The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.

Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?

In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire

A large part of this is being driven by illegal trafficking operations that recruit desperate families looking to give their families a safer life. Republicans have chosen to demonize both the families as well as the traffickers. It must suck living a life incapable of empathy for others less fortunate.

Anyways, this is actually a pretty good read on it, despite it coming from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/us/migrant-surge-travel-agencies-smugglers/index.html

Visa, for example, spent $10 in the 12 weeks to October 6, compared to $77,500 during the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower’s data.

I’m no business genius like musk, but I’m gonna take a guess that wouldn’t even pay the bills for the ridiculous X sign he put on the roof and then had to take down.

What does Atwater make?

What do you mean, like, how much money does the company make?

Oh, no, I mean what do we make?

I don’t follow. We make money.

No, I know we make money. I mean, what do we create?

We create wealth.

No, no, I mean, what do we build, what do we design, you know? Because I have some ideas that could really help the company.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, we don’t build anything.

“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.” – MAS*H

Yup. Anyone who received this non-public information and then traded based on that information is guilty of insider trading. I would also think that reddit has some liability here, as they shared this information to non-employees.

Here’s a verification of a video showing some of the aftermath of the attacks by The Washington Post. Since WaPo sometimes changes links on breaking stories, a copy is below.

A graphic video verified by The Washington Post showed the aftermath of a deadly strike along Gaza’s main highway Friday, part of a wave of Israeli attacks that killed dozens and injured more than 200 people fleeing northern Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The video, recorded along Salah Al-Deen road, shows bodies,- including several young children- strewn along the road as black smoke rises from vehicles engulfed in flames. On the north-facing side of the road, bodies are laid out amid personal belongings, including a bicycle, on flatbed trailers attached to a truck.

The video was first geolocated by open-source researchers Chris Osieck and Gabòr Friesen and confirmed by The Post.

Late Thursday, Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents within 24 hours, the United Nations said. On Friday, the Israeli military dropped leaflets over Gaza City telling residents to “evacuate your homes immediately and go to the south.”

Hamas’s surprise incursion on Oct. 7 killed at least 1,300 people in Israel, authorities said. Palestinian officials said the subsequent Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,799 people in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces did not have an immediate response.

I think it varies by seniority. We had layoffs, and all of our lead and principal engineers were able to land a new position in 4-6 weeks. But the junior, mid, and even some senior level engineers had a far rougher time. And managers/directors are having a really difficult go of it right now.

So he went to public school in New York back before Reagan started cutting taxes for the rich and exploding the wealth gap. The taxes that paid for that very school and gave him his start. Now this twat is on the conservative side of completely gutting public schools.

The result if you unfortunately have Google’s “Bard AI” search lab turned on. At least it has a disclaimer that the results may be garbage.

Terry Fox.

WHAT? You mean burning fossil fuels won’t turn the planet into a tree-filled utopia?

From one of the pages describing “reputation”:

Governance Polls have a Decision Threshold that they must meet in order to pass. This is the minimum amount of weighted vote that the winning option must have for the poll to be considered approved by the community.

The Decision Threshold is set to a minimum of 10% of Points in a community and is updated algorithmically according to the activity on recent governance polls. As more votes are cast on Governance Polls, the Decision Threshold for future Governance Polls increases.

Governance Polls can be used to change distribution rules for Points or get input on other community decisions, such as content rules or flairs. They are enacted by Reddit in the case of distribution rules and the moderators for rules that require nuanced community input.

I mean, what do you say to this? They’ve gone completely insane.

Frailty. Starring and directed by the late, great Bill Paxton. 20 years later this one still sticks with me. Best to go in without knowing anything about the plot.

11 years, and I really haven’t missed it. Lemmy has been great (the 3 day no-poop guy was just as good as anything that was on reddit), the apps are getting better by the day, and Mastodon has easily filled the gaps for breaking news.

Pretty sure this one is the result of mixing cleaning products…

To get an immediate curated feed, I recommend following @lisamelton@mastodon.social. She boosts all sorts of interesting stuff from others. It’s a great way to find other accounts you might want to follow.

It’s been great for me and my family. But we live in a major metro with good TMobile coverage, ymmv. Definitely a great price for 4 lines, I can control all the plans and pre-paid billing for each line from the app, and the hotspot works great. If the coverage is good in your area, the price can’t be beat.