101–110 of 182 posts
> The locations of his servers are a secret, as are many of the names of his employees, several of whom he’s said are fellow millionaires. How is that possible? Are the servers behind an onion network?
The public gateways could communicate to some unknown network of servers behind the scenes.
FIY: While they claim being hounded back in Russia, and that they will be instantaneously jumped upon by 3 letter services if they were to run there, they were proven to have a huge office there as well as their main server infrastructure. Another red flag, is that they were never blocked in Russia. They look suspicious.
Got a source for the first claim? Second would've been a red flag if the Russian gvmnt would've been routinely blocking other chat systems.
Here:
https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-...
I'm still not sure which one is better: Signal or Telegram.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the compulsory 9% Church Tax in Germany, unless you formally renounce your religion: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/113... Notably: "The changes include German banks now having to withhold the tax on capital gains of account-holders who are church members."
It's 8-9% of your income tax – so in reality maybe 2% of your income or less. This tax is levied by the churches. You may be against the fact that they get this right because you support a more strict separation of church and state (which is not in the spirit of the German constitution) but this is hardly something the state is to blame for.
https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/stop-paying-german-church-t...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Besides, it’s not about just me: the whole point of taxes is that it gives options to everyone, not just those lucky enough to be born to wealthy parents. Then how does this thinking fit with the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year? Does that mean that services are getting better? Because you know, it's actually the opposite. It's getting worse: more and more illiteracy in schools, inflation of…
...the reality of taxes increasing everywhere, year after year Can you show data to back this up? To my knowledge, income taxes in all Western countries are lower today than they were in the '50s or '70s.
Let me do the calculation for Belgium for you:
$1 -> First, because yearly the employer has to pay you for 13.92 months, not 12 (end of year bonus thing), we take that out. That's 14% (but you get 20 days 1.5 times paid holidays, and an end of year bonus, which is taxed at a higher rate, but you do get that)
$0.86 -> "patronale bijdragen" (30%) -> $0.6 (even this ignores a few taxes that stem from having employees at all, and assumes there is no union at your workplace. Unions are extra).
$0.6 -> brutto netto (depends on total pay because this is a progressive tax, but let's assume you have a normal pay (which gets you into the higest tax bracket and taxed at roughly 40%, let's say 50k euros/year before tax, which is not a particularly large amount) -> $0.36 [1]
$0.36 -> VAT 21% is charged on this -> $0.285
So total tax in .be, for normal workers, is 71.5% (a bit less if you make very little, more if you make more).
This is a strict underestimate, as it assumes you're renting, not owning any real estate, producing zero garbage, not using public transport, harbours or airports, or a car or any kind of motorized vehicle, don't use fuel for anything, not using electricity, gas or water, not ...
Also: you might think this is fair. Everybody pays this, right ? Well, there's one tiny little detail that allows anyone sufficiently rich to evade almost all taxes : capital gains is not taxed in Belgium. Needless to say, this is a hole in the tax code big enough to drive the "bagger 288" through, but only open to the rich (more extreme examples have their own company own things like their house, and they "charge" their own company rent to pay almost entirely with pre-tax money, and you charge their own company rent which is not taxed according to the above calculation). [2]
Aside from cementing the position of the rich, and attracting French comedians, I'm not sure what this accomplishes. [3]
And in case you're wondering about the people who decide all these taxes. Surely they pay those taxes themselves, right ? No [4]. They feel they don't owe the state 71.5%, they feel they owe 12% + VAT, or about 30%, less than half of what their subjects pay)
So no, it's just the normal workers that pay this amount. If you are rich and can get your money paid out to you however you want, then you are taxed at less than 30%, or nothing if you "invest" it all (for instance in that house you live in and rent to yourself). If a politician likes you enough, or needs you, you can get a job that doesn't owe these taxes in government.
Still think it was higher in the 50s ? VAT was 0%, pre-pre-tax taxes (patronale bijdragen) were 0%, and income tax was nominally higher, with the highest bracket at 60% starting pretty high (but again no taxes on income that was packaged in companies). So let's say a well paid consultant in the 50s would have been taxed at something like 45%-50% total.
The argument socialist make to further increase the taxes is, of course, not to tax the rich more. That cannot be discussed in public (and of course has nothing to do with the fact that nearly all leftist politicians are rich landlords that have never once in their life paid tax like this).
The worst of it is, this is correct, but if you tell this to a friend ... they don't believe you ... hell some I have gone through this with them in detail, and they still don't believe me.
They don't believe it to the point that they truly don't understand why construction companies pull crap like having their employees "resident" in Poland. Yes those labourers get less money, but the vast majority of the savings is from not having them subject to the Belgian tax system.
What this pays for ? Social security and pensions. Oh, and total amount the government managed to save for future pension payouts with these taxes ? Zero. 0 comma 0. The amount of elderly is rapidly going up, and taxes will need to rise, at minimum, 100% (from their current level, ie. taxes on wages will need to rise to 140% of pay) if the current level of benefits for the elderly is to be maintained.
[1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2011/12/belgium-in...
[2] http://www.taxbites.be/taxation/content/view/64/42/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/dec/22/gerard-depardie...
[4] http://www.brusselstimes.com/magazine2/5828/myths-and-truths...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you assume it's "just security though obscurity" and not "security plus obscurity"? Or that "obscurity"" as a security measure is a tragic weakness. This is a trap a lot of people fall into and I don't know why.
If the compromise of the secret servers causes the entire network to go down, then that secret is a weakest link, so it's not "security plus obscurity". I don't know much about Telegram's system, but if it is run on centralized servers, then that is a serious weakness...adversaries who have the capability to find and disrupt can exploit that so even though the communication may be end-to-end secure, the entire system…
> A lot of people in the western world don’t realize how much taxes limit their options. You can end up paying almost half your income in taxes, which basically means you’re working for the government for 180 days a year. I think I can find better ways to use the money I make for the benefit of society. ok, so he's basically suggesting to get of rid government. I respect different stands on the size/role of the gover…
That point is totally valid. "The West" is rapidly becoming a mirror image of the Soviet Union. With half or more of economic value of your work going to uncle Sam, how this is not a state ran economy? If I remember correctly, the split for a typical Soviet citizen was 60/40, and this is where the West will be this decade if government expenses will continue rising at the speed they do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A common misconception with "Security by Obscurity" is that it's always a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good. However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by…
I’d counter that the security benefit may be so small as to underweigh the hassle and bug potential of those obscurities. ... and counter myself by reminding that all computer security is obscurity, just varying levels. I think, in the end, we do need to measure things :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's 19% for most stuff and 7% for some other stuff, on average it's closer to 16 o 17% on everything you buy and pay. Once you account for the 17% being part of your remaining money, you get an effective incoming VAT tax rate of 8.5% (assuming you keep around 50%, if you keep more, this goes up) I believe the highest amount of income tax you pay is around 60%, plus 8.5% you get close to 70%. However, most people wil…
The highest amount of income tax you pay (Reichensteuer) is 47,48% (45% plus Soli). This number is a bit misleading though since the tax rate is a curve that starts at 14% for incomes above 8656 EUR and reaches a plateau of 42% at a yearly income of roundabout 53000 EUR. The highest tax rate only applies to the part of the income that exceeds about 250000 EUR. So the first 8k are tax free, for every EUR above that yo…
> A lot of people in the western world don’t realize how much taxes limit their options. You can end up paying almost half your income in taxes, which basically means you’re working for the government for 180 days a year. I think I can find better ways to use the money I make for the benefit of society. ok, so he's basically suggesting to get of rid government. I respect different stands on the size/role of the gover…