You will spend less money just paying taxes than donating money are writing off your top end. For instance if I have $100 and the government wants 40% of it then I could give them $40. Or I could donate, lets say $15 and now I owe 40% on $85 which is $34. Add the $15 I donated and it's $49.
Plus there are limits on how much you can deduct and it's less for assets than for cash. Lastly we have a thing called Alternitive Minimum Tax what is a catchall for anyone that thinks they can pay less by adjusting their income down. You need to calculate both taxes and you pay the higher one.
Why? Wouldn't truly generous people even donate clothes from their backs. And sell their homes to help others? They would not need tax deduction for those either.
Did Elon Musk really only take 9 minutes to read, consider, and respond to Ilya & Greg's thoughtful "Honest Thoughts" email? That seems remarkably brief, crazy.
I'm surprised by OpenAI's resilience through all this drama. It's impressive to see how far they've come from 2017 to 2024. This journey has given me a whole new appreciation for startups and the individuals behind them. Now I better understand why my own past mediocre attempts didn't succeed.
Appreciate the emotional support, I feel for you. You reminded me of my youtube music subscription with my massive playlist, I like to think of it as just currently unavailable, I lose hope slowly.
This post seems to have been flagged but I want to thank everyone for their suggestions and future measures. The plan for now is: 1. Retry again with email/pass in incognito in a 24 hour interval; 2. Try to get the same phone number from the telecom operators; 3. Make Subject Access Request (EU) to Google in hopes of at least getting my data back.
In order not to get caught up in the same thing again there are many good suggestions in the comments, all with some overhead/friction but 100% worth it if you ask me :D.
Update: Recovery attempt via telecom operators failed - the number is stuck in limbo between two carriers. While this didn't work in my case, other European users may still recover their number by either:
1. Starting a new 2-year contract
2. Paying a one-time fee for a preferred number (~150 EUR in my case)
Tip: Contact your local carrier to check if number recovery is possible, or if you can request a specific number for a new contract.
Currently pursuing Plan B: Submitted a Data Access Request [1] to Google in hopes of getting my data back.
Finally, Google gave me access to my account by allowing me to use the new phone number they asked me to provide and not the one from 2022, exactly 8 days after the incident.
I do live in the EU, if the plan to get access to the phone number with the telecom operators on monday doesn't pan out I will try to do that.
Honestly I don't mind waiting weeks to recover the contents of my account as long as I know that it's not lost forever. But all the FAQ and comments on the internet regarding similar scenarios have no good ending and people just giving up with no recourse.
I knew about Subject Access Request but didn't cross my mind I could use it in my current scenario. Thank you!
"Account disabled 'myemail@gmail.com', We noticed unusual activity in your Google Account and locked it to protect your information. Learn more" and a button "Try to restore".
And now I got: "Too many failed attempts, Unavailable because of too many failed attempts. Try again in a few hours.".
Yeah... this is consistent with my experience. Try to keep calm and actually try again in a few hours.
It sounds like you have 2FA enabled so an account takeover is very unlikely. It sounds like you haven't violated the TOS in some egregious way, so actual ban is unlikely.
Most likely is there's some type of crazy cookie thing going on that is causing the auth system to vomit. It's shocking that this happens, but alas.
Seriously, just take the messages at face value. Better headline would have been "Google proactively protected my 10 years of private data after some villains tried to steal it".
Sorry, I meant that I don't have it in my possession as I've moved out of the country and stopped paying for it, but I still know the number, the issue is that I can't get a message to it for 2FA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...
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