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tomcorrigan

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That's called transfer pricing and is essentially illegal in almost every jurisdiction. There are of course plenty of loopholes and ways around it and large companies such as Apple spend a fortune with the big 4 accounting firms to take advantage of every such loophole.

I am in Australia and we have had contactless payments for years. Apple Pay with an iPhone was more trouble than using a card. On the other hand since I got my Apple Watch I haven't carried credit cards with me. It started out as a 1 month experiment to see if I could survive and it has never been a problem.

I'm very dubious about the first source you posted. It claims vehicles consume 15-20% less fuel when travelling on concrete compared to asphalt. That statistic doesn't pass a basic sniff test in my opinion.

You are correct about the HK case. However there weren't many observers who though Phillip Morris stood a chance. The lawsuit was much more about signalling to other countries considering plain packaging than actually overturning the laws in Australia. There is still a pending WTO arbitration which is also expected to be decided in Australia's favour.

See also the outcome of Phillip Morris v Uruguay

It's definitely not. Illegal drugs are also much more expensive in Australia than in many other places in the world. There is a growing problem with black market untaxed "chop chop" tobacco here. The tax increases have made it more and more attractive to both importers and smokers.

That ignores common sense. If Uber is more profitable by circumventing W2 regulations it will do so. There is no morality in capitalism, only worship of the bottom line. Businesses don't care about "reasonable" regulations, they care about profit. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. A corporation is not a person, it can't be expected to think like one. Instead people must elect representatives that impose laws that force business to operate in a way that is compatible with our collective morality.

Why would I even care about credit card information being stolen. My bank will reimburse that no questions asked. I am much more concerned about my personal information being leaked. CC fraud costs other people money, identity fraud is much more damaging to me.

You are pretty much totally wrong. Australian banks make much less from interchange fees than their US counterparts. Apple wanted the same fee in Australia as it collects in the US. With interchange fees being smaller in Australia this cut represented a much bigger portion of the total fee. The banks here have also already invested a lot of money and effort in driving contactless payments by issuing all cards with the technology for at least the last few years plus providing the payment terminals. They therefore think Apple is providing less value than in the USA and should thus be entitled to a smaller cut when an Apple Pay transaction happens.

When they banks applied to the competition regulator for permission to collectively bargain with Apple they specifically undertook to negotiate about fees individually. What the banks want to collectively negotiate is access to the NFC hardware on Apple devices so they can provide their own digital wallets and bypass Apple Pay.

I'm inclined to agree given that voting is not compulsory. In Australia, where voting in all elections and referenda is compulsory, I would have to stridently disagree. I suspect the result today was skewed by the big swing towards the 'Remain' vote following the assassination of Jo Cox causing a lot of 'Remain' voters choosing to stay at home in the expectation of 'Remain' comfortably prevailing.

Defending Our Brand 10 years ago

I would love to see Mozilla (a big backer of Let's Encrypt) drop the Comodo root certs from their alpha and beta Firefox builds for a couple of days to show them how ugly things get when both sides play nasty.

Hiroshima (1946) 10 years ago

Having withdrawn the citation you should either replace it with a better one or retract your assertion.

Given what little we know there is no suggestion of an actual intent to kill. Without such an intent how can you possibly suggest attempted murder? You have overreached massively. The logical conclusion of your reasoning is that any assault with a deadly weapon amounts to attempted murder.

It's law in Australia. If you do not serve a notice period you owe the company wages for that period. 1 month wages minus 1 month notice = 0

You have misstated the law. If you sign an employment contract that requires two weeks notice from either party to terminate, then you work a week and quit without working the two week notice period your employer is not required to pay you for the notice period, they absolutely must pay you for the week you did work. Similarly if an employer tells you not to work the notice period they are still obliged to pay you for it.

I understand your confusion as the wording the clauses about withholding pay on notices is somewhat unclear and takes a pretty close reading to understand

Most adults have settled views on religion which they are unlikely to change during their life. A Muslim, Jew, mainstream Christian or a person of any other religious persuasion is just as likely to be totally uninterested in the preachings of a Mormon.

It was never proven because it never happened. The wikipedia article has much more detail.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle_...

It is not merely coincidental that all unintended acceleration events occurred in automatic cars. Also, a widespread unintended acceleration problem has not been observed in Toyota cars outside the USA.

It's a shame that so many on HN are so swift to condemn Toyota