nicker · HackerTrans

I wish there was a way to hold legislators accountable/liable for badly written laws. Our statute books are overflowing with junk. It is like we have a mammoth code base with no source control and no one even trying to clean it up. Just a stream of special interest patches being thrown on top.

nicker

15 anni fadiscuss

At TechDirt <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we...; they argue that by default the photos are in the public domain. We don't want to fall into the trap of assuming everything must have some copyright owner.

nicker

15 anni fadiscuss

I'd prefer it just redirect to the top of news.ycombinator.com/. The ranking of stories change over time, so at some point "more" has no meaning when the underlying list has changed. Since everyone who sees the expired link page, goes back to the top, the site should redirect there for me automatically.

I guess another option is to have the URL be like: http://news.ycombinator.com/items?start=31 then clicking "more" sends you to whatever the current items 61-90 are.

nicker

16 anni fadiscuss

Does anyone else see the irony of public campaign financing as a solution to problems explained in the this article?

In the same way that companies distort regulations of their industry to thwart competition, politicians will ensure that public campaign financing rules will prevent newcomers (e.g. tea party, green party, etc) from ever getting elected.

nicker

16 anni fadiscuss

The problem with passwords is that ideally they are long random strings and different for every site. But humans are not good at remembering such passwords, so they tend pick shorter passwords and to re-use them on lots of sites.

But computers are good at remembering lots of long random strings, so why have we not developed a standard for site log-ons which the browser chooses the passwords and stores it securely for the user?

nicker

16 anni fadiscuss

First, it costs a lot (accounts and attorneys) to game the tax system. So only "the rich" can afford it. The net result is progressive taxes wind up hurting the "doing well but not rich yet". Second, if I go to a store and buy a chair the sales tax rate is flat. Everyone pays the same rate. That seems fair. But if I make a chair and sell it, the income tax I pay on the gain depends on how much income I've made that year. Thus two people making the same chair and selling it for the same gain would pay different amounts of income tax. That unequal taxing of the same gain is what is unfair about a progressive tax rate.

It's much harder to split up personal income. The flat tax is not an income tax. It is a tax on the creation of wealth. Most people think a flat tax means just changes our current tax system to have just one tax rate. The Flat Tax is a complete re-architecture of what and how to tax.

nicker

16 anni fadiscuss

A non-zero second deriviate invites gaming. The tax rate (e.g. 20% or 35%) is per "unit". If the marginal rate is too high, you can always break up into smaller units (e.g not get married or split up a company) or defer realizing income until next year, then your overall tax burden is lower. A flat rate means that scale and timing do not effect the amount of taxes paid.

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