Hacker News: actuator

New comment by actuator in "Ask HN: What's an appropriate compensation counter offer in London 2024?"

actuator — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 15:45:13 +0000

It is a stupid hidden tax thing. They don't tax the first 12.5K of income, if it is below 100K. They start reducing that 12.5K limit as your income goes up, for every £2, it reduces by £1.

So, if you earn 100K, the first 12.5K of your income is not taxable

If you earn 105K, the first 10K is not taxable

If you earn 125K, there is no non taxable amount.

So the tax rate gets applied two times, that's why the strange thing between 100K and 125K happens

New comment by actuator in "U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected"

actuator — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 15:21:56 +0000

> You know, the US spends most of our government money on old people too (social security, medicare, etc.).

My whole point was how these issues are less of an issue for US, again comparing with UK

US has better age demographic distribution than UK

The net tax burden on an average UK person is way higher compared to US while having worse average wages. Quick googling shows per capita income tax collected in US is $15K, while in UK it is $21K

GDP per capita of UK is $46K compared to US's 70K

If even after having high taxes, a country is having problem funding social services, then that's a big issue as the high taxes are meant to take care of that. US doesn't have this issue as taxes being lower, people can use the money not spent on tax on funding the social care things for themselves.

Also, overall US is still an attractive place for high earners so it will keep on attracting people from those segments which will boost its tax revenues and lead to decline of Europe. As while western Europe might be still a good place for people on median wages or below, USA might be much better for people on the other end

New comment by actuator in "U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected"

actuator — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 15:01:04 +0000

Most countries in Western Europe have the social net curse blogging them down. The high tax, high social care system only works if the country is on a good growth track. As more people turn old and retire, someone has to pay for those. With wage stagnation in most normal occupations and lack of growth, the way they have tried to tackle this is with increase in immigration, which in turn keeps wages low in low paying sectors. Also, unlike US which does integration really well, this is not true for Europe where high immigration is leading to even frictions because of lack of integration.

On top of that, tech emerging as a big industry which forms a big part of the whole economic output of a country, has led to Europe losing out to US. Although only China through thier protectionism has been safe from that.

You can see this in the commentary about UK politics, where they don't have money to fund NHS and NHS wages haven't grown which has bogged down their healthcare system. Most of the manufacturing ecosystem is completely degraded. Productivity is at a complete toss as well, as they are not even able to build high speed rail well now, which for a social net country like UK should be of paramount importance.

To combat this, they have increased taxation, either through freezing slabs or moving down tax slabs. This penalises people in high wage professions and it leads to loss of competitiveness.

New comment by actuator in "Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices"

actuator — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 02:48:56 +0000

I agree, also converted 19th century warehouse has a nice ring to it. No one will probably pay the premium for a converted 5 year old building

New comment by actuator in "Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices"

actuator — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:52:26 +0000

I have seen few buildings in London itself which were warehouses and now have these weird shaped apartments with high ceiling height and a separate floor bedroom arrangement. A lot was kept from the old structure, some of them even make the plumbing added look more of an industrial design

New comment by actuator in "Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices"

actuator — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:38:18 +0000

If companies are letting go of real estate as some employees want to go remote, why would the said employees who are remote want to stick in the center of city where these offices are, but not go out a bit outside of the center or even suburbs.

If they do move out, the demand of real estate in the center anyway goes down

New comment by actuator in "Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices"

actuator — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:36:30 +0000

Eh, there are quite a few apartment buildings in every major city which used to be something else like warehouses

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 13:09:34 +0000

That is wildly inaccurate. If anything among the Middle East countries India is aligned more with UAE, which till recently Qatar was more at odds with

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 10:12:41 +0000

I think the problem is not that they won't criticise them, it shows that they lack editorial freedom, which means any coverage even if global matters coming from them should be looked at with suspicion, like what would be Qatar monarchy's view on this global issue

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:48:15 +0000

Wow, you are trying to build up a ethno-religious conspiracy, seems uncalled for

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:44:31 +0000

> They are pretty much the equivalent to the BBC

I am sorry, but they aren't. This is just false equivalence, you can just go read BBC's coverage of UK politics and you will see criticism of their government

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:42:38 +0000

Well, I did write state sponsored propaganda outlet, not state sponsored media outlet as I think the journalistic freedom an organisation like BBC gets is different. They can criticise policies of UK government, something Al Jazeera can't.

I would argue that they just have more polish to their presentation rather than having more integrity, and the coverage in local language is quite different from the one in English

New comment by actuator in "Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel"

actuator — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:30:19 +0000

Not that it justifies the deletion, I wonder how a state sponsored propaganda outlet came to be regarded well among global audiences. It would be interesting to read up on what they have done to garner that image.

New comment by actuator in "Chandrayaan-3 Lands on the Moon"

actuator — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:26:26 +0000

Russia has a wonderful space program with ability to reliably go to space and are one of the biggest contributors to ISS.

Setbacks happen, but I am sure that doesn't change how they feel about Chandrayaan-3

New comment by actuator in "Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]"

actuator — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:23:26 +0000

I believe Chandrayaan 1 has detected water, but not sure if it was the first one to do so

New comment by actuator in "Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]"

actuator — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:04:07 +0000

More people are interested in sports than space landings, who would have thought

New comment by actuator in "Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]"

actuator — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 12:41:20 +0000

Congratulations to ISRO! Hopefully some interesting data and findings come from it and then Gaganyaan next!

New comment by actuator in "Indian-American engineer fired for speaking Hindi during dying relative's call"

actuator — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 13:28:42 +0000

He does say he went to the meeting room and ensures that there is nothing classified there.

I am guessing the language is being brought in the discussion because the coworker in not understanding the language might have assumed the worst.

New comment by actuator in "Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For"

actuator — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 13:02:23 +0000

This is such a naive and for lack of a better word stupid take

> YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.

Make Netflix more powerful? In what world is that good for competition

New comment by actuator in "Logistics challenges of saving Air India’s diverted 777 in Russia"

actuator — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 21:29:17 +0000

> Air India has always had a YOLO attitude to air traffic control.

What do you mean by this? Do you have some examples in mind. Also, the airline is a different entity now from a few years back.

> I'm somewhat surprised America doesn't restrict inbound and outbound flights from overflying Russia.

I am sure they would have but this might have been a concession few governments might have secured to keep flights economically viable.