NateNate60

@NateNate60@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a hearing on data centers, a resident of Tyrone Township, Michigan, asked a simple question: Have you signed a non-disclosure agreement? Officials refused to answer⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Contract law is a branch of the civil law and breach of contract gives rise to civil liability.

  Let’s talk about legal bribes vs illegal bribes.

  A “legal bribe” would be something like offering some crazy incentive to a councillor that is tied to the project being approved, like saying “We’re thinking about donating $100,000 to your re-election campaign” or “Your son should apply for our data analyst position with an annual salary of $100,000”. There is no explicit agreement, just a wink and a nod. But the person being bribed knows that the receipt of the reward is contingent on their acting according to the bribe offerer’s wishes. This form of bribery is legal in the United States and actually constitutionally protected according to the infamously fucked-up Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. If the councillor doesn’t do what the data centre company does, they’ll simply not receive the donation or their son won’t get the job.

  An “illegal bribe” is just a classic bribe: an agreement that we will pay you X dollars cash if you do Y. That’s illegal in the US and carries strict penalties. But since it’s illegal, if the money has already been paid and the bribe recipient doesn’t do what was agreed, or the bribe offerer doesn’t pay after the bribe recipient does what they’re told, there is absolutely no recourse to the legal system because courts will not enforce contracts for illegal activities.

  The NDA is probably a legal bribe. The company invites the councillor to discuss the data centre project at the fanciest restaurant in town, makes them sign an NDA that “all details of the meeting will remain confidential”, then discusses the possibility of the campaign donation or nepo job offer at the meeting. Then the company pays for the meal on the company card. All of that is technically legal, but of course, it’s horribly corrupt so if the locals caught wind of it, they’d run the councillor out of town. Entire municipal councils have been recalled from office before as a result of unpopular data centre projects.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Still waiting for a response...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  True, true

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Still waiting for a response...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s WAY too much mustard sauce. That hot dog is ruined.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a hearing on data centers, a resident of Tyrone Township, Michigan, asked a simple question: Have you signed a non-disclosure agreement? Officials refused to answer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Michigan Constitution Art. 4 § 11 protects state legislators from liability for speech in the legislature. A similar clause that applies to local councillors would prevent these sorts of contracts because they wouldn’t be binding; the councillors could openly violate the non-disclosure agreement during the council sessions and would be immune from liability for breaching the agreement. That being said, being legally allowed to speak won’t persuade a person who doesn’t want to speak from staying silent. If the company in question offered a huge bribe to not talk, that’s not something that can be solved by the legislature. That’s a problem for the prosecutor’s office.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox wanted 77M Game Pass subscribers by 2026 — today it has less than half that⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s okay, Microsoft can just have Copilot subscribe 40 million times to pad out the numbers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s this related thing in linguistics which is quite fun, relating to the terms loanword and calque, which both mean “words originating from foreign languages”: The word calque is a loanword, and the word loanword is a calque.

  A calque is a literal translation of the components of a word. One of the most commonly calqued words across all languages is skyscraper (in Chinese, it’s 摩天大楼, “sky-touching large building”). The word loanword is a calque of German Lehnwort (lehnen, to borrow + Wort, word).

  A loanword is a word which is taken directly from another language and, with exceptions to fit the receiving language’s grammar and pronunciation, is not translated. An example of an English word which has been calqued into many languages is “okay”. The word calque is a loanword from French, where it means “copy”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No, I don’t think you’d follow through. I also think you knew you were going to lose that wager.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you think you’re right, you’re more than welcome to take me up on my wager and win $20 for the charity of your choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re free to propose alternative charities. Maybe even a local food bank or some organisation. The point is: I’m happy to put my money where my mouth is, and I don’t think you are. In fact, even if you lose the bet, I don’t think you’d do it anyway. After all, I’m just some guy on the Internet.

  I don’t have “faith” in the US legal system. I just know more than you about how it works and how it doesn’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll be willing to make a wager with you. If David Hearn is sentenced to at least 12 months imprisonment, I will donate $20 to an international human rights charity of your choice. If their case is dismissed, he is acquitted, or he is sentenced to less than 12 months imprisonment, you have to donate $20 to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

  Do you agree?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Unlike what most people seem to think, the US criminal court system in a manner that would allow someone to go to prison for years for this. Trump prosecutors have a reputation for poor performance in court. Grand juries refuse to indict these defendants for obviously trivial crimes, and trial juries will acquit.

  They tried to charge someone with assaulting a federal agent for lobbing a sandwich at a Border Patrol goon during a protest. The Trump-appointed chief prosecutor in Washington made a TikTok about how they were coming down hard on protestors. It went to trial. The jury acquitted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Regardless of whether any beatings occurred, when someone is imprisoned in your country, they are under your care, and you are responsible for them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s malnutrition, beatings, or if he just smacked his head against the wall on his own accord really hard: it is the responsibility of the custodian to ensure the good and proper health of those in their custody. That is the position of international human rights law. It doesn’t even matter if a prisoner decides to kill themselves, a death in custody is always the responsibility of the custodian and in that case it’d still be the custodian’s fault for allowing the creation of circumstances that allows prisoners to kill themselves.

  It is not usual for a person to suddenly become comatose while in custody. And even if that did happen, it was North Korea’s positive responsibility to notify consular officials and the family of that, and deliver proper medical care to them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I will...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Old investing adage: The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I will...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  and sactions evasion

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I will...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you for repeating the same thing that I said

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I will...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I like to compare the Bitcoin price chart to the stats on a roulette wheel. You can’t really predict what causes it to go one way or the other, but you do know that it will eventually go back.

  I mean, Bitcoin is the one thing that just won’t die. Every time its price collapses, people declare it dead, but a few years later it somehow comes roaring back. If you think Bitcoin is worthless just because it has no utility and no person smarter than a chimpanzee would invest in it, by God you are overestimating the intelligence of finance and crypto bros.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dog⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate fire department robots. Those bitches can get fucked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dog⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate police robots. Those bitches can get fucked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do airports place a cap on 10,000 USD for undeclared cash?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is to combat money laundering and tax fraud. I’ll give three examples.

  I saw an episode of Border Security Australia where a woman has previously claimed a VAT refund on a pair of earrings worth tens of thousands of dollars. As you may know, many countries allow you to claim a refund of VAT on products intended for export, as VAT is intended to be a tax on consumption. But customs agents caught her wearing the earrings, meaning she had not actually exported them and essentially cheated the tax authority out of thousands of dollars in VAT.

  Last year, during a trip to Hong Kong, my mother withdrew 20,000 USD in cash from her American bank and took it with her in person, and then deposited it in her Hong Kong bank account. It was just easier to do it this way since an international wire transfer would have been expensive and slow. She declared it to both US customs and Hong Kong customs, and in both cases they just checked her passport, noted down the transaction, and let her through with minimal questions. It’s intended to be an anti-money-laundering check. If that money has been obtained through crimes, most criminals would not willingly disclose that to customs, and it’s such a large amount of cash that anyone doing so must be trying to move money internationally and not just pay for a holiday. There is literally no penalty or tax and minimal hassle to declare it, so pretty much whoever is trying to sneak large amounts of cash or gold or whatever through customs is either (1) very ignorant or (2) up to no good. Further questioning usually allows customs agents to separate the first category from the second.

  On the topic of China, there are strict capital controls in place to prevent wealthier Mainland Chinese individuals from moving all their money abroad. This policy is to encourage domestic spending and investment and it also has the effect of drastically lowering borrowing costs for the Chinese government. Moving large amounts of cash or gold in person is the most obvious way to evade these limits so Chinese customs has to take a strict stance against such behaviour in order to prevent China’s airports from becoming a massive hole in their capital controls.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polymarket bet: Will Trump praise Allah again by April 15?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Polymarket rules are not laws. “Oops I broke the rules you caught me lol, looks like my crypto wallet’s banned now so I’ll have to make a new one in 5 seconds”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polymarket bet: Will Trump praise Allah again by April 15?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “It’s not gambling and it’s not an unregulated securities market. Think of it as a bribe to encourage political insiders to spill their secrets.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Emissions go brrrr⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t live in Seattle, but the Costco locations near me also regularly have long queues. That rarely happens at other filling stations. There isn’t a shortage of gasoline currently; it’s just expensive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The majority of people will ignore advertisements. Usually less than 10% of people will respond to advertisements and an even small percentage will buy something. Out of 742,000 advertisement impressions, they’d be lucky to get 1,000 sales.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, but that was a joke about bicycles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m guessing most people are not buying Macs if they want to play games on it. Macs are excellent work computers but not suitable for anything more intensive than the Sims 4. Which is fine if you only want to play that, but most people buy Macs because they want to do work on them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d be pretty impressed if you showed me a car with better fuel economy than a bicycle. I don’t know about you lot, but I haven’t had to refuel my bicycle a single time since I bought it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Many things can be true at once. Is it true that Steam controls a dominating share of the PC gaming market? Yes. Is it true that when a company enters such a market position, that they can use that position to engage in anti-competitive and anti-consumer behaviour? Yes. Has Valve actually engaged in such behaviour? No.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any reason not to charge my laptop with a USB C phone charger?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The required input for the computer is usually inscribed on the chassis at the bottom. However, the text is usually faint and can be easily rubbed off after the computer has been used for some time. Mine says 20 V 2.25 A.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any reason not to charge my laptop with a USB C phone charger?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are using the laptop at the same time, there is a chance that the charger may not provide enough power to the computer to operate and force it to temporarily draw from the battery to supplement the power from the charger. This causes additional wear on the battery.

  For example, if you plug in a 15 W charger and the computer wants to draw 20 W, it will draw it from the battery. Spikes in power consumption are not uncommon during ordinary use as the CPU will temporarily engage turbo mode during certain tasks, such as when it is loading a Web page or starting a program. Depending on your operating system, plugging the charger in may also cause the OS to disable battery conservation features which leads to more frequent spikes in power consumption.

  None of this would be a problem if, for example, your charger delivered 45 W of power, because during those spikes, it just means the battery receives slightly less power as more of it is consumed by the computer.

  If you are not using the laptop at the same

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come in American classrooms they make another language an elective. Why not teach our kids as many languages possible that way if we go somewhere we will kind of have uper hand?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, so let me put it this way:

  Housing might, in theory, be guaranteed in your home town. This is a strength of China’s system, I grant, and it’s one of the few examples of one of their socialist policies which actually somewhat works. Their national pension scheme is the other thing I can think of that functions decently well.

  But it’s certainly no Soviet Union where if you go up to local officials and say “I have no job and I want to work”, they’ll find something for you to do pretty quickly.