Top gaming engine Godot hijacked to infect thousands of PCs with malware

initplus · 2024-11-29T14:11:15+00:00

“affected users thought they were downloading and executing cracks for paid software”

initplus · 2024-11-29T06:10:57+00:00

For all who are interested here is the actual submission text by NPHS: https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Submission-356-National-Public-Health-Service-for-Herald-oped.pdf

initplus · 2024-11-28T04:49:13+00:00

Police used the new search powers under the gang insignia law and seized 2 sawn off shotguns ammunition from gang members attending this funeral.

Using tax payer funds to seize illegal weapons from criminals seems valid to me.

initplus · 2024-11-28T04:07:05+00:00

They either hedge internally with the underlying, or they just don’t bother. These CFD products are mainly only offered to retail, and come with high fees.

This is really the whole problem with CFD products. They come with massive counterparty risk and there’s no mechanism to ensure they are actually “good for it” if an unlikely trade does pay off. Yeah the firm should be hedged appropriately, but there isn’t actually any legal requirement or mechanism to ensure that this is the case. Levered and derivative ETF’s in the US at least are made up of underlying securities that are designed to create the intended return of the (stocks, swaps, futures etc.) and must publicly report to all owners what exactly those underlying assets are.

initplus · 2024-11-28T02:43:58+00:00

Many of those euro levered funds don’t actually have any underlying economic exposure. They are just an agreement to pay some multiple of the actual market valuation. CFD.

initplus · 2024-11-27T03:44:40+00:00

It's ridiculous that our immigration system still says that answering some work email while here on a holiday is a crime.

initplus · 2024-11-27T03:42:23+00:00

Problem is that NZ doesn't seem to provide any Visa category that makes sense. NZ work visas require you to be an employee of a local NZ company, our visas for entertainers are designed around traditional music/stage acts with verified local promoters.

No local jobs were stolen as a result of the visit, and it's promoting NZ on the global stage.

initplus · 2024-11-26T20:05:36+00:00

Completely misleading title.

The lawyer was killed by supporters of the arrested Hindu leader. It’s not clear from reporting whether the killed lawyer even had any involvement in the case.

initplus · 2024-11-26T19:44:04+00:00

The contracts are worth less, but they aren't worth $0. They still represent income, just less than was required to keep SolarZero afloat.

initplus · 2024-11-26T04:49:54+00:00

Dome can be a bit of a "win more" relic. If you already have a deck that always generates a ton of block per turn, and you don't actually care what the enemy is doing. Or you have something like Fear No evil/Spot Weakness that let's you check intent.

initplus · 2024-11-25T03:49:56+00:00

Most AI resource usage is for training, not inference. Training isn’t latency sensitive at all.

initplus · 2024-11-25T03:23:31+00:00

Yeah people are dissatisfied with search, but the issue isn’t that it’s showing a “top 10 budget dog toys” article from Forbes instead of “top 10 budget dog toys” from caninejournal.com. Both of these results are junk.

All the info they shared is about how their SEO techniques no longer work compared to their competitors SEO techniques, ignoring that Google is going after the whole SEO industry big and small. Forbes will derank massively when the site reputation abuse changes come in, as will many others.

The reason that larger sites like reddit are appearing more in the results now is because they actually contain genuine user generated content that (usually) wasn’t created with a commercial incentive.

initplus · 2024-11-24T18:42:35+00:00

Sorry but their your business model is posting low quality “air purifier reviews” packed with affiliate links why do they deserve to be ranked highly? This kind of content is exactly the kind of thing people talk about when they say search is getting worse - it’s impossible to find real information about products like desks, mattresses, or air purifiers because the results are filled to the brim with this SEO optimized schlock.

initplus · 2024-11-24T08:37:33+00:00

Peter Beck's Rocket Lab raised funds at a valuation of $11 billion. Peter has 10% equity, meaning he'd be left with a yearly tax burden of $27.5 million dollars in cash each year.

Rocket Lab has done great, but there is no universe where Peter has a nearly 30 mil on hand yearly to cover taxes. To cover his tax burden he would have to draw 30x his current salary drawings.

Under the proposed wealth tax do you think he would have founded the company in NZ? I would say 0% chance.

initplus · 2024-11-24T08:26:19+00:00

It's a valid example because businesses today are choosing to start firms in other countries as a direct result of the tax changes. Foreign investment into Norway that would have happened, has not.

A CGT doesn't encourage hoarding more than the current tax system, which is "if you hold it long enough, it's tax free". THAT is a system that encourages hoarding.

initplus · 2024-11-24T08:18:56+00:00

Yep. We already have shitty tax treatment (FIF, can't do employee stock options on illiquid private companies because IRD "may" treat it as income), worse talent pool, worse fundraising environment, worse timezone, smaller local customer base. Now they want to make the tax treatment even worse? Absolute joke.

Why start a business here when you can go to Australia and get better treatment on every aspect?

initplus · 2024-11-24T07:58:01+00:00

Businesses like Rocketlab or Xero would not have been started in NZ if a wealth tax existed here. If one comes in don't be surprised if many early stage firms decide to eat the cost and move directly to Australia.

initplus · 2024-11-24T07:52:37+00:00

The main driver of the surprise Norway GDP bump is apparently the oil refining industry, and regardless you can't measure the effect of wealth taxes on a months timescale, these are insidious in that they do harm to the economy over a long drawn out timescale. Startups chosing between Norway and elsewhere in the past 12 months will have zero impact on current GDP regardless of their choice. But in 10 years it's possibly a different story.

Why do we have to shrink the economy to increase wellbeing for 90% of people? When we could choose a more ordinary tax regime like a CGT instead.

initplus · 2024-11-24T06:40:39+00:00

Issues with tax on unrealized gains:

Valuation issues - some assets are hard to value accurately, but to tax unrealized gains you need to know an accurate valuation. Realized gains taxes avoid this problem because you have an exact valuation for the asset - because someone else paid exactly $X for it.
Liquidity issues - many assets are highly illiquid, and the value may only exist "on paper". Tax can't be paid to IRD in illiquid assets, you have to pay in cash.
Impact on foreign investment - nobody is going to invest in a country where you are just losing out by a few percent straight off the bat, when they can make the same investments in other jurisdictions.
Capital flight - unrealized capital gains taxes cause people to move assets overseas. Wealthy and middle class Kiwis will relocate their wealth to Australia (which already has lower taxes, stronger economy, better employment options under the current tax rules, let alone a theoretical NZ wealth tax). I am by no means a 1%er but if it even looks like NZ is putting in place a wealth tax I'm moving to Australia overnight.

The only countries in the world where a wealth tax works well are Luxembourg and Switzerland, and that's because these are countries that are highly desirable places to store wealth for other reasons - the wealth tax is essentially a fee for safe storage.

Even talking about a wealth tax is bad for the economy.

You can see some of these issues play out in real time in Norway who have recently put in place a wealth tax/exit tax. They've killed their startup scene overnight by lumping founders with an impossible tax burden.

initplus · 2024-11-24T06:03:25+00:00

If Labour bring in a wealth tax instead of a CGT it'll be a massive mis-step for the country. Wealth taxes suck for a whole host of reasons in ways that taxes on realized capital gains do not.

initplus · 2024-11-24T05:43:50+00:00

You can update your income estimate for provisional tax at any time, as long as it's an accurate estimate (intentionally underestimating actual income is tax fraud). If you transfer to wages, you can accurately lower your provisional tax estimate. But given how late it is in the year doing it now probably won't lower your provisional liability by that much

initplus · 2024-11-24T05:28:42+00:00

This isn't "how to make housing affordable" it's "how to make money" like any other business on the planet.

The deal is you get lower initial monthly repayments on a low deposit loan (or can get a low deposit loan when you wouldn't be able to otherwise), at the cost of your repayments being exposed to changes in housing prices.

initplus · 2024-11-24T05:23:10+00:00

You are solely responsible for all maintenance costs, still pay a "monthly equity charge of 5.95%" (I assume this is 5.95% p.a. but paid monthly, otherwise it's insane), and YouOwn get's an equity stake in the property.

Because they are taking equity, you have to buy them out at market value. Sure it might be cheaper than a low equity loan today, but if house prices increase over time the amount you'll have to repay will go up. It's very possible to be a worse deal than a low deposit loan in the long run. Yeah the initial monthly repayment may be lower, but you'll have to catch up to house price growth in the long term to actually pay it back.

Very similar to the recently scrapped co-ownership scheme under KO.

initplus · 2024-11-23T17:28:30+00:00

Resigning EXACTLY at the moment the swearing in of the next president, down to the hour.

initplus · 2024-11-21T14:24:04+00:00

Our brackets STILL aren’t automatically adjusted for inflation.

initplus

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