They didn't do it because of oil (well to take for ourselves). They did it because Venezuela has been cozying up way too much to Russia and China, and sending both of them a lot of oil.
The President of the United States quite literally plainly stated on national TV that we did it for oil and will be sending US oil companies in to steal their oil to sell for ourselves.
He even went so far as to say it was “our” oil a few weeks ago. That was quickly forgotten among a stream of other outrageous things that happen daily.
Today seems like a day to rewatch Team America: World Police
Maybe try learning something about oil extraction before making insane claims that it is even possible for an oil company to just roll up and "steal" oil and send it back to the US.
I'm no fan of Trump, and I believe he's basically gone rogue, but, literally, he never said what you say he said. If I missed something, please provide a reference, but I doubt you'll find anything. You simply misheard. He's been extremely brazen in mentioning such a crass topic as American interest in Venezuelan oil, which normally would be pushed vigorously under the rug, but he didn't go as far as saying that's the reason. The official (and preposterous by itself) reason is still the drugs.
My take concords with what @JumpCrisscross said elsewhere in this thread:
"HN sometimes has trouble understanding coalitions.
Some support for oil. Some want to unseat a dictator. Some are concerned about Venezuela being a hive of Chinese, Russian and Iranian activity. Some did it to destabilise Cuba, or lay the groundwork for hitting Iran. Still others are just plain psychopaths and like blowing things up."
I would add that personal pique probably had as big a part in this decision as anything else.
"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so," Trump said.
Yes, and? Read my comment and the comment I was replying to. Nowhere did Trump "literally admit" they went in "for the oil". Nor that they plan to "steal the oil". I'm not saying that that's not part of the reason (probably is, but not the only one). Trump though, didn't "literally admit it". This whole adventure is outrageous and misguided enough as it is, without us needing to bend the truth to make it feel even more so.
HN sometimes has trouble understanding coalitions.
Some support for oil. Some want to unseat a dictator. Some are concerned about Venezuela being a hive of Chinese, Russian and Iranian activity. Some did it to destabilise Cuba, or lay the groundwork for hitting Iran. Still others are just plain psychopaths and like blowing things up.
Yes, and oil will now flow to Florida - for as long as an obedient US puppet lives. The gal who actually won the election is not obedient enough for Trump since she doesn't have "support and respect" of the nation according to Trump.
You're missing that those 80% are not the same people every year. The IRS definitely doesn't keep a database of who is married or not, nor are they scouring every counties database for changes. I'm not sure where you're getting the "they will just send you a letter" part.
Sounds fine to me. Sometimes you have a simple W-2. Sometimes you need to report life changes. "Efficiency" means those 20% figure it out when they have to.
I think a couple more have caught on, but Netflix was one of the first I think to let you press a button to finish your email login for popular email providers. So you could press the "@gmail.com" button instead of typing it all out. Doesn't really matter on a computer, but was nice when signing in on a TV.
> We're left to guess what this means. What's work around the work? If that work is now unsavory, why can't they work on work rather than around it? Is this describing reducing the management layer? (support) or customer/partner support? Will they be replaced by automation? I get you don't want to go into specifics of who's let go, but then don't pretend you're providing a clear analysis, and don't give a washed out business lingo salad instead.
> TBH I don't see what changed on Spotify for a customer perspective in the past few years. I still see bugs I reported years ago, the UI is largely the same.
He didn't get into it because you answered it yourself. And anyone who has used it for a while has most likely the same initial thought.
It used to provide some limited banking services up until the 60s and it still does billions of dollars worth of money orders a year so a lot of the infrastructure is still there.
> It's an interesting (and scary/depressing) subject to think about - what proportion of people would or wouldn't find that acceptable in even more extreme circumstance?
"Right side of history" isn't used just to sound cool. It's to embolden opinions like his. Same with the description of "just a bunch of old white men".
No idea how true it is, but I overheard someone on a flight say that whenever you feel a real sudden jolt on a plan it's really only moving like 2-3ft.
Jassy and Zuckerberg have both said that new employees (even experienced hires) are underperforming compared the workers who were in an office setting at some point. With a couple of years of turnover, that can compound quite a bit.
Thinking back to when I started working, I somewhat buy that. I would have had a much harder time getting up to speed (both technically and institutionally) in a remote environment, where the barriers to learning from your peers are higher and the feedback processes (especially in a company formed around in-person work) are slower.
Because you could have gotten married, been blinded, and started a business grossing $900k but only netting $100k a year and they would know none of that outside of a couple of 1099s.
What they did for you though is look at your return, and saw you didn't declare investment income that they knew about from a 1099.
But your point is wrong. In 87% of the cases, the IRS does have all the information. Even if you have donations or other deductions it doesn't matter, because 87% of people take the standard deduction since it's more than their itemized deductions.
And marriage and death records are public, as are probate. So they would have all of that too.
That's not what they said at all. Most people are not changing marital status or starting businesses every year.
The IRS could send a tax bill for what they do know, with an option to agree that is all you owe and pay, or an option that you will need to file the taxes yourself because they are missing information.
For the vast majority of Americans, option 1 will cover them.
I think it’s likely the IRS uses some kind of database of US vital statistics (including marriages) as part of efforts to detect tax fraud. Other federal agencies do, eg the State Department’s passport office uses a proprietary database called EVVE of birth and death data. [0]
Sure, but couldn't that be done on a case-by-case basis, and the fed just sends you a refund/bill at the end of the year that you're responsible for amending?
I'm not saying a company like Intuit adds zero utility, I'm just saying that I think a lot of taxes are simple enough to where it would be relatively easy to just give people a default thing. If the IRS gets something wrong, or is missing some info, then I think a software like TurboTax makes a lot of sense, but isn't that much more of an edge case? Fundamentally, the complexity of my taxes didn't really change in the last five years.
When the 1040EZ was a thing, only 16% of filers used it. Those would be the candidates who could safely have the IRS do their return. With anyone else, there's all kinds of information the IRS has no clue about.
Most people don't use the EZ because even the most common deductions (that the IRS knows about, like your mortgage and state taxes and your stock investments through a firm, etc.) couldn't be put on there.
But the IRS still knows about them.
Also they could put a website where you could spend five minutes entering the most common information they don't already know, and then spit out your bill.
It's not that hard. Most filers situations aren't that complicated.
>Also they could put a website where you could spend five minutes entering the most common information they don't already know, and then spit out your bill.
It's not and 99% of the time it's blatant user error. Like the guys top post that is refusing to believe his father slammed the re-subscribe button when sharing his account with him.
The example from the top post sure I may give some leeway, but there are plenty of subscription services where it is clearly multiples of effort more difficult to cancel than to subscribe. Common example being - can only cancel over the phone after being told 10 reasons by a sales rep as to why you should continue to pay. This is not down to user-error, this is blatantly trying to fraud your users.
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