djyaz1200

"Most of the time that's price fixing and is illegal."

Bingo!

That's the answer, the fed funds rate is a price fixing tool. Banks via the federal reserve governors meet to decide the base interest rate from which most other interest rates are derived. Aka the "price" of money. This is done to optimize the rent seeking activity of loans. The banks want to optimize how much interest they extract from the productive economy without harming it to the degree it stops growing or shrinks.

Related, most people think the Fed IS the government but it is not... it's banks... https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-fed...

Can someone explain why two these planes are more than a third of the total cost of the James Web Telescope?

The same general reason, they are very complicated and need to work perfectly for many years with a lot of challenging constraints. First off they need 2 of them to create coin flip risk for attackers. Then they need to be adapted for mid air refueling so that they can stay airborne indefinitely in the event of nuclear war. Speaking of Nukes all the systems need to be hardened against EMP. The climate control system is probably equipped to filter out any biological or chemical agents. All or parts of the aircraft are probably armored to mitigate small arms fire. The planes keep a Nasa Apollo capsule in their belly so that the president can jettison from the plane in the event that is necessary, that's probably a pain in the a* to install. The whole aircraft is probably setup to mitigate surveillance attacks with things like windows that deliberate vibrate to thwart laser based audio eavesdropping. Then each plane needs to host a few dozen staff and reporters who accompany the president. Then also the 747's travel with cargo planes and/or Ospreys also made by boeing to transport the armored limos and/or helicopters. All or some of those support aircraft might be included in the price. Probably a bunch of other classified stuff I haven't thought of. Still outrageous but I can kinda see why it adds up to billions.

That action reinforced the exact opposite of the narrative they were trying to create with the Robinhood name. Instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor they were running a casino where if you win too much they stop the game.

Sure, and it could be jammed or blocked potentially as we've already seen in Ukraine. Assuming Starlink can eventually establish and maintain an exclusively space based internet connection anywhere then any site accessed could potentially circumvent local laws/censorship.

Here is an article from 2016 about an Iranian using his satellite connection to get access to banned content... https://www.wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-s...

I think what Elon understands that these regulators have not considered carefully is that if people access Twitter or other tech services via the Starlink network satellites they are literally above the law. EU, North Korea, China, Russia has no power to regulate space based activity.

Twitter needs to get smaller to get better, specifically they need only real people (no bots). While this usage misstatement is minor it points to a longstanding directional problem whereby they focused too much on vanity metrics. I'd argue this a reason why they didn't do a better job challenged all the fake/bot accounts because those are great at pumping up vanity metrics.

* Having 2% of the population locked down to maintain COVID zero? * Or having 0.3% of your population die, and several times that disabled?

This is a false premise. Their lockdown will only slow the virus spread, unless they stop all travel and trade in their country the virus will find a way in. Everyone in the world will be exposed to the virus eventually. So in the end they will bare the cost of the lockdown and the virus, not either or.

Can someone please ask this guy to sell these to Ukraine?!

Listening to the audio book while doing some mindless chore or going for a walk has worked well for me. Good luck!

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis of the potential implications. I'd consider adding a policy mechanism that ranks all procedures and medications in terms of their necessity and cost/benefit; and cutting off what's covered at whatever point is required to keep the system financially solvent. This was proposed 10+ years ago by Oregon's Governer at the time who is a physician.

Article here... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133446...

Relevant excerpt... "The state maintains a list of nearly 700 medical procedures ranked in order of priority. Right now only the top 502 items on that list are covered by the Oregon Health Plan."

If you're willing to commit to a significant monthly spend the providers will offer lower rates. Contact several of them and collect competing bids.

Outrage about this is 100 years late. The entire college admissions process as we know it today was designed intentionally to exclude jews from Harvard.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in

Edit: 2009 HN Discussion about this article... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520836

Patent applications should be published online right away so they can get roasted by the whole internet. This follows the principal of Cunningham's Law "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

Generally strong IP rules tend to favor the less wealthy, weaker IP rules tend to favor those with the most capital. That's why billionaire Mark Cuban is funding things like this article. When people say things like "just out execute in the marketplace" what they are really saying is just pour millions into the project. Not everyone has millions and one of the foundational principals of US society is that a poor person with a good idea should be able to get rich. How rich and what they should do to qualify for the patent is worthy of debate. For example patent holders should have to be a "practicing entity" (aka a real business) working to deliver the innovation to the market.

The patent system should be better not gone.

Pinged you direct with more info

Lots of good advice here.

I'd recommend going to AA meetings. AA has a vibrant network of people dedicated to not drinking meeting everyday all around the world. If you don't like the first meeting try a different one, they vary widely.

Find other indulgent drinks to enjoy, ginger beer is a fun one that is widely available.

Tell friends you "don't drink" once, if they need to be told more than once they aren't your friend.

Much of the physiological drive to drink is literally based on thirst, so keep yourself super hydrated at all times. Being hydrated also dilutes your stress hormone (cortisol).

Exercise more, if you stop chronic drinking provided you're otherwise healthy you should start to feel much more energetic in a few weeks. Use that energy to improve your body and mind with rigorous exercise. This will help you look better, feel better about yourself and gives you a reason not to drink. A hard workout gives a feeling really similar to drinking but entirely healthy and natural. The more you look like a serious fit athlete the more people will easily accept it when you pass on drinks.

Crossfit gyms are a great place to make friends with healthier people.

Good luck!

We were paying them around $1500/mo and had a similar issue where they blocked some (in our case) legitimate messaging traffic. We switched most of our traffic to another provider and are pleased. We had been a Twilio customer since 3 days after they launched and I owned a significant amount of their stock. I sold it all when this happened in spring of last year and I'm glad I did... stock has gone down significantly since. I don't see Twilio doing well long term, they provide an API for a network they don't own.

That's true except for cash out refinancing. Lots of middle class folks take out home equity loans to pay down credit card debt. This was a big component of the 2008 financial crisis. That and banks leveraging 40-1 and betting big that housing would never decrease in value.

In my naivety I build a startup that fixed a problem for a fortune 500 company thinking they would be delighted. They weren't. These big companies are staffed by individuals who are focused on their career and will do absolutely anything to extinguish your company/idea and pretend it was their idea and champion the company's initiative. It's disgusting but it's reality and if you are a founder be ready for it.

One of the Sean's :)

Shawn Fanning

Governments shouldn't even consider taxing electrics. Trucks create the majority of road damage (https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...). Trucking companies should pay for the roads along with gas powered vehicles and if that gets prohibitively expensive then get an electric car or send goods primarily by rail. This is the real challenge of fighting climate change, many powerful and wealthy classes of people and businesses are going to have to pay for more of their share of their negative externalities.

I'm not an NFT supporter but they might have utility. I'm certainly interested in a more robust debate about their potential than "get off my lawn". Further, it's silly to imply that the current system of tracking + transferring assets doesn't have any carbon footprint.

I agree you can't escape having some contracts but I think the NFT supporters would say that the NFT functions like the deed to a property.

A problem NFT appears to be an attempt to solve is all the parasitic people, organizations and rules that govern the transfer of assets. These lawyers, title clerks, law firms, title companies, auction houses and governments extract significant rent from asset transfer marketplaces. This rent is a cost to market participants but the larger cost is limiting the liquidity and size of the overall market.

Like imagine if the title to a car was an NFT instead of a piece of paper. I think NFT might just be a complete scam but it might have utility in disintermediating markets.

I presume those who support NFT's (I'm not among them) would suggest that owners would use the legal process in some cases to set a precedent for enforcing rights so that people end up respecting those rights. Like parking tickets for private parking lots, the incentive would be just pay to avoid the hassle if you want to use the asset legitimately. I think the odds of this "pay to display" business model coming together are low but if they did it could be a big financial opportunity for those who hold the rights to valuable content.

This is a good explanation of why some people perceive NFT's to have value, setting aside if they do or not. The people who believe they have value I think expect at some point a business model will emerge to provide them with income for access to the "art" they "own".

The way to make a business model is to associate copyright ownership with the NFT ownership and then assert those rights by filing DMCA takedowns (and/or lawsuits) everyday to anyone who displays the "art" without paying for the privilege and using the NFT owners original work as the source file.

This would create digital scarcity because copies couldn't be used without legal exposure, so any real business or serious person who wanted to use it would pay for the rights to. It's like the Getty Images business model scaled way way up. I don't necessarily think this business model is good for society or will actually happen but it's the way to monetize NFTs.

In the future this type of genetic selection could happen as a fluke or could be engineered... either way the result could be unprecedented genocide. Labs that goof around with "gain of function" should be geographically isolated since it's now obvious their contents have the potential to end life on a scale larger than a nuclear weapon.

Thank you for the TL;DR

Lots of great advice here, suggest reading the famous book "How to win friends and influence people", very old but lots of good timeless advice.

Wish you all the best!

Anecdotally, I've been skipping breakfast and lunch M-F with first food at 4pm and I've been losing a little bit of weight (.5%/month) and have a lot more energy. I probably eat about the same caloric volume of food, maybe slightly less. Been at it for about 6mo. Not saying this is right for others but I've been encouraged by the results thus far. I started after reading (some of) the book "The Energy Paradox" by SR Gundry. It's too long but the point is eating requires energy and can make you feel tired. I imagine I'll stick with this program.

Apple as of years ago was capturing over 90% of all the margin in smartphones (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/23/apple-captures-record-91-per...). I'd argue that represents a monopoly in paid smartphones. Our option as users is either buy a phone from Apple or accept what is essentially a free service from Google (you have to buy the hardware)... who are giving that away to solidify their search monopoly. This to me doesn't represent a thriving marketplace of user choice.