Tell me you’re young without saying you’re young.

Those headline rates were not the rates actually paid.

The quantity and scope of tax write offs at that time were substantial and often generous. The tax reform act of 1986 lowered the headline rates and substantially reduced the scope of deductions.

As such, referring to that “high taxation” era as some sort of halcyon days due to the tax rates is quite misguided.

If you ever want to hear a tax accountant get excited, talk to one who was practicing in the 80s. The stories you will hear…

Assuming $20 for a typical paid trip, I’m guessing $800 would be closer to what they would charge for 2 free rides a day within SF.

$400 might be were it ends up when it’s widely adopted and a mature product — probably in the “budget” category of a segmented market.

Her story does not jibe with any of my experiences, direct or indirect, with law enforcement in Japan.

It’s not something I worry about.

What I, and many of my peers, excel at is taking vague inputs from end users and putting them into actionable specs. Often times this requires considerable education of the end user.

AI might be able to suggest best practices, but getting someone from malformed ideas into an actionable path forward is a very human thing.

Sure, tech-savvy lucid thinking clients with time on their hands might not need my services any more at some point, but… yeah… that’s not my client base.

I get paid to solve business problems. Everything I’ve done in the past could have theoretically been done by my customers, but it wasn’t. AI removes a small amount of the friction for a small portion of the market, but that’s just not a market-wide phenomenon.

“Super smart, super savvy, highly-motivated, and prefer to spend time instead of money” does not describe most business owners.

That’s just my 2 cents…

Hmmm… maybe. I think not. It really depends on your other claims below, with which I mostly disagree.

2. Most entry level jobs for current graduates in white collar fields. (See hiring rates for these positions)

Maybe a small amount. Entry level white collar jobs have a low hiring rate for other reasons, imho.

3. Thousands of layoffs (mostly attributed to AI use, while not 100%, the Anthropic's specific marketing push has a huge influence on this - unlike OAI and other labs)

What they say and what the actual reasons are not the same, imho. Correcting for over hiring is the actual main reason.

4. All low-code products/startups

Low-code and no-code products in the hands of someone who doesn’t have a developer’s mind and/or experience usually ends up as a mess, and quickly becomes an unusable mess.

I know of exactly two people who have done successfully used AI to make a low-code/no-code product. One is just highly motivated and wicked smart. The other did a minor in CS a long time ago (works in a different field). Everyone else shows me a pile of garbage and asks me how to fix it (answer: throw it away and start from scratch).

5. Web agencies who did small websites for local businesses

As with 4 above, the only site a local business can make for themselves is one that functions as a business card… at best. Usually it looks more like a business card that a kindergartner made. They simply don’t understand what makes a website good for their business, therefore they cannot direct AI to make it for them.

There’s a lot to criticize about AI, imho, but these aren’t on the list.

Simple example… they get others to do the work while they reap the rewards. That’s clever and lazy.

Short answer — there are lots of chargebacks and (sometimes) fraud around this content. Vanilla payment processors don’t like high rates of chargebacks and fraud.

> Also why PornHub and OnlyFans are immune to religious lobby?

They use a high-risk payment processor that takes a much higher cut of each sale (basically as insurance).

The AI output you are referring to mostly seems to refer to “AI slop”. It’s not hard to argue that AI slop sucks.

There is a lot that AI does that has created joy for me or people around me:

- whimsical profile pics for online profiles for me, family, and friends

- writing e-mails for community groups — good for a family member who doesn’t have the most sociable writing style

- automating data capture and organization

- automating scheduling with multiple and variable constraints

- catching obvious errors that somehow still happen (e.g., off by one errors)

- filling in gaps in analysis either due to gaps in knowledge or simply an oversight

These are sample of things that I have done or helped people do in the past week, and the results have been well-received.

Maybe I’m part of that solution that you propose, but I have used words similar to “biggest change since…” (I usually say spreadsheets, but I don’t think “Industrial Revolution” is wrong).

Fwiw, I don’t think the result will be dystopian the way most people seem to think that it will. I firmly believe that meat space interactions will gain much more traction, and that will change the way we live and work.

Mostly fear mongering or law breaking that is commonly punished throughout the world.

In order:

- nonsense, unless heated argument includes assault or disturbing the peace

- stealing… yes, it’s a crime. Usually handled with an apology and repayment if charges are brought. Completely overlooked if it was an actual one-off accident.

- overstaying visa - also a crime. Self-reporting to an immigration office will usually lead to a light punishment of “return home and 1-year re-entry ban”. People who live in Japan on tourist visas and do short visa runs are scrutinized carefully.

- grabbing umbrella or bike - fear mongering. This happens all the time. If it comes to a head, just apologize. I will say that there is a bit of an art to umbrellas and bikes — either embrace the musical chairs, or take actions such that it is less likely to happen to you.

The vast majority of folks who get detained in Japan either did something particularly obvious (DUI, violence with a weapon, etc.), or they had been warned multiple times about illegal behavior.

Sometimes the crime they are busted for seems trivial (e.g., Al Capone and tax evasion in the US), but there are other more serious crimes that they have been involved with or expected to be involved with.

I have literally never heard of any innocent person being detained in Japan, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times in the US (esp. for peaceful protesters).

That said, I know of many cases in Japan for which very guilty people were given appropriate warnings rather than detention and prosecution, and behavior changed.

I’m guessing either she didn’t understand the warnings, or she didn’t follow their guidance.

Simple example, they may have asked her to follow a procedure before leaving the country, and she didn’t because she “thought it was over”.

The law enforcement machine in Japan doesn’t like to arrest people. 99% of the time or so, it only arrests when they have an open-and-shut case and/or the person had been warned multiple times.

Maybe this has changed in the age of social media influencers, maybe this is different for black people, but Japanese cops have always taken the discrete approach with me and the folks I’ve known (both Japanese and non-Japanese).

I’m guessing you don’t know many lower income people.

Not only are credit cards generally not part of the picture for these folks, but often they don’t even have bank accounts.

Whatever the stated reasons are is one thing.

The biggest issue is that a network of BYDs in the US would be a massive intelligence coup.

It will never be permitted unless the intelligence aspect is addressed… if it can be.

It’s currently just as bad but in a different way, imho.

The ability for labels (or whoever owns the rights) to wantonly invoke automated DMCA copyright strikes and demonetization on social media channels like YouTube is borderline criminal to me.

Their lobby did a great job getting them more than they deserved (specifically with regards to the facilitation of capricious invoking of DMCA), but the abuse of the rules limits the growth of the creator economy in very unhealthy ways.

This is the exact line of inquiry that I took.

I asked why they didn’t just offer the toxic person a buy out or just fire the person and take the hit.

And…

1. They did offer a buy out. The person refused. The person was towards the end of their working career, and backdoor comms revealed that the person felt like they had quite a few years left of earning potential.

2. Then why not fire and pay the price? This turned back into the issue of the legal team not having the capacity to handle a case like the one they would have. The person would basically be retired and bitter and would make harassing the company legally their full time job — one that would probably yield decent dividends. Remember, the person was not looking for an equitable outcome — it was an identity issue.

Ultimately, they decided to put the person in a differ department, don’t give them any power, but give them something to do that was at least marginally productive. The person was placed under a super chill person and coasted to retirement.

It’s hard to tell if the path taken was financially optimal, but it was certainly close. That said, the path they took led to far fewer strains on the legal and executive staffs. I’m guessing that was actually worth a lot.

In certain domains, this has already happened.

> Sounds like the company in the latter example really screwed up

Interesting. I think they made an unfortunate but sound decision based on their circumstances.

> but how does that connect to disclaimers?

It doesn’t directly.

> Is it just an example of malicious behavior?

Yes. It’s an example of how absolutely bat-shit crazy people can behave in ways that can tax a company’s legal team. Having folks use a disclaimer will almost certainly lighten some of this load in terms of defending against folks who weaponize online comments made by employees.

Disclaimers aren’t there for folks who are thinking and acting rationally.

They are there for people who are thinking irrationally and/or manipulatively.

There are (relatively speaking) a lot of these people. They can chew up a lot of time and resources over what amounts to nothing.

Disclaimers like this can give a legal department the upper hand in cases like this

A few simple examples:

- There is a person I know who didn’t renew the contract of one of their reports. Pretty straightforward thing. The person whose contract was not renewed has been contesting this legally for over 10 years. The outcome is guaranteed to go against the person complaining, but they have time and money, so they tax the legal team of their former employer.

- There is a mid-sized organization that had a small legal team that had its plate full with regular business stuff. Despite settlements having NDAs, word got out that fairly light claims of sexual harassment and/or EEO complaints would yield relatively easy five-figure payments. Those complaints exploded, and some of the complaints were comical. For example, one manager represented a stance for the department to the C-suite that was 180 degrees opposite of what the group of three managers had agreed to prior. Lots of political capital and lots of time had to be used to clean up that mess. That person’s manager was accused of sex discrimination and age discrimination simply for asking the person why they did that (in a professional way, I might add). That person got a settlement, moved to a different department, and was effectively protected from administrative actions due to it being considered retaliation.

There may be credible journalists at some major print newspapers, but I don’t think there are many people who actually believe that any major US-based journalism outlet defaults to credible any more.