This has been the subject of much debate and law-making in the Netherlands. The issue isn't new, and better believe that someone will pay this tax.
In the old days, self-employed people did pay the national insurance tax without actually being covered. Then, the tax was repealed, but if the Revenue Service ruled that your work constitued employment rather than self-employment, you still had to pay (and were retroactively covered). Most freelancers were fine with this as they were in the best position to assess how much of a risk this actually was. But some thought this to be "unfair" and the law shifted the burden to the freelancers' clients. Still not a big deal, clients were ok with this if you could show a VAR, an individual ruling on the nature of your worker status, issued by the Revenue Service.
Not long ago, legistlaters thought the VAR system was needlessly burdensome, and changed it so that self-employed and their clients had to enter into a pre-approved "model agreement". No one understands this system; some large companies (typically the worst offenders such as Deliveroo) got their model agreements stamped and carried on with the practices that started this whole debate in the first place; the rest more or less completely stopped hiring freelancers except through payroll companies (who are just highly expensive middlemen). This went on for the better part of 2016, until the new law was suspended. It still is, and they are still debating on where to draw the line between self-employment and employment.
This has been the subject of much debate and law-making in the Netherlands. The issue isn't new, and better believe that someone will pay this tax.
Not long ago, legistlaters thought the VAR system was needlessly burdensome, and changed it so that self-employed and their clients had to enter into a pre-approved "model agreement". No one understood this system; some large companies (typically the worst offenders such as Deliveroo) got their model agreements stamped, the rest simply stopped hiring freelancers except through payroll companies (who are just highly expensive middlemen). This went on for the better part of 2016, until the new law was suspended. It still is, and they are still debating on where to draw the line between self-employment and employment.
Handwriting was already a lost art before we did our writing on computers. The cursive writing we learn in school is suitable for learning how to write, but painfully inadequate for developing good handwriting that is personal and reasonably fast, beautiful, yet legible at the same time.
Not even that. In DevOps it’s not even necessary to have a DevOps “guy”, that term smells a lot like the other drivel HR people tend to stick in job requirements. Originally at least, DevOps was more about process: a way for changes to flow smoothly, quickly and safely through development, QA, and deployment, with automation being a big part of that. But those 3 tasks can still be handled by separate teams like in more traditionally organised shops (ITIL).
Net neutrality isnt about Netflix and Alphabet. Bandwidth throttling and companies having to pay for a "premium channel" to their customers doesn't hurt them, they will pay and carry on: this extra fee is an annoyance, but it actually helps protect them from competing startups without deep pockets. Good luck launching your music or video streaming service if the connection to your customers is going to be shit by design.
Dirty air? Despite such cheating on emissions and an increase in car use, the air has gotten a hell of a lot cleaner in the past decades and continues to get cleaner still. You can't just claim damages due to "dirty air", at most you could claim damages for much dirtier the air has gotten due to Volkswagen not quite meeting the Euro-6 norm or whatever it is.
With that said, a stiff fine is in order. But not like this. €1B to Germany, $4.3B to the US, then maybe another $1B by the state of California, $500M to the city of New York, €1.5B to France, €2B to Mexico, well, you get the picture. It's not in anyone's interest to cripple this company, and I would much rather have seen smaller fines plus some jail time for those responsible.
Critique of islam is not the same as "islamophobia" (i.e. an irrational, unfounded fear of islam); a word invented to equate any such criticism with discrimination so it can be stifled. Also, I do not support vile racist scum, but I do support their right to voice their opinion without fear of persecution. Because that is also my right, and I would very much like it to stay that way.
No kidding. Similar sentiments can sometimes be heard in the EU Parliament: a desire for more control over undesirable speech, enshrining "islamophobia" into law and equating it with discrimination. This has little to do with the "evil EU" by the way, many national polticians would love to have more control over what is being said online as well.
A nice example: many members of a group protesting against a planned refugee center in a Dutch town received a visit from the police, after a few heated online debates on the topic. The police and the responsible minister claim that the visits were well-meant, aimed at giving protesters a "friendly warning" before they cross the line. Sure. But you can also be sure that such a visit will be felt as deeply intimidating by many. Post something relatively innocuous online and have uniformed cops in your living room the next day? Yeah, those guys will probably be a little but more careful about what they write online. Mission accomplished.
Another example: a cartoonist working under a pseudonym was arrested in the middle of the night by a 9-strong SWAT team, for the crime of making nasty cartoons. In the end they found only 1 or 2 cartoons that actually ran afoul of discrimination laws, but... the guy stopped drawing after that arrest. Mission accomplished.
The real scary part is that few people care. Many might think that such tactics are a little heavy-handed, but then immediately say: "we're better off without that filth online"
I wonder why banks would rely on a crypto currency like Ripple, of which 60% is held by the company and a further 20% is held by the founders. I know why they use it today in some cases: to experiment with the tech in a nimble manner, by not having to rely on their own bloated, creaking mess of legacy systems held together with spit and bailing wire. But you don't need a "coin" to settle stuff over a block chain, you can just record everything in dollars.
It’s process replacing competence. But the problem isn’t that managers think average guys + procedure adds up to Einstein, its that they think that with enough procedure, average devs can get 70% of the work done (in terms of quality and productivity) that fully competent devs produce, and that 70% is enough. They are usually wrong on both counts.
They apply the same to Agile. Instead of embracing its principles and empowering competent staff to apply them, they seek to translate Agile into more rules. To the point where they actually require prospective team members to hold an “Agile practitioner’s” certification. Like writing a 500 page essay on brevity.
"There is also concern that the proposals will rely on algorithms that will be programmed to "play safe" and delete anything that creates a risk for the platform." That is not a concern, it's a feature. And once the current system of copyright enforcement after the fact (with takedown notices and such) is replaced with a priori filtering, you can be sure that websites will then also be held responsible for socially undesirable content, and asked or scared into censoring it a priori as well. I expect EU sites to comply and others to leave. Mission accomplished.
I've no idea if we really have a shortage of bricklayers here in the Netherlands. Most homes I see going up are prefab concrete with a faux brick cladding glued on. Most brick work is for new luxury houses or repair work on older ones.
What is relatively new though, at least as far as I can see around me in Europe, is that an increasing number of formerly semi-permanent jobs are being turned into gigs. Employers are basically saying: "We need you to quit and come back as a freelancer." Not that long ago this often was a pretty sweet deal especially for white collar workers, but what they are really saying these days is: "We want you to become a freelancer, working at shit rates which will leave you with as much cash in your pocket as you used to get from us, but without us having to pay for a pension, insurance, training or an income between assignments." An especially attractive proposition for employers in countries like mine, where employers' dues (national insurances and pension) are around 30% on top of gross wages.
affordable readers are still far too uncomfortable and small.
I beg to differ. I read an awful lot, and I say that modern e-readers have come a long way, and are now as comfortable to read as printed books, under pretty much any circumstances, with a few nice extras like built-in backlights and the ability to carry thousands of books (plus the ability to download more) in a package weighing less than a single paperback. But I do not "work with texts", I read fiction, start to finish in a linear fashion. Maybe that's the difference. Because the way e-readers handle annotations, search, and images stinks, compared to paper. For the past decade or so I have bought all my fiction in electronic format... but any reference material or non-fiction works that I might want to annotate or lend to friends, I've bought in paper format. So yeah, paper still plays a role. But for a large number of people, e-readers are actually a better choice already.
It doesn't have to make sense. Erdogan is a despot who at this point can pretty much do what he wants. And he is a populist pur sang... banning a disruptive foreign company fits exceedingly well in his playbook, whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the matter are.
The problem is that the vast majority of those millions aren't crying about it later. They are happy with the situation and "have nothing to hide". Until of course this sharing of personal data with abandon comes and bites them personally.
A loss of points on your Social Score, perhaps. You know, the thing that tracks Chinese citizens' behaviour and bars them from flying and other "privileges" if the score drops too low.
Slashdot Mirror
Now imagine going to jail for that... That has to suck tremendously: "What are you in for?" "Welllll...."
./ ate a paragraph there:
This has been the subject of much debate and law-making in the Netherlands. The issue isn't new, and better believe that someone will pay this tax.
In the old days, self-employed people did pay the national insurance tax without actually being covered. Then, the tax was repealed, but if the Revenue Service ruled that your work constitued employment rather than self-employment, you still had to pay (and were retroactively covered). Most freelancers were fine with this as they were in the best position to assess how much of a risk this actually was. But some thought this to be "unfair" and the law shifted the burden to the freelancers' clients. Still not a big deal, clients were ok with this if you could show a VAR, an individual ruling on the nature of your worker status, issued by the Revenue Service.
Not long ago, legistlaters thought the VAR system was needlessly burdensome, and changed it so that self-employed and their clients had to enter into a pre-approved "model agreement". No one understands this system; some large companies (typically the worst offenders such as Deliveroo) got their model agreements stamped and carried on with the practices that started this whole debate in the first place; the rest more or less completely stopped hiring freelancers except through payroll companies (who are just highly expensive middlemen). This went on for the better part of 2016, until the new law was suspended. It still is, and they are still debating on where to draw the line between self-employment and employment.
This has been the subject of much debate and law-making in the Netherlands. The issue isn't new, and better believe that someone will pay this tax.
Not long ago, legistlaters thought the VAR system was needlessly burdensome, and changed it so that self-employed and their clients had to enter into a pre-approved "model agreement". No one understood this system; some large companies (typically the worst offenders such as Deliveroo) got their model agreements stamped, the rest simply stopped hiring freelancers except through payroll companies (who are just highly expensive middlemen). This went on for the better part of 2016, until the new law was suspended. It still is, and they are still debating on where to draw the line between self-employment and employment.
Handwriting was already a lost art before we did our writing on computers. The cursive writing we learn in school is suitable for learning how to write, but painfully inadequate for developing good handwriting that is personal and reasonably fast, beautiful, yet legible at the same time.
Not even that. In DevOps it’s not even necessary to have a DevOps “guy”, that term smells a lot like the other drivel HR people tend to stick in job requirements. Originally at least, DevOps was more about process: a way for changes to flow smoothly, quickly and safely through development, QA, and deployment, with automation being a big part of that. But those 3 tasks can still be handled by separate teams like in more traditionally organised shops (ITIL).
Net neutrality isnt about Netflix and Alphabet. Bandwidth throttling and companies having to pay for a "premium channel" to their customers doesn't hurt them, they will pay and carry on: this extra fee is an annoyance, but it actually helps protect them from competing startups without deep pockets. Good luck launching your music or video streaming service if the connection to your customers is going to be shit by design.
Dirty air? Despite such cheating on emissions and an increase in car use, the air has gotten a hell of a lot cleaner in the past decades and continues to get cleaner still. You can't just claim damages due to "dirty air", at most you could claim damages for much dirtier the air has gotten due to Volkswagen not quite meeting the Euro-6 norm or whatever it is.
With that said, a stiff fine is in order. But not like this. €1B to Germany, $4.3B to the US, then maybe another $1B by the state of California, $500M to the city of New York, €1.5B to France, €2B to Mexico, well, you get the picture. It's not in anyone's interest to cripple this company, and I would much rather have seen smaller fines plus some jail time for those responsible.
Critique of islam is not the same as "islamophobia" (i.e. an irrational, unfounded fear of islam); a word invented to equate any such criticism with discrimination so it can be stifled. Also, I do not support vile racist scum, but I do support their right to voice their opinion without fear of persecution. Because that is also my right, and I would very much like it to stay that way.
No kidding. Similar sentiments can sometimes be heard in the EU Parliament: a desire for more control over undesirable speech, enshrining "islamophobia" into law and equating it with discrimination. This has little to do with the "evil EU" by the way, many national polticians would love to have more control over what is being said online as well.
A nice example: many members of a group protesting against a planned refugee center in a Dutch town received a visit from the police, after a few heated online debates on the topic. The police and the responsible minister claim that the visits were well-meant, aimed at giving protesters a "friendly warning" before they cross the line. Sure. But you can also be sure that such a visit will be felt as deeply intimidating by many. Post something relatively innocuous online and have uniformed cops in your living room the next day? Yeah, those guys will probably be a little but more careful about what they write online. Mission accomplished.
Another example: a cartoonist working under a pseudonym was arrested in the middle of the night by a 9-strong SWAT team, for the crime of making nasty cartoons. In the end they found only 1 or 2 cartoons that actually ran afoul of discrimination laws, but... the guy stopped drawing after that arrest. Mission accomplished.
The real scary part is that few people care. Many might think that such tactics are a little heavy-handed, but then immediately say: "we're better off without that filth online"
I wonder why banks would rely on a crypto currency like Ripple, of which 60% is held by the company and a further 20% is held by the founders. I know why they use it today in some cases: to experiment with the tech in a nimble manner, by not having to rely on their own bloated, creaking mess of legacy systems held together with spit and bailing wire. But you don't need a "coin" to settle stuff over a block chain, you can just record everything in dollars.
The real missing question? TFS helpfully gives us the answer to that but fails to provide the question itself.
It’s process replacing competence. But the problem isn’t that managers think average guys + procedure adds up to Einstein, its that they think that with enough procedure, average devs can get 70% of the work done (in terms of quality and productivity) that fully competent devs produce, and that 70% is enough. They are usually wrong on both counts.
They apply the same to Agile. Instead of embracing its principles and empowering competent staff to apply them, they seek to translate Agile into more rules. To the point where they actually require prospective team members to hold an “Agile practitioner’s” certification. Like writing a 500 page essay on brevity.
"There is also concern that the proposals will rely on algorithms that will be programmed to "play safe" and delete anything that creates a risk for the platform." That is not a concern, it's a feature. And once the current system of copyright enforcement after the fact (with takedown notices and such) is replaced with a priori filtering, you can be sure that websites will then also be held responsible for socially undesirable content, and asked or scared into censoring it a priori as well. I expect EU sites to comply and others to leave. Mission accomplished.
In this case, I believe that they sign the proposals into law, but they do not make them
I've no idea if we really have a shortage of bricklayers here in the Netherlands. Most homes I see going up are prefab concrete with a faux brick cladding glued on. Most brick work is for new luxury houses or repair work on older ones.
What is relatively new though, at least as far as I can see around me in Europe, is that an increasing number of formerly semi-permanent jobs are being turned into gigs. Employers are basically saying: "We need you to quit and come back as a freelancer." Not that long ago this often was a pretty sweet deal especially for white collar workers, but what they are really saying these days is: "We want you to become a freelancer, working at shit rates which will leave you with as much cash in your pocket as you used to get from us, but without us having to pay for a pension, insurance, training or an income between assignments." An especially attractive proposition for employers in countries like mine, where employers' dues (national insurances and pension) are around 30% on top of gross wages.
affordable readers are still far too uncomfortable and small.
I beg to differ. I read an awful lot, and I say that modern e-readers have come a long way, and are now as comfortable to read as printed books, under pretty much any circumstances, with a few nice extras like built-in backlights and the ability to carry thousands of books (plus the ability to download more) in a package weighing less than a single paperback. But I do not "work with texts", I read fiction, start to finish in a linear fashion. Maybe that's the difference. Because the way e-readers handle annotations, search, and images stinks, compared to paper. For the past decade or so I have bought all my fiction in electronic format... but any reference material or non-fiction works that I might want to annotate or lend to friends, I've bought in paper format. So yeah, paper still plays a role. But for a large number of people, e-readers are actually a better choice already.
It doesn't have to make sense. Erdogan is a despot who at this point can pretty much do what he wants. And he is a populist pur sang... banning a disruptive foreign company fits exceedingly well in his playbook, whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the matter are.
The problem is that the vast majority of those millions aren't crying about it later. They are happy with the situation and "have nothing to hide". Until of course this sharing of personal data with abandon comes and bites them personally.
What exactly is the advantage over digitally signed digital diplomas?
If a company is trying to sell you on an “experience”, you can be sure that you are getting raped somehow. The only question is in which orifice...
One benefit is attention from idiot VCs
Sending your military unasked onto another country's soil is generally considered to be a hostile act, even if no shots are fired.
Not needing an account to read the content is an excellent start. That used to be a no brainer... until FB came along.
A loss of points on your Social Score, perhaps. You know, the thing that tracks Chinese citizens' behaviour and bars them from flying and other "privileges" if the score drops too low.