I think of my iPhone as a phone plus a mobile browser plus a biometric device. It has a lot of memory and a lot of compute power but that is just because all the crap sites and apps out there, unnecessary animations, etc. One could also claim that a phone is a mobile gaming device, although that is not my thing.
Biometrics is the feature that confers all the power to Apple and Google. All sorts of shady things can be done in the name of security and privacy.
The internet would be a much better place if browsing and biometrics were done in different devices.
Not American, buddy, so I don’t have skin in the game. But it looks extremely bad when people who got rich in the Silicon Valley engage in politics like this.
Even if one disagrees with a billionaire tax, I’m sure there are better ways to engage with politics besides “protect my capital at all costs”.
It is not so much that they oppose, but how they oppose.
AI isn’t creating the problem, it is just showing the problem. Those who did not want to learn before AI did so reluctantly, mixing Google and SO. Now they ask AI. An existing problem found a new solution.
Personally, I really enjoy using AI. I have created my own cascade workflow to stop myself from “asking one more question”. Every session is planned. Claude and Codex can be annoying as hell (for different reasons). Neither is sufficiently smart for me to trust them. I treat them as junior devs who never get tired, know a lot of facts but not necessarily how to build.
I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code before Google and SO.
I also enjoy using AI. It makes it easier to get mundane work done quickly. Junior devs who never get tired is a great analogy. It's a force multiplier and for people with limited time (meetings, people management, planning etc.) they enable doing a lot in limited time. I can relate to more junior people being worried and/or some senior people concerns of quality though. I get a task done, review it, get another task done. I won't let it build something large on auto-pilot.
One thing that should be noted is that life was simpler back then. You could know the syntax of C or Pascal. You knew all the DOS calls or the standard libraries. You knew BIOS and the PC architecture. I still used reference manuals to look up some details I didn't have in my head.
Today software stacks tend to be a lot more complicated.
Funnily enough, I learned to code “depth first” by putting together enough documentation examples and stackoverflow answers to reach a working Android app, long before I learned to code “breadth first” in school.
This is stupid. Smoking has high social negative externality. It causes cancer to the smoker and to others around the smoker. Who pays for the treatment of those affected? All tax payers.
Want to die? Die fast, not in a way that waste everyone’s money, and don’t take others with you.
In the UK it is forbidden to smoke in public places and the revenue from taxes on cigarettes is several times what the healthcare service spends on smoking-related illnesses.
So I'd say things are already exactly as you wish.
Google is still around: revenue is at £8 billion (Office for Budget Responsibility) and in decline, and NHS spending is at £2.6 billion in England, which is by far the bulk of the UK (NHS England).
"In 2024, smoking cost the public finances in England £16.5bn, more than double the £6.8bn raised through tobacco taxes." [0]
"The NHS’s expenditure on smoking-related health issues remains high, corroborated by the reported £20. 6 billion cost to public finances in the UK in 2022, with approximately £2. 2 billion attributed to the NHS" [1]
It seems NHS spending is only a part of the story. Also note that I'm only quoting cost to public finances, the overall societal costs are cited as being much higher.
First, you corroborate that my data are indeed correct.
Second, I debunked the argument that illness treatment is paid by the tax payer, when indeed the data show that this is not the case as tax revenue far exceeds cost
Then, adding fuzzier and fuzzier unrelated things and add them up all equally as "costs" (like a very widely defined "economic cost", and peolple do not exist to maximise their labour output) to tilt the balance the other way is not an honest take, it is fudging the numbers to fit a narrative.
Frankly that fits the overall thinking on this topic and others: people cannot decide for themselves reharding their own lives, things must be banned, dissenting opinions are "wrong" and must suppressed. And we are back to exactly what the article is about!
Even if they don't die from a directly smoking-related cause, smokers experience more chronic illness than non-smokers, and it tends to start earlier in life. Non-NHS costs include sickness benefits, absences from work, and reduction in lifetime earnings. And then there are the opportunity costs from whatever else they might have spent the money and time on, not to mention what they might have achieved in life had they not developed emphysema in their early 40s.
It's certainly possible to argue about the exact figures, and ASH are hardly a neutral third-party. But it's more dishonest than not to pretend that they don't exist.
What cost is "loss of lifetime earnings" because you die early while still of working age? And cost to whom? (You're dead).
How can you add that like-for-like to actual financial cost to NHS? (Which was the otiginal issue of the discussion, remember?)
Shifting the topic and trying to add random things as "cost" is fudging the numbers, so dishoneest, indeed. It is obvious and I am hoping you see it, too.
Bottom line is that smokers do pay for the cost of their healthcare so this is a fair system and people can then make their own decisions regarding their own lives (which is what a free, liberal society is about).
Well, no, the cost of their own smoking-induced illness isn't the only cost, as mentioned before what about the healthcare costs of people who pick up 2nd or 3rd hand smoke?
I think the point we are making thay you don't want to acknowledge is that the cost to society, healthcare or otherwise, simply cannot be made up for with sin taxes on cigarettes. If we tried that, a pack would need to cost like 10x or more of what it does now, and even then it's debatable.
Unless we have finer data, I would assume that 2nd and 3rd hand smoke is included in "smoking-related" so in the cost figure. It has also to be much less than actual smoking so will not massively change the NHS cost.
We have already established that healthcare costs are more than covered by existing tax.
Arguing and trying to make up additional "costs" is, again, just fudging the numbers and clutching at straws at this point...
Extraordinary claims require evidence, not snarky Google mentions. Spending amounts are for what specifically? Do those 2.6 billion account for second and third hand smoke? For smoking in pregnancy leading to problems?
Most of the price of a pack of cigarettes in the UK is tax. It is fairly well known that revenue is higher than cost to healthcare service (NHS, which is funded via general taxation), and data are public and very easily found. My previous comment with data was indeed literally the result of two Google queries (revenue amd cost) and were from official sources, which I mentioned.
You don't like the data? Fine. You want to do your own detailed research and enlighten us? Fine. I didn't comment to be cross-examined to death...
I provided data although I commented that they were easily available because "what's your source" is the usual lazy retort.
This is hostile cross-examination, not discussion. I suggest you read the guidelines before saying things like "this is HN" (although you are right that this is a commom behaviour here).
> So I'd say things are already exactly as you wish.
Except, you know, the "don't take others with you" part.
That is a crucial, fundamental part of liberalism that people often skip over. Everyone only seems to remember the "I have the freedom to do whatever I want" part and skip over the "until that freedom impedes the freedom of others" part.
Biometrics is the feature that confers all the power to Apple and Google. All sorts of shady things can be done in the name of security and privacy.
The internet would be a much better place if browsing and biometrics were done in different devices.
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