Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | unclewalter's commentslogin

From Juba to Jive[0]: "In a minute (1980s-1990s) in the future, perhaps a month from the time said, but not immediately. (Southern city use)"

[0] - Juba to Jive edited by Clarence Major


Fascinating. My white bread daughter who lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains used the term the other day with me on the phone so I know it's arrived

https://www.amazon.com/Juba-Jive-Dictionary-African-American...


The term I'm thinking is "pastiche". I usually apply it to "Disney World" type of items or places that try and recreate the feel of a different time. Some "speakeasy" bars fall in to that category.


Of course I don't think your statement's motive is to understand how we replicate the exact process of what is in Star Trek in the real world. More of a functional equivalent. However, because I have the poster, if you look at plans of the Enterprise, it contains a large volume that is reserved for "bulk matter". I believe it's this, along with some transporter technology enables the replicator to create a variety of combinations of chemicals and materials.


Oh, nice! I never saw that in any of the supplemental materials I stumbled upon. Which Enterprise is on the poster? Do you have a link handy?


Poop, gentlemen. The bulk matter is poop.


dougmwne's right. Though I can't find my poster online (for the life of me), the technical manual is pretty clear:

[...]The various waste sludges recovered from the water recycling processes are a valuable resource. The organic waste processing system subjects the sludge to a series of sterilizing heat and radiation treatments. The waste is then electrolytically reprocessed into an organic particulate suspension that serves as the raw material for the food synthesizer systems. Remaining byproducts are conveyed to the solid waste processing system for matter replication recycling. [...] Material that cannot be directly recycled by mechanical or chemical means is stored for matter synthesis recycling. This is accomplished by molecular matrix replicators that actually dematerialize the waste materials and rematerialize them in the form of desired objects or materials stored in computer memory. While this process provides an enormous variety of useful items, it is very energy intensive and many everyday consumables (such as water and clothing) are recycled by less energy intensive mechanical or chemical means. Certain types of consumables (such as foodstuffs) are routinely recycled using matter replication because this results in a considerable savings of stored raw material (See: 13.5).

From tngtm section 12.5: https://xaeyr.typepad.com/files/franchise-star-trek-tng-tech...


Spoiler for S3 of Star Trek: Discovery - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIIYb04HGbQ


And red shirt corpses


I didn’t see anything in the email that suggested they were agreeing to partition the market. Apple said they didn’t want to compete with Apple w.r.t. Office. Who would? Office is awesome and it’s not Apple’s wheelhouse. ClarisWorks would need massive resources to compete. They were just being transparent that they weren’t in the business of serious Office-suite-like development. The rest of the points seemed like they were quid-pro-quo decisions that could potentially give customers a lot of value: QuickTime support on MS machines, Microsoft developing IE for Apple (and Office)... in this context, Apple is talking to Microsoft as a software package provider, Apple needs partnerships with these companies so their OS can get traction.


"Apple said they didn’t want to compete with Apple w.r.t. "

... That's what market partitioning _is_ though, right?

The two parties could independently come to the conclusion that Apple shouldn't compete with Office, but actually discussing it (and documenting the discussion!) is a flagrant violation of U.S. anti-trust laws.


Apple probably also did not want to compete with Michelin w.r.t tires either.

Partitioning the market is when you, well, partition the MARKET, meaning divide up potential BUYERS of your product with some other company selling a similar product, so that your company is effectively a monopoly within the subset of buyers that you were allocated.


So the buyers for office software may have had two options, but after this deal there was effectively a monopoly with both potential subsets of buyers left with only MS Office as a choice... This reads like the definition of a monopoly from a school textbook...


I love the way Apple Maps gives turn by turn directions: “go past these lights and at the next set, turn left”. Just way more understandable as a ... human.

However, it commonly gives me just the wrong destination. Just the other day, it put me five blocks away from the actual address in Downtown LA. Which is... well, suboptimal.


That actually makes sense to me. If I feel secure, I feel carefree. Maybe there should be a different word when providing a secure environment from the word where people enjoy that secure environment.


“Participants were then intentionally infected with malaria three months later to test the vaccine’s efficacy.”

I did not know that purposely infecting people with a deadly parasite for research was a thing!


It's called a challenge trial. It's done to compress later stages of clinical trials and only uses low risk volunteers. It's also generally only done when theres effective treatment for expected negative outcomes.


Parasite, not a virus. For some parts of the world, it's like getting the flu. You expect to get it every year.


Thanks, updated. My ignorance of this practice extends to all deadly pathogens, really.


I wonder how disclosure works for the "field study testing the vaccine in adults is under way in Mali."

Do they screen enrollees based on scientific literacy? Seems like there could be significant moral hazards here.


I’ve been the “lab rat” in many US studies, and generally all we get is a disclosure stating the purpose, risks and methods of the experiment. There’s no test for “scientific literacy” at all. I’m not even sure the point of this. What people care about is the risks and methods.


All patient consent must be worded for patient comprehension. This is done by the IRB.


To me, the parent wasn’t saying an asset holder would need to pay taxes on the asset unless they used it as collateral. To me, this makes a lot of sense. If someone owns a startup and worries tax implications would overextend them if the value was taxed, they shouldn’t use it as collateral on a loan.

I may be missing your point though.


I don't see why we care that they're using an asset as collateral for a loan. They still need to pay back that loan with post-tax money.

Maybe they're kicking the can down the road, but that's their choice.

The real issue here is that super rich are, at the end of that road, donating shares to their non-profits, tax free. ...and that their children then have access to that non-profit and all of its assets, again without income or estate tax.

The big hole here isn't the unrealized gains - it's the "charitable Foundations" that are a complete scam.


> They still need to pay back that loan with post-tax money.

Unless they pay back said loan with another loan. Given the massive amount of wealth accumulated, you can rinse and repeat indefinitely. Basically you have a free cash flow machine, without ever having to convert that income as proceeds (unless you want to convert between asset types).

Having said I agree with your main point: we need to close the loopholes, and the charitable foundations is the biggest of all, and sadly the article missed the point entirely.


The annoying point is that those foundations are not at all charitable.


> and that their children then have access to that non-profit and all of its assets, again without income or estate tax

That shouldn't matter as long as they don't start to enjoy the benefit of those assets.

This means tax rules should separate the estate as a business/investment from the personal use of the funds/wealth.

Sure, at some point it becomes neigh impossible, like let's say Bill and Melinda went to Africa on their marriage anniversary, was that business or personal? (And yes, at that level of wealth, influence, income it's always both.)

When an owner (or close relative or friend of an owner) of a family trusts/foundations/estates/NGOs/church/non-profit conducts business through said entity, that entity should pay some tax corresponding to said expense as if some part of that expense were income to the owner/relative/friend.


> Maybe they're kicking the can down the road, but that's their choice.

I can't just say "Oh, I'm investing 30% of my income, tax that part when I sell later", I don't have that choice of kicking the can down the road.


In the UK at least, the 'trick' is that the load is never actually repaid, or is continually deferred.


tldr; The rich, there kids and grandkids will never pay taxes under the current structure.

The problem is you're not kicking the can down the road, you are delaying it forever. Your entire 'Lifestyle' can be funded tax free. Instead of things being your assets, that you spent money on you could have a company plane, car, boat, house. Lavish dinners can be put on the company card as 'business meetings' and travel as 'Business Travel'. This is all taken out of your business profits and the best tax structure for a business is at a loss or barly profitable. Add that to the point OP made about taxing collateral loans is it would semi-eliminate the 'loophole' of never having to pay taxs.

Edit: One more point. Should a $1m donation to scientology be considered a tax writeoff?


Collateral for a loan is a completely separate point. The issue was taxing unrealized capital gains. Effectively if your house goes up $100,000 you'd owe the government the capital gains tax on $100,000 immediately, not when you sold. If you don't have the money to pay for the capital gains you're looking at selling the asset. Finding the money to pay capital gains while paying down a mortgage isn't a direction I'd want to go in.


As I understand the proposal, you wouldn't owe the tax on $100k immediately -- that would only happen when you use the house as collateral for a reverse mortgage or similar. This makes sense to me, because the capital gains are effectively realized when used as leverage.


Parent was arguing to not delay capital gains at all, as was the article. I'm pointing out how that idea is bad.


Of course, in the USA, outside of California, this is essentially what we do.

We can argue about whether or not it's good, but its not unthinkable. Property taxes in most places (in the USA, the subject of the article) are linked to the current market value of real estate. Sometimes property values rise, taxes follow, and people have to move.


Property taxes are such a small portion of property value that they seldom force a move. Capital gains can be anywhere from 20-50% depending on country. Having your home go from 800,000 to 1,000,000 and having your property taxes go from 4000 to 5000 a year is very different from having your home go up 200,000 and suddenly owing the government 40,000 to 100,000 dollars.


I agree with you. This makes even more sense as in: if a lender lends you $x against a collateral of N shares, this means that they consider that there is only a tiny chance that said shares may be worth less than $x before the maturity of the debt. So this means that for all practical purposes we could decide that there are at least $x of realised gains. (In a more extreme version you could even consider that all your shares, and not just the N shares used as collateral, should be valued at $x/N per share and treat the gain as a capital gain for tax purposes)


But you basically always do use your house as collateral on the mortgage loan. I think this is a more radical change than you have realized.


You could pin it to when loans are issued rather than their existence.

That would only affect home refinancing, which will still be a considerable number of people.


That's different, because the house is collateral for itself, effectively a "rent to own", not for money that can be spent elsewhere.


I agree, I don’t see why income tax couldn’t be levied on any amount greater than $X borrowed/secured by an asset as collateral.

For all intents and purposes, it is income and should be taxed as such.


Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein might disagree.


and look they don't have coastal waters /s


There’s no home field advantage in war



The US has lost (or not definitively won) every war since WW2, none of which were on home field.


Three examples off the top of my head:

The Korean War technically isn’t over, and since both sides claim they won, you’ll have to pick a winner yourself.

The US military’s extreme prowess in the first Iraq war was the last evidence the Soviets needed that they had lost the Cold War.

The US was able to achieve its goals in Yugoslavia in a straightforward manner.


In all of those cases there is one or more nations with an much stronger claim to victory then the US.

The cold war was an implosion by economics and the vast bulk of the preasure came from western europe who alost harvested nearly all of the victory gains, and that happened years before the first gulf war.

The US Acted as a poorly paid mercenary force for the houses of Said doing the first and second gulf war and the long term strategic goal went in Iran's favor when the US/Saudi backed puppet government of Iraq imploded and someone else had to step in and deal with ISIS(that someone else originally turned out to be Iran's republican guard backed by Russian advisors and hardware).

Kosovo again had Europe playing they leading role in the diplomacy both post and doing the war and harvesting most of the benefits.

Outside of late western Roman empire, i can think of few nations where the army was as impotent in terms of actually backing the diplomatic game or rather where the diplomats where as incompetent that despite having the best trained/funded army no tactical victory was too great to turn into an strategic defeat.


Iraq was concurred in 2 months the 2nd time. That was the war. If the leader of an enemy was hiding in a dirt hole in the ground and then hanged and that isnt a win to you then your definition is wrong. You are confusing nation building with war.


An improbable drive?


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: