partial_accumen

To my complete lack of surprise, Russia is seems to be a freer country for free software developers than the United States.

What does the United States have to do with this? Since when is Finland part of the United States? Linus Torvalds is Finnish.

Most laws aren’t retroactive. If you do the thing before it’s illegal, then you skated by. That could very easily be the answer here, especially as most all the physical automation is barely existent. If a company deploys now, they don’t pay the tax, but they will when they upgrade models.

You’ll need to provide your definition of “physical automation” for the purposes of your argument. As it stands that is NOT clear, which is part of the quagmire of all the Automation Tax approaches.

As to code automation, same rules apply. Excel macros get by, but I would apply the tax on companies that replace white collar jobs via SaaS or other applications as their core businesses model,

What does this mean? If a company is still running on-prem MS Exchange servers for company email, then the law passes, then the company switches to Office365 for email instead, does your law hit that company with an Automation tax? If so, how would the tax be applied? Amount of spend on Office365? Amount spent on salaries of former MS Exchange administrators? How long would the tax apply? A year? Forever?

What I’m also seeing is that all encumbant companies (shielded from the automation tax because they already put automation in place) would have an advantage forever against existing companies trying to make automation changes (and being hit with the tax).

Another loophole I see is companies completely liquidating or selling to a newly formed company so that there are “no jobs lost to automation, because this company from day 1 has always used automation”.

or for that line of buisness for vendors that do a lot of things. It would have to be refined as to where you draw the line, but you could.

I don’t know what this means.

Can you give a concrete example of your Automation tax? Situation before your law goes into place, the law passing, then the Automation tax a company would pay when they make a specific change in your example?

The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.

I’m all for UBI, but the automation tax is a quagmire.

In this theoretical new tax, tell me what qualifies to be taxed?

• An Atlas autonomous robot? Sure, absolutely. How about instead a hydraulic arm that is controlled by a human? Previously there were 4 humans that moved the widget from A to B, but now they have 1 human operating a joystick for a net loss of 3 jobs. Is that taxed?
• How about an Excel macro? Prior to the macro, there was one person filling in the spreadsheet the entire 8 hour workday. Now that person was replaced with an Excel macro that runs in 5 minutes with one click. That is automation too right? What would you tax? The cost of the person replaced?
• Who pays the tax? A company that buys an Atlas robot after the law is passed? Absolutely. How about a company that bought Atlas robots 24 hours before the law passed? How about the company that bought them a year before the law passed? Now apply the Excel macro automation. Excel macros have around since the 1990s. Are you going to go back to the first macro run and tax every company retroactively? How about if the macro only does part of the work?

Automation tax is a nice idea but a nightmare to try to make in policy. Additionally, it will have a stifling effect on any business efficiency efforts after it exists.

If the tax is based upon workers losing their jobs to automation, it will have a massive knock on effect limiting new hires. A company would be very leery of hiring a worker if they could be accused (and taxed) of automation replacement when that worker is let go.

In 1970 there were 1.5 million UAW auto workers. Today there are 400k. source Yes, UAW membership isn’t the only type of auto worker, yes there are other factors that cause auto decline besides robots. However, I challenge you to point to a modern large scale automotive manufacturing factory that doesn’t use robots.

The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.

So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.

You’re changing the problem that is being solved. The CURRENT work process is to use a human with all the benefits and detriments of a human. The idea would be to drop one of these Atlas robots in without changing the work or work environment. Perhaps there is a more efficient human doing the work from 8am-5pm and only some work needed from 5pm-8am. An Atlas robot would be perfect use case here. You don’t have to redesign the work or the environment for a human or robot to switch out to do the same work.

What you’re describing is changing the nature of the task or the environment to optimize for a robot.

• Flat floors? Just use wheels instead of legs.
• Short distance to cover? Drop the entire torso and head and just be an arm with a camera.

Boston Dynamics already has that robot. Its called Handle:

As you can see, its a wheeled robot with an arm, but this robot couldn’t do the task that the Atlas robot can in the video because it doesn’t have the fine motor control or fingers to grasp the engine covers, nor does Handle have the ability to deal with those soft pliable racks where Atlas is placing the covers.

At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.

My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with “Engine covers”. That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.

Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.

Are the largest power consumption steps of semi conductor product happening 24/7? Could we simply align manufacturing times with useful solar production times? So no need to store all the solar power, with the idea of consuming most of it immediately for manufacturing. Then pass a run that Semi conductor fabs have to build out their own solar arrays to cover most of their power consumption.

I mean, “give access” and “double your bitcoin” are somewhat textbook phrases for scams…

You’re underscoring my point. I don’t think either of those two exact phrases were use in the scam video. In my post I was communicating the paraphrased things they were saying. Its like you’re finding the words in the word search because I circled them, then handed it to you, and you’re saying “there’s the word, its in the circle!”.

I didn’t commit to memory the exact language used because as soon as I figured out it was a scam I had no reason to remember their exact words. If you go looking you might find an example of the video. Its beyond my interest though.

It sounds like a scam because I’m distilling all the things that told me it was a scam. I’m glad you can take what I’m tell you is a scam and say “yes thats a scam”. Congrats?

Musk also does stupid stuff that loses money. He’s (likely illegally) giving away money to buy votes in some states. Musk is also a known cryptobro. The idea that Musk would be giving away crypto to try to build influence or attention isn’t far fetched.

I saw one of these and it took me a second to realize it was a scam. I’m a spaceflight geek and as much as a tool as Musk is, there’s heavy overlap in spaceflight and SpaceX.

On Youtube there was a purported “live launch update” livestream. I was confused because I knew there were no launches scheduled that day of any kind much less SpaceX. What I saw was Musk on a stage outdoors apparently talking about a new SpaceX crypto product and the voice, which sounded exactly like Musk’s talked about giving away free crypto the only thing you had to do was buy it, then share you wallet info and Musk would double it.

Besides this smelling very suspect, I realized that there were never close shots when musk was talking, so you couldn’t see the lips match the words being said audibly and I knew it was a scam.

I can absolutely see how the greedy would get scammed by this.

It might be interesting to set up a Russia Linux box as a honeypot.

booking flights without user intervention.”

“I’m flying from New York to Chicago. Why the hell do I have a 18 hour layover in Buffalo NY then a 8 hour layover in Peoria IL?! Who booked this damn flight?!”

“Jarvis, bring up youtube and show me a video how to cook the perfect brisket, and as soon as the ads start mute the volume and attempt to hit the ‘skip ad’ button as soon as it appears, resume volume when the cooking content returns”

Yes. Which was not the topic being discussed.

The idea was that Google Chrome would lose a significant market share because of this. And, on the off chance that somehow happens, that is basically a death sentence for all the browsers dependent on Chromium.

Hmm, okay if thats the only thing you’re willing to discuss, I’ll respond directly to that then.

The idea that Google is going to have significant market share loss from removing V2 manifest support is laughable. This is especially true if you’re saying the market share for Chromium will decline specifically for uBlock Origin no longer working. As of right now there are:

• only 40 million users of uBlock Origin on Chromium browsers source
• over 5.52 billion people using the internet as of this month. source

So if 100% of uBlock Origin users stopped using Chromium browsers because of lack of uBlock Origin that would only represent a loss of .769%. Not even 1%.

Further, I’m betting Google would continue to keep development on Chromium going even with significant market share loss to some other browser. Google was around for the late 1990s and early 2000s when Microsoft absolutely dominated the web browser market and had the ability to literally change the specifications of the web on a whim and locking out non-Microsoft systems from the full web experience. A company Google’s size (and business model) cannot be safe if a competitor can change the web standards for the web client (browser) that Google products run in.

I say all of this as a loving user of Firefox with uBlock Origin, that I’m posting this comment with right now. However, I’m realistic about the situation as it exists today.

So… basically everyone but Firefox (and maybe Safari?) are based on Chromium to some degree?

Yes.

Because if there is not massive amounts of money and resources pumped into Chromium development? Vivaldi and Brave will be up a creek

Well, the browser will function just fine with Manifest V2 support removed in July 2025, but lots of addons will no longer work.

And considering basically everyone but Firefox (and maybe Safari?) are based on Chromium to some degree…

Opera Browser (before it was sold to a Chinese company) did have its own browser engine before it went Chromium. It was called Presto. source. The team that used to own/run Opera before the sale to China formed again to make the Vivaldi browser.

Vivaldi and Brave will continue to support Manifest V2 addons (like uBlock Origin) until July 2025. The article doesn’t say how long Opera will continue, but I’m guessing its the same deadline of July too.

I really like there is now a legal definition Alcon has put together that any association of Musk with a brand is a risk to the brand.

Ok, let’s grant that as true (by that I mean we will ignore arbitration as a whole thing).

No need to ignore your arbitration distraction. As a customers you can opt-out of arbitration. I did. I can sue Tesla.

“You may opt out of arbitration within 30 days after signing this Agreement by sending a letter to: Tesla, Inc.; P.O. Box 15430; Fremont, CA 94539-7970, stating your name, Vehicle Identification Number, and intent to opt out of the arbitration provision. If you do not opt out, this agreement to arbitrate overrides any different arbitration agreement between us, including any arbitration agreement in a lease or finance contract.” source

Suddenly Tesla stock drops, again, and they push an update that puts remote unlock and navigation and heated seats behind a subscription requirement to boost revenue.

The only updates that Tesla pushes out OTA are recall fixes. Other patches are pushed over wifi. If you don’t configure wifi, the car won’t download patches. I’m currently running 4 patch releases (about 3 months) behind. I know a couple of folks that are intentionally running at a patch level over a year old.

Your car will lose those functions immediately with no input from you. Then you file a lawsuit. You will not be granted an emergency summary judgment. Which means your car will immediately lack those capabilities.

Assuming none of the above applies? Sure. A company can break the law too and no actions undo the lawbreaking the only remedy the justice system can offer is after-the-fact and even then the plaintiffs may not be able to be made whole. I’m not sure what your point is.

Absolute best case scenario in 5-7 years your car will get the features back after it has turned into a pile of rust.

Cars don’t turn int a pile of rust in 5-7 years, even Tesla cars don’t. Do I need to link a used car page showing, now 12 year old, 2012 Tesla cars for sale that aren’t piles of rust? Also, I think you’re blowing Tesla paid features out of proportion because of what you’ve heard about other car makers.

Tesla doesn’t have subscription or even paid seat heaters with the very rare exception of a short run of Model 3 Standard Range cars, and even then it was just the REAR seat heaters, and even then it was a one-time $300 payment. This is similar to the other much talked about “battery unlock” feature, which again, was only on a short run of cars (4 years ago I think?) that Tesla put a larger battery in the car, but didn’t charge customers for it. Later they offered a paid feature for customers to unlock the extra portion of the battery, which Tesla never claimed was there and customer never paid for to begin with. The only other paid features are “acceleration boost” which I didn’t pay for so there would be nothing lost.

The “subscription seat heaters” was BMW, not Tesla.

The expected outcome is you will get a class action settlement (which again, you actually signed away your rights to) that cuts you a check for a few hundred dollars.

As you point out, most people can’t sue Tesla, but I can because I opted-out, so there likely won’t be enough people to form a Class to have a Class Action. So if I sued, my case would likely go forward by itself. We started this discussion with the included Tesla Standard Connectivity feature. Since subscribing to Premium Connectivity (priced at $99/year) would be a remedy that is easily converted to dollars, I could even sue in Small Claims Court without a lawyer. The max judgement in Small Claims Court is $6000 (in my state anyway) so since the prior terms say I was entitled to Standard Connectivity for the life of the car, I could sue for 60 years of service and still be inside the claim limit.

You signed away your right to sue them.

I can absolutely sue Tesla.

There are many legitimate complaints about Full Self Drive. I’m happy to respond to you but which specific complaints about FSD are you referring to?