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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • That’s not really true. Banks getting higher interest on loans also pay out more interest on deposits, otherwise they’re unable to attract and retain customers. FI profitability is based on net interest margin (revenue from lending - losses from deposits), and they need deposits to have the money to lend out so they can’t arbitrarily lower their deposit account rates to increase NIM.

    Banks get richer no matter what happens, because people need loans. If anything, higher rates make it more challenging for banks to make money as people are less able to make repayments and less likely to take out loans for luxury purchases or holidays.











  • Nope, carbon tax is different to carbon offsets. A carbon tax is intended to put an immediate financial burden onto energy producers and/or consumers commensurate to the environmental impact of the power production and/or consumption.

    From a corporations perspective, it makes no sense to worry about the potential economic impact of pollution which may not have an impact for decades. By adding a carbon tax, those potential impacts are realised immediately. Generally, the cost of these taxes will be passed to the consumer, affecting usage patterns as a potential direct benefit but making it a politically unattractive solution due to the immediate cost of living impact. This killed the idea in Australia, where we still argue to this day whether it should be reinstated. It also, theoretically, has a kind of anti-subsidy effect. By making it more expensive to “do the wrong thing” you should make it more financially viable to build a business around “doing the right thing”.

    All in theory. I don’t know what studies are out there as to the efficacy of carbon tax as a strategy. In the Australian context, I think we should bring it back. But while I understand why the idea exists and the logic behind why it should work, I don’t know how that plays out in practice.


  • They are almost certainly restricting the amount of information they release under the advice of the legal team at the University, in preparation for the impending commercialization. I agree, it’d be great to have the details and to live in a world where all information is free and open. However, we don’t on both counts. The assumption that they could only be attempting to mislead people when this isn’t even a product for sale yet, is at best naïve and at worst willfully obtuse.




  • The semantics is that downloading is copying something from one computer system to another. Nothing about intent or permanence or whether it’s a temp/cache file or not. If you did not download the file, you cannot have seen it.

    Whether you meant to do something or not does not change the action. The colloquial use of the word downloading to mean something different from streaming or browsing does not change the fundamental action.

    In the case of WhatsApp, which is specifically in question here, it doesn’t “cache” images in a temporary folder. It saves the images to your devices media folders in their own library. So even by your definition, they’re being downloaded. Now, this is a setting which is on by default so maybe an individual doesn’t realise. It doesn’t mean they’re not downloading the content.