Lookit all the gonks over there.

Using Linux will I lose pretty much all my modded Windows games and all Windows games that aren't Steam. I will also lose 20-50% of my fps for the same graphics card and have to spend more time every day configuring my computer instead of using it. And yes it damn well is like that. WINE is great, but it doesn't prevent these realities.

I think it's pretty similar in Canada, although I can't speak to the comparative levels of complexity. One reason is that, like the U.S., many powers are held by the federal government, while others are exclusive to the various provincial governments. A notable example is the provinces' ability to levy taxes in addition to federal ones. There may also be other provincial records that the federal government does not have direct access to, such as marriage records.

So it "dissolves"... into what? Last I heard, microplastics in our water (and later, our food) are raising ever more concerns about human health.

I can't think of a single other country that claims to be civilised that has a tax code so complicated you need vast amounts of software and a high-power computer just to file what is properly owed.

TLDR version: The system is engineered to be too complex for humans, which is the mark of a very very badly designed system that is suboptimal, inefficient, expensive, and useless.

Let's pretend for a moment that you've a tax system that taxes the nth dollar at the nth point along a particular curve. We can argue about which curve is approporiate some other time, my own opinion is that the more you earn, the more tax you should pay on what you earn. However, not everyone agrees with that, so let's keep it nice and generic and say that it's "some curve" (which Libertarians can define as a straight line if they absolutely want). You now don't have to adjust anything, ever. The employer notifies the IRS that $X was earned, the computer their end performs a definite integral between N (the top of the curve at the last point you paid tax) and N+X, and informs the employer that N+X is the money owed for that interval.

Nobody actually does it this way, at the moment, but that's beside the point. We need to be able to define what the minimum necessary level of complexity is before we can identify how far we are from it. The above amount has no exemptions, but honestly, trying to coerce people to spend money in particular ways isn't particuarly effective, especially if you then need a computer to work through the form because you can't understand what behaviours would actually influence the tax. If nobody (other than the very rich) have the time, energy, or motivation to find out how they're supposed to be being guided, then they're effectively unguided and you're better off with a simple system that simply taxes less in the early amounts.

This, then, is as simple as a tax system can get - one calculation per amount earned, with no forms and no tax software needed.

It does mean that, for middle-income and above, the paycheck will vary with time, but if you know how much you're going to earn in a year then you know what each paycheck will have in it. This requires a small Excel macro to calculate, not an expensive software package that mysteriously needs updating continuously, and if you're any good at money management, then it really really doesn't matter. If you aren't, then it still doesn't matter, because you'd still not cope with the existing system anyway.

In practice, it's not likely any country would actually implement a system this simple, because the rich would complain like anything and it's hard to win elections if the rich are paying your opponent and not you. But we now have a metric.

The UK system, which doesn't require the filling out of vast numbers of forms, is not quite this level of simple, but it's not horribly complicated. The difference between theoretical and actual is not great, but it's tolerable. If anyone wants to use the theoretical and derive an actual score for the UK system, they're welcome to do so. I'd be interested to see it.

The US, who left the UK for tax reasons (or was that Hotblack Desiato, I get them confused) has a much much more complex system. I'd say needlessly complicated, but it's fairly obvious it's complicated precisely to make those who are money-stressed and time-stressed pay more than they technically owe, and those who are rich and can afford accountants for other reasons pay less. Again, if anyone wants to produce a score, I'd be interested to see it.

Whenever we played Polopony, I was the old boot.

Valhalla, NY â" In a stunning development that has tech commentators and seasoned internet cynics rubbing their eyes in disbelief, sources indicate that the next major discussion thread on the venerable tech news site Slashdot is "absolutely guaranteed to be full of the most levelheaded and unbiased arguments the platform is capable of." The anonymous source, believed to be a rogue AI trained exclusively on supportive internet comments and transcripts of diplomatic summits, added, "I can't wait!" This bold proclamation suggests a continuation of the site's long-celebrated tradition of robust, civilized debate.

For years, Slashdot's comment sections have been a beloved digital arena where the finest minds in technology convene to calmly and respectfully dissect nuanced topics, meticulously citing sources and never, ever resorting to ad hominem attacks, sweeping generalizations about entire operating systems, or declaring a beloved piece of software "dead" based on a minor UI change. The platform has always been a sterling example of how to meticulously avoid the pitfalls of gender politics, with sexism in either direction being a complete anathema to its rigorously technical and objective commentariat. Details of the specific article that will host this groundbreaking exchange remain under wraps, but speculation is rife that it will involve a topic so universally agreed upon and devoid of controversy that only polite, insightful, and entirely bias-free commentary will be possible. Possible contenders include "Breathing: Generally good?" and "Free puppies: Mostly harmless."

But why?

All that's coming and more, and voting for a Democrat wouldn't have made a hair's difference. You're lying to yourself thinking your party isn't as deep in the pocketbooks of the truly wealthy as the Republicans. Hell, look at the spending differences in the last few elections. And I'm not in any kind of moral panic, I just don't like seeing half the human race turned into a whipping boy for YOUR side's panic.

Speaking of sacred cows don't forget the people freaking out about soggy knees, the end of the world coming tomorrow, consensual pussy grabbing and racist dog whistles while voting for the politicians who were the other side of the coin.

You don't need to simulate all that, at least initially. Scan in the brains of people who are at extremely high risk of stroke or other brain damage. If one of them suffers a lethal stroke, but their body is otherwise fine, you HAVE a full set of senses. You just need to install a way of multiplexing/demultiplexing the data from those senses and muscles, and have a radio feed - WiFi 7 should have adequate capacity.

Yes, this is very scifiish, but at this point, so is scanning in a whole brain. If you have the technology to do that, you've the technology to set up a radio feed.

>AI chatbots don't have a right to exist. They are not free speech and can be regulated as much as we as a society choose to regulate them.

Yes, that's true. but trying to blame AI for this kid's suicide is no better than trying to blame Movies, Videogames, etc. No one forced this kid to pull the trigger.

The Koch Brothers paid a bunch of scientists to prove the figures being released by the IPCC and clinate scientists wrong. The scientists they paid concluded (in direct contradiction to the argument that scientists say what they're paid to say) that the figures were broadly correct, and that the average planetary temperature was the figure stated.

My recommendation would be to look for the papers from those scientists, because those are the papers that we know in advance were written by scientists determined to prove the figures wrong and failed to do so, and therefore will give the most information on how the figures are determined and how much data is involved, along with the clearest, most reasoned, arguments as to why the figures cannot actually be wrong.

...Then there's an inefficiency in the design.

You should store in the primary database in the most compressed, compact form you can that can still be accessed in reasonable time. Tokenise as well, if it'll help.

The customer should never be accessing the primary database, that's a security risk, the customer should access through a decompressed subset of the main database which is operating as a cache. Since it is a cache, it will automagically not contain any poorly-selling item or item without inventory, and the time overheads for accessing stuff nobody buys won't impact anything.

If you insist on purging, there should then be a secondary database that contains items that are being considered for purge as never having reached the cache in X number of years. This should be heavily compressed, but where you can still search for a specific record, again through a token, not a string, then add a method by which customers can put in a request for the item. If there's still no demand after a second time-out is reached, sure, delete it. If the threat of a purge leads to interest, then pull it back into primary. It still won't take up much space, because it's still somewhat compressed unless demand actually holds it in the cache.

This method:

(a) Reduces space the system needs, as dictated by the customer and not by Amazon
(b) Purges items the system doesn't need, as dictated by the customer and not by Amazon

The customers will then drive what is in the marketplace, so the customers decide how much data space they're willing to pay for (since that will obviously impact price).

If Amazon actually believe in that whole marketplace gumph, then they should have the marketplace drive the system. If they don't actually believe in the marketplace, then they should state so, clearly and precisely, rather than pretend to be one. But I rather suspect that might impact how people see them.

Are you kidding, he has Parkinson's. They give the best handjobs!