bradjohnson

It's really not.

This is clearly not true if you observe actual real estate and rental prices and as long as we continue to allow corporations to own a majority of development projects, it should be obvious this won't work. The profit incentive doesn't work this way, and they are better off just letting a home sit empty than to dilute the value of their portfolio by selling or renting low to compete against themselves.

> The people with remote contracts aren't affected by this.

False. I currently work at Amazon and was hired remotely, as per my employment contract, and I've been forced to relocate or resign.

SEO optimized turds have been floating to the top of google results for years and google hasn't done anything to effectively combat it. Why would this be something that google would do something about?

Personally, I think it's interesting to see federated services get put through the ringer as possible alternatives. Lately there's been a perfect storm of entitlement from corporations (i.e. Twitter and Reddit) over their userbase that is great to see funneled into a stress test for federated alternatives.

Why not? Typically users of reddit are subscribed to more than one subreddit, so migration to a single destination that can handle all of those communities seems like an obvious choice. The network effect of many users advocating that their second favourite community migrate over to the "new reddit" seems reasonable once people start to establish a userbase there.

The article tone portrays the critical thinking of a third grader and the confidence of a used-car salesman. I would say that this blog post was worthless, but that would be giving it too much credit.

> Then they simply wouldn't set any such goals. Why would they bother risking it?

Good. At least then they're not profiting off of the climate crisis while taking no action.

I'm referring to the article, not a feature of a product. I consider profiting off of green-washing while simultaneously being one of the biggest contributors to pollution and then silently reneging on your carbon emissions target a "corporate misdeed". I think that all of the companies that set these public carbon emissions goals as PR should be held fully accountable for missing them.

>It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy.

It's implying that we are sending ourselves towards extinction, just as if you were sending yourself towards obesity by continually consuming 10,000 Calories per day. What is really crazy is that there are still climate change deniers that exist in this comments section.

> Nothing is stopping customers from holding corporations accountable, by taking their business elsewhere if they find a corporation to be unreliable.

Nothing except layers of political lobbying, misleading advertising, opaque corporate ownership, and monopolistic practices. The result being:

- You won't find out about corporate misdeeds, and if you do

- You will be told it's not that bad or that they've changed, and if you don't believe that

- You will have trouble finding a brand that they do not own, and if you find that

- It won't be as easy to obtain or cheap

The visible decisions that I've seen attributed to CEOs range from "absurdly and obviously bad" to "good, until you find out the same decisions are already echoing throughout the industry". It begs the question did they come up with it themselves? Or did they just happen to hear rumblings before the grunts did?

I would argue that an above average CEO has a negligible effect on the company and an average one actively damages the company. The good ones make the decisions that everyone copies shortly after. We could probably replace >90% of them with AI and be better off.

There is no basis for the increase in value. Crypto at large is a Ponzi scheme where the increase in amount of suckers buying into it is the sole evidence given for its usefulness.

Every stalwart crypto supporter talks out of both sides of their mouth every time they are questioned about the actual utility of crypto. Is it the future of money (AKA useful liquidity) or is it a great investment that can only increase in value (AKA speculative deflationary asset)?

It cannot be both and it is certainly not useful as money. Makes you wonder why DOES the line go up?

There's no such thing as monetary debasement for bank notes as there is no intrinsic value for the physical dollar.

If you're saying that inflation in general is bad for the economy, I would encourage you to read this: https://www.britannica.com/money/inflation-vs-deflation

Useful how? Linking a real-time deflation chart doesn't exactly scream "useful".

I'm saying that any knowledge you think might tip the scales in one direction is inconsequential. You will lose money or gain money depending on the will of those with the most stake. It is never a "smart move" to invest in crypto. It is gambling.

Maybe get a lady friend to blow on your mouse before you click buy.

If red hasn't come up in a while on a roulette table, is it a smart move to bet on red?

Not true, but don't let facts get in the way of your kneejerk racism.

> The U.S. is leading in global LNG supply growth with an additional 5.9 million tonnes of capacity in 2022, for a total of 80 mtpa.

> Norway saw the second-largest growth in LNG supply, with an additional 2.8 million tonnes of capacity. Malaysia and Qatar were close behind, with 2.4 million tonnes and 2.3 million tonnes of capacity growth in 2022, respectively.

>If consumers spend more money, then businesses will respond by hiring more workers.

That is not how economics works...

Most automation of physical jobs didn't happen by dropping a robot into the same situation as a human, but by adapting the environment for automation. I think the essay spends too much time positing that since most times robots can't be dropped into existing situations, there is no threat of automation for these industries. That might be true for things that can't be changed rapidly (such as how plumbing works in residential housing built over the last hundred years), but for many things it is reasonable to expect capitalists to shift the environment in which that job is done to allow for scalable automation.

E.g. Grocery store cashiers haven't been replaced by humanoid robots, but they have been significantly offset by computers and scales and by making the customer do the manual steps of scanning and bagging via self-checkout.

I don't think it's fundamentally different, and I think you're conflating complexity with randomness.

That's true. I think that it is analogous to the discussion of AI limitations. Both of these are tools and are not categorically exclusive.

In the case of translation of floating point numbers from base-2 to base-10 we have to make approximations which will often be slightly wrong forever without regard for amount of precision.

With AI, depending on the pre-conditions, the AI could be stuck in a state of being slightly wrong forever for a specific question without regard to further refinement of the query.

These are both still useful as tools. We just need to be able to work on the amount of refinement of the answer that the AI gives, which may be able to be solved fairly well through prompt engineering, if not through the advancement of GPT itself.

>The answer in the Javascript console is still a correct answer.

It's wrong in the same way that saying 1/1 = 1.0004 is wrong. It's not a matter of chosen precision in that it doesn't make the answer correct when you increase the number of zeros between 1 and 4.

Primarily, the problem with that is I don't know anywhere that I would choose to spend money that also takes ETH. I also don't really think that what you're describing is good or common.

Common: The middleman is still there in the most common case since most wallets are custodial. There are a ton of recent examples of exchanges freezing accounts, including the very article that we're commenting under, so I don't really get what you're talking about.

Good: It doesn't make sense to use a wildly volatile deflationary token as currency. Deflation discourages spending which is why there is no real currency that restricts the supply of money to a fixed amount, because it encourages hoarding.

> You also ignore the "nonexistent enterprise" bit.

What is the enterprise? Cryptocurrencies themselves have no governance or accountability. They don't have any responsibility to continue to exist beyond the efforts of the participants that are propping them up. This is evidenced by the massive number of rug-pulls that constantly happen in crypto.

> is a statement that evaluates to true for any currency ever minted.

Except not really. Let's talk about USD. If there were no new participants introduced to United States currency at this point it doesn't become valueless because it is not a deflationary speculative currency. It exists as an agreed upon representation of value, it doesn't need to continue to consume new participants to justify its valuation, or continue to exist.

Let me ask you, is there a good or common reason to buy etherium today besides hoping that it increases in value? How would it increase in value if no new people were introduced to the system? How does crypto justify its existence in any way beyond convincing the next biggest sucker to buy in? Bonus points if you don't mention stocks.

I really like the idea of going through the list of common warning signs for a Ponzi scheme and still having to weasel around like "well technically if you squint, this one doesn't apply to every cryptocurrency."

Unfortunately cryptocurrency and NFTs fit exactly the definition of a Ponzi scheme and it's quite easy to see why:

> Pon·zi scheme

> noun

> a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Literally the entire basis of deflationary speculative "currency" is a Ponzi scheme. It has no value if new people don't buy in.

Citation needed on the "selling" part.

I agree, I think it's mostly framed as something Amazon does to screw over employees by dangling stock they might not ever get a few years out. I'm not even arguing about the other points for the parent of my original comment, but the vesting schedule at Amazon is severely underrated in my opinion.

At my last company, the stock price when I joined was at $150/share, it rose to over $200/share and crashed to under $30/share by the time my initial vesting date came. I lost six figures of expected TC based on my original offer (over half my total compensation). Since it was a 1 year cliff, I couldn't do anything to diversify or limit my risk because my RSUs were not mine until they vested.

Lesson learned, but I don't think there's an archetype of engineer that prefers that kind of risk profile over large cash payments each month. My downside for Y1 at Amazon is 4% of the agreed upon TC.

Disclaimer: I currently work for Amazon but I would argue that their vesting schedule is their strongest selling point, especially in the current market. If you got into Amazon relatively recently, you're in a strong position for your take home pay.

The backloaded stock gives you stability up front with their high signing bonus, and high growth potential for TC assuming stock growth in two years. My pay is basically equalized over 4 years at current stock prices when I began, so my expected 4 year outlook without raises/performance bonuses/stock appreciation is:

Y1: ~70% Base, ~26% Bonus, ~4% Stock (5% total initial grant)

Y2: ~70% Base, ~18% Bonus, ~12% Stock (15% total initial grant)

Y3: ~70% Base, ~0% Bonus, ~30% Stock (40% total initial grant)

Y4: ~70% Base, ~0% Bonus, ~30% Stock (40% total initial grant)

Rough numbers, you get it. Not everyone has the same deal, but from what I've seen @ Amazon this is pretty standard and honestly significantly better than having to deal with the volatility of a 1 year initial vesting cliff like most public companies.