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Factorium

639 karma · joined September 7, 2021

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Factorium··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
Its easy to compete with Steam:

- 10-15% commission

- Exclusives

- Curation/quality control

- Integrated anti-piracy

- Forums/modding/game guides

- User profiles/achievements/gamification

- Less generous regional pricing (like on consoles) in exchange for slightly lower overall pricing

- 5% cashback into wallets, like Nintendo eShop

Epic only does some of these things, which is why its struggling. Its lack of social features is a major reason for low engagement on the platform, probably driven by Tencent and Chinese censorship restrictions (in the same way that the Steam forums are unavailable in China).

Factorium··on Nearly half of toys from third-party online sellers found to be dangerous
"The research by the British Toy and Hobby Association (BTHA) identified toys that...."

https://www.btha.co.uk/about-us/

The British Toy & Hobby Association represents specialty retailers, local manufacturers, and a few (large) international toy brands.

All of these groups lose out when a British parent buys cheap Chinese generic toys for their kid on eBay.

Factorium··on Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party
We've already experimented with UBI in 2020 and seen the result:

- Huge levels of fraud (applications from overseas scammers for state unemployment benefits etc.)

- Widespread shortages of entry-level workers

- Massive inflation and economic dislocation

Instead of UBI, we should just stop illegal immigration, and support deportations, which will increase wages and lower cost of living (real estate) pressures. Exactly like the Trump policies of 2019 which saw the lowest Black unemployment rate in history...

Soup kitchens and homeless shelters, universal free and available contraception/abortions, and stopping the incentivization of single motherhood with via increased welfare benefits, will better deal with poverty in the short and long terms.

Factorium··on Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy
It would be a pretty easy legal definition. Start with services that have over 100 million users:

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

And exclude messaging services eg. Telegram, or platforms which are focused on technical or professional knowledge sharing (eg. Quora, LinkedIn, Wikipedia).

I think the risk would be conglomeration - platforms would partner up so that the minimum fee could give access to multiple services. You'd also want to avoid the fee from just becoming a 'token' with advertising still driving 90%+ of revenue.

Old-fashioned antitrust enforcement might still be necessary (eg. separating Facebook from Instagram and Whatsapp), as well as setting a maximum % of gross revenue that can come from advertising, maybe 75%.

Factorium··on Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy
The control is still with the parents. They can cut off access by controlling payment access. When the product is free, the control is with the corporation.
Factorium··on Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy
There's an even simpler solution: ban free social media. Require each platform to charge a minimum of $x/user/year.

You remove kids by default (no credit card/bank card), and the focus of product managers is less on driving addictive browsing, and more on driving renewals (presumably through quality features, content, and fostering community).

The customer is no longer the advertisers (or shady Governmental data scrapers), but now the users.

Look at the generally higher quality of Netflix content compared to free-to-air TV.

You could apply the same regulation to other addictive products: p*rnography and games. These categories would also improve in quality, be less exploitative, and become less available to children, if a minimum payment was required for access.

Factorium··on Honduran Islanders Push Back Libertarian Startup City
Reading the article, the locals are complaining about:

1. They wanted free stuff (water), and didn't get it.

2. They wanted more free stuff (from robberies), and couldn't get it - security was tightened.

In many of these countries, the reason for lack of development is the local people. Foreign libertarian communities will need complete political autonomy, perhaps even to form their own federation of micronations, otherwise the local population will essentially hold them to ransom in exchange for an increasing share of productive output.

This is why it might be easier to develop advanced human communities on Mars - no locals to worry about!

Factorium··on [dead]
Big Tech's reward for censoring and deplatforming the 'losing side' of the 2020 election is safety from antitrust.
Factorium··on Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks
Life continued as normal in Sweden, Russia, Belarus... the pandemic 'response' was driven by the media and politicians. If there is surge of deaths in nursing homes (typically 50% of COVID deaths), it has no impact on the rest of the economy.

Many of those same politicians later benefitted to tune of millions of dollars from advance knowledge of federal bank intervention in markets. If there was no lockdown, this opportunity would not have occurred. There was a clear conflict of interest.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fed-vice-chair-traded-stocks-1527...

Its the same for individuals who bought into MRNA startups eg. BioNTech in 2019 - there's a clear financial motivation to promote disruptive lockdown, in order to position vaccines as the cure.

https://trialsitenews.com/gates-earns-10x-on-biontech-in-jus...

Its likely that lockdowns worsen COVID, because of the reduction in health from lower Vitamin D (staying inside), poorer diets, increased stress, and reduction of exposure of younger people (school cancellations, nightclub closures etc.) who usually form the bulk of the herd immunity population for seasonal respiratory viruses.

Factorium··on PFAS Contamination in the U.S
Just ban entire elements. There's no need to include fluorine in any consumer packaging or in any products that can leach into the environment.

Just whitelist certain chemicals and uses eg. toothpaste fluorides.

Factorium··on Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes
The necessary innovation is ethical/political. People over age 80 should be able to request to medically cease their life for any reason.
Factorium··on BMW’s New Overspray-Free Paint Works Like an Inkjet Printer
Why not just make them from stainless steel like the cybertruck?
Factorium··on Why California is shutting down its last nuclear plant
The car is charging and discharging daily anyway. The key is just to do it at certain times.

If people can make serious money from the vehicles just from charging/discharging, there's also a big motivation to design batteries with longer lifecycles.

Factorium··on Why California is shutting down its last nuclear plant
Just charge EVs, and then discharge them during the afternoon and evening.

Peak energy prices are approximately double that of off-peak.

For example, if 50% of a standard Tesla 3 battery could be reserved for this, 31kWh, you could make about $8 per day, or $2,900/year, plus be contributing hugely to grid stability.

It could be as simple as setting cars to discharge back into the grid any remaining power from 4PM-8PM (depending on user preference), and charging from 11PM - 7AM.

It seems totally reasonable for regulators, grid operators, carmakers to collaborate and create standards and mechanisms for car owners to charge and discharge based on their typical driving needs and live pricing.

Look at the enthusiasm for GPU mining - people will flock to getting their cars to do this.

Factorium··on Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
It didn't because the US Government printed trillions of dollars:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m0

There are a lot of people who have benefitted enormously from the economy/stock market crashing, then being resuscitated by this unprecedented money injection:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fed-vice-chair-traded-stocks-1527...

https://fortune.com/2021/07/08/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-hu...

Politicians and bureaucrats should have planned with industry ahead of time and notified them that the COVID impact would be cushioned by huge financial stimulus. But why do that if you as an individual bureaucrat or politician can make millions by trading on that insider knowledge?

Its unfair to blame suppliers when there has been Government conspiracy against them.

Factorium··on Apple and Disney among companies backing groups against US climate bill
Westerners are actually much more efficient in terms of scientific, economic, cultural output per unit of CO2, compared to developing nations.

Ethiopia can benefit from the renewable energy technology developed in the West, and skip fossil fuels entirely.

Factorium··on Apple and Disney among companies backing groups against US climate bill
The best solution to climate change is a price on Carbon.

Anything else is just pork.

If we don't want to impose a carbon price on ourselves, we can do it to others via import tariffs.

Factorium··on International Mail Service Suspensions
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...

Afghanistan

Guadeloupe

New Zealand*

Tajikistan

Australia *

Laos

Reunion (Bourbon)

Timor-Leste

Bhutan

Libya

Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Miquelon)

Turkmenistan

Brunei

Martinique

Samoa

Yemen

Cuba

Mayotte

South Sudan

French Guiana

Mongolia

Syria

How much of this has to do with Australia and New Zealand maintaining closed borders?

Factorium··on Senior developers are leading the great resignation movement
You can now add: mask vs maskless, pro vs anti-lockdown, vaxxed vs unvaxxed.
Factorium··on Covid and the moral matrix: Will “lockdown ethics” persist beyond the pandemic?
Get ready for the vaccine mandate goalposts to be shifted to '6-monthly booster shots for everyone'.

This is already the policy in Israel:

https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-vaccine-pass-to-expir...

"Israel said its vaccine pass, which grants access to nonessential venues like restaurants and bars, now expires six months after the second dose of vaccine."

"Getting a booster shot five months after the second dose resets the clock and extends eligibility for the so-called "green pass" by another six months, Israel's health ministry announced."

Factorium··on China power crunch spreads, shutting factories and dimming growth outlook
Despite all of the announced 'bans', how much underground Crypto mining is still occurring in China? Even at the level of small rigs in apartments running 24/7?

If its still a sizeable level, could China use its international influence to push further crypto bans overseas, in order to depress prices and make PoW mining less attractive, and thus save electricity?

Factorium··on Tech firms' nightmare: Vanishing green cards
The major issue with the USA right now is insufficient housing. Adding more people will only make this worse.
Factorium··on Tech firms' nightmare: Vanishing green cards
H1B visas should also have a per-country cap. Having a within-country male gender cap would also be useful, to encouraging overall equality and diversity in the immigration intake.
Factorium··on Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research
Its unlikely the virus was engineered expressly to kill millions - it seems increasingly likely that the virus was engineered to drive mRNA vaccine sales, as well as to disrupt the 2020 American election (by forcing an unprecedent switch to mail-in paper ballots and upending a vibrant US economy - at the same time as China was struggling under international tariffs).

Just look at what an investment in BioNTech would have done if you bought in October 2019:

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BNTX:NASDAQ?window=5Y

You'd be 25x in less than 2 years.

How convenient for the Gates Foundation to invest $55 million in September 2019! https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

The chief innovation of mRNA vaccines is that instead of using expensive egg cultures, you can reproduce viral proteins inside the vaccinated patient themselves. This presumably means much cheaper manufacturing.

Additionally, you can drive long-term vaccine sales, since antibodies based on a single protein (spike) are more likely to fail compared to immunity based on the complete protein structure. We're already seeing this now with the 'need' for booster shots in response to variants driven by these leaky vaccines.

Factorium··on America is substantially reducing poverty among children
70% of African-American children are born outside wedlock:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Nonmarit...

Which is driven by a welfare system that punishes married couples with lower payments (witness the huge rise in out-of-wedlock births since the welfare schemes of the 60s/70s).

35% of African-American children live in poverty:

https://www.nccp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/wpc10-fig3.j...

Creating a subsect of society which is endlessly reliant on transfer payments to avoid poverty is not a good outcome for society. It would be better to encourage family planning and marriage.

http://marripedia.org/effects_of_out-of-wedlock_births_on_so...

"The evidence is clear and disturbing, being born outside of marriage lowers the health of newborns and increases their chances of dying; it delays children’s cognitive (especially their verbal) development; it lowers their educational achievement; it lowers their job attainment; it increases their behavior problems; it lowers their impulse control; it warps their social development; it helps change their community from being a support to being a danger to their development; and it increases the crime rate in their community.

To make the situation worse, the government has instilled powerful incentives in the welfare system which makes illegitimacy a community way of life, particularly in very poor communities. The widespread incidence of illegitimacy in turn passes on all these effects to the next generation in an even more malignant form.

While the government cannot instill virtue, it does not need to subsidize this rejection. Government policies have subsidized illegitimacy, and the evidence of its serious effects are steadily growing. Congress must adopt policies friendly to children. But to do that Congress must first become more friendly to married fathers and mothers."

Factorium··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
This is just anecdotal, but some people run their GPU for mining during Winter since its 'free heat'. This basically renders the GPU into a space heater, which is 3x-4x less efficient than a heat pump.

Additionally, some individuals steal electricity (eg. from their workplace, or if they have electricity included in their rental contract). Cryptocurrencies have thus conveniently enabled a form of electricity theft and fraud previously impossible for the individual.

Factorium··on Collections: No Man’s Land, Part II: Breaking the Stalemate
According to some historians, WW1 was deliberately extended in order to completely eliminate Germany (which pre-WW1 was scientifically and industrially superior to the UK) as a strategic competitor to the British Empire:

https://www.amazon.com/Prolonging-Agony-Anglo-American-Three...

Factorium··on Gates Earns 10x on BioNTech in Just Two Years: $55m Investment Now over $550m
This was written July 2 2022. The value has increased 57% since then.
Factorium··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.
Factorium··on Serbia surveillance law urgently withdrawn
In Australia you have to check-in with a QR code to visit children's playgrounds:

https://www.knox.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/news/playgrounds...

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