MegaButts

We both think the other is an idiot. I'm going to trust my friends that are securities lawyers and professional traders over an internet stranger regurgitating commonly held misunderstandings on how the market works. Believe whatever you want.

This is absurd. If you make a bet that you're unable to honor which forces you to shut down the market, you've lost control. If they can't account for this then they can't account for the trades they're supposed to honor.

Yes, it's literally their job to account for situations like this. They failed. Pointing out how insane the situation was only points out how poorly they predicted what might happen with private information they still haven't shared publicly. If they can't account for the bets placed then we don't have functioning markets. They knew what the short interest was, they knew what the options chain was, they have data about trades the public can't even see. There were multiple traders pointing towards a potential short squeeze in GME going back well into 2020, so if they could see it why the fuck couldn't the DTCC?

Your stance is "their job was hard therefore it's not their fault." That's quite frankly batshit insane when we're talking about the stock market which is an enormous functioning part of our economy. Yeah man, I'm concerned they don't know what the fuck they're doing because they've already proven they don't. If they didn't care they wouldn't have changed the collateral requirements - you're contradicting reality with your argument.

You can have the last word, I'm not going to respond any further.

So you agree the DTCC doesn't know how to manage their collateral requirements? It's one of their primary reasons for existing. It seems like something they should've been able to foresee or handle, rather than force brokerages into PCO when they already lost control of the situation.

It's really akin to the LME trade halt fiasco, which then became even worse when they retroactively reversed trades. The point is, when they're about to lose money they'll change the rules of the game. If you don't recognize that then you're the sucker at the table.

Old Toyota trucks were basically indestructible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Yy5P6FUes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBN3IuVCxl8

That said, it's generally good advice. You just chose one of the most overbuilt, reliable vehicles of all time - not great for generalizing to other cars.

> I also think that these issues are transient

I think the amplification of these issues is transient, but that the overall trend is still up. I believe CPI will come down again soon, but then start to trend up again without drastic measures from The Fed (much more than raising rates by 25 basis points a few times a year like they're currently discussing).

The world economy is complicated though. Nobody was predicting covid a few years ago. Not many people were predicting a war last year. Who knows what crazy wrench reality will throw in the system soon.

Fair. I'm not an expert on the economy of Japan (although I know a little bit). But in this case the money being printed is being used to prop up the stock market. It's essentially creating an artificial bubble.

So yes, you're right. How you use the money matters. But the US government isn't using it to help consumers, it's using it to help corporations.

I did not articulate this in my original comment, and concede you're (mostly) right. I maintain that "the money printer goes brrrr" is the main issue in the US, but admittedly I'm not providing as much data as you and your arguments aren't bad.

Your points are valid about there being truly unusual geopolitical factors right now which fuck up supply chains, shipping routes, and overall availability of goods.

But it's ignoring something much simpler: if you print more money, you're directly obfuscating supply and demand by devaluing your currency. The notion that it's not money printing because it's held by financial institutions is as credible as trickle-down economics. There's still more money in the system, and that system is purposefully using the extra cash to prop up the stock market. You know what the best hedge against unsustainable debt is? Devaluing the currency.

Yes, I am making some simplifications. If you really want to get into the details of quantitative easing in the US we can, but honestly it's just noise. You can't escape the concept of supply and demand no matter how opaque your policies are. The M2 money supply has had an enormous increase in just the past few years.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

I admit I have not had a chance to look at all your links as of writing this comment.

> Well if the suspect was wrongly accused, they'd have to reimburse the damages.

Do they? I'm honestly asking, but I would be surprised if most of the time the police (or any 3 letter agency) reimbursed victims for their negligence.

> For example dogs don’t really seem to recognize single syllable words well if at all.

I'm pretty sure most dogs understand "no" (and the equivalent word in other languages is often 1 syllable). I haven't done anything approaching a study, but I've trained many dogs in my life and my experience disagrees with you. Some other common words they know really well include: treat, sit, off, here - basically anything you teach them.

> At the high altitudes and speeds the Blackbird would have to go to evade a MiG-25, it would have no hope at all of evading a missile.

I thought the SR-71 was faster than missiles?

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/forget-stealth%E2%80%...

> On the other hand, I think long haul trucking will be one of, if not the first job to be 100% replaced by self-driving vehicles.

As someone who spent a good portion of his career in robotics and specifically self-driving cars (including the big companies with billions of dollars, not the me-too startups), I disagree.

Most people aren't as cynical as me, but I left the field entirely. I doubt it will happen within the decade, at least in a way that's profitable. I'm skeptical it will happen within 25 years. It's not hard to demo the technology to convince people it's almost here (I should know, as I often helped stage the demos for investors). But self-driving cars have been 2 years away for almost a decade now. I really think it's similar to nuclear fusion. Some people might remember when Google put a blind man in a self-driving car as a promotion. That was over 10 years ago. I'm not saying there has been no progress, but there is still a giant chasm of unsolved problems before getting to the finish line.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/3/29/2910196/google-self-drivi...

That said, I'm happy to be wrong.

They should really include a video, because without it this article isn't particularly helpful.

https://youtu.be/wwH40rYJt9g

By adding that clause to your statement, you're essentially nullifying your argument. "It almost never happens, except when it always happens." So I ignored the latter half because otherwise your statement seems pretty useless. Because then we're ignoring most of the data because...well just because, I guess.

Sure, if we discount all the times it happens by default, maybe your argument makes sense. But that's like saying let's ignore the majority and only focus on the exceptions and extrapolate to make conclusions about the majority.

You're answering a question that nobody asked. And I'm the person that asked the question.

In my experience it's the opposite. I personally know this has happened for probably over 100 positions, and that's not based on rumors but something I witnessed. And I saw that across a half dozen organizations ranging from 100-10,000 employees.

So "almost never" is almost certainly wrong. My sample size is small, but it's big enough that when it happens 100% of the time it suggests it's the norm.

Your assumption that organizations are efficient might be wrong. I'm basing my judgment on observation and you're basing it on theory.

You don't necessarily know who you want to hire when you have a position. The question is if you already know who you want to hire, do you always go through the charade?

> Some companies

I'm genuinely asking - are there companies that don't do this? I guess excluding companies with something like <20 people.

I disagree that employees have no power to make a difference. It's learned helplessness. By that logic, unions are also ineffective at bargaining. The point is you have to actually work together instead of for yourself.

I agree with you, and I'm very much of the opinion that most techies are entitled assholes who only care about enriching themselves. I was just pointing out what I considered to be a flaw in GP's reasoning.

> Are you going to leave?

I did, actually (more than once). And it's what made me realize how few engineers care about anything other than their paychecks and ultimately themselves. When push comes to shove, the vast majority of people I've met and worked with have no qualms looking the other way for more compensation.

> Nonetheless, it served as strong evidence as to how even really smart people can get caught up in cult-like communities.

I see it differently. It seems like strong evidence as to how smart the average googler really is. If you start with the assumption these people are smart then you can reach your conclusion, but if you discard that assumption you just have a group of gullible employees.

My guess is Medal of Honor.

Yeah, I was hoping for a really detailed engineering-heavy article from IEEE but it came across more like an ad.

> Fast-forward to today. My company, Infinitum Electric, of Austin, Texas, has developed a PCB stator motor that fits a wide variety of purposes.

It then continues to sing the praises of this company throughout the article. There's nothing special about this article to me, which makes me wonder why people like it so much it's #1 on HN right now (genuinely curious, not knocking other people's opinions).

> More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately.

What was his public reason for doing so?

Consider: not working for an unethical company.

PMs at Amazon, even people who need visa sponsorships, have options (and probably better options). Don't defend their poor choices. Engineers at Amazon have even more options.

> This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false)

Please prove it's false.

I don't have a strong opinion about the manufacturer raising prices in this instance. In the sense that there is a wild mismatch between supply and demand it makes sense to do so, and I'd rather the manufacturer reap the reward. I haven't thought enough about knock-on effects though. Yes, I'd prefer the manufacturer raising prices to having scalpers do it. I'm not trying to nitpick here, but I never said otherwise.

My focus was entirely on the immorality of the scalper. In my opinion, they aren't providing value. In fact they are actually reducing value, since they have to hold at least some cards in order to sell them, actually restricting supply (and that's assuming they aren't doing it intentionally to create more artificial scarcity, which I'm sure some are). All they are doing is matching a limited supply with the highest bidder. Without scalpers just as many cards would get delivered to end users, now the only difference is those end users are richer. They are constricting a bottleneck and profiting from it at the expense of consumers and arguably even GPU manufacturers.

> Extracting value isn’t unethical

We just fundamentally disagree here. Parasitism is unethical to me. I understand it's inevitable, but that doesn't make it okay.

You're envisioning a world where people are using the product as intended, and simply because it's not available to richer people instead that is what you view as the problem?

It seems to me the problem is scarcity (I think we agree on this much), and people trying to profit off that aren't anything more than parasites (we seem to disagree on this).

Let's just agree to disagree.

I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone I'm just pointing out how retarded "the market" can be by using an obvious example. You're right, consumer electronics is not the same as healthcare. You're defending scalpers because you say they provide liquidity, but you're ignoring that they're creating artificial scarcity in order to price gouge you. It seems like things are misaligned to me, but agree to disagree.

You're saying people scalping PS5s right now are taking a risk and deserve to be compensated for it. Setting aside how absurd I think this is, in the same paragraph you say this is both an "amoral reality" and you "don't see...an ethical problem with this."

You're using market dynamics to justify morality. My point is you extrapolate this and you end up with the US healthcare system, which is completely fucking broken providing less value at higher cost. Parasitic middle men don't deserve to be compensated and we should do everything possible to eradicate them.

It's actually quite easy to live in a market-based society and not have these problems - it's called regulation and we need a shitload more of it. It's how we established a minimum wage, and abolished child labor, and even separated commercial banking from investment banking for a period of time.

I'm not arguing people aren't willing to pay more. I'm pointing out that the scalper is providing nothing of value to anyone but himself. You can apply your same logic to healthcare, because people are always willing to pay more. It's the cornerstone of the US healthcare system.

I'm discussing ethics and you're discussing economics. The problem is this obsession with finding arbitrage to extract value from the system, which is the entire point of your comment where you're defending the market because someone can profit from it without actually providing any value. I'd like to live in a world that isn't full of selfish assholes trying to fuck everyone else over all the time. I understand market dynamics just fine - I got rich from it and I'm a shittier person for it.

> I figured it was the right kind of entrepreneurship to support

You're supporting a scalper. You're teaching him that there's money to be made by positioning yourself as a middle man. There's no value creation here, just value extraction.