The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.
Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.
So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.
Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.
> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Tell us how that works.
> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?
So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?
I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?
I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:
There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.
This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.
[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.
Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).
Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?
Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.
If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.
I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.
There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.
I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.
If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.
People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.
Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not
If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.
> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.
Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.
> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.
How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?
What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?
> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.
Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.
Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.
Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.
In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.
Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.
By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.
You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.
> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax
Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.
Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)
Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.
--
While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?
Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)
Being available for use by militaries is incredibly irresponsible, regardless of what scope is specifically claimed, because of the inherent gravity of the situation when a military is wrong. The US military maintains a good deal of infrastructure in the US; putting into their hands an unreliable, incompetent calculator puts lives at risk.
It would be structured as a non-profit (there are no teeth to a PBC; the structure is entirely to avoid liability, and if you have no trust in the executive body of an organization, it has zero meaningful signal).
It would have a different leadership team.
It would have a leader who could steelman his own position competently. Machines of Loving Grace was less redeeming than Lenat's old stump speeches for his position, despite Amodei starting up in an industry significantly more geared for what he had to say, and Lenat having an incredibly flexible sense of morality. Its leader would not have a history working for Chinese companies and jingoistically begin advocating for export controls.
It would have different employees than the people I know who are working there, who have a history of picking the most unethical employers they can find, in a fashion not dissimilar to how Illumination Entertainment's "Minions" select employers.
The subway has millions of riders in a day. One hundred and fifty complaints per precinct (which is a generous estimation) is nothing, and the NYPD is a failure of an organization that pays over half a hundred million dollars a year on misconduct lawsuits. NYPD officers have a higher crime rate than the people of New York.
Luckily, similar to how they made a choice for these constraints, you also chose yours. Both are artificial constraints; nobody is forced to solve problems in an esolang, and very few people are forced into having kids. You could have chosen their constraints instead. You chose a constraint set difficult for you; they chose a constraint set difficult for them, and the wonderful thing is that you both can work on the problems at your own pace, under the constraints you've chosen for yourselves.
The Senate majority leader controls what legislation makes it to the Senate floor.
Frankly, most legislation that favors the interests of wealthy donors is bipartisan.
For instance, the legislation that rolled back the banking reforms put into place after the financial crisis during the first Trump term.
> the bill, which was years in the making, was a rare bipartisan accomplishment at a time when Congress is gridlocked on almost all major issues.
Sixteen moderate Senate Democrats helped Republicans pass the bill. It was an unusual moment of political unity that sparked a public feud in which the Democratic Party’s progressive wing went to war with its more business-friendly centrists.
As it says in that link, the author of said link applied for a software patent after the initial GPL violations (that even in your article, he doesn't apologize for; he simply points out that he was a jerk about it while not meaningfully accepting guilt). If you look at the actual events of that situation, Pearson acted far worse than what you would imagine from just reading his own words, years later:
Pearson never made amends; he continued his bad actions long after being called out (and possibly still does).
The correct solution to bad actors is to raze them to the ground; Matt isn't wrong in this. He has the means and is doing something principled with them: Destroying a bad actor.
This should be encouraged; it is how capitalism is supposed to work.
Look... Pearson could be the Black River Killer, and that still wouldn't make Matt's actions morally justified.
(For clarity, I'm specifically talking about buying the thesis.com domain name, which he couldn't use because Pearson had the trademark).
It's vindictive and wasteful. Period. That's $100,000 ($132,000 in today's dollars) that could have gone to making the WordPress community better, some other charitable cause, or even a nice vacation for Matt and his family.
I'm sorry, but that is not normal or "principled" behaviour and it's not something that should be "encouraged".
Lots of things are wasteful. Punishing a bad actor who is actively infringing upon your legally-enshrined rights is better than buying a sportscar with that money.
Have you ever been pulled over by a cop and given a warning? Many people have.
As long as there's any amount of leeway in enforcement of the law, things like courtesy cards will exist. All it is is a little nudge to say, "Hey. I'm one of you and yours. Let's let it slide."
That will continue to exist even if the cards entirely disappear.
> As long as there's any amount of leeway in enforcement of the law, things like courtesy cards will exist
The moment it’s standardised not only in writing, but as a physical object, it should become trivially prosecutable. The existence of these cards should trigger DoJ intervention. (Maybe the Adams administration’s recent failings will prompt this.)
> As long as there's any amount of leeway in enforcement of the law, things like courtesy cards will exist
Do they exist somewhere else?
The police have wide discretion to issue a warning instead of a fine in most countries as far as I know. But these cards seem to be unique to NYPD. I don't mean that corruption doesn't exist elsewhere but usually it's a little less obvious!
In my highly corrupt country, it's enough to tell the officer you know person so-and-so. They might ask you a question or two, or even threaten to call the person you claim to know, but they rarely do.
That's what you do in smaller towns in the US. Especially in the South, but I'm sure it's pretty much the same elsewhere. Cards are a big-city thing, maybe even just a NYC thing.
Letting it slide is one thing. Letting it slide because of who someone is, is something else entirely. Just because the behavior will continue to exist doesn't mean it should be actively encouraged or systemized.
Formal corruption like this is a show of force by the enforcers that they are above others. It’s also useful for cops figure out which other cops will cover for them, rather than apply the law fairly (see article).
Most of the time when a "warning" is given it is because the cop doesnt have sufficient evidence for a ticket. Dont tell the cop how fast you were driving. If they ask, the probably dont know.
I've seen a movie where a cop gives a warning to one of the character and actually enters the warning into the system so that warnings are tracked. The guy is a bad dude that does not want to leave a trace so ends up killing the cop.
I don't know if it's an actual thing.
Edit: I remember now, it was Jack Reacher season 2.
At least in Canada, you can get an official warning where they fill out the ticket slip but don't fine you. I'm not sure how long its tracked for but it is a real thing. Also I do believe that the car being pulled over is likely logged somewhere usually in the officer's notes.
The reason he killed the cop wasn't that he didn't want to leave any trace (though he killed other people over that previously) it's that the car was stolen from someone he had murdered and he knew that that would show up when the cop ran the plates.
There's nothing sexualised about it. The person is of an ambiguous build and facing away from the camera. The article does more sexualising than the photo itself does, in the typical way that British media likes to oversexualise and play scandal to sell papers.
To me it clearly seems to be a woman, and perhaps I'm just revealing my own overly prudish nature, but to me a topless woman in just tiny bikini bottoms at a beach is somewhat sexualised.
Imagine it were a photo of a good looking man wearing almost nothing and suggestive of some exposure if only you were looking from another angle. Would that have done so well?
I think it's just hard for us as men to recognise the sexism because we're not used to being systematically sexualised.
> I think it's just hard for us as men to recognise the sexism because we're not used to being systematically sexualised.
Not true. Men get all sorts of comments about their height, appearance, facial hair, even genital size... We can not work at some jobs because of oversexualization.
And libido, that is, a stereotype that men are by default sexual predators. This is one reason why you don't see many men working at day cares and elementary schools.
Probably your cultural background. The attitudes towards nakedness are very different across cultures. Your attitude seem to be that if you sexualize the back of a women it is the woman who is the problem and should be covered up.
> Your attitude seem to be that ... it is the woman who is the problem and should be covered up.
100% not. In fact it's the opposite: you're supposing that a woman in swimwear at a beach is giving implied consent for her image to be used in a radically different context. That would put the onus on the woman to cover up in a way that I wouldn't.
In any case, I think the bigger problem is actually for instead those people in the business environment where this appears. Is it really a surprise that a semi-nude image used for illustrating image processing software is of a woman? Do you honestly think it is just as a likely as a man? I know the term "micro aggression" is controversial but sexist choices like this are real and common and do have an impact on attitudes for both men and women.
> you're supposing that a woman in swimwear at a beach is giving implied consent for her image to be used in a radically different context.
Are you suggeting he used the image of his wife without her consent? That would indeed be inappropriate, but the article does not seem to support this accusation. The quote from her imply she is fine with it:
> "The beauty of the internet is that people can take things, and do what they want with them, to project what they want or feel," she says.
Do you feel the statue of David is sexual and/or sexist? What about the numerous Greek statues of completely nude, anatomically-accurate men?
Given my cultural background, it disturbs me that you’ve sexualized this photo enough to start casting the shadow of sexist offenses onto others, when it’s an opportunity for self-reflection. Why are you sexualizing this photo?
> Do you feel the statue of David is sexual and/or sexist?
I'm not the person you asked but I feel like answering with my (unwanted) perspective. The statue of David, in its current context in a museum is not a particuarly sexual or sexist object. On the other hand if my employer (or whoever) started introducing equivalent statues of naked people (of any sex) into my workplace I would probably view that as innapropriate.
This is essentially how I view the image of Jennifer - in the context of a loving relationship between two people on the beach its a nice thing, but I would view it as a bit weird if someone at my workplace started sharing an equivalent picture of their partner.
> The question is - is it you or Michelangelo who is the problem?
Clearly in the context of my comment its neither. Its whoever is bringing the naked statues into my workplace.
This (to me) is such a blindingly obvious third option that I assume you deliberately didn't include it as an option because you're trying to argue a point you know is flawed.
You are assuming the art-less workplace is the natural default. I’m from a culture where having art in the workplace and in public spaces is common and generally appreciated.
I think you're assuming that the way people interact with something is independent of its context.
The impact of (to take a random example) a university having a statue of Venus or whatever in the grounds, is not the same as having the Lenna image in a textbook
> I think you're assuming that the way people interact with something is independent of its context.
I’m unable to comprehend how you got to that assumption.
But to be clear, I undestand you shouldn’t bring art or musical instruments to work if you work for the Taleban. But in the story, the audience are adult creatives working professionaly with visual arts
> I’m unable to comprehend how you got to that assumption.
Because you conflate art in public spaces with the use of images like Jennifer in selling software. To me it seems obvious that these are fundamentally not the same.
If you are on the beach with them, sure. If you stick it in a PowerPoint in an office, that's a different matter. (Same as if it's a nearly-naked man for that matter.)
How and why does this make it a different matter? Photographs capture a moment in time. This moment occurred at a beach. It wasn’t sexual then, and it’s not sexual now.
If someone manipulated the image to be explicit or presented it in an obviously sexual context, that might be a different story, but even then, the original image itself was never inherently sexual.
I’d reframe this to point out the image is very natural, i.e. what could be more natural than experiencing nature in one’s natural state?
Seeing this as something sexual is a choice, and an unnecessary one at that.
> How and why does this make it a different matter?
Context is important. I've spent time on nude beaches, that doesn't mean its appropriate to turn up to work with my dick out. What is appropriate in one place is weird in other places (it would also be weird to rock up to a nude beach in my work clothes).
Appropriateness is orthogonal to sexualization though.
Yes, context matters, but I fail to see anything about this particular context shift that is inherently sexual.
It’s also worth pointing out that exposing your genitalia is in a different category than taking your top off, and certainly different than implied toplessness.
I fully agree that being topless at the beach is fine and cool, do whatever you like there. I also agree with the poster above who said it feels slightly weird to share a picture of that with people in a work environment.
I think if it were a frontal shot then sure I’d agree. But in this case I think if you draw anything sexual from that image then you are just way too horny and that’s your business and yours alone.
This is exactly the kind of image you would use to market Photoshop, a tool for image makers who are concerned with producing exactly this kind of idyllic, escapist scene.
Ok, I encourage you to use this picture in your email signature at work or use it as your desktop wallpaper and see how far you get in 2024. And I think it is definitely a good thing it is like that now. How do you think women that worked where John Knoll was doing demos felt about the naked woman? Not sexualizing the workplace is better for everyone. Actually kind of dismayed to see HN be so "good ol' boy" on this one. It reminds me again how out of touch and male-dominated it is.
I love the photo, but it's a great photo for private use, not work use. I think you guys aren't paying attention to the HR videos you are supposed to be watching.
I do think John knew exactly what he was doing and that the killer app for Photoshop, computers, and the internet that would come after was sex.
I’m not interested in your hypotheticals when we can just talk about the actual use of the image. Why change the context? At the places I’ve worked it’s been unusual for people to even set a wallpaper and extremely unusual to use some arbitrary image in an email signature (like what??).
Maybe you should ask some women that you know what they would think about this actual scenario (not contrived scenarios), rather than presuming.
Ok...you want a scenario where an image of an attractive young woman was shared and used extensively by members of a male dominated field and where women involved in the field have told us what they think of it?
Oh yeah, I've heard that one before - its Lena/Lenna:
Over the last decade or so journals and professional bodies have been trying to stop people using the Lenna image - Nature essentially banned it in their publications in 2018, and IEEE just this year.
You misunderstand me. I’m saying we have a concrete scenario here, so we should discuss that scenario. Not some other different scenario. The Lenna image was literally taken from a porno mag. Its original context is erotic. I agree that it shouldn’t be used as it has. But that’s not what this thread nor my comments are about. If you want to make it about something else then go ahead but I’m not interested.
wut? ambiguous on what dimension? That's a brick shithouse right there. (how's that slang for you, ESL learners!? it's definitely not an insult, and it's unisex so, not offensive, just means "good build")
No, it means an exceptionally muscular build, which the subject of that photo doesn't have.
Anyway, the comment you're replying to clearly means "a build that leaves the gender ambiguous", not that the dimensions are ambiguous! You don't seem to really be disagreeing with that.
Maybe in some places but north-west UK just means "kinda robust/big/thick" (e.g. could be a bouncer or wrestler) - there's no requirement for "exceptionally muscular". Akin of what kids these days use "absolute unit" for.
(quibbles aside, I agree with you - GP is wrong, not even slightly a "brick shithouse" by any of the definitions)
in the picture she also is muscular, not like a body builder, but like a fit person showing definition (everybody working out or doing yoga was not "a thing" when that picture was taken)
But also, it's just obvious from the words in the phrase. I assume that outside toilets were often just wooden shacks, so a brick one is notable for its robustness. Is that comparible with a beefy labourer's physique? Sure. Is comparible to a curvy, classically feminine body shape? That doesn't make sense.
As the sibling comment to this one says, it doesn't even just apply to people (in fact I'd say it primarily doesn't).
uBO already runs on iOS. Orion is compatible with Firefox and Chrome extensions. The lack of extensions in mobile browsers is a sign of Mozilla's decay, not a sign of Apple being unnecessarily restrictive. They also don't care about you having extensions on Android; their most recent redesign left Android Firefox users without extensions for months.
Mozilla is an ad-supported company from every angle: Pocket, search deal, the ads built into Firefox. Why don't they get more of the blame for the current state of the browser ecosystem?
You can install ublock origin but it doesn’t actually do anything on Orion on iOS. I tested it not too long ago, maybe things have changed but Orion still uses WebKit and iOSes APIs. I have heard Orion’s default ad blocker isn’t bad though.
Chrome on Android doesn't support browser extensions. Google is an advertising company. They are not incentivized to allow extensions. Extensions block their ads, and are a risk vector for mobile users, who are often young, inexperienced, and running outdated systems software.
> What's Orion
A web browser, using the same Webkit as everybody else on iOS, with support for browser extensions.
People give Apple too much flak for the mismanagement or warped incentives of browser vendors. Lack of extensions in existing browsers isn't their fault to any degree.
> and is it compatible with normal desktop Firefox and Chrome extensions, or with the mobile ones?
There's not a separate spec for "mobile" Firefox extensions and desktop browser extensions. Google WebExtensions. It's an open standard that desktop Firefox follows and that Chrome almost does.
It obviously can. My first sentence was "uBO already runs on iOS." You asked if Orion was compatible with "normal desktop Firefox and Chrome extensions." There's no distinction between desktop Firefox extensions and mobile ones! Addons on both are just standard WebExtensions, and I've already noted that it runs both Chrome and Firefox extensions.
Your lack of understanding of what browser extensions are is exactly why it would be better if Apple explicitly banned browser extensions from the App Store. Ignorance is a malware vector, and even you, a commentator on Hacker News, do not understand the browser extension ecosystem. Instead, they're taking a bunch of flak for something they aren't even doing, all the while iOS has had a browser supporting uBO for years.
"I noticed similar issues. I think the reason is that Orion on iOS supports fewer Web Extension APIs than it does on desktop (see the list below). As far as I know, uBlock Origin makes heavy use of the webRequest API, and this seems to be mostly unsupported on iOS. So I decided for me to use uBlock Origin only with the Mac version and rely on Orion’s built-in content blocking on iOS."
"When using the uBlock Origin browser extension on iPhone or iPad, it is unable to block any ads or trackers on webpages. The displayed interception count always remains at 0. This result is consistent whether downloading the version from Chrome or Firefox's software store."
Sounds like from that (may be out of date, some posts complaining are 15 days ago though), it runs but doesn't work:
Caveating a few things: Firefox nightly works pretty much just as well and as stably as the regular build and brings back extensions. Months ago they did something with PDFs that made them ridiculously slow, and nightly for some reason doesn't let me open PDFs in other apps like stable does. But the combo works for me. I agree that this is Mozilla's fault, though. Until most websites stopped working (how is beyond me but for example github wouldn't let me click links) I used the last version before the redesign
