knowitall

ireland said:

Rocwurst said:

knowitall said:

Utter nonsense. Siri is at best ‘highly incapable’ at the moment.
Its a really awkward read: investors becoming visionary all of a sudden.
When pigs can fly.

Incorrect. Siri is actually more accurate now than Alexa after recent upgrades by Apple.

LoupVentures reported recently that in their latest annual test of voice assistants, Siri's accuracy rate was 79% compared to Alexa on 61% and Cortana on just 52%.  Siri was only 7% behind the leader, Google Assistant on 86%.

And Siri is improving at a faster rate of 22% compared to only 7% for Google and 9% for Alexa.

That difference between 79% and 86% seems small. Also one would expect Google’s to be improving at a slower rate because it’s already 7% higher on the scale than Apple. Were Apple not improving at a much higher rate it wouldn’t look good for Siri’s outlook.

Abalos65 said:

knowitall said:

seanj said:

avon b7 said:

lkrupp said:

iCave said:

I'm not sure which country you are from, but looking at high quality health care and affordable education provided in most of the European Union, it bears evidence that high taxes, when used the right way, do pay social dividends.

Complete baloney. The ONLY reason the EU has the social programs it has is because the EU members have NO military budgets to speak of. Instead the EU relies on the United States to protect it from the Russian Bear, the Middle East Islamic radicals. If the U.S. pulled out militarily from the EU and NATO those countries would have no choice but to dramatically increase their military budgets and those social programs would suffer big time. For over 70 years now the U.S. has spent its treasure to keep the peace in Europe.

Now that is baloney. The absence of conflict in Europe is precisely because of the EU. 

As for external threats and U.S 'protection', simply pull out of NATO if it costs too much!

That won't happen because the U.S wants to keep its military bases in Europe. It wants to continue selling arms. It needs NATO allies. Without them (however 'small' their financial contribution) the Gulf wars would not have been possible and with so much debt, the U.S is rapidly approaching a point where it might have hardware to parade around but no be able to use in actual conflict. Wars are expensive.

I'll take a balanced welfare state over any of that.


https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nato-budget-is-funded-2018-7

You're believing the spin from the Eurocrats I'm afraid, the EU has done NOTHING to prevent conflict in Europe.
When Yugoslavia split and war broke out, including ethnic cleansing, it wasn't the EU that stopped it, it was NATO with the USA and UK at the forefront.
As for the current ongoing war in the Ukraine, that's solely due to the EU courting the Ukraine to get them to join as part of their ongoing aggressive expansionist policy. Every observer pointed out that Russia would never allow Ukraine to join, but the EU persisted.
Meanwhile there is civil unrest across Europe - weekly riots in France for months - and the rise of extremists on both left and right due to the EU's disasterous Euro policy. Economists warned back in the 90's that allowing countries with divergent economies to use a common currency would result in economic collapse, so rules were put in place to stop it. But when Eurocrats realised that Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and France would fail the test and be excluded from the Euro, they decided to ignore their own rules. As a result they set in train the sovereign debt crisis that erupted in 2009 and is still ongoing. The reason they did this was simple to trap these countries in the EU, leaving after having adopted the Euro would be nearly impossible.

The USA and Canda should consider a mutual defence pact with a smaller set of countries - the UK and France account for nearly 50% of ALL of europe's military capability. In the long term, the like of Macron in France and the Eurocrats in Brussels want to undermine NATO and rely more on an EU Army. The hilarious thing is they don't want to fund it properly, for example, Germany's armed forces reduced to a token force with most ships, aircraft, and submarines unsable due to repairs being required.

The EU is forced upon its citizens (with no option to vote on it) by politicians aiming to get a very profitable second career at the EU parliament (effectively selling out the interests of their own country).

Are you from a country within the EU? In that case you missed an election only two months ago: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/en/be-heard/elections

iCave said:

georgie01 said:

pjs_socal said:

I am surprised that it took EU countries this long to enact these kinds of taxes. It’s common knowledge that Apple (with help from Ireland) took advantage of loopholes in international tax laws to reduce their tax burden. Of course, Apple has done nothing illegal, but it’s completely within each country’s rights to change tax laws to close those loopholes.

On one hand you may be correct, but on the other hand (one you were not speaking about...) taxes just in general are outrageously high and collecting these is just another failed attempt at governing. These taxes are a burden put on citizens not out of fair altruism by recouping money lost through ‘loopholes’ in tax laws, but rather out of a general attitude of turning toward increased taxes in an attempt to make up for inefficiency and greed.

We’ve gotten so used to this that we’re barely phased by it (outside of temporary moaning and complaining) even though everyone knows this is just a money grab.

I firmly believe the government can be run generously with a 10% income tax collection (and no sales tax). We just need to change our attitudes about tax and the responsibilities of the government.

I'm not sure which country you are from, but looking at high quality health care and affordable education provided in most of the European Union, it bears evidence that high taxes, when used the right way, do pay social dividends.

Coming to this particular topic, it appears that even if the corporation tax is 5% and there is a legal loophole to pay 4% instead, companies still tend to try to save that 1%. Looking that way, this is a sane solution.

There are no 'too high' or 'too low' taxes.  A society needs some revenue to cover its social expenses and this society has to look after itself, just as corporations look at their own profit motive. Taxation is a good way to implement this.