#apple 1 trillion

[xflixer7]

all of my yellowjacket headcannons (so far)

word count is like a trillion ok i’m not counting all of this

hi it’s been 8 months i finally counted (1865 words)

lottie

she/her transfem! lesbian bottom (i wanna eat her whole)

-schizophrenic

-definitely has some type of ocd

-ptsd

-autistic because i say so

started playing soccer when she was little

will actually go insane is you steal any of her clothes if you look at her she will actually be drooling with heart eyes

plays piano

also knows violin because her parents made her take it doesn’t play is anymore though

lottie isn’t jealous but very protective

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-phoebe bridgers

-clairo

-#1 laufey fan on the world

-fiona apple

unironically knows every katy perry song by heart because she used to be her favorite when she was little

her room is huge

likes putting her hair in pigtails

golden retriever girlfriend she’s so sweet ugh and loves to spend time and money on her person you always staying at her house would literally kiss the ground the person she is dating walker on if they asked her too:((

also the worst cooker you ever met like how did you fuck up toast why is the smoke alarm going off??

favorite color is blue

lottie definitely has a hairstylist she goes too every month to get permed and there really close i can see her telling them about ALL the school drama

lottie wants write story’s when she’s older maybe romance or mystery idk but i can just imagine her having a typewriter and writing you story’s she has wanted to do it since she was a kid and is very passionate about it:((

what i think her favorite shows are:desperate housewives,american horror story,sailer moon

so scared of horror movie like she will start crying

her favorite characters are:

-emily (corpse bride)

-bree (desperate housewives)

-starfire (teen titans)

always goes on and on about how she’s bubblegum and your marceline she LOVES adventure time

her favorite movie is bridge to terabithia

lotties favorite animal is a bunny and she really wants a pet bunny

BEGS you to give her your bra and your confused but you give it too her and she makes a bracelet out of it and wears it practically every day proudly

also think that lottie is a great artist? like sketching and painting wise

nat

SAY IT WITH ME transmasc! (he/they) definitely bi because i say so

-depressed

-dyslexic

-ptsd

started playing soccer in middle school

LOVES christmas like has an unhealthy obsession with it (tries to act like he doesn’t)

northern italian knows the language pretty well also a great cook

wants to play electric guitar

his favorite (modern!) singers are

-tyler the creator

-radiohead

-alex g

-hole

-is so obsessed with mistki don’t even get me started

randomly painted his room black one day when he was bored

usually prefers his hair down

you give him haircuts he doesn’t trust anyone else someone definitely fucked up his hair once and he never went back

his favorite color is black or gray

just wants to be famous tbh but he wants to be in a band

what i think his favorite shows are:rick and morty,bojack horseman,shameless

LOVES horror movies and reality tv like 90 day fiancé and the kardashions (his guilty pleasure)

also likes claymation

his favorite characters are

-ash (fantastic mr fox)

-alyssa (the end of the fucking world)

-coraline (coraline)

his favorite movie is little miss sunshine

nat’s favorite animal is a panther he saw one in the jungle book when he was little and just thought it looked cool

always headcannoing characters as trans like finn from adventure time or jeff from clarence he’s so cute:((

nat skateboards too definitely not great at it but does it when he’s bored

jackie

(she/her) jackie is just a bratty pillow princess lesbian you can’t fool me

-adhd asf

-neurodivergent for sure

-ptsd

started playing soccer because she was bored eighth grade tbh i don’t think she likes it as much as the others but she thinks it’s fun

chronic hoodie stealer

this girl is a vegetarian for sure

jackie is jealous always period

her gay ass button ups bro

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-ariana grande her fav

-rihanna

-billie eilish

-harry styles

-lana del ray

pretty mainstream music taste

all pink room it’s very like coquette?

ponytail girl but also enjoys her hair down

favorite color is light pink duh

wants to be a makeup guru or just stay at home honestly she hates working

what i think her favorite shows are:euphoria, grays anatomy,glee,vampire diaries

i think she likes very drama files shows and will rant about tv show characters and there dynamics and why she think that there like that and etc for HOURS

ughhh jackie is such a girls girl like she is the friend who always has your back and has gum or a tampon for you she is the friend who would check you on your period

her favorite characters are:

-maddy (euphoria)

-regina (mean girls)

-winnie the pooh (she thinks he’s cute)

her favorite movie is DEFINITELY jennifer’s body

jackie is a cat lover and has 2 i can see her with a orange and a gray cat and they always fight

shauna

DEFINITELY bi (she/her)

-bipolar

-ptsd

joined soccer with jackie in eighth grade

has like thousands of boxers

russian

knows how to play saxophone (she doesn’t even know how she learned she just did) she doesn’t own one though

so jealous but never says anything (this girl cannot communicate to save her life)

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-the cranberries

was so mad when they got popular on tiktok and had to let everyone know they where her fav since day 1 (everyone knew)

-suki waterhouse

-cigarettes after sex

-never got over halsey since 2017

-the smiths

(a TRUE music lover over here)

she honestly doesn’t care how her room looks but it’s never clean

doesn’t do anything with her hair really

dark green is her favorite color

shauna’s hair may seem simple but she’s VERY picky about how it’s cut and is always worried there gonna cut it bad so she gets it cut like twice a year(she always ends up hating it)

she wants to be some sort of doctorate she’s fascinated by the human body so i can see her wanting to be a surgeon

what i think her favorite shows are:good girls, queens gambit,13 reasons why

her favorite characters are:

-velma (chicago)

-cassie (euphoria)oh the parallels…

-amy (gone girl)

her favorite movie is chicago (loves musicals)

a simple gal she really likes dogs

taissa

she/her lesbian

-anxiety

-ptsd

joined soccer in fifth grade

mixed (duh)

used to be in the marching band

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-frank ocean

-post malone

-has a soft spot for shawn mendas has all of his albums

-really enjoys 60’s music so she really likes the beetles

her room is pretty big too not huge on decorating

doesn’t care about hair like at all will wear a headband sometimes

a good girlfriend like if your cold she will give you her jacket type she has a temper never jealous either girlfriend material she’s the type you would want your kid to date y’know?

respectful to adults gets good grades and stuff

her favorite color is like a pearlescent white and everyone is like what the hell is that (she is trying to be different this is one of my favorite colors😿)

cuts her own hair thinks it’s overpriced and dumb to have someone professionally do it

tai wants to be something important like president or some shit i can see her being a lawyer

what i think her favorite shows are:the umbrella academy,big mouth,skins

tai only watches skins and euphoria type shows because she loves the drama

her favorite characters:

-hermoine (harry potter)

-patrick (perks of being a wallflower)

-nadine (edge of seventeen)

her favorite movie is the 6th harry potter movie she also thinks it’s the most underrated

she likes tigers

van

she/her and lesbian duh

-ptsd

joined soccer kinda randomly in seventh grade

irish

plays the trumpet but is kinda embarrassed by it

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-bruno mars

-tori amos

-girl in red duh

-david bowie

-was ziggy stardust for halloween when she was 8

can’t convince me her room is not painted red

doesn’t care about hair either puts in a ponytail to keep it out of her face

is a great girlfriend all the same traits as taissa except not the best at school she’s honestly surprised she graduated

favorite color is red

her uncle cuts her hair for like five bucks out of his garage also i definitely think she used to have a bowl cut when she was little

doesn’t really care about money she just wants to be happy wants to own a record store or be a professional soccer player

speaking of records she definitely has a lot of collections like lowkey a hoarder…but her stuff is cool though! like funky pops hot wheels cd’s records etc

what i think her favorite shows are:beavis and butthead, avatar, south park

mostly likes adult animation

her favorite characters are:-harley (suicide squad)-ron (harry potter)-beast boy (teen titans)

her favorite movie is the bee movie or lego batman there cinematic masterpieces

van likes pigeons for not particular reason she just thinks there funny looking

i can see van as a surfer too like her dad definitely is one also i can imagine her being really close with her dad and they have a local family business bakery:((

misty

she/her and idk her sexually like i genuinely have no idea

-autistic

-ptsd

always wanted to be on the team but knew she was bad at sports

german definitely

her favorite (modern!) singers are

-any female kpop band

-justin bieber

-pink-

melanie martenz is her favorite forever

light purple room has justin bieber posters everywhere

lowkey forgets she has hair whenever people comment on it she’s like “oh yeah!”

very obsessive of you and loves you almost too much sometimes you think it’s creepy but than your like “awww she’s so cute”

likes the color yellow

her favorite colors are brown and orange (there her favorite because she feels bad everyone calls them ugly)

i can see her being a k-pop stan too

(her bias in bts is j-hope)

also is a famous editer on tiktok and no one knows😭her username is like “gxxbflix” or some shit

literally has had one haircut in her life like it never grows?

i see her as a pharmacist

what i think her favorite shows are:walking dead,mlp,monster high

has SO many online friends

definitely loves romance anime

she’s in like every fandom ever because she wants to have online friends and be included on discord😭

plays clarinet

is in band

favorite characters:

-cruella (cruella)-alice (alice in wonderland)-edward (edward sciccor hands)

and mistys favorite movie is alice through the looking glass (because it shows the queen of hearts back story and misty loves her)

and misty likes birds duh

those are my headcannons for them i know it’s a lot but i’m obsessed ok send requests if you have any please

-🙈

[correctproseka]

So i may have done smth out of spite

Someone on twt was mad niigo got Mind Brand bc "niigo gets all the more famous songs". Which no, not really. Ive limited myself here to 8 covers of famous songs, but every unit has over that (or well, i counted over that on every other unit but ln, but thats also just bc i dont listen much to the leo/need style without prsk so i know them less)

[image id: two images with all five units, with 8 song covers on all of them with the names under, it goes as:

Leo/Need: Roki, Hibana, Teo, Deep Sea Lilly, Lost One's Weeping, Ghost Rule, Six Trillion Years (and overnight story) and Kagerou Daze

More more jump: Viva Happy, Patchwork Stacatto, Shoujorei, Kokorohoyou, Darling Dance, Kyuu Kurarin, Vampire and Romeo and Cinderella

Vivid Bad Squad: Bring It On, Doctor Funk = Beat, ECHO, Ifuudoudou, Ghost City Tokyo, Traffic Jam, Odo, PaIII. sensation

Wonderlands x showtime: Buriki no Dance, Dappou Rock, Dance Robot Dance, King, Telecaster B-Boy, 1 2 fanclub, Alien Alien and Love Ka?

Nightcord at 25:00: Otome dissection, Venom, Bocca della verita, Villain, Aishite x3, Phony, Envy Baby and Bad Apple!

End Id]

So really if you only, or mostly recognize niigos ones, it just means you listen to the emo music smh /hj

[inbabylontheywept]

So, just some Fermi numbers for AI: I'm going to invent a unit right now, 1 Global Flop-Second. It's the total amount of computation available in the world, for one second. That's 10^21 flops if you're actually kind of curious. GPT-3 required about 100 Global Flop-Seconds, or nearly 2 minutes. GPT-4 required around 10,000 Global Flop-Seconds, or about 3 hours, and at the time, consumed something like 1/2000th the worlds total computational capacity for a couple of years. If we assume that every iteration just goes up by something like 100x as many flop seconds, GPT-5 is going to take 1,000,000 Global Flop-Seconds, or 12 days of capacity. They've been working on it for a year and a half, which implies that they've been using something like 1% of the world's total computational capacity in that time.

So just drawing straights lines in the guesses (this is a Fermi estimation), GPT-6 would need 20x as much computing fraction as GPT-5, which needed 20x as much as GPT-4, so it would take something like a quarter of all the world's computational capacity to make if they tried for a year and a half. If they cut themselves some slack and went for five years, they'd still need 5-6%.

And GPT-7 would need 20x as much as that.

OpenAI's CEO has said that their optimistic estimates for getting to GPT-7 would require seven-trillion dollars of investment. That's about as much as Microsoft, Apple, and Google combined. So, for limiting factors involved are... GPT-6: Limited by money. GPT-6 doesn't happen unless GPT-5 can make an absolute shitload. Decreasing gains kill this project, and all the ones after that. We don't actually know how far deep learning can be pushed before it stops working, but it probably doesnt' scale forever. GPT-7: Limited by money, and by total supply of hardware. Would need to make a massive return on six, and find a way to actually improve hardware output for the world. GPT-8: Limited by money, and by hardware, and by global energy supplies. Would require breakthroughs in at least two of those three. A world where GPT-8 can be designed is almost impossible to imagine. A world where GPT-8 exists is like summoning an elder god. GPT-9, just for giggles, is like a Kardeshev 1 level project. Maybe level 2.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨

UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION

The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.

Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.

However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.

Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.

Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.

A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.

In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."

The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.

The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.

Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.

Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.

Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.

Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.

Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.

Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.

It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.

While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.

Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.

What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.

#source1

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

Blue: titles are opinion pieces or analysis, and may or may not contain sources.

[wildpeachfarm]

Snippet from a fic where the server is alive and loves her administrator.

In the heart of the server, once a great nation, or a blight on the server, depending on who you asked, was L'manberg. Reduced to rubble, burned and blown to bits all the way to bedrock, the obsidian grid still hung in the sky, a better testament to the foolishness of man, who thought they could spit in the face of God, of multiple gods, and believed what they had built would live to tell the tale. A desolate reminder that no one, save the gods themselves, were unfallable.

Or, rather, what should have been desolate.

Sapnap slowly descended the steps that had been carved into the sides of the crater, after one too many of our personal items had fallen or been thrown in. Almost entirely the whole way down, he could see the sky blue and verdant green moss of George's clothes, the man in one of his rare bouts of consciousness. He was kneeled in the dirt, deep and focused on something blocked from sapnap's view.

"Sapnap, come look at this," George demanded the second Sapnap's foot finally touched the bottom. Unlike the quiet, oppressive unease that had settled over the server, conflict lurking underneath every action and coating every word spoken bitterly, George is alive, a breath of fresh air, unaffected for the most part by the ongoing of the community, whether that be out of apathy or ignorance. Either way, Sapnal didn't care, and it was nice amongst everything else to have something stable, something that never changed. Just him, and George, and-

Sapnap cut his thoughts off, refocusing on his task. He approached George, planting his axe in the dirt to lean on and peak over George's shoulder. "What's up?"

Slowly, carefully, George removed his cupped hands away from whatever he had been protecting. Underneath was a small plant, a tiny green thing, just barely poking out of the dirt.

Sapnap frowned. "You know everything you plant here is going to die, right?"

"It won't." George leaned back on his haunches, using a muddied hand to push his goggles up and off his face. "It grew here itself."

"This place has been uninhabitable for a year now," Sapnap reminded him. "Maybe someone else was enough of a dumbass to plant it here but it won't survive."

"It grew here," George insisted, gently petting the budding plant with his index finger. "It will survive. A brave little thing. It's growing here because it wants to. The world wants it to."

Sapnap frowned. George, out of all three of them, had always been the one most vaguely spiritual. But Sapnap thought of mossy caves and of rapid growing trees, branches stretching out underfoot. He thought of only the freshest, juiciest apples always being in arms reach, of perfect gardens with little maintenance from his fathers. And he knew George was thinking of it too, based on the soft smile on his face and how he gently put the slowly unfurling leaves of the plant like how one might pet a dog.

Together they thought of fruitful autumns and summer breezes and snowfall enough to plan but not enough to trap them inside. They thought of odds 1 in 7 trillion, of never rolling an ankle.

In the end, they said nothing.

ohhhh echo this EATS

[mariacallous]

About three years ago, some of Google’s security engineers came to company attorneys with a gigantic mess.

The security team had discovered that Google unwittingly was enabling the spread of malicious software known as Glupteba. The malware had corrupted more than 1 million Windows computers, turning them into vehicles to mine cryptocurrency and spy on users. By hijacking Google accounts, purchasing Google ads to lure in users, and misusing Google cloud tools, the hackers behind the operation were on their way to infecting even more computers.

Tech giants such as Google long have had a playbook for destroying botnets like Glupteba. They call up fellow companies and US authorities and together coordinate a massive takedown operation. Sometimes, the cops file criminal charges. But this time around, Google’s legal team recommended an approach that the company hadn’t pursued in years: Sue the hackers for money.

The eventual lawsuit against two Russian men and a dozen unnamed individuals allegedly behind Glupteba would be the first of a run of at least eight cases that Google has filed against various hackers and scammers, adding to a sporadic few filings in the past. The tactic, which Google calls affirmative litigation, is meant to scare off would-be fraudsters and generate public awareness about scams. Now, for the first time, Google is opening up about this strategy.

Leaders of Google’s security and legal teams tell WIRED they believe going after people in court has paid off. Google hasn’t yet lost a case; it has collected almost all of the more than $2 million that it has won through the legal process, and forced hundreds of companies or websites to shut down. The awards are trivial to Google and its parent Alphabet, a $2 trillion company, but can be devastating for the defendants.

“We’re disrupting bad actors and deterring future activity, because it’s clear that the consequences and the costs are high,” says Chester Day, lead of the three-person “litigation advance” team at Google that’s focused on taking people to court. Google, he adds, is “making it clear that we’re willing to invest our resources into taking action to protect our users.”

Google blog posts and similar content about the lawsuits and the underlying scams have drawn more than 1 billion views, according to the company. Google representatives say that the awareness increases vigilance among consumers and shrinks the pool of vulnerable targets. “Educating people about how these crimes work may be the best thing we can do to stop the crime,” says Harold Chun, director of Google’s security legal team.

Several Big Tech companies have pursued affirmative litigation, though not necessarily under that name and with varying strategies. Microsoft has filed more than two dozen lawsuits since 2008 with a focus on securing court permission to dismantle botnets and other hacking tools. Amazon has been a prolific complainant since 2018, filing at least 42 cases over counterfeit products, 38 for reviews fraud, three for copyright abuse, and, recently, two for bogus product returns. Amazon has been filing so many counterfeit cases, in fact, that the federal court in western Washington assigned three magistrate judges to focus on them.

Since 2019, Meta has filed at least seven counterfeiting or data theft cases, with settlements or default judgments in four so far, including one in which it won nearly $300,000 in damages. Like Meta, Apple has sued Israeli spyware developer NSO Group for alleged hacking. (NSO is fighting the lawsuits. Trials are scheduled for next year.)

Some attorneys who’ve studied how the private sector uses litigation to enforce the law are skeptical about the payoff for the plaintiffs. David Noll, a Rutgers University law professor and author of a forthcoming book on state-supported private enforcement, Vigilante Nation, says it’s difficult to imagine that companies could bring the volume of cases needed to significantly stop abuse. “The fact that there is a small chance you might be named in a suit isn’t really going to deter you,” he says.

Noll believes the big risk is that Google and other tech companies could be burdening the court system with cases that ultimately secure some favorable headlines but do less to make the internet safer than the companies could achieve through investing in better antifraud measures.

Still, of the six outside legal experts who spoke to WIRED, all of them say that overall Google deserves credit for complementing the work of underfunded government agencies that are struggling to rein in online abuse. At an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars per case, it’s a low-risk endeavor for the tech giant, former prosecutors say.

“Reliable and regular enforcement when folks step outside the law brings us closer to a society where less of us are harmed,” says Kathleen Morris, resident scholar of law at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “This is healthy and robust collaboration on law enforcement by the public and private sectors.”

Google’s general counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado, tells WIRED she wants to send a message to other companies that the corporate legal department can do more than be the team that says “no” to wild ideas. “Legal can be a proactive protector,” she says.

Marketing Scams

DeLaine Prado says that from its earliest days, Google has considered pursuing litigation against people abusing its platforms and intellectual property. But the first case she and other leaders within Google recall filing was in 2015. Google accused Local Lighthouse, a California marketing company, of placing robocalls to dupe small businesses into paying to improve their ranking in search results. Google alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising. As part of a settlement, Lighthouse stopped the problematic calls.

Since then, Google has filed complaints against five similar allegedly scammy marketers, with three of them ending in settlements so far. A Florida business and its owners agreed to pay Google $850,000, and a Los Angeles man who allegedly posted 14,000 fake reviews on Google Maps agreed to stop. Terms of the third deal, with an Illinois company, were not disclosed in court files, but Google spokesperson José Castañeda says it involved a seven-figure payment to Google.

Castañeda says Google has donated all the money it has collected to recipients such as the Better Business Bureau Institute, the National Consumers League, Partnership to End Addiction, Cybercrime Support Network, and various US chambers of commerce.

Another genre of cases has targeted individuals submitting false copyright complaints to Google to get content removed from the company’s services. A man in Omaha, Nebraska, whom Google accused of falsely claiming ownership of YouTube videos to extort money from their real owners, agreed to pay $25,000 to Google. Two individuals in Vietnam sued by Google never responded—a common issue.

In 2022, Google won default judgment against an individual in Cameroon who never responded to charges that he was using Gmail to scam people into paying for fake puppies, including a $700 basset hound. After the lawsuit, complaints about the scammer dried up, according to Google.

But legal experts say the most fascinating cases of Google’s affirmative litigation are four that it filed against alleged computer hackers. The suits emerged after months of investigation into Glupteba.

Security engineers at Google realized that eradicating Glupteba through the typical approach of taking down associated servers would be difficult. The hackers behind it had designed a backup system involving a blockchain that enabled Glupteba to resurrect itself and keep pilfering away.

That’s in part why Google’s attorneys suggested suing. Chun, the security legal director, had pursued cases against botnets as a federal prosecutor. “I thought this would be something good to do from a civil angle for a company as well,” he says. “Law enforcement agencies have limits on what they can do. And Google has a large voice and the litigation capacity.”

Chun and other attorneys cautioned their bosses that the hackers might use the lawsuit to reverse engineer Google’s investigation methods and make Glupteba more evasive and resilient. But ultimately, DeLaine Prado, who has final say over lawsuits, signed off. Chun says his former colleagues from the government applauded the complaint.

Google sued Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov, alleging that they were the Russia-based masterminds behind Glupteba after linking websites associated with the virus to Google accounts in their name. The search giant accused the duo (and unknown co-conspirators) of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The lawsuit also alleged a trademark law violation for hiding Glupteba in a tool that claimed to download videos from YouTube.

Google argued that it had suffered substantial harm, having never received payment for ads it had sold to the hackers, who allegedly were using fraudulent credit cards. Users also had their experiences with Google services degraded, putting them at risk and impairing the value of the company’s brand, according to the lawsuit.

In court papers, Starovikov and Filippov stated they learned of the lawsuit only through friends and then decided to hire a New York attorney, Igor Litvak, to fight on their behalf. The defendants initially offered innocent explanations for their software related to Glupteba and said that their projects had not targeted the US market. At one point, they countersued Google for $10 million, and at another, they allegedly demanded $1 million each to hand over the keys to shut down the botnet. They eventually denied the allegations against them.

Following an ordeal over whether the defendants could obtain Russian passports, sit for depositions in Europe, and turn over work files, Google’s attorneys and Litvak traded accusations of lying. In 2022, US district judge Denise Cote sided with Google. She found in a 48-page ruling that the defendants “intentionally withheld information” and “misrepresented their willingness and ability” to disclose it to “avoid liability and further profit” from Glupteba. “The record here is sufficient to find a willful attempt to defraud the Court,” Cote wrote.

Cote sanctioned Litvak, and he agreed to pay Google $250,000 in total through 2027 to settle. The jurist also ordered Starovikov and Filippov to pay nearly $526,000 combined to cover Google’s attorneys fees. Castañeda says Google has received payment from all three.

Litvak tells WIRED that he still disagrees with the judge's findings and that Russia’s strained relationship with the US may have weighed on whom the judge trusted. “It’s telling that after I filed a motion to reconsider, pointing out serious issues with the court’s decision, the court went back on its original decision and referred [the] case to mediation, which ended with … me not having to admit to doing anything wrong,” he says in an email.

Google’s Castañeda says the case achieved the intended effect: The Russian hackers stopped misusing Google services and shut down their marketplace for stolen logins, while the number of Glupteba-infected computers fell 78 percent.

Not every case delivers measurable results. Defendants in Google’s other three hacking cases haven’t responded to the accusations. That led to Google last year winning default judgment against three individuals in Pakistan accused of infecting more than 672,000 computers by masquerading malware as downloads of Google’s Chrome browser. Unopposed victories are also expected in the remaining cases, including one in which overseas app developers allegedly stole money through bogus investment apps and are being sued for violating YouTube Community Guidelines.

Royal Hansen, Google’s vice president for privacy, safety, and security engineering, says lawsuits that don’t result in defendants paying up or agreeing to stop the alleged misuse still can make alleged perpetrators’ lives more difficult. Google uses the rulings as evidence to persuade businesses such as banks and cloud providers to cut off the defendants. Other hackers might not want to work with them knowing they have been outed. Defendants also could be more cautious about crossing international borders and becoming newly subject to scrutiny from local authorities. “That’s a win as well,” Hansen says.

More to Come

These days, Google’s small litigation advance team meets about twice a week with other units across the company to discuss potential lawsuits. They weigh whether a case could set a helpful precedent to give extra teeth to Google’s policies or draw awareness to an emerging threat.

Team leader Day says that as Google has honed its process, filing cases has become more affordable. That should lead to more lawsuits each year, including some for the first time potentially filed outside the US or representing specific users who have been harmed, he says.

The tech giants' ever-sprawling empires leave no shortage of novel cases to pursue. Google’s sibling company Waymo recently adopted the affirmative litigation approach and sued two people who allegedly smashed and slashed its self-driving taxis. Microsoft, meanwhile, is weighing cases against people using generative AI technology for malicious or fraudulent purposes, says Steven Masada, assistant general counsel of the company’s Digital Crimes Unit.

The questions remain whether the increasing cadence of litigation has left cybercriminals any bit deterred and whether a broader range of internet companies will go on the legal offense.

Erin Bernstein, who runs the California office of Bradley Bernstein Sands, a law firm that helps governments pursue civil lawsuits, says she recently pitched a handful of companies across industries on doing their own affirmative litigation. Though none have accepted her offer, she’s optimistic. “It will be a growing area,” Bernstein says.

But Google’s DeLaine Prado hopes affirmative litigation eventually slows. “In a perfect world, this work would disappear over time if it’s successful,” she says. “I actually want to make sure that our success kind of makes us almost obsolete, at least as it relates to this type of work.”

[steddie-fanfic-recs]

love grows (where my rosemary goes)

by MacksDramaticShenanigans

Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington & Claudia Henderson Characters: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Claudia Henderson, Wayne Munson Additional Tags: Not Canon Compliant - Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Established Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Gardens & Gardening, Spring, Fluff, Love Confessions, first I love yous, Minor Claudia Henderson/Wayne Munson, Steve Harrington Has A Green Thumb, Plant Dad Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Loves Eddie Munson, Freckles, An Ode to Freckles Words: 3,213 Chapters: 1/1

Summary

“Do you know you have, like, a trillion freckles on your face?” Steve asks right back, leaning in. His left hand winds itself around the strap of Eddie’s overalls, pulling him in too, and the right one catches Eddie’s jaw. It’s cold from his own lemonade glass, abandoned somewhere by his feet, and his thumb sweeps over the bridge of Eddie’s nose, the apples of his cheeks. Doubles back to tap the single freckle that sits right on the tip. It’s true — Eddie does have freckles. Maybe not a trillion, but when the sun peeks out from behind the clouds like today and becomes a more permanent resident in the sky, those pesky little polka dots like to make their appearance, painting his face in faint faint dusting. They’re not obvious or anything; nobody really notices them unless they’re looking for them. But that’s the thing about Steve. He’s always looking. Always seeing. It’s why Eddie loves him so much. It’s why — oh. He loves him.

[undeniablerealities]

something I've been considering is how the second smart phone I owned had an IR blaster built in

all of a sudden I could connect to / interact with any tv, any cable box, any projector, and basically anything that demanded a remote. that tech felt WAY ahead of its time but utilized 30/40 year old development. Immediately after that generation of phone, it was eradicated and I've never seen anything like it again.

I feel like it was removed because that data it collected wasn't very profitable. Compared to a wifi controller, which can track your location, button presses, what you're interacting with, how what you're interacting with reacts, an IR blaster only shared device-side info, not what you're using it for (generally)

this is disturbing for a couple reasons, namely IR Blasters use tremendously less energy than WiFi or Bluetooth (which is just high density WiFi) and IR doesn't NEED connectivity. So many 'smart devices' rely on WiFi to perform basic functions, junking up your bandwidth, when they could send a very simple IR blast to tell your your toast is done or your laundry is ready to switch.

But that's the problem, if it's not on WiFi then Samsung who supples the washing machine, Comcast who supplies the internet, and Apple who supplies your phone can't profit over the data you're generating merely by interacting with this process. In reality, your phone should have an IR Blaster and Receptor so that you can start the laundry, and have the laundry machine tell you when it's done by an extremely simple low energy IR Blast.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ we won't see anything like this until our officials finally start regulating how personal data is collected and sold. I did the math the other day using this calculator and concluded that the value of internet data for an individual across their entire life is roughly $25000. That means for every living person right now, over all our entire lives, our internet data are worth between 1 & 2 Trillion dollars. money that none of us will ever be able to use.

Now consider this, say for Apple or Comcast or Disney or Twitter, you can pay to interact with these services. You pay your money to watch the new sanitized 'Season 1' Disney Who. Disney, or any data-driven company, is then also taking your personal data and selling it for more money. You pay to use services, then you donate your data by using said services.

IR Blasters or cookie-tracking, personal data is gonna become a tremendously bigger problem as we get older

[888saint]

There's no question that Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) had an incredible run in 2021.

The dog-themed cryptocurrency jumped from $0.000000000133 (nine zeros) at the end of 2020 to $0.000033 (four zeros) at the end of 2021, skyrocketing around 26,000,000% as major cryptocurrency exchanges allowed trading in SHIB and meme coins remained popular after the earlier rise of Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE).

After the meme coin shaved off five decimal zeros from its price, some are calling for the coin to eventually reach $1. From its current price of $0.000021, that would mark a gain of roughly 4,700,000%. Considering how far Shiba Inu has already come, it may seem realistic for the coin to gain another 4,700,000%, but basic math is standing in the way.

Shiba Inu trades for such a small fraction of a penny because its supply is so large. There's currently a supply of 549 trillion SHIB tokens in circulation, giving it a market cap of around $11 billion. If those tokens were worth $1 each, SHIB's market cap would be $549 trillion, roughly 200 times bigger than Apple, the world's most valuable company, and more than six times the world's annual GDP.

In other words, Shiba Inu reaching $1 would likely require a massive reordering of the world economy. That's not going to happen. However, there is a caveat.

The only way SHIB can reach $1

There are two ways for Shiba Inu's value to increase. One is that traders simply bid up the price. The other is for the supply to decrease, which should make the remaining coins more valuable. In order for this to happen, the coins have to be taken out of circulation, or burned, as traders usually call it, by being transferred to dead wallets.

It's not unusual for this to happen. In fact, according to Shibburn, a website that tracks the burning of Shiba Inu coins, 410 trillion Shiba Inu coins have already been burnt. Nearly all of those coins were taken out of circulation by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) who was gifted half of the 1 quadrillion Shiba Inu coin supply by the anonymous Shiba Inu founder. Buterin did so because he felt uncomfortable controlling so much of the supply of the cryptocurrency.

According to Shibburn, at the time of writing, 62 million Shiba Inu coins had been burned in the last 24 hours. While that might sound like a lot, at that rate it would take a little more than two weeks to burn 1 billion coins, and 40 years to burn 1 trillion. The burn could accelerate if there were an organized movement among SHIB holders, which could pick up steam if the value of SHIB continues to drop. However, there's a clear disincentive to burning the coins. If the value begins going up, it's in the interest of holders to keep their coins rather than burn them, and the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency makes it unlikely that there will be an organized movement powerful enough to substantially reduce the number of coins.

What's next for Shiba Inu

Since its peak at $0.88 at the end of October (2022?), Shiba Inu has lost more than 75% of its value, and other cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply as well. Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is down nearly 50% from its all-time high, as is Ethereum. Cryptocurrencies have tumbled amid broader jitters in the stock market over rising interest rates.

It's impossible to predict where the crypto currency market will go next, but the most highly inflated assets during the pandemic have already fallen sharply.

At this point, another Shiba Inu rally seems unlikely, and reaching $1 is nearly impossible.

Source:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-only-way-shiba-inu-will-ever-reach-$1

After October 22

Bitcoin Futures at the CME

ETF funds for Bitcoin

Crypto companies (stocks tend to gain as Bitcoin gains)

Cryptocurrency brokers sell derivatives

What’s next?

Coinbase announced AI 🤖 bot and how to create your own trading bot in 3 minutes using artificial intelligence

Price of Shiba at the time of this post (1:55am 10/30/2024)

0.00001910

Newark NJ

[originallandlockedmariner]

For three years running…

2020

Kobe. Pandemic. Lockdown. Koalas on fire. Harry and Meg retire. Toilet paper hoarding. Alcoholism. Impeach the f*cker. Parasite. Bonnie Henry. Tiger King. Working from home. Sourdough bread. Harvey Weinstein guilty. Zoom overdose. Dip your body in sanitizer. 6 feet. Quarantine. OK Boomer. Home schooling (everyone passes). Murder hornets. Dolly Parton. Don’t hug, kiss or see anybody, especially your family. Chris Evans’ junk. TikTok. Glory holes. Face masks. CERB. West Coast wildfires. Stay home. Small Businesses lose, big box stores win. F*ck Bozos. ‘Dreams’ and cranberry juice. Close yoga studios, but thumbs up to your local gym. Speak moistly to me. George Floyd. BLM. F*ck Trump. Phase 2, 3 and Summer. RBG. Baby Yoda. Biden wins. Bond and Black Panther die. No more lockdown. Back to school and work. Just kidding... giddy up round 2. Giuliani leaks shit from his head. Resurgence of chess. UFOs are real. Restrictions. Dave Grohl admits defeat. Monolith. “F*ck... forgot my mask in the car”. No Christmas shenanigans allowed. Bubbles. Alex Trebek. Use the term ‘dumpster fire’ one too many times. Jupiter and Saturn form 'Christmas Star'. Happy New Year Bitches!!!! 2021... you better not sh*t the bed!!

2021

“We love you, you’re very special”. Failed coup attempt at the Capital. Twitter, FB and IG ban Donny. Hammerin’ Hank goes to the Field of Dreams. Bozo no longer richest man but still a twat. Leachman, Tyson, and Holbrook pass. The economy is worse than expected. Kim and Kanye split. Brood X cicadas. Dre has an aneurysm and nearly has his home broken into. Bridgerton. MyPillow CEO is a douche. Covid restrictions extended indefinitely. Captain Von Trapp dies. Proud Boys officially a Terrorist Organization. Richard Ramirez. Cancer takes Screech. Travel bans. Impeachment trial (again?… oh and this was barely February? WTF??!!) Suez Canal blockage. Myanmar protest. Kong dukes it out with Godzilla, while Raya watches. Olympics. Friends compare elective surgeries. F9. Canada Women’s Soccer Gold. Free Britney. Multiverses. Residential Schools in Canada unearth children’s bodies. Kate is Mare of Easttown. Cuomo resigns. Disney and Dwayne cruise together. Wildfires. Delta variants. Musk passes Bezos. Candyman x 5. Capt. Kirk goes to space. F*ck Kyle Rittenhouse. Astros didn’t win. Squid Game. Goodbye Bond. Dune is redone. Angelina is Eternal. Astroworld deaths. Meta. Omicron. Three Spidermen. Tornados in December? World Juniors cancelled. Pills against Covid. School opening delayed. And Betty White dies. 2022… my expectations are ridiculously low…

2022

Wow… eight billion people. Queen Elizabeth II passes away after ruling the Commonwealth before dirt was invented. The monkeypox. Russia plays the role of global asshole. Wordle. Mother Nature rocks Afghanistan. Hover bike. Styles spits on Pine. Olivia Newton John, Kristie Alley, and Coolio leave us. Pele was traded to team Heaven. FTX implodes. Madonna and the 3-D model of her vagina. Pig gives his heart to a human. Beijing can brag that it is the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics. Uvalde. $3 trillion Apple. Keith Raniere gets 120 years. The Whisky War ends with Canada and Denmark going halfsies. Mar-a-Lago. Nick Cannon brood hits a dozen. Shinzo Abe is assassinated. Inflation goes through the roof (if you can actually afford to put a roof over your head). Volodymyr Zelensky. European heat wave. Bennifer. Salman Rushdie is stabbed on stage, Dave Chappelle tackled, and Chris Rock is only slapped. Thích Nhất Hạnh. Heidi Klum goes full slug. Cuba knocked out by Ian. Liz Truss and 4.1 Scaramuccis. Taylor Swift breaks Ticketmaster. Human shitstain Elon Musk ignores helping mankind and buys Twitter instead. Riri becomes a mommy. NASA launches Artemis 1. Trump still a whiny little bitch. Music lost Loretta Lynn, Christine McVie, and Meat Loaf. Democracy died at least three times. Pete Davidson continues to date hottest women on the planet. Microplastics in our blood. Alex Jones is a cunt. So is DeSantis. Argentina wins the World Cup. Meghan and Harry. Eddie Munson rips Metallica in the Upside Down. tWitch. Roe vs Wade is overturned by the micro dick energy of the Supreme Court. CODA. James Corden shows he is a "tiny Cretin of a man". Amber (and the shit on the bed) Heard (round the world). Sebastian Bear-McClard proves he’s one of the fucking dumbest men alive. Latin America's ‘pink tide’. Anti-Semitic rants by Ye. Bob Saget. A verified blue checkmark. Godmother of punk Vivienne dies. And, Tom Cruise feels the need for speed yet again. 2023… whatcha got for us?!? Nothing shocks me anymore.

[9lounges]

Post Malone Ventures into Country with New Album F-1 Trillion

Post Malone has released his sixth studio album, F-1 Trillion, marking a brave entry into the country music market. The 29-year-old artist's most recent album, which was released on Friday, August 16, is an unexpected but thrilling shift from his typical style. It features collaborations with many of the biggest names in country music, such as Tim McGraw, Morgan Wallen, Dolly Parton, Jelly Roll, and many more.

Post Malone talked candidly about his long-standing ambition to record a country album in an Apple Music interview. He acknowledged that at first he wasn't sure how to approach the genre. "I've always wanted to make a record like this, but because I didn't know how the hell it worked, it [seemed] so inaccessible for the longest time," Post said. His foray into the country music industry was packed with learning and exploration, particularly as he mastered all aspects of collaborating with Nashville's seasoned artists. READ FULL STORY 

[irkimatsu]

you've been getting too many husk asks lately. let's go slightly more old school today~ favorite bandori cover songs? i'll go first

poppin' party - hikaru nara/daydream cafe

afterglow - ai no scenario/amanojaku

pastel palettes - hanamaru pippi wa yoiko dake

roselia - charles/believe in my existence/a cruel angel's thesis

hello, happy world! - shin takarajima

raise a suilen - 1/3 no junjou no kanjou

i stopped playing a little after morfonica and the other band came out so idk anything about them two, not answering them

Too many Husk asks? Never! Slander! Get out of my house!

I do love Bandori though~ I stopped playing around the same time you did, so we know the same songs, generally.

Poppin' Party - I was going to answer "Cherry Bomb", but while I was looking, holy crap when did they cover "Hot Limit", this is amazing

Afterglow - I'm gonna go with "Don't Say Lazy" as my favorite, but I also have a soft nostalgic spot for "Butter-Fly". "Lost One's Weeping" and "Ama no Jaku" are good too

Pastel Palettes - Legally I'm obligated to answer with "Hanamaru Pippi wa Yoiko Dake", "Adabana Necromancy", or "Idol", but if we're only factoring in songs I've actually played in the game, I'm gonna go with "Sobakasu" or "Moon Pride". (Which I already have my own biases for. Shhhhh)

Roselia - "Red Fraction" and "Six Trillion Years and Overnight Story". "Bad Apple" is good, too

Hello, Happy World! - "ROMEO". KAORU. MY LOVE. MY LESBIAN. MY PRECIOUS IDIOT. There's also "1 2 Fanclub", "Alien Alien", "Happy Summer Wedding", "POP TEAM EPIC"... Kokoro's voice cures depression. I love HaroHapi. GAY HORSE, GAY HORSE, I WANT A GAY HORSE!

Raise A Suillen - I think "1/3 no Junjou na Kanjou" is the only one I know offhand. It's fine.

Time to toss all the cover albums into a playlist, I gotta refresh my memory and learn some new stuff!

[dwagom]

the unfamiliar sound you might be hearing is of suspension cables snapping one by one, actually

[maiosx]

fuck all those right wing boomer dads monetizing their audiences on twitter and not paying uber eats and doordash drivers for their own deluded dreams. all the things they have are fake, they talk like they own things but they don't they are tied to them, stay true to your code or don't bother trying to game the system like elon musk and the boomer dads. his company hasn't even stayed above 1 trillion in the span that all the rest of the tech giants had, apple reached 3 T twice already, and they don't even make cars. he keeps trying to bully zuck and he's already married and even if his platform wasn't as neatly organized as twitter, he invented the sidebar on profiles before they did. even though instagram is annoying and shilly, it's a nicer platform than twitter bc atleast there i don't have to hear more than 6 seconds of someone's politically sided opinions. I was a hipster before all of you, I had twitter and the original instagram, without monetization, where is my cut then from all those years of helping rockstar games have a racing community... rockstar had to make me a midnight club dlc and featured the toyota celica I had bc all those social network billionaires never did anything and sam houser built a better platform than they all did.

[fulfillplex]

Best Methods to Sell Print on Demand Gadgets Online (Part 1)

Do you adore Apple products? Perhaps you have a strong interest in the most recent laptops or a thorough understanding of cutting-edge smartphones. Whatever the reason, now could be an excellent time to launch an online gadgets store, especially given that the consumer gadgets industry in the United States alone is expected to be worth $2.06 trillion by 2023. However, selling online isn't always easy – and you might find yourself at a loss for where to begin. But don't worry; this ultimate guide to selling print on demand gadgets online will assist you. Continue reading to learn more.

 

How to Sell Print on Demand Gadgets Online?

 

1. Source Your Gadgets

You'll need to source gadgets before you can start selling them online. There are several options to consider for this and suitability for your specific goals and situation.

 

Wholesale

When looking for products for your business, the first place you'll probably look is a gadgets wholesaler – this is how most online and local gadgets stores get their products. On new gadgets, wholesalers will usually offer relatively competitive prices. They're also likely to have a good stock level, allowing you to get the products you need when you need them. Some wholesalers may have minimum order requirements, so consider where you'll store your gadgets before selling them.

 

Print on Demand Fulfillment

If you don't want to waste time sourcing and storing products, print on demand fulfillment can be a great option. When using print on demand services, your primary goal is to market and sell as many products as possible. When an order is received, it is routed to the company that fulfills it. It reduces storage and eliminates the need to deal with shipping and distribution companies' often complex arrangements. Of course, less effort equals less profit. It can be much more difficult to make a reasonable profit on each product you sell when hiring a print on demand company. That is why it is best to concentrate on volume.

 

Second Hand

Selling used gadgets can be a lucrative business venture. However, it can take significantly longer than purchasing from a wholesaler or print on demand fulfillment products. You're also dealing with uncertainty about future stock levels, which could make meeting customer demand difficult. However, if you can pull it off, sourcing and selling used gadgets can be very profitable and environmentally friendly. You can find used gadgets almost anywhere, from yard sales, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon.

 

 

2. Sell Your Gadgets Online

Touch the surface of the online gadgets business, and you'll discover a plethora of options for where to sell.

 

Personal Website

Creating your own online store is arguably the best way to sell gadgets online. When you do this, you create a true asset – not to mention one over which you have complete control. Using a market-leading website builder, such as Wix or Shopify, will provide you with all of the tools you need to create a website that you can use to grow your business quickly and easily. Although all online selling platforms have advantages, owning your own site gives you the most room to grow.

 

Marketplaces

You can sell gadgets on several online marketplaces. The most popular are Amazon and Walmart. Using an online marketplace has several advantages, including ease with payments. However, there are some disadvantages to using an online marketplace. Unlike your website, you do not own the platform, which means you have little control over any changes to it, such as changes in functionality or commission increases.

 

Social Media

Many major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, now allow you to sell directly to your customers, eliminating the need to link to an external site. It is a great way to tap into your audience's engagement with social media platforms while also leveraging the following and hype you've built on your own social channels. However, there are some drawbacks to using online marketplaces, such as having little control over the platform and how your business operates on it. Most businesses that sell on social media pair it with their online store to expand their reach and make it easier for their customers to buy from them.

 

Trade-in

A trade-in site is a final option for selling gadgets online. Unlike online stores, marketplaces, or social media, these sites guarantee to buy your products and price them based on the model, age, and condition. You'll usually get a much lower price for your products if you sell them on these sites. They do, however, save you a significant amount of money on sales, marketing, and store setup. These sites can be profitable if you can find cheap second-hand gadgets or shift stock from your online store that isn't selling.

 

Check out Part 2 on the next page! 

If you’re interested in outsourcing print on demand gadgets to sell online, you can check us out and get a quote.

[mariacallous]

A strange thing happened in the eurozone economy at the end of last year. Despite widespread forecasts that the common currency area would plunge into recession and register negative growth in the last quarter of 2022, it managed to eke out a small gain of 0.1 percent. What is remarkable is not that Europe beat expectations, but that it was one small country—Ireland—whose surging economy single-handedly prevented the eurozone from slipping into the red.

Almost unbelievably, little Ireland, with a population of only 5 million, now has the economic scale to shift the growth statistics of the entire eurozone and its 343 million inhabitants. In 2022, Irish GDP growth of 12.2 percent compared to 3.5 percent in the eurozone as a whole. In absolute numbers, only Germany, France, and Italy contributed more than Ireland to eurozone GDP growth in 2021 and 2022. Ireland’s economic boom has enabled the country’s government to post a budget surplus of 1.6 percent of GDP, even as eurozone countries struggled with an average deficit of more than 3 percent.

Honestly, who wouldn’t want this luck of the Irish?

Look closely, however, and Ireland’s so-called economic miracle looks more than a little odd. The country’s growth is simultaneously both real and artificial. Much of it is driven by a handful of U.S. multinationals, which continue to route global sales and profits through their Irish operations to take advantage of Dublin’s lower business taxes. Although difficult and complex to calculate, Apple’s shifting of intellectual property assets to Ireland is estimated to have contributed half of Ireland’s miraculous 26 percent GDP growth in 2016. That bizarre fact inspired New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to ridicule Ireland’s “leprechaun economics”—and the Irish statistics office to move away from using GDP as a measure of economic growth.

Yet the surge of U.S. investment in Ireland is also real. In particular, Ireland’s role as a pharmaceuticals manufacturing hub dramatically increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nine out of the world’s top 10 drug companies have significant production facilities in Ireland. The U.S. State Department thinks the corporate build-out in Ireland will continue, given Ireland’s status as the only remaining English-speaking European Union country following Britain’s departure. That makes it easy for international companies to operate and enjoy barrier-free access to the EU’s single market.

It’s hard to exaggerate Ireland’s dependence on U.S. tech and pharma companies for investment and taxes. Corporate tax receipts are now the second-largest source of tax revenue (after income tax) for the Irish state: 27 percent of all tax income in 2022. The average was just 9 percent in the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2020, the last year for which data is available. This, in turn, is fueling an unprecedented torrent of tax income for the Irish government. Corporate tax revenues were up nearly 50 percent in 2022 alone.

Just 10 multinationals—all of them U.S.-based tech and pharmaceutical companies—now pay nearly 60 percent of Ireland’s corporate tax. Directly and indirectly, U.S. multinationals employ more than 375,000 people in Ireland, approximately 15 percent of the country’s labor force. Driven by investment from the United States, foreign multinationals now account for 53 percent of all payroll taxes paid by corporate employers.

Driven by the windfall in corporate tax receipts, the Irish government’s budget surplus is expected to swell further, to 10 billion euros in 2023 and 16 billion euros in 2024. Relative to the size of the economy, this would be equivalent to a U.S. budget surplus of more than 1 trillion dollars in 2024.

The problem for Ireland is that this singular dependence exposes the country to growing risks. Take the tech sector: As multinationals like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon see their profits shrink and slash jobs worldwide, it will not only hurt the Irish economy, but deprive Dublin of tax income as well.

What’s more, the threat to Ireland’s stability from its overdependence on U.S. companies is about to be multiplied. In 2021, nearly 140 tax jurisdictions, including Ireland, agreed to a major reform of how multinationals companies will be taxed in the future. Pillar 2 of these reforms—a minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent for large companies—is already coming into effect. In 2024, Ireland’s corporate tax rate is due to increase to 15 percent from its current level of 12.5 percent, reducing its attractiveness as a tax haven compared to other countries. The United States also approved the minimum tax plan in August 2022, despite significant private sector and political opposition.

However, it is Pillar 1 of the OECD’s reforms that will dramatically erode Ireland’s future income from corporate taxes. This reform will reallocate a share of company profits to where sales (or users) are actually located. Previously, tax liability was calculated on where the company or its subsidiary was legally based, no matter how many profits it rerouted from other parts of the world for tax-avoiding purposes. For Ireland, the consequences are obvious: U.S. multinationals operating in the EU will be forced to divide some of their sales by member state, thus significantly reducing the amount of sales and profits that can be “booked” through Ireland. This reform is due to come into force in 2024. The end of Ireland’s windfall is therefore only a matter of time.

The Irish Department of Finance estimated in January that around half of Ireland’s corporate tax receipts—$10 billion—are “transitionary” and will be lost as the new tax rules are implemented. That translates to more than 10 percent of total government spending in 2022—more than the entire Irish education budget. This is putting the Irish government on the precipice of another financial disaster, little more than a decade after it had to be bailed out of impending bankruptcy by the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. That disaster left Ireland with one of the highest per capita public debt levels in the world.

Regardless of the impending financial train wreck, however, Dublin is unlikely to wake up from its American dream anytime soon. Diversifying its economy and revenue sources away from U.S. multinationals would require Ireland to shift its economic and geopolitical orientation, downgrade (in Dublin’s eyes) its deep relationship with the United States, and seek greater integration into the EU economy and its myriad rules.

That’s because Ireland’s dependence on U.S. multinationals is just another expression of the country’s affinity with the United States—the “shared heritage” referenced by U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. These ties to the United States long precede Dublin’s embrace of European integration and make it unlikely that Ireland will ever have the same intensity of economic, cultural, and other ties to France, Germany, or the rest of the EU.

The approaching economic and fiscal train wreck resulting from the new tax rules requires a fundamental change of mindset from Irish policymakers. Squaring the circle—holding on to its deep U.S. ties while integrating more closely with the EU to diversify its economy—means Dublin must give a little (and lose a little) to both sides. Yet Ireland’s ability to navigate this conundrum is doubtful. Even though the coming changes have been plain for all to see, Dublin’s current Trade and Investment Strategy does not contain any concrete policies to mitigate the overdependence on U.S. investment flows. Although the document acknowledges that EU market opportunities are underutilized, it again recognizes the importance “markets such as the UK and the US, which offer familiarity with language and culture.”

If there is no short-term solution to Ireland’s financial vulnerabilities, a few longer-term needs stand out. Dublin should ensure that its current budget surplus is invested wisely to help diversify its drivers of growth. One such driver would be significant increases in public investment in housing and public transport infrastructure to bring the country closer to Western European standards. Ireland’s tax base should be widened to allow for a wider distribution of income sources. For example, In 2021, Ireland gained just 5 percent of its tax receipts from property taxes, compared to more than 11 percent in both Britain and the United States.

Most importantly, Ireland must deepen its trading relationships outside the English-speaking world. Notwithstanding the country’s 50-year membership of the EU, a dearth of foreign language teaching has created a monolingual business culture, which priorities existing links with the United States over the development of new markets, both within and outside the EU. This needs to change if Ireland is to build a sustainable economic model.

Biden—whose family, like so many in the United States, has Irish roots—said in 2021 that “everything between Ireland and the United States runs deep.” This is Ireland’s economic reality today. As the corporate tax boom ebbs, Ireland should ensure that its American dream doesn’t become a recurring economic and financial nightmare.