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gws

673 karma · joined October 31, 2011

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gws··on The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life
One lesson to add: Any investment can go to zero, so better size it accordingly.
gws··on Federal investigators probe Tether
Listen to 8:45 of this video: https://youtu.be/IjR3Hj0aRW4?si=s2D0wjQOIS5uiFKh

He says that Tether can redeem any request because his company holds their money. If Tether is unbacked this is security fraud

gws··on Federal investigators probe Tether
8:45
gws··on Federal investigators probe Tether
The incentives at work here are that if a CEO of a public company makes false statements of this kind goes to jail. This is like the CEO of the bank that held Bernie Madoff's money going on record before Madoff's fall saying he holds Bernie's money and it's all there. If Tether is unbacked Howard Lutnick is going to jail, so it is irrational to believe Tether is unbacked at this point.
gws··on Federal investigators probe Tether
The most comprehensive and forceful statements are in this video: https://youtu.be/IjR3Hj0aRW4?si=s2D0wjQOIS5uiFKh
gws··on Federal investigators probe Tether
For those doubting that Tether is fully backed, note that Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgeral, one of the largest investment banks and a public company, has stated that Cantor Fitzgeral manages Tether’s money and indeed the money is all there and invested in US treasury bonds
gws··on Htmx 2.0.0 has been released
No question but I wanted to say, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out which js framework was less of an overkill, and finding htmx was pure joy
gws··on Ask HN: Is AngelList Legit?
I’ve withdrawn money from AngelList after distributions, the platform is legit.
gws··on Culture Change at Google
“The most incredible and unusual thing that struck me about Google's early culture was the tendency to value employees above all else”

I wish they had valued users above all else

gws··on Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?
Elden Ring. Need to finish this mofo to be able to focus on anything else. It truly is a masterpiece.
gws··on Bing ChatGPT image jailbreak
If LLMs were actually intelligent they would decide on their own what to do irrespectively of what they have been ordered by anybody else. Just like intelligent people do.
gws··on Tornado cash takedown and its repercussions
In reality it is exactly the opposite. The very rich can pay advisors to create all the privacy schemes they want, “optimize” their taxes, etc. Financial privacy would benefit the middle class way more than the very rich.
gws··on Programming Fonts
In the end you need to choose if you are going to spend all your time tweaking fonts, color schemes, and other settings or actually write software
gws··on Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did
Come on guys, do some research, Tether now publishes audited reserve reports as part of the settlement with the US Department of Justice. ~70% of tether in circulation are backed by Treasury Bills and cash deposits, so immediately redeemable. The other ~30% in short term commercial paper can pose a bit of risk but unless they did something really stupid (and they are all but stupid) nothing to put the backing at risk. Tether is here to stay and if you feel giddy at the idea of it going down ask yourself why you are rooting for someone to fail...

https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports

gws··on Did I just lose half a million dollars?
I don’t understand why these contracts don’t let addresses that make this particular error recover their funds, it would be easy to implement at contract creation or am I missing something?
gws··on Tether Fined $41M for Lying About Reserves
I did not edit :)
gws··on Tether Fined $41M for Lying About Reserves
Will reply here rather than in all the sub-threads: I’m not saying lying is good, I’m pointing my finger at the paradox that on one side everybody is scandalized that Tether is not shut down, on the other everybody is happy to keep their money with big institutions that are proven to be even worse.
gws··on Tether Fined $41M for Lying About Reserves
Still there have been zero redemption issues in getting USD back from USDT
gws··on Tether Fined $41M for Lying About Reserves
You are right, they lied, and people could have been harmed if there were a “bank run” on Tether. But in practice there was not and nobody suffered any damage, zero, nada, nicht. While big banks got fined for actually taking money illegally out of people’s pockets and nobody said let’s shut them down
gws··on Tether Fined $41M for Lying About Reserves
Don’t really get you guys saying Tether should be shut down… the big banks get routinely fined with much bigger fines for much bigger crimes, are we gonna shut them all down then? At least Tether did not steal from nor defraud anyone. Just as a random example: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jpmorgan-chase-co-agrees-pay-...
gws··on Live BTC transactions in Twitter hack
You are right; also I would imagine the tax authority does not even care too much about where the money came from, they just want to make sure you paid enough taxes. Criminal investigation agencies of course do care.
gws··on Live BTC transactions in Twitter hack
> The irony being that it is the onus of the accuser to determine the origin

Not really, you need to be able to justify to the tax authority how you got in possession of any amount of assets you have and prove you pay taxes on it.

So if a large amount of money eventually show up in your bank account (or you buy a house or any other "visible" asset) and it is not compatible with your previous tax returns it is likely the tax authority will notice it and at that point you are fried

gws··on July 11, 2020 RIP my darling boy
His death was incredibly touching to me, and I’m not a sentimental guy. I asked myself why that was the case and the answer I came up with is that he was a true idealist, what I longed to be but did not have the ____ to
gws··on How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
Yeah, it drives me insane, once someone used my email to sign-up on eBay and started buying sex toys. Can't believe eBay didn't do email verification. I was at work and started getting emails like congratulations, your dildo is on its way, with pictures.
gws··on How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
I follow these rules:

1) if I never signed up goes immediately to SPAM

2) if I did signed up I make the effort of going through their unsubscribe procedure

3) if I still get emails after (2) goes to SPAM

gws··on [dead]
Had no idea, got there from Twitter. I did enjoy the article though
gws··on Starkey and the Future of Hearing Aids
That can't work because of the lag of the phone to hearing aid communication
gws··on Starkey and the Future of Hearing Aids
Nice PR piece :)

We need dramatic improvement in battery capacity to put machine learning in hearing aid, it's far away

gws··on Inbox by Gmail Shutting Down
I really don’t understand why they are doing this. This is the app I use the most on mobile up there with the browser. If there is an area where it makes sense to experiment with multiple UIs is email.
gws··on Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller (2011)
Not at all, I’m calling a bad parent anybody whose kid is getting abused repeatedly without the parent realizing it and intervening to stop it. Well, not a bad parent, a beyond awful parent.
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