There are exactly one-and-a-half points of his bio in the text (one being cut off halfway). The rest is a list of relatives. If that doesn't imply a judgement based on his relatives, it's just completely pointless.
By that logic everyone and everything is corrupt, monitored, etc. Including the hardware you might install your own VPN node on, all messenger apps, all phone lines, the mail, and so on. Your best friends are all spies. Your bedroom is bugged.
That would mean there is absolutely no way to improve your privacy and you might as well do nothing.
As others pointed out, this is break-ins, not cars being stolen. Typical cost of a break-in is one window. I have no idea how much that costs, but let's say $1000, which is probably 10x too much. That comes out to $1000 x 0.0364 = $36/yr.
How long do US citizen stay with a single healthcare provider (/insurance)? If, say, only 50% are still with the same provider at age 50 as they were at age 30, there is a discount on the benefits of preventative measures compared to single-payer systems.
I believe they may be referring to the idea that not everything is consumed in the year it’s produced. Infrastructure, for example, is useful years or even decades after it is built (and, presumably, counted in GDP).
I’ve seen that error in just about any discussion of charitable giving, including on HN. I doubt it’s due to a lack of knowledge/skills, because these people would tend to give away all their earnings in the belief to somehow make a profit.
So you left Twitter 5+ years ago expecting them to soon fail, and you feel vindicated by the very-much-still-existing Twitter of today purging some accounts?
Building roads, writing traffic rules or enforcing them just isn't amendable to optimisation using your preferred mechanism of free-market economics. Or, more accurately: competition only works for rather large competitive difference needed to overcome the natural friction introduced by the difficulties of moving.
It's painful to see that people seem to not even be aware anymore that our societies have yet another organising principle beyond capitalism, namely democracy.
Sure, you never agreed to be somewhat dependent on "society". But there just isn't enough land to live in the anarcho-libertarian fantasy where you don't have to find compromises. And the standard hyperbole of the "threat of violence" makes even less sense if you unquestioningly champion capitalism while rejecting democracy, because capitalism also relies on the ultimate threat of violence, as anyone not paying their rent will notice sooner or later.
Private prisons seem to be a good counterexample here. Not only does the profit motive lead to inhumane conditions and perverse corruption, such as the Chicago(?) judge getting a kickback for every juvenile sent into the system. The outsourcing of that "monopoly on power" OP decried exaggerates any problems inherent in the government<->citizen relation: civil servants at least have a certain professional ethos, swear an oath, are usually invested in a long-term career, have pensions to look forward to (and not risk), are subject to far more rules (FOIA etc), can mostly not escape liability through bankruptcy, and so on.
Privatised security is an almost prototypical dystopian nightmare. Look no further than TSA. Millgram might have fudged his data, but the idea that giving someone a uniform and power over others tends to awry is still somewhat plausible.
Other examples: those rent-a-goons shooting civilians in Iraq for sport. (With, by the way, double the salary and many military toys not relevant to the job at hand). The US health system also comes to mind, only that you would have even less choice to chose your local police short of moving.
> Is it a coincidence that this got fixed just weeks before Chromium-based Edge is due to be released?
The Venn-diagram of people that care about this bug and care about the new Edge can't be much bigger than, well, you. So I'd actually go with "coincidence" here.
It's commendable that the author counteracts the tendency towards cynicism with the occasional rebuttal, although to fully embrace the spirit of kindness, I would maybe skip the Dilbert reference.
Remember: If everyone really were as stupid and/or evil as some of these maxims postulate, it'd be highly unlikely that you just happen to be the exception. Also: management, design, law, marketing, journalism, social sciences, and politics are all disciplines just as challenging as programming or engineering.
And if you can't think of any reason why one of those fields should be difficult, you're just as likely to better at it as that field's practitioners being better at your job.