hedonistbot

The "tons of fashion and crap" that you correctly identify as the elephant in the room is also the main source of employment and income for the majority of the population. The reason we are not doing anything about climate change (and will not do anything in the foreseeable future) is that any meaningful change will require abandoning the market capitalism and growth models that run the world economy. Try selling that to the voters or even here among the more privileged technocrats. Are you willing to take a major cut in your living standard in order to help people in Africa and Bangladesh? It's far more likely that the West builds walls on its borders and as a previous comment said, we start mowing down the hungry masses with machine guns. With the full support of its population of course, under an enlightened and highly developed democratic system.

How about betting on Greece winning the Euro?

> Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.

> They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

An Obama Campaign data scientist from the 2012 campaign explaining how they did the exact same thing but Facebook were ok with it "because they were on our side".

https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975564499297226752

None of this would have come to light if the "right" person had won the elections. The moment Trump won, the campaign against social media began, first with the "Fake news" meme, then "Russian hacking", YouTube's adpocalypse and now "Facebook data breach". Some people are getting very scared that the traditional manufacturers of consent are losing their grip on people's minds.

And I am not in support of the mass surveillance exercised by those companies, just noticing the timing. When Obama won, his data scientists were hailed as geniuses. What do you think they were doing?

This video can be called "Microsoft the Good Parts". Also WPF gets only one mention and the future is Azure? So is WPF heading the way of Silverlight?

On a side note, I wasn't aware that the agreement with the US government was meant to expire after ten years. Is it a coincidence that right after that we got the Windows Store push?

> institutions lend .. on many multiples of what they actually have in deposits.

That is not true at all. You are probably thinking of the minimum capital requirements (banks leverage) which measures all lending (bank assets) against their common equity. Deposits and credits are roughly equal and the minimum capital is required to cover mispricing on their assets. And no, banks are not being deregulated in this regard. In fact Basel III which regulates those reserve ratios is much stricter and it took several years for banks to recapitalize to the new minimum levels.

Or you are thinking about the bank's deposit with the fed (the fractional reserve part). But those reserves are not a problem for banks because if there is lack of reserves on the interbank market and the price (interest rate) of borrowing reserve increases above the fed's funds rate, then the Fed steps in and provides the reserves at the rate it wants to keep. This is part of central banking because a central bank cannot simultaneously control the amount of reserves AND the interest rate.

I can't recall the hn thread (there have been tons of crypto currency threads recently), but the comment was referencing this reddit discussion where a bitfinex representative made the same conjecture:

https://archive.fo/R6sku

> Isn't it more plausible that this is not someone writing a check for tethers (money coming in from outside the crypto ecosystem) but more likely it is coming from converting other cryptos into USDT?...

They should already own a ton of bitcoin and someone speculated in a previous thread that their reserves are actually in bitcoin, which would make a lot of sense. The problem here is that every time someone redeems their tether for real dollars, Tether (the company) have to sell part of their reserves and this brings bitcoin price down, in effect dwindling their reserve pool. If there are enough bitcoin buyers or there aren't many people redeeming their tethers for dollars, they should be fine. However, if people lose faith in tether (the coin) then mass redemption will crash bitcoin prices (judging by the daily volumes of tether trading) and there won't be enough reserves to cover everyone at par with the dollar. Hence the pyramid scheme allegations. This is all assuming they don't hold $2+ bn cash in reserves.

Bitfinex and some other exchanges list their crypto prices in USDT and most people trading on their platform probably don't realise this is not dollars. So there's your guaranteed demand. As long as those buyers HODL there is no pressure on USDT.

How about this theory: I can print USDT (by fiat) and buy BTC with it. Now I have a large amount of BTC and propped up price. Then CME starts trading BTC futures against real USD, coincidentally the trading starts at the very top of BTC price. Then I start selling both BTC for dollars AND BTC futures again for dollars (cash settled on expiry). I am making real USD and only started with USDT (supposedly backed by nothing, best case by my BTC wallet). Now that prices are 50% lower and I have tons of USD (or just print more USDT) I can start buying again keeping the price acceptable and ready for another pump before I start selling the next BTC futures contract.

Is this possible. Am I missing something?

Bulgaria is a NATO member and hosts 4 joint military facilities with NATO forces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian%E2%80%93American_Joi...). The NATO pact treats a military attack on one of its members as an attack on all of them (including the US).

Well, I am uninstalling and switching to Iridium right now and it's not JUST because of this Mr Robot thing. I wasn't happy with the direction of Firefox for a while but waited for Quantum to see if things would change. The technology improved, but everything else got worse. So it's time for me to say 'bye, bye' to a browser I've used for more than a decade.

Just came to say that Tom Friedman is a hack and this op-ed reads like a paid commercial. To call a top-down authoritarian power grab "Arab Spring" is mind boggling.

> but none of us gets a free pass from morality, not even in business

What? That's news to me. What about the entire defence industry? What about all the politicians that take a cushy job in the companies they helped during their time in office and who can be directly held accountable by the electorate? And why should anyone question the Saudis when they just signed a multi billion dollar weapon deal with the US government. Your statement sounds very naive.

You don't need a "next", the definition is broad enough to include anything a government would like to prosecute right now.

I've tried most of the advices mentioned except (serious) meditation and melatonin. Exercise has the opposite effect for me - it pumps me up and makes falling asleep even more difficult, and since I exercise 3-4 days per week after work, this is the main driver that keeps me awake. I also wake up every day at the same time. The problem is not the waking up part but the general feeling of exhaustion that accumulates during the day and the week because when I feel like falling asleep (between 1 and 4 pm) I am at my busiest at work, so I just push through and by the time I am at home and ready to relax, my body has given up on the idea of sleep.

My biggest problem with sleep is the fixed working schedule I have to follow. The 9-to-5 is killing me. It's not that there isn't enough time to sleep, it's that I cannot convince my body to go to sleep if it doesn't feel like it. Just last night I stood awake till 5 a.m. unable to fall asleep despite all efforts. The problem is that my natural clock seems to be working on a 26-7 hours per day cycle and I cannot fit this properly into the regular working hours. This leads to general accumulation of tiredness during the week and on Friday I need a total reset by going to bed early. At least now I know what to look for in future job opportunities.

> the men who tend to advance politically and in their careers are usually the ones with the best social skills. They're the ones who are the best at making advantageous alliances and forming strong relationships with those outside their family.

I don't think this is the case at all. From my experience with politicians the most important traits are total lack of morals, unconstrained egoism and ability to sound authoritative even when lying or lacking any grasp of the topic at hand. Those also help in a corporate environment. I can't speculate whether those "skills" are more common among men.

62% more days of sick leave is an acceptable trade off for most employers. If the alternative is a separate office for everyone, the rent expenses will be more than the paid leave loss. And the only thing upper management cares about is the bottom line. So in a sense, increased productivity in the economy is partially paid by our degrading health. That's not something often mentioned in the Economics text books.

Just noticed the Terry Davis cameo in the comments with one of his random generated god quotes - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23#terry-a-davis-1274100060

This article got even better.

My problem with "getting more productive" is that the gains nowadays are achieved through automation (capital investment in general) which pretty much guarantees that the gains from the increased productivity are captured by the capital owners. So even if we double the productivity of the economy, there is no guarantee that this will improve the lives of most people who depend on salary or pension. There must be some form of redistribution to allow sharing the gains of productivity but this has been a taboo in the US (and many more places) since the 80s and I don't see this changing anytime soon.

Then how is it possible for the rest of the developed countries with heavier government role in healthcare to provide better care that costs less?

What are you talking about. Health is the definition of inelastic demand. Then add the almost missing negotiating powers of a single consumer vs an insurance giant and you have a very efficient system for those on the supply side of the equation and a death sentence for a lot of people on the demand side. The American system is efficient only for health insurance companies and no one else.

Please stop shifting the blame to outside forces. Losing to the most incompetent candidate ever despite the full support of the traditional media, Hollywood and the political establishment on both sides shows how bad Hillary's campaign was and how Obama failed to bring "hope and change". There should've been a torrent of resignations among the dems after this results and yet they continue like nothing happened and just shout "Russia".

That could be against WTO (or some other trade organization) rules and could lead to sanctions. WTO has been one of the main tools to project US interest across the world. Basically saying, "You want access to the world market? You will have to open your markets to us and accept IP rules that are beyond the control of your local government."

That's economics for you. That's why I switched fields some time ago. It is a "science" that consistently gives flawed predictions and it's is often used to provide cover for political ideologies.

There was some noise about bringing about a world reserve currency in the years after 2008 but not much came of it. There was a big increase of the SDR allotments to handle the bailouts that were expected immediately after the crisis. And Chinese currency is now part of the SDR basket. But I don't think a world currency outside of US control will be allowed to exist.

Also Keynes' ideas on handling imbalances goes in the face of what politicians have been saying for decades: "Deficits are bad, and surpluses are good." So neither the public nor the politicians are ready to even acknowledge that there might be problems with this logic.

If you are referring to Bretton-Woods Conference, it is not obscure at all. It is probably the most important monetary event in modern history and probably everyone with economics background knows about it. Also it was during WWII. But you are right that parts of it (like the international clearing union and its implications) are just mentioned in passing in economic courses and rarely acknowledged nowadays.

So your point is that indeed everything is subject to market forces and hence we cannot control the minimum wage. Or that market forces are not all encompassing and we should legislate the areas where they lead to unacceptable equilibria? I am confused...

> from Czech robotnik "forced worker," from robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery,"...

I am not sure if this is correct. In Bulgarian we have almost the same word работник (rabotnik) and it just means "worker". No forced, slave connotations. Also checked with google translate and it doesn't find Czech translation for "robotnik" but it suggests to switch to Polish and translates it to "worker" as in Bulgarian. And работа (rabota) means "work" in Bulgarian and google translate shows the same for the Polish translation.

Someone from Czechia here?