete basis.

Question: how does this site differ in function to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine?

According to the article, they’re selling it for ¥97 billion but will lease it back, so they will post a ¥73.9 billion gain from the sale. But in the first half of 2025, they posted a loss of ¥221.9 billion. So selling their HQ will offset about two months’ worth of losses.