Oh My God! This is completely unexpected - Tax increases kill economic growth - What I am reading 11/17/2014

Seattle Times - Japan slides into recession as tax hike takes toll -

Japan's economy unexpectedly slid into recession as housing and business investment declined following a sales tax hike, further clouding the outlook for the global economy.

I am going to be blunt here - This was only unexpected by absolute fucking retards and a certain class of politician (But I repeat myself).  Anyone who has paid any attention would have known that drastically increasing the sales tax would lead to a decrease in economic activity.  

And so speaking of retarded politicians killing economic activity:

‘Millionaires tax’ possible in Seattle? Council asks city’s lawyers -

The Seattle City Council voted Friday to have the city’s Law Department investigate the possibility of enacting progressive measures like a “millionaires tax.”

The action tells city lawyers to explore the legality of “an excise tax on annual individual or household earnings in excess of $1 million.”

because nothing says, "Come spend your money in my city" like a whole new series of taxes Especially when you couple it with insults about the 1%, but that's not the only new tax the council would like to enact:

A proposal from Sawant that didn’t make the council’s Friday agenda would have raised an estimated $20 million a year for bus service by establishing an employee head tax on businesses and increasing the city’s commercial parking tax.

Someone needs to tell this council that 3rd world status isn't something that you are supposed to be striving for.

Quartz - This US Navy ship is now armed with a drone-killing laser beam -

The US Navy now has a ship in the Persian gulf armed with a “laser gun.” That’s how the US Chief of Naval Operations described it, in passing, to a Congressional hearing back in March.

Great, but when are we getting the rail guns that can blast a hole in the moon?  Priorities people!

Medium - How to get a job in Silicon Valley -

I'm not sure I would want to since my daily reading of Valleywag and Pando Daily make it sound like Hell on Earth, but if it's your cup of tea here you go.

 The Register - Attack reveals 81 percent of Tor users but admins call for calm -

The Tor project has urged calm after new research found 81 percent of users could be identified using Cisco's NetFlow tool.

...

"Although the capacity of current networks makes packet-level monitoring at such a scale quite challenging, adversaries could potentially use less accurate but readily available traffic monitoring functionality, such as Cisco's NetFlow, to mount large-scale traffic analysis attacks."

Oops!

Sonic.net - Net Neutrality is Just a Symptom -

Lets call it like it is: in most of America, we’ve got a broadband duopoly at best. And it’s simple economic theory and best-practice capitalism that in an unregulated near-monopoly, you will see manifestations of policies, practices and behaviors that are not always customer friendly.

Read the rest.