boc

I'll be upfront with you: bitcoin is probably the worst "tech" ever mass-adopted. That's my bias.

1. The banking industry is thousands of times more important that crypto for everyday Americans. It's what literally makes our entire economy run. Crypto is used for speculation. What you should be comparing bitcoin against is the energy it takes to list a few ETFs on an exchange, which is essentially the cost of a few hundred servers, aka nothing. Bitcoin is ungodly inefficient and will only become more inefficient.

2. "It could be less, much less, or much less," This is a filler argument. Study says "around" a number, so you're arguing it could be a really broad definition of "around"? Not a serious take.

3. The absolute number matters because it's showing the economic activity is being concentrated in the pockets of just 137 entities. This is NOT a broad-base economic phenomenon that helps employ people in communities around the country, like say running gas stations (another polluting industry). If you're going to use 2% of the nation's electricity, you'd want the benefits spread across at least 2% of the population. Not 0.00002%.

4. Net energy consumption pulls from our current energy grid. Within a grid, if you use more clean electricity in one area, it'll pull more supply from dirtier sources elsewhere. Saying that bitcoin mining helps "green" the grid is a myth because you have to mine it 24/7/365, which means intermittent sources like wind and solar are at a big disadvantage. Battery storage tech is not there yet, thus gas plants and dirtier sources have to kick-in to keep up with 24/7 consumption.

> I'm not a crypto proponent per se

Yet you rolled out the standard crypto talking points flawlessly.

> Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist

Again, I suspect you aren't an environmentalist either. Please just be straightforward with your motivations here.

North Americans are used to more extreme climates... by their standards The Netherlands is very mild.

IDK, the Waymo cars that drive around SF meet my definition of full self driving. They handle a ton of weird traffic patterns, pedestrians, pickup zones, and very dense urban environments much better than I think you realize. Unless you live here, you probably aren't aware of their capabilities.

If the Marines hadn't insisted on adding STOL/VTOL capabilities wrt the F35B, the project would have been much more straightforward and successful. Even despite that crazy requirement, it's still a success for NATO exports.

I might be a sucker but I bought YouTube Premium about a year ago and it's definitely been worth it for me. I love watching those 10-20min length YouTube videos instead of watching TV shows, so skipping the ads is really clutch and has saved me probably 24+ hours of my life lol.

Trillions of random chances over the course of billions of years.

We are incredibly far away from AGI and we're only getting there with wetware.

LLMs and GenAI are clever parlor tricks compared to the necessary science needed for AGI to actually arrive.

It started as a reaction to a market distortion during/after WWII. There was a government-imposed salary cap during the war (Stabilization Act of 1942), so private companies had to get creative to attract talent. One thing that stuck was offering additional health insurance to employees. The rest is history.

Further reading: https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-obamaca...

It also hopefully opens up the door to responsibly talk about how obesity will shorten your life significantly. There isn't a concept of "healthy obesity" when you look at your body's bloodwork. My buddy lost a friend who was only 38 due to complications from morbid obesity. It was tragic.

Cheap, effective interventions like this are incredible for our future populace.

I'd urge you to consider that your personal lived experience may not match the experience of the other 332,000,000 Americans.

Instead of trying to explain away official statistics by talking about things you see on your drive to work, consider updating your priors instead.

Just curious, do you expect prices to return to pre-pandemic levels? If so, how do you think that will happen? Disinflation is very different from deflation, and nobody should be rooting for deflation.

Do you even remember 2008? If this is a bad economy for you, imagine actually entering a recession and you lose your job + house.

US-based here. Here's my strategy:

Hook up credit cards to bank and setup auto-pay on full balance and treat them like debit cards.

Pay for everything with the credit card that gives me the most points in that category (aka 4X on dining, 3X gas, 4X groceries, 3X travel, etc).

Fly for free multiple times a year by using my credit card points to book flights/transfer to airline partners. Also get a bunch of nice travel perks. My last airport meal + drink was free because of some random credit card bonus.

Credit cards in the US are amazing. You also get what it essentially a 0% loan for ~40 days from after buying something and when the money comes out of your bank account, plus great fraud/return protection from Visa/Amex.

This seems less efficient/more dangerous than simply asking for mailed statements and then auto-paying the full balance. They'll deliver you a physical statement in the mail for you to look through/digest, and you aren't risking missing a month and paying interest.

Responsibly afford

We’d have already seen a massive spike in cancer if it was true.

I’m begging HN to stop assuming they understand economics before dismissing the entire profession.

I would agree if A) Threads didn't just add 100M users overnight, and B) if Twitter wasn't a spam-filled shitshow.

It's undeniable that Twitter is a failing product. Their advertisements are literal basement-tier garbage... I see the type of ads that normally fill your spam inbox. The blue checkmarks seem like they're all Elon sycophants and thus you are forced to interact with a bunch of weirdos as the top replies to any post. It just feels like walking into a Walmart at 1am, vs Threads which feels like Target on a weekday.

Once people realize that they just need to go follow their Twitter follows on Threads (instead of just their insta followers), Threads starts feeling like a way cleaner version of Twitter. And that's before they add most of the features like hashtags, trending, follow topics, DMs, etc.

I thought I would get burned out on Threads but it's still keeping my interest.

You’re on the English-speaking internet when the only other countries awake are Canada and Australia/NZ.

You’re in an America conversation thread, whether you like it or not.

Beat-up Toyota T100s are still the landscaper vehicle of choice out west.

Large trucks that are taller can still be useful for tossing bikes and recreational toys in the back, but they are a pain for loading/unloading unless you're a very tall person. Oddly enough I did a ton of home renovation with my first-gen Honda Pilot because you could easily slide a 4x8ft piece of plywood/drywall into the back and close the tailgate. Perfect height for unloading and comes with a built-in cover for rainy trips.

That said, having a truck bed with a liner is really handy for muddy/dirty tools, gravel, organic matter, chemicals, and other stuff that you don't want smelling up your car. I definitely didn't toss that stuff into the back of the Pilot.

I think you’re confusing transitory inflation causes with entrenched inflation causes. I’m definitely not arguing that wages triggered our current bout of inflation. I’m arguing that wage increases are required to sustain and entrench inflation. If you have inflation continuing upwards without any wage reaction, eventually people can’t afford to consume, which curtails inflation (or you ruin your currency ala Turkey). The only way to sustain the rise long term is by increasing wages to match inflation expectations.

So when the government printed trillions of dollars continuously from 2000 until 2019 yet we had record low inflation... was that just a fluke? A multi-decade rebuke of your theory?

I mean I'll take my downvotes but it's not a controversy within the economics field that broad wage gains perpetuate inflation. It's also not just something "taught in academia".

Concerns about wage growth is a primary reason why the Fed has been raising rates aggressively. They need to slow down economic activity so that wage gains cool. It's just politically toxic to say that explicitly, so they talk about other macro factors when pressed about it. Read between the lines here and you'll see that the Fed has been laser-focused on the wage-price spiral effect: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-01/best-bet-...

Which is a good thing if you want inflation to eventually fall. Wage growth is the primary sustainer of inflation, which leads to the classic wage/price spiral wherein employees negotiate automatic increases in salary to keep up with predicted inflation.

Inflation in the US today is still transitory in nature, but you can look at other countries to see examples of entrenched inflation.

I’m not saying it’s a good outcome for society short-term, but if everyone kept getting raises to keep up with inflation, businesses would respond by continuing to raise prices.

What are your opinions on Peter Attia’s podcast? They seem similar but it’s impossible for a lay person to judge if they’re trustworthy.

Yeah agreed; at least heroin sales don’t directly fund nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, enable gigantic ransomware attacks on innocent civilians, or generate massive carbon emissions+e-waste in order to continue existing.

Degrowth is not a solution. Geo-engineering is our only way out of this mess.

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die.

If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand that you’re playing with fire here. This week is critical to saving your platform.