Yes, education around these scams and their methods could be better, but there is also a reason they target the elderly and vulnerable. Unless something else terrible happens, I assume I will count in one or both of those groups eventually. I feel like when I get there, I would appreciate empathy rather than disdain, if I were ever taken advantage of.
Regardless, you do not actually need to enable developer settings to install APKs from unknown sources (at least, not on my Samsung). When you open an APK from within another app (e.g. Google Drive or WhatsApp), Android "helpfully" forwards you straight to the relevant security settings page, allowing you to immediately toggle the "Install unknown apps" permission for that specific app. It's a streamlined flow, only a couple of taps, no scrolling/searching/reading, therefore likely easy to coach a victim into performing.
So, I expect what the Android team is alluding to in the original post is to enable additional friction like you describe.
Hah, yes, this is also how S21 works. But to still refute the OP's point: (1) it is in stock settings, you do not need to enable the developer settings menu via any arcane method. (2) When you tap on an APK in e.g. Google Drive or WhatsApp, Android "helpfully" forwards you straight to this settings page, allowing you to immediately toggle the "Install unknown apps" and installation will begin (there may be another "do you want to install this app" confirmation).
The point being that there is not a whole lot of friction in this flow -- one or two taps -- likely making it easy for scammers to coach victims to perform.
I agree that activating the developer settings menu is substantially more friction, and may arouse more suspicion in a victim, but [on many/most devices] is not currently required. I guess the original article is alluding to putting this kind of friction in place.
I don't think it's that simple. GitHub themselves say [1]:
> You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.
Yes, it does note immediately below that "if you publish your source code in a public repository on GitHub, according to the Terms of Service, other users of GitHub.com have the right to view and fork your repository". But that doesn't mean it's open source. You probably can't/shouldn't create derivative works with your forks. And you definitely wouldn't be allowed to just use this code in a commercial product, for example.
> But ignoring that, the double taxation applies to income not spent. It is irrelevant to this discussion, in which Bezos borrows to spend.
It's not irrelevant if Bezos spends his borrowed money on real estate and generally vacuuming up other assets that are likely to appreciate in value faster than his loans. It's not like he consumes all of it (or even most? I don't know, but I doubt it. How on Earth do you consume a billion dollars?).
> Thus there is no double taxation for you or for Bezos(2).
As I already explained there is for me if I don't consume all of my taxed gains before I die, or if I use it to purchase assets that outlive me.
> Bezos is not doing this to evade paying taxes, he is doing it to take advantage of spreads.
He's clearly doing it for both reasons. At least to avoid, not evade. I accept that he's legally not required to pay tax in this situation, but the whole point is I'm saying that should probably change!
> So here, too, this is just complaining about things that aren't actually happening in order to get a justification for complaints about "injustice". It's a lot of very angry people applying who/whom logic rather than getting the details right about how much is paid.
Dismissing this as "just complaining" is really missing the wider point. That is that "buy, borrow, die" is a well documented strategy that the ultra-wealthy use to avoid paying tax and that is widely considered a tax loophole (even by those familiar with basic accounting and tax economics). Whether it's a loophole or not isn't even really the point, rather that we should change things such that people who "buy, borrow, die" actually pay something like CGT.
In your opinion. However, some people clearly believe it _is_ a tax loophole, presumably including those you're discussing with upthread.
One of the talking points against inheritance tax is that it taxes the same money twice. If I'm a middle earner I pay taxes on my income, and I pay CGT when I dispose of assets to pay for my car or retirement or whatever. Taxes are then levied a second time on what's left when I die.
People above are pointing out that, in contrast, extremely wealthy people manage to avoid the income/CGT part by borrowing against their assets tax-free and repaying the loans once they die and after the assets can be stepped up. So yes, inheritance tax may still be paid, but a great deal of their day-to-day income while alive is untaxed. Inheritance tax should be _in addition to_ income/CGT rather than instead of it, and part of the perceived injustice is that the ultra-wealthy get to dodge this in ways "ordinary" people can't.
Based on that I personally would call it a loophole.
> You are inventing tax loopholes that don't exist
Are you aware of "step-up in basis" [1] that is widely considered a loophole around CGT for inherited assets? Any gains on assets up to the point they are inherited will not be subject to CGT.
This doesn't seem right to me as it goes against my intuitive sense of how other factors generally scale with size/weight/volume (e.g. rocket equation), but I admit I'm definitely not an expert. However Wikipedia claims [1] that 250-300 Wh/kg is sufficient for small aircraft but something the size of an Airbus 320 would need 2 kWh/kg. A random recent paper about scaling electric aircraft [2] seems to imply that there are challenges to scaling size as well:
> All-electric designs have been demonstrated for small air vehicles. However, such prototypes have not been scaled up to more than ten passengers due to the specific energy (E*) limitations of current battery technology. [...] A significant proportion of the energy expenditure would be used to transport the mass of the batteries; this mass would not decrease during a flight as would that of conventional fuel.
Are these sources wrong, or too simplistic in their analysis, or am I misinterpreting what they're saying?
AirMap mobile app [1] has a very comprehensive database of no fly zones, airports/airfields, and summaries of national rules. It works well in US/Canada and lots of countries in Europe too.
I find it often misses local city or park-level rules so I'd always use it in conjunction with a local jurisdiction's app (if available), as well as checking council websites etc.
> In a normal social setting if someone says "If you don't like X don't interact with it!" that can reasonably understood as a negative statement.
Except they didn't say that, did they? What they said verbatim was "simply do not read it" which is a much more reasonable tone than how you seemingly interpreted it.
Whether it's negative or not also depends on the context which in this case is a proposed solution to literally the most negative and upset-sounding post in this chain: the one that started it. What does your ML model think of "I'm gonna throw up on my keyboard"?
> As a free person I think you need to have the right to make bad decisions and accept their consequences, as long as those do not impact others.
Peak Libertarian fantasy to think this should apply here. Unfortunately, the real world is never so ordered and predictable that you can know for certain whether the country road you're about to speed on is completely empty. Just like you, the rest of us have the right to use that road as well whenever we please.
Even if you were the sole victim in such an accident, you're ignoring all the second order societal costs. Who will pay for the police time spent investigating the accident, delivering the news to your loved ones, and the cost of bereavement leave on their employers? Who's going to pay for removing the wreck and fixing whatever infrastructure (e.g. the road surface) you might have damaged? What about the mental health effects on the unfortunate neighbour who discovers your mangled corpse? And if you're only injured, how about the costs of an ambulance and medical treatment? We don't all live in the USA where that is (supposedly) borne by the individual.
Whether you like them or not, speed limits exist for good reasons.
> doing 35 mph in a 30 mph really going to kill anybody?
Demonstrably yes. Check out this study by the UK's Transport Research Laboratory. The chances of killing a pedestrian rise dramatically from around 10% at 30mph. The likelihood roughly doubles at 35mph. Remember that kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity, not linearly, so even small increases in speed can have dramatic effects on accident outcomes: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...
Regardless, you do not actually need to enable developer settings to install APKs from unknown sources (at least, not on my Samsung). When you open an APK from within another app (e.g. Google Drive or WhatsApp), Android "helpfully" forwards you straight to the relevant security settings page, allowing you to immediately toggle the "Install unknown apps" permission for that specific app. It's a streamlined flow, only a couple of taps, no scrolling/searching/reading, therefore likely easy to coach a victim into performing.
So, I expect what the Android team is alluding to in the original post is to enable additional friction like you describe.