Sometimes I wonder, when did HN went so wrong and is full of comments that do not further the discussion but purely result into flamewar and ridiculous homilies.
I think it is very complicated. CAF comes in many forms, Judicial AF and Administrative AF. In many cases you can't even reach the courts as the government attorney needs to allow the case to reach the court.
If it is CBP that confiscates your cash, it is supposed to inform DOJ about it and then you are supposed to reach out to DOJ to get it back. Now despite the law CBP simply refused to inform DOJ, as you have to chase this alphabet soup of agencies. In most cases CBP offers to keep a portion of the cash and wants to return rest of the money as settlement.
CAF is a program that should be completely abolished.
Sorry but this comparison does not hold. Australia or anyone else is more than welcome to ban Facebook and other companies but because of very nature of internet would needlessly waste resources.
Few things to note:
1. Just because Facebook is from California and LocalBook Inc. is local does not mean LocalBook would be any better. For sheer scale, the Localbook is more likely to be corrupt.
2. Australia's regulation is hare brained. Sorry, but such moves are expected from third world despotic dictators and not a country that calls itself developed.
3. Shouldn't we all cheer the fact that at least for Australia Facebook will not be handling "news' thus wont be influencing people ?
Yup. Tesla has built a real profitable company with a decent car and has brought a real shift in thinking about the cars of the future. If there is ever a real self driving car then I wont own it but rather rent it like Uber.
Waymo on other hand sounds like a cool engineering project that is not going anywhere and Google will shut it down in next 10 years.
This is 100% true. Indian laws around marriages are heavily discriminatory based on gender and religion. Marriage has become problematic especially for educated men and if you plan to marry better cover all your bases really well.
> why should my orthopedic troubles be a risk factor for providing insurance to cover COVID-19 treatment?
I think Google/Fitbit might actually end up benefiting someone like you. If you have a pre-existing condition and if insurance company is denying your normal insurance it tells me that the insurance market in India is highly inefficient. This like like leaving money on the table and sounds very stupid in the insurance company's part. What I feel is happening is that insurance is often a side product for some companies which they accomplish as best effort.
Google/Fitbit might actually help insurance companies gain better data and offer far more optimized products even they themselves do not have that capability. Of course individual rights to privacy etc. should be protected and government has a very legitimate role to play here. But monetization of health data would be beneficial to consumers.
The general logic is left leaning policies end up creating the problems that people do not like with California. Climate change paranoia, massive spending on things that never materialize, failure to upgrade infra, idiotic restrictions on private businesses and so on.
Because no one wants to reinvent a complex wheel of login/acls and identity management ?
When you are buying a product owned by facebook what login do you expect ? Google ? Is it okay if a German citizen starts obeying American laws on German soil instead of German ? It makes no sense.
Imagine being the lawyer in FB who cleared this, obviously he was right to clear this because there is fundamentally nothing wrong with this, nothing illegal or immoral. Even as VP or PM I do not see why anyone would object to a Facebook login on a device owned by Facebook. Heck, even my website supports login via Facebook.
Clearly German government officials do not have a job to do so they are picking on this sort of things.
Well, American immigration law differentiates between people based on where they were born, part of the reason why many of us have to waste our time working for FANG when in reality we would like to start something of our own.
Discrimination in law is bound to have discriminatory consequences down the road for the folks. It is very common practice of citizens to demand a premium for being citizens from those who are on a visa and are stuck in 100 year green card queue.
I do not think you understand the complexities of the visa laws of USA, so instead of judging someone please spend time educating yourself first and then make comments here.
There are two major classical music traditions in India. Hindustani (Indian which is influenced by both Hinduism and later Islamic contribution, Carnatic which is mostly Hindu).
People familiar with Indian music can easily distinguish between classical music and non classical music but for a layman like me the test is :
1. Is the piece being based on some well known Raga (Raga - is a mood or a tune in very rough sense).
2. Is it being sung by a person with years of training in classical music which is learned from a Guru.
Indian railways website is very slow and pathetic (so bad that there are lengthy discussion on HN about it. search for IRCTC).
Given the shortage of tickets thousands of people try to book tickets at 7am when the window to book a certain class of tickets call `Tatkal` opens. Thousands of people are trying to book the exact same tickets from say 7am and by 7:10 am all tickets get sold out.
Now, if you could prefill all the forms and just press submit you might be able to buy the tickets before others. Railways website specifically tries to not allow any kind of pre-filling. The app merely bypasses that restriction. (I have written scripts in past to do just that when I lived there).
Railways is a classic colonial government system and operates pretty much as if India is still a British colony. They have their own police force called RPF which arrested the boy under Railways act 1989 for “unauthorised business of procuring and supplying railway tickets” which the boy did not do at all. Not to mention, the railways form has a captcha so it was not even a programmatic submission. There are railways mafias in India who buy tickets by bribing railways staff and I suspect these people are responsible for getting this boy jailed as his solution helped more genuine passengers to book their tickets by undercutting the "agents".
It remains to be seen how the courts apply the standard here but it will probably take around 10-15 years for the courts to come to a verdict.
Personal Rant: When I was in India, I had the misfortune of relying on Indian railways to travel home from college. I was so pissed that I was determined to get out of India so I have to never deal with Indian railways. I had tried all possible ways to hack the booking system and had my own chrome extensions to fill up the forms.
That is why I think it is important USA's monopoly is eventually broken by Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian or French companies. Yup, all the platforms will be flawed but we can continue to post nipples on some and compare Xi to Pooh on some.
Lump of labor fallacy is at least 100 years old and yet Americans and administration quotes it as if it is a gospel. Americans have a full right to control their borders but citing "wage depression" is pure nonsense. There is no such evidence. ZILCH.