Nibodhika

joined 2 years ago
[–] Nibodhika 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The girl stopped going to the school at the same time someone was kidnapped in his neighborhood. The rumor was that it was that same girl, but he doesn't believe it. It's not that confusing.

[–] Nibodhika -1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Much more storage space

Much more storage than 512GB?

a higher-rez 120hz screen (beautiful)

Much higher res than 2160x1080? And Is the difference between 90hz and 120hz really that noticeable?

cameras that rival my DSLR but take MUCH better low light pictures (cats)

I'm sure other devices already had cameras just as good, but for the comparison I'm going with I'll grant that it's very likely your new phone has a better camera

USB-C

Almost every phone was USB-C 6 years ago

more speed (I didn’t need more speed, but it’s nice that it’s there)

Probably the only number that would be extremely higher on your new phone is a benchmark for speed, which probably won't mean much unless you're a heavy gamer on your phone, and even then most games try to hit a wider audience so they have lower specs.

absolutely bonkers battery life

Much more than 4000 mAh?

So, let's forget the camera and benchmarks for a second, compare your phone with this: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Asus-ROG-Phone_id10914 which you could have bought 6 years ago for $900 and tell me if your new phone is really that much better or cheaper. Then let's do the same with an extra 6 years, so find me the best smartphone you can from 2012 and see if it's even comparable, and if you go back 6 extra years there weren't even any smartphones. And that's the whole point OP was making, your new shiny phone is great, but you could have gotten a very similar thing 6 years ago when you bought your previous model, you would still be wanting to change it now because that device would not have received updates and the battery would probably have started to lose it's charge faster, etc, but technically phones today are not that much better than 6 years ago, especially not considering the amount of advances that happened in the 6 years prior to that, or the 6 before then.

[–] Nibodhika 3 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

What did you got on that new device that wasn't available 6 years ago?

[–] Nibodhika 2 points 3 weeks ago

The thing is that 10 years ago the phone I had was very similar to the one I have now, the laptop I had was very similar to the one I have now, and up until very recently I still had parts from the desktop I used to had back then installed on my current desktop, I also visited lots of the same sites I do now and played some of the same games. But if you go back another 10 years it's very different. In 2004 I didn't had a cellphone, by 2014 I had a Google Nexus, now I have a Google Pixel. In 2004 I didn't had a laptop, in 2014 I had a 8GB RAM 512GB dual core laptop, now I have a 32GB 1TBB 6 core one. In 2004 My desktop had 256MB RAM 10GB single core 1.6GHz processor, in 2014 it had 16GB RAM 1TB 6 core, now it has 32GB RAM 3TB 6 cores.

Obviously my computer now is much better than the one from 10 years ago, bit not by the same amount than the one form 2014 was from the one from 2004. To try to put it in perspective I would need to have around 500GB of RAM for it to be the same leap in RAM amount.

[–] Nibodhika 7 points 3 weeks ago

For the majority of people, doing all that you described is a lot more work than just flipping a light switch. Let me explain with two xkcd comics, first:

https://xkcd.com/1319/

You say write your own program as if that was something everyone can do on a whim. Even experienced programmers might find relatively simple tasks can hold possible complications. So it's not as easy as just doing it. But most importantly:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

I have to get up to turn off the lights possibly once a day, most of the times I turn them on/off I'm already walking past the switch, but let's be generous and assume once a day I have to go out of my way to turn them off, and let's be extra generous and say it takes me 30 seconds to do it, so spending more than 12h trying to automate that is a waste of time because it would take me more than 5 years to gain the time I saved back. However, my Christmas lights are all plugged to a smart plug, because otherwise I would need to turn them on individually once a day and turn them off individually before going to bed, and buying a random smart plug I can control with my phone took me way less than that time, so it's worth it.

You seem to think automation is always worth it, but sometimes it's not. It depends on how much it costs (be it in money or time) vs how much you gain, and also you need to contemplate how much you lose. For example my Christmas lights are on smart plugs like I mentioned, technically someone might be able to hack them, so I wouldn't put my computer on one of them, even though it might be useful to measure power consumption, because someone might theoretically turn my computer off so the possible drawback outweigh the benefits of measure the consumption. Sure, I could design my own smart plug and use it, but that would take me a long time and I'd rather spend that time with my family.

[–] Nibodhika 14 points 4 weeks ago

By that logic you also don't feel bad for people who die in car accidents because from the first time they got behind a wheel they knew of the possibility. You should also not feel bad about people who are ran over, from the first time you walked outside your parents told you it was a possibility. Every time you go outside you're risking being hit by a car, so don't expect me to cry when that happens, right?... Right?...

No, life is full of dangers, and ODing is just one of them. Most people who OD are in a bad situation and started using drugs to cope, and then it took control of them. Almost none of them made a conscious decision to OD, and one could argue their road to using that amount of drugs was also not entirely their choice, after all lots of those cause chemical dependency. Think about this, someone is stressed at work, they're offered a cigarette by a friend who smokes daily, they smoke it and feel the stress going away, are able to focus and get through that tough spot, so they do it again next time they're stressed, and then they start to get more and more stressed, but now they're hooked, and trying to quit will be extremely difficult... Would you really not feel bad if that person developed cancer because he was stressed once and a friend offered a cigarette? How is ODing any different?

[–] Nibodhika 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

-It requires an arbitrary use-agnostic choice of value. Why 10 million? Why not 5? Why not 50?

Why are tax brackets the value they are? Would you say that tax brackets are a bad system? They also rely on an arbitrary use-agnostic choice of value.

-it requires an arbitrary time scale. Why 5 years? Why not 3? why not 10? Why not limit once in a lifetime?

Same reason taxes are calculated over yearly income and not every 2 years or 6 months. It's also arbitrary, it's just an arbitrary you're used to so you don't question it.

Both cons you found for my solution are also present on tax brackets, i.e. arbitrarily defined values and length, by that logic you also think tax brackets are a bad idea.

The reason why I said 10 Mil over 5 years is to try to exclude as many legitimate use cases as possible. For starters we're talking about people, not business, there are legitimate reasons for a business, particularly large ones, to take much larger loans. But for people? The largest expense on a regular person's life will be the house they buy, and 10 Mil is WAY above the average price for that, if someone is buying a >10 Mil house I'm okay with them getting taxed on the loan, if they managed to get a 40 year 0% loan (impossible) they'll already be paying 20k per month, might as well pay some more on top of it. But wait, you might say, what about smaller loans that compound to >10 Mil, that's why there's a 5 year limit, this means the person needs to loan over 2 Mil per year, which is simply not possible for someone unless they're mega-rich, because again they would need to be paying >20k per month.

And yes, those are arbitrary values and probably they need adjusting via research and experimentation, but again the same is true for tax brackets, and I think everyone agrees those are a good idea.

This answer you acknowledged my proposal, therefore I now believe that you understood it, on your first answer you suggested I had a definition of income/non-income loans, which is not at all what I'm proposing.

[–] Nibodhika 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Read my answer before replying, I provided a solution for that's and it's a solution based on the astonishing difference between what high middle class people and super rich make.

I'll repeat it, every dollar you take from a loan gets tallied, and expires after 5 years. Whenever that value goes beyond 10 million you start paying taxes on the loans. You, or any high middle class person, won't be able to take that many loans in such a short period of time, simply because it would mean that you need at least an income of 2 million per year just to repay those loans, and I think we can agree that's not high middle class.

This way there's no loophole on the type of loan.

[–] Nibodhika 2 points 1 month ago

Vomited tomatoes are also rich in MSG, how can you not like them?

There's a lot more to flavor than taste, and people are free to not like the flavor of anything regardless of the amount of MSG, salt, sugar or vinager.

[–] Nibodhika 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah, and this should showcase just how bullshit the system is. IMO every one of those 100 trades in the middle should be taxed, this removes bullshit from the system, you can't buy a contract saying you'll buy the stock, because that would be buying something of that value and would be taxed. We need to start seeing those 100 trades, as what they are, i.e. a way to try to rig the system.

[–] Nibodhika 1 points 1 month ago (5 children)

But then the value goes WAAY up. Let's assume you live in a very good house, and mortgage it you're able to get 5 million out of it. Do you think someone like Jeff Bezos could live for 5 years with that?. You can do it fairly straightforward, everytime you take a loan, the full amount of that loan gets added, after a period of 5 years that value disappears, if at any point that value goes above 10 million, you start paying taxes on it. And the higher it goes the more tax you pay on it, just like how income tax has brackets, and just like how up to certain values are exempt.

For you or me if we were ever loan 10 million over 5 years we wouldn't have a way to pay it back. For an Uber wealthy they do that fairly quickly, Bezos mention costs 600k a month, so he'll get into the first bracket from just that in a year and a half.

People need to realize just how big the gap is, there are plenty of ways to tax extremely rich people without affecting the middle class by just putting the bracket so high up that it's impossible for a middle class to reach it.

[–] Nibodhika 8 points 1 month ago

That read exactly as a footnote on a Terry Pratchett book, if you have never read Discworld you should, it has the same sense of humor that you do. For example another popular saying being bastardized:

Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

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