danhak

> With a disciplined approach to investing, I think that it's very much possible to reach financial independence with a typical tech salary in the US

Bear in mind that you have been the beneficiary of an exceptional bull market

Yeah, the current fee ($695) is a bit eye popping.

But I am actually using every penny of the airline, Uber and Equinox credits ($200 + $200 + $300) so it’s effectively free for me and all the extra benefits like lounge access are icing on the cake.

My life changed so much for the better once I got lounge access.

Unlimited free food and beverages (restaurant quality at The Centurion), free WiFi to do some work, and a clean relaxing space to decompress a bit or even shower before a flight.

Will never pay $18 for a mediocre airport sandwich again.

It just stopped being fun.

It went from being a mostly euphoric, relaxing and sensory-enhancing experience in my teens and early 20’s to one mainly characterized by anxiety and paranoia.

> but the CPI covers both owners equivalent rent (if you owned your house) and rent (if you rent)?

The hypothesis is that folks have dropped out of the rental market as well (e.g. rents have hit a threshold that's caused people to live with parents longer or even become homeless.

I don't think that would be captured in CPI

Perhaps cost per square foot hasn't changed much. But that's irrelevant if there's no more entry-level inventory left for folks who are just starting out.

> I posit the "housing" part of the CSI is almost completely inelastic and only reflects what people pay in rent/mortgage, not the cost of entry.

This is a really interesting point. A longstanding criticism of the reported unemployment numbers is that it doesn't take into account those who have given up / dropped out of the labor force.

Perhaps the CPI is similarly failing to capture people who have been shut out of the housing market altogether (e.g. homeless, staying with family longer than previous generations)

> 1. It was definitely zoonotic, and suggestions otherwise are racist conspiracy theories.

How is the zoonotic hypothesis (“virus originated in Chinese wet market” / “due to Chinese dietary practices”) any less racist?

Seconded, this is one of the loveliest parts of the country if you can tolerate the winter. Twin Cities and Madison are both incredibly pleasant, livable with lots to offer and surrounded by some beautiful forests and nature. Madison is a bit smaller and more of a college town.

It's not just shipping -- I am moving into a new apartment and every single furniture company is backed up like crazy. My sofa isn't expected until December!

People are definitely on the move. That, plus supply chain issues and raw materials shortages is my guess.

> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services.

Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens.

E.g. We all know about that guy who bought a pizza with BTC. And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC (which they have since backtracked) it was a media sensation and market-moving. This is not normal.

I remember growing up in the 90's and happily learning in school and on TV that it was my civic duty to recycle.

One of the biggest catastrophes of environmental policy was to shift the burden of plastic waste away from corporations and onto the consumer.

Corporations can pump out as much single-use trash as they wish, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the result not of their practices but of individuals' inevitable failure to be conscientious and manage the waste they produce. Classic tragedy of the commons.

It should have been a matter of Federal policy, not individual choice. Just like the (successful) ban of lead-based paint and CFC's.

There was a massive spike downward literally the minute Musk sent the tweet.

When the price is stable for hours then collapses after an event, you can pretty safely infer the correlation.

Could you please expand on how keeping interest rates artificially depressed, causing the prices of homes to skyrocket, advances the goal of preventing homelessness?

Do you believe taking a psychotropic drug for the very first time before a big pitch--before having any sense of what a proper dose might be--is on the the reasonable side of the spectrum between "risky" and "reckless"?

There are many, many successful bootstrapped software businesses out there. It's not as though founders in this industry don't already have a choice about whether or not to seek outside investment, and to consider all the relevant tradeoffs.

In what ways could capital be made less necessary?

But this notion is incompatible with capitalism itself.

The idea of capitalism is that capital accumulates in the hands of those who figure out how best to deploy and protect it. Investors, not Zhu, are the ones with the track record and experience.

Trusting them to be stewards of capital is a better bet than trusting an eccentric, unproven founder who decides to experiment with LSD for the very first time before a big pitch.

If Zhu had managed a successful exit, he would have established that track record, accumulated some capital of his own and bought himself the leeway to be as eccentric as he wishes in the future. See: Elon Musk.

Very curious about what the breakdown of that 20% is by manufacturer. A friend of mine traded his i3 for a Model Y and said the experience has been like night and day. Access to Supercharger network is a game charger. No other fast charging network is really even close.

Why are processed foods automatically bad so long as the macronutrient / sodium profile is otherwise in line?

There's debate about whether Apple's technologies are truly novel, that doesn't mean they aren't a good business.

It seems like the discourse has shifted to describe even legitimate businesses that are overvalued in the opinion of an author as "pump and dump" or "ponzi scheme"

They’re not really “giving up” anything if they attract a business that otherwise wouldn’t be there at all.

It’s still a net gain to have a major employer in your locale, along with all the other economic benefits and tax revenue that entails.

*immiseration of those who don't hold assets

Which is precisely what's been happening. Just take a walk around any major urban center in the U.S. There is misery in the streets. The opioid crisis is another manifestation of the same despair. Historic civil unrest, "eat the rich" / "billionaires shouldn't exist" rhetoric heating up. Etc. etc.

This organization wants to crowdfund the purchase of Facebook at current market value by soliciting donations via PayPal?

Are they aware that there is already a mechanism in place to buy companies called the stock market? Hypothetically the most efficient way to do this would be to ask folks to purchase then donate shares.

This is the third rail of Covid discussions. But you are correct. The area under the curve was exactly the same in all the "flatten the curve" vs zero mitigation models. The rationale behind flattening the curve was never to decrease the absolute number of infections.

But somewhere along the way, the goalposts were implicitly switched from "flatten the curve" to "wait for the vaccine"

I’m not suggesting that this fear is part of conscious reasoning.

We came of age in an era when HIV / AIDS was finally acknowledged and taken seriously by society, and recognized as something that could affect anybody.

I think the attention placed on STDs during our Sex Ed classes may have something to do with it. Learning about the horrible things that could happen to you through casual sex (with grotesque accompanying photos!) was a major part of our curriculum. And we were taught that condoms may not protect you. So I think there is some innate fear and shame embedded here.

This article seems to me an extremely negative spin on a business relationship that appears to have progressed in a very standard way:

- Palantir's U.K. head of sales meets with NHS Chief in 2019 over dinner. Apparently there were some fancy cocktails involved...how sensational!

- Pandemic rolls around; Palantir--among other tech companies--awarded contract to do data analytics work on early Covid response

- Palantir's contract now extended. Ostensibly NHS is pleased with their work?

I agree that Bitcoin is here to stay and has utility. The issues that I have are

1) It is volatile and impossible to value; any price is as reasonable as any other. What is my benchmark here? The amount of USD in circulation? The value of outstanding U.S. Government debt? (if it is indeed going to replace Treasuries as reserve currency / safe haven asset). Can someone more knowledgable than me chime in?

2) Its utility as a currency is inversely proportional to its utility as a speculative instrument. And speculation appears to be 99% of the interest and discussion.

His goal was to answer the interesting question: "how many hashes could I manually generate per day," not to generate hashes in the most efficient manner possible.