kangnkodos

The author implies the assumption that over time, distributed data will get quicker and cheaper, like the CPU and memory on a PC.

It won't.

It can't.

The problem is that validating transactions on a blockchain must be expensive. If they were cheap, then I could spend a few bucks, take over a blockchain, and say that my transactions are the valid ones.

There's no way around this issue.

My message in round 1 would be:

"340958123405982

In order to decide who the leader is:

Before every round, I'm going to flip a coin before I send the next message out. Heads I'll stick with my method of deciding who the leader is for the round. Tails, I'll switch to your method of deciding on the leader for the round.

If I get heads, in the next round, I will send you this same message but starting with a different random integer from one to any size. If we both send each other this same exact message but starting with a different integer, in the same round, then whoever sends the largest integer, gets to be the leader and we will follow their plan."

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Next round and every round after:

If heads, I'll send out the same message but starting with a different random integer.

If tails, I'll follow their method of selecting a leader.

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If it ever reaches a point where we both send each other the exact same message except for the integer, and my integer was the largest one, my next message would be (or if their method ends up with me being the leader):

"I am the leader. We will both announce red in the next round"

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If it ever reaches a point where we both send each other the exact same message except for the integer, and my integer was the smaller one, my next message would be (or if their method ends up with them being the leader):

"You are the leader. I will follow the plan you sent me in this round."

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If we send each other the exact same message and the integers are tied, in the next round I flip a coin and if heads, send out the same long message again.

Yes. It's important to analyze why the person giving the advice is suggesting a particular course of action.

If it's face to face, after I ask for advice, I always follow up with "Why?"

It would look like the Rockstar language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSlcxxYAA8&t=2959s

A US company, Ambri, is also working on a molten salt battery.

"The liquid metal battery is comprised of a liquid calcium alloy anode, a molten salt electrolyte and a cathode comprised of solid particles of antimony"

I think it's a good rule of thumb to assume that anyone who guarantees returns greater than the historical return of the S&P 500 is a ponzi scheme.

I don't know of a single reputable bank, hedge fund or publicly traded company that does that.

A huge number of places do have high returns from time to time. But any reputable firm points out that past returns do not guarantee future results. No reputable firm guarantees returns that high in the future.

The key is the guarantee.

Anyone who GUARANTEES returns that high in the future is suspect, and therefore must be more transparent than usual in order to clear the bar. The article indicates that Celsius was less transparent than usual in describing exactly how they made their high returns.

Who ends up holding all the $USDT?

Who are currently the biggest holders? Lots of different random individuals? All the people who have deposited cash into an exchange but haven't bought bitcoin yet/people who have sold bitcoin on an exchange, and haven't cashed out for USD yet? Institutions, if so which ones?

Where does it tend to pool up?

Are there any studies of where most of it sits?

I expect my property, my house and yard, to appreciate less than the S&P 500. I expect the value of my property to go up a little, but not a lot. By choosing to buy property, instead of living in the cheapest rental I could find, there is an opportunity cost. And I'm OK with that.

If money was the only goal, renting something extremely inexpensive and investing would give me a better financial return.

He mentions his house is near a street named Baltimore. And he said he's near DC, not in DC.

One possibility is University of Maryland in College Park.

The main street that runs through campus is Baltimore Avenue. And it's just a few miles outside of DC. It's close enough to be on the DC Metro.

There's a Megamart a few miles away. A Lidl supermarket is just north of campus. And there's a very small Target with a nice sized grocery section with fresh fruit and vegetables, etc. right in the middle of campus.

If you're walking from the middle of campus, Target is your best bet. Lidl is a possible walk, depending on exactly where he lives, but a little further. Next would be Whole Foods, two miles south of campus. Maybe he hasn't discovered that yet?

Near DC. He mentions Baltimore as a street near his house. That's the main street that runs through the University of Maryland campus in College Park. It's just a few miles outside of DC.

This is a bad analogy.

The main difference between alchemy and chemistry is that chemistry follows the scientific method.

When an alchemist learned something new, they kept the information to themselves and tried to profit from it. They wanted to turn lead into gold, and then keep the secret method to themselves.

A chemist profits by sharing the new information.

First go to where the people are.

Turn off your phone and put it away.

Then, when you're somewhere with a bunch of people, don't look at the big groups talking and laughing together. Look for someone all by themselves who looks even more introverted than you. Go over to THAT person and say hi. Make some positive comment about the event. "I'm really looking forward to the thing. I've really been interested in things since I was a little kid." Ask them their opinion, "What made you decide to attend?", "What do you hope to get out of it?", "What did you like about the thing we just saw?" "How did you get started in this kind of thing?" Be ready to give them more than a one word answer about why you like the topic.

Make small talk. Ask open ended questions, "What's that like?", "Tell me more about that thing you mentioned a few minutes ago, I want to hear more about that." Be ready to tell a few stories yourself. Talk, and also listen. Really listen to what the other person has to say, and how it makes them feel.

After you broke the ice, and there's a pause in the conversation, look for a third introverted person all by themselves. "Let's go talk with that person." Now you have a group of three. Keep your eyes open for people on the edge, and bring them in and up to date on the conversation. "Hi, have you met Huey and Dewey yet? Dewey was just telling us about a fascinating method of arranging books at the library".

It's not easy to reach out and say hi to a stranger. It's extremely difficult. You'll have to force yourself to do it the first few times. When you leave your room to go to an event, promise yourself that you're going to talk to at least one person at the event. Then do it.

It's kind of like learning to ride a bike. All the thinking ahead of time doesn't do a bit of good. You just have to make a leap of faith, hop on, and hope for the best. Practice small talk again and again, and you'll get better at it.

Ask people about their other interests, and make it clear that you want to join that other activity. "You go rock climbing on Saturdays? I've always wanted to try that. How do I sign up for that?" Then meet one or two of the rock climbers and find out about their other interests.

Just put it on myspace. That information will never completely go away.

... with the same message in a bunch of different languages. It will be become a future Rosetta Stone.

There have been studies which start with giving everyone the same amount of money, and then simulating random transactions. In a very short amount of time, one person ends up with 95% of the money.

When it is run different times, a different random person ends up being the one rich person. But it never ends up with everyone having about the same amount of money.

Or any small company. Most of what he's describing happens at large companies.

"Recent work has recovered the gene sequences of this unusual strain, so that the 1918 pandemic virus could be reconstituted to display its unique virulence phenotypes."

What could possibly go wrong?

What is the average daily net inflow of US dollars into Tether? How many days of net inflow is $41M?

I double checked, and my friend successfully got away with homeschooling her kids in Germany. This was over five years ago. She thinks that maybe because she's American, they didn't follow up as much as they would have with a German citizen. She also told me today that she was there for almost a year, not a few months.

I wouldn't suggest anyone else try this.

Yes. A friend was homeschooling her kids in the US, and then her husband got an assignment in Germany for about a year. She took the kids and joined her husband in Germany for a few months. The rules were all different, and much stricter in Germany. I remember she was thinking of trying to continue to home school there, and keep her kids inside during school hours, and try to slide under the radar. I don't remember if she got away with it or not.

You can't take your kids out for a week or a month. But if you take your kids out of the country for a whole school year, what would stop you?

By that definition US Treasury bonds will be a ponzi.

Currently, the US Treasury pays old bond holders by a combination of tax revenue and by issuing new bonds. However, each year, a bigger fraction of old bonds are paid by issuing new bonds. Over time, this will lead to almost 100% of old bonds being paid by issuing new bonds, and then they will be a true ponzi.

If Tether's USDT went belly up, there would be a loss of confidence in the Coinbase exchange, a run on the market, and a collapse in the price of Bitcoin.

Right now, everyone who has an account at Coinbase believes that if they liquidated their Bitcoin tomorrow, they would eventually get genuine US Dollars equal to the amount of money in their account. Under normal operating conditions, this is true. But if Tether's USDT goes down in price significantly, all bets are off.

Under normal operating conditions, when a client sells Bitcoin in their Coinbase account, Coinbase trades Bitcoin for Tether's USDT, the USDT sits in the user's account for a while, and eventually the user get US Dollars.

Where do the US Dollars come from?

Tether has a reserve of some US Dollars, and other non-crypto assets that can be quickly traded for US Dollars. Let's just consider this whole bucket as US Dollar reserves in order to simplify this discussion. The important thing to remember is that Tether's US Dollar reserves are only a small fraction of all outstanding Tethers.

Also, Tether is constantly gathering more US Dollars. On an average day, Tether receives more US Dollars than go out.

If for some reason, everyone decided at the same time that a USDT was worth less that one US Dollar and the price continued to drop over time, everything would change. In this dropping USDT price scenario, anyone who held USDT would go to Tether at the same time and ask for their US Dollars back.

Tether would have a few options at this point, but one option they would not have is giving everyone their US Dollars back. Remember that Tether has limited US Dollar reserves. Assuming they kept trying to refund every request with a full US Dollar, they would blow through their reserve and hang up a closed sign on their window. Tether doesn't have any bankruptcy insurance, and there isn't a government that is likely to bail Tether out. They're not too big to fail.

Oh, Tether would try some tricks to slow down the process. But they may not be able to stop the run on the bank/exchange.

So now, let's assume Tether is worth zero. What happens to Coinbase and it's clients?

Buying Bitcoin would not be a huge problem. Coinbase might have to change their procedures, but they could still find people willing to accept US Dollars in return for Bitcoin.

The trouble would be selling Bitcoin. On a normal day, they just trade Bitcoin for USDT, and if necessary, go to Tether and trade the USDT for US Dollars. But if the normal system doesn't work because a USDT is worth zero, Coinbase would have trouble selling Bitcoin in a timely manner.

People would flood Twitter complaining that they can't get their money out of Bitcoin through Coinbase, and this might trigger a second run. All Coinbase customers might lose confidence at the same time, and try to sell their Bitcoin in their Coinbase accounts at the same time. The price of Bitcoin would crash. Perhaps people would not trust exchanges such as Coinbase for a long time after, and prices might stay low for a long time.

This is all just a wild guess. What do I know?

In the last ten years or so, returns have been extremely high. If you look back at all the data available, you get a number closer to 3.5% or maybe at the most 4%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_study

"Many people with a large amount of money, perhaps a million or two, consider themselves middle class when clearly they could even retire and live off their passive income"

If you have a million dollars, stop working, invest the money, you can safely draw about 35K per year for a long time. This is based on long term historic returns of the stock market.

There are different definitions of middle class in the US. The first one I found, Pew 2019, said the range was 46k - 137K.

So living off the passive income of a million dollars puts you well below middle class.

You would like to read more on this?

Read "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and pay attention to how Delores Umbridge defines a set of ideas that must not be questioned. Her role of Inquisitor is similar to the role of a modern Diversity Council.

Everything, even salt has some small amount of consciousness. That's why I refuse to eat salt.

So, you agree that anyone who eats eggs should be fired?

I agree that a woman should get to decide what to do with her own body. Texas SB 8 is bad.

But imagine you enter a Twilight Zone episode, and are transferred back to the 1920s.

You publicly state your opinion that abortions should be legal, and then you lose your job because of it.

How would that feel to you?

Even though I think a woman's rights are the most important, I understand that there are lots of people from 1920, or even today who think the unborn baby's rights are the most important.

In fact from their point of view, they think people who support abortion are baby killers. That's not right. You and me aren't baby killers. We want to help women. That's all.

I don't think people with this other opinion are monsters. They're people. Like you and me. Just people with other opinions. They just want to help unborn babies. That's all.

Is the left's success and the right's failure at getting CEOs fired a good thing or a bad thing?

If you are on the left, it's great.

If you're on the right, you just lost your right to have free speech and stay employed.

It's not just CEOs. An everyday engineer can be fired for publicly repeating political opinions on the right. See Damore. But no one who repeats public opinions on the left gets fired.