I just happened to catch this at random a couple of months ago when I looked at my bill (I normally don't review my bill every month).
I called AT&T and they similarly to others' experience did not give any explanation as to why they permit third parties to initiate subscriptions without any explicit confirmation from users. Of course, I had them put on purchase block and refund my money, but I'm sure for everyone one of me there are 20 people who didn't notice or just happened to not look at their bill - I normally don't either. This is really unbelievable.
But this isn't even true of many groups at Google, where people are managed by young (admittedly generally very smart) hotshot product managers without an engineering background.
Why not also have an automated script for the vast majority of sites for which people don't upload their own summaries? First two paragraphs and last paragraph seem like they would do the trick 80-90% of the time.
Shrewd (though likely just very lucky and timely) choice of topic. Looks like they can either (i) take their talents to any one of 10-15 companies that desperately need improvement in this area OR (ii) create a very promising startup and perhaps get taken out in a talent acquisition.
It's also an issue of timing and deferral. Because one can offset short-term capital gains with capital losses, and individuals generally have absolute control over realization of capital gains, the effective rate on capital gains can effectively be zero or near-zero given sufficient liquidity, despite a statutory rate equal to the ordinary income rate.
This is cash that was taxed once in the foreign jurisdiction at whatever prevailing rate was in effect there. With the exception of the US, nearly all developed countries have territorial tax systems at which the rate on those foreign profits would be 0%.
A repatriation holiday would be a huge (and poorly targeted, considering nearly the entire benefit inures to about 10-20 firms) giveaway, but it's only discussed in the first place because of our strange worldwide corporate tax system.
It is not even clear that it is tax avoidance. In most situations the capital gains preference is meant to mitigate, and in fact only partially mitigates, income taxation at the corporate level.
Preferences for real estate and investment managers in the form of carried interest...well, that's another story.
I think it is more symptomatic of the terrible job market than anything else. For most jobs available today (talented engineers in NY/SV excluded) there are usually hundreds of applicants for almost any half-decent position, and so employers have the luxury of culling based on any non-protected class that has any sort of predictive value, even if the correlation is extremely weak.
If the economy ever turns around, I suspect this issue will disappear. I certainly don't recall this when unemployment was at 4%.
This is a ridiculous post and I'm surprised it made it to the front page here. The two kids who pitched these ideas were akin to the traditional adult "business types" who pitch an idea with nothing else to really bring to the table. Honestly, who wants to work with an 11 year old on a startup like this, where the kid likely has very little to offer (they certainly can't work full-time startup hours, even if summer is coming) except perhaps the media buzz of a young entrepreneur.
The vague tinge of racism being alleged here (and yes, the author is crafty enough here to set out the components of the charge without setting it out, because it would sound ridiculous were it directly stated) is distasteful.
This is the dark side of the startup dream that is endlessly pushed on all the VC blogs and tech sites and boards like this that I frequent.
Anyway, with that said, I think you really just need to stabilize your situation. You (obviously) need to find a job, any job, whether it is temping, stacking books in the local library, retail, anything. Diminish your credentials if need be. You sound like an intelligent guy, you can probably think of ways to make yourself at least temporarily appealing to jobs that are objectively below you.
I am very sympathetic with your parent situation. You are lucky at least that they are old enough to be drawing SS and Medicare. It sounds like you are in a low-cost area and so that should be enough to at least support them at a minimum American subsistence level. With consistent checks coming in and government-supported health care, it would be hard for them to royally screw themselves permanently in the financial sense. And unless they are wealthy, it does not sound like they really need estate planning, and you can try to help with day to day care but you cannot let it consume you.
I echo everything everyone has said about community and inspiration. Sites like News.YC provide all the inspiration I need - I have actually found the hackers and founders type meetups I have been to to be quite underwhelming compared to what I read and the people I interact with online.
I called AT&T and they similarly to others' experience did not give any explanation as to why they permit third parties to initiate subscriptions without any explicit confirmation from users. Of course, I had them put on purchase block and refund my money, but I'm sure for everyone one of me there are 20 people who didn't notice or just happened to not look at their bill - I normally don't either. This is really unbelievable.