improbable22

72 ms·

301.
by improbable22 9y ago
Yes that's exactly what I'm implying. We tax the money going from a human being into the corporation (VAT etc). And we tax the money coming out (Payroll etc). The idea that we must tax the company's profits too (if they made
302.
by improbable22 9y ago
Of the E2000 the customer paid, about E400 is tax right away. That's far from nothing. You could argue it should be higher, or lower. It's frequently adjusted. My point is that this transaction is what certainly happened in German
303.
by improbable22 9y ago
But this is exactly what happens now. And this is what the letter is upset about. He thinks Apple Europe Gmbh. made profit, and Apple's accountants say Apple Paradise Inc. made the profit, and we all think Apple Cupertino made the prof
304.
by improbable22 9y ago
It would benefit society because we could all spend our outrage on things more productive than pushing on a rope. The profits were taxed as VAT or something on the way into Apple. They will be taxed again as income tax or something on their
305.
by improbable22 9y ago
But "income tax" is a misleading name for this. It's a tax on corporate profits. The letter wants you to compare this rate to _your_ rate of income tax and be shocked. But this is stupid, the corporation is not a human being.
306.
by improbable22 9y ago
But will people travel to this tax haven to buy their computers? Will Apple's employees all move there to write software? Nope. What we mean by Apple operating in (say) Germany is these things: they make sales there, and they have empl
307.
by improbable22 9y ago
Maybe the problem is in trying at all to tax something you can't pin down, like this IP transfer between (say) Apple Germany and Apple US. I mean what should its value be? Clearly Apple Germany is nothing at all like an independent com
308.
by improbable22 9y ago
Yes to this: "corporation tax, as it is structured today, is unfit for purpose in a globalised economy". Where Apple sold its computers is well-defined, you can count each one and tax it. Where their employees work is also well-de
309.
by improbable22 9y ago
Marco Arment nailed this: https://marco.org/2017/09/18/courage The iphone had an instantly recognisable silhouette for 10 years: symmetrical forehead & chin, with a big round home button. Going to very t
310.
by improbable22 9y ago
In alphabetical fields people avoid saying "Author et. al." for this reason. Lots of famous papers are known by their three- or four-letter acronyms. If you called "BCS" (superconductivity) "Bardeen et. al." it
311.
by improbable22 9y ago
Don't forget handwriting here. For all these centuries, and perhaps even today, the vast majority of both writing and reading of mathematics wasn't typeset: on blackboards and in lecture notes, and on paper in the many attempts to
312.
by improbable22 9y ago
Yes to this. When you're calling some big fast package (be it some field-specific thing, or just matrix algebra) the language you're in doesn't matter that much. In terms of speed, but also in terms of effort -- you spend mos
313.
by improbable22 9y ago
What syntax would you like instead, for numerical programming? * Python seems not so different, but once you add numpy then it involves a lot of ugly `np.arcsin(np.sqrt([...]))` type of things. * R looks horrifyingly ugly but I haven't
314.
by improbable22 9y ago
When I type an actual SMS, the 160 limit seems to be reduced if I add non-English characters, like emoji or possibly even just an em-dash. So they could simply have followed SMS more closely, 140 bytes or something.
315.
by improbable22 9y ago
Yes, libel is correct. They absolutely should have known it was wrong -- their business is lending money to people! If their procedure is insufficient, they should have fixed this. I would love to see the banks sued for libel, a massive cla
316.
by improbable22 9y ago
This is correct. Another common terminology is that a vector is a 1-form, and a bi-vector a 2-form. The wedge of an n-form and an m-form is an (n+m) form, which generalises the cross product. To define the dot product you need the notion of
317.
by improbable22 9y ago
The last time I voted there was a campaign to remind you that taking a selfie with your ballot paper is illegal -- for exactly this reason.
318.
by improbable22 9y ago
And what seems most important to me, the failure modes are obvious. Any school teacher who's collected tests from naughty 10 year olds can imagine all of them. These are the people who volunteer to show up and watch the process, in eve
319.
by improbable22 9y ago
BTW the author of this article, Stephen Hsu, has a blog which frequently has interesting comments on such things (and AI, and much else): http://infoproc.blogspot.com/
320.
by improbable22 9y ago
But protectionism doesn't have to be "a battle for last place". It often is, I agree, but is also one of the levers used by Korea (etc.) to develop. The book which changed my mind about this, which I highly recommend, is Joe
321.
by improbable22 9y ago
Just tried this a bit, I like the idea of a simple browser, have tried lots. Like having the address at the bottom, hate that Safari has this and tabs at opposite ends of tge phone. Corners are cute. Agree with Lobster that "X" is
322.
by improbable22 10y ago
It's precisely the update of Abramowitz and Stegun. I believe the book version is this: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=978052... but they occasionally still find mistakes to fix online.
323.
by improbable22 10y ago
Some earlier research on this topic: http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3365 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.3367