hnmonkey

The party in power is not expected to lie, cheat, and steal to maintain their position. You're claiming that as if that is the righteous goal of any party. I would argue that's exactly what the founding fathers didn't want. There's a trust but verify attitude in the Constitution which is why there are checks and balances. Also, in America there is only 1 party that continually seems to be doing all of those things and ramping it up massively as of late. The opposition party, when in power, has generally not had to do any of those things because it usually does things that the people of the country want so they don't need to do those dirty things to stay in power.

Also, claiming that if you had a genie that could make your candidates win it would be silly to refuse is kind of not great. I think for a lot of people that it would be downright disturbing to use that and they would instead realize that if their candidate lost then that is the will of the people and that's democracy and what we all supposedly should want. Trying to make it anything but is basically cheating, which you are admitting if you had the opportunity you would gladly do. I'm not sure I would claim that as happily as you have.

You're almost arguing that corruption is the norm and that it really can be great if it works in your favor. This is a pretty disgusting argument.

You're not the only one. It seems like paranoia has taken on this new-ish meaning over the past few years of just being afraid of something that is totally valid. It seems the previous usage of it has kinda died out somewhat.

This is a pretty absurd connection that has zero evidence to back it up. It's an extraordinary claim so where's the actual evidence of it? Your NY Times story simply talks about the Chinese spies and doesn't actually prove what you said.

So from the FWIW... what is it worth? It doesn't really seem like it's worth anything so why mention it?

Just to be clear... paranoia is an irrational fear that people are out to get you. If you are actually being spied on by someone (you are) then that word doesn't apply since the fear of that spying is 100% rational.

I imagine that it will make it much easier to have face-to-face happy hours, dinners, lunches, and so on. It will also enable people lobbying on behalf of Amazon to do so closer to the mothership and include people from Amazon to further strengthen their abilities. Those types of conversations do have benefit for the people they represent and are why there's a huge lobbyist industry. Those face-to-face meetings and parties and eating together really can make things happen faster than trying to broker deals from across the country through phone or video conference. I presume this is one of the main reasons behind this decision.

Plus when trying to make a sale or negotiate a deal I'm sure it makes people on the other side feel better if someone says "And the people to support you or jump when you say how high are going to be 5 minutes away rather than 2 timezones away." It's almost at the point where subcontracting out is similar to just having all the work done in the same building you're already in. Seems like that would make people feel more comfortable.

Your condescension only seems to grow and you continue to get more incivil while crying out that you're getting attacked (elsewhere in this thread saying I'm attacking the messenger). I think I'll call it quits in trying to have a civil conversation with you since you only seem interested in spewing unsubstantiated pro-Chinese statements and attacking everyone in this thread that doesn't agree with you.

When did 'western powers' invade China and drug a large percentage of their population between 1918 and 2018? What was the percentage of their population? What were the drugs? What was the purpose? Who did it? How did something that you say supposedly happened 100 ago effect a country 200 years ago?

This is an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence. You've shown no evidence of the statements you've made in this thread so far so I hope you'll change that up and provide us with some here. I'd be very interested in seeing some for this.

This seems like a great neutral path forward that shouldn't upset anyone and doesn't paint the research as 100% factual and in-stone, yet. It leaves the door open to continue the work while rectifying the issues. However, it doesn't excuse the way the advisor asked them to just go with it anyway unless there was some nuance left out in that part of the conversation (akin to you what you've stated) we're not hearing.

There really needs to be repercussions for this type of thing. Naming and shaming is a good first step towards that utopia. If those responsible for these types of unethical actions never get punished they'll just keep doing it to the detriment of society.

Your posts in this thread have continually grown more and more incivil and arrogant in defense of Chinese spying. Stating that you thought this audience HN was smart but now you realize you have to teach this audience on HN is incredibly condescending. What do you get out of taking this stance towards this audience?

All of his/her comments in this post are seemingly only there to stir up people. There's no evidence behind the things they're saying other than a hand-waving attempt at minimizing China's bad faith actions by saying others do similar things. When arguing that someone who is 10/10 bad is equal to someone that is 4/10 bad you have to really reach to equate the two and not see the nuance.

Can I see your evidence of this? Because what I stated actually has evidence. There's explicit proof of people in America moving to China. There's explicit proof of Chinese students coming to America to learn. There's explicit proof of us creating deals with the Chinese for manufacturing. There's explicit proof of Americans and Chinese communicating. There has never been more Chinese - Americans in the US.

You however hand-wave my whole post away and say it can't be further from the truth with no evidence. You also say that the average US citizen actually knows very little about China. I would argue that's inaccurate. I would say that Americans have never known the Chinese better. All people are able to be manipulated into accepting views that do not reflect reality. I'm not sure how that still supports the belief that was stated above that Westerners know little about China. What mysteries do Westerners not know? Their brutal concentration camps have even been in the news recently. Their hacking attempts have been in the news forever. Their party's takeover of the government and potential lifetime dictatorship has been in the news.

You seem to be implying that everyone in the US are dunces.

Can I have some of the verifiable evidence of your anti-Chinese propaganda from the last 10 years? You seem adamant that there's an abundance of it across the globe and that it's so pervasive over the past 200 years. I'd love to see just some of the recent bits.

Technically, while I do think that those companies have moved to stronger encryption over the past few years (which is a general trend I think) for consumer facing stuff, at least one of the changes that came out of PRISM was that Google started encrypting all of their communications in and out of their data centers (and in between) because PRISM was tapping at the datacenter level if I recall (something related to the note with the smiley face).

Is there a solid argument for not having more regulation on these organizations? We have so much regulation on slot machines and casinos for example because we know that a lot of money passes through there and there's high potential for money laundering. Why not have strong regulations around voting systems too? We know that if voting systems are compromised the impact could be devastating to the entire country - far more critical to America's security and continuity than regulation in many other industries.

I just don't get the opposition to that. It seems like it's in everyone's best interest (those that are honest and are looking for a fair foundation to build from that is).

Huh? The Cold War was not a conspiracy in the way you're implying at all. It was very publicly out there as you had kids under desks to avoid nuclear war and both countries saying how awful the other is. Westerners know plenty about China... you seem to be referring to a time hundreds of years ago where China was this far-away place and no one knew about it or understood it because we primarily traveled by trains and boats that took weeks to get anywhere and didn't have an internet connection with them. Times are a little different and have been for a long while.

Today people from the West travel to and live in China constantly. Tons of Chinese kids come to America and go to universities (some where they're like 20% of the school's incoming class). How do you think all of the west's stuff is made in China? From communicating with Chinese people and traveling to China. It didn't just magically happen. It's also pretty well known to the West and other parts of the world that China has been stealing state and corporate secrets for a very long time.

I really don't get this argument. The West (and world) knows China inside and out.

Do you have proof that any of the news about China (from tons of different sources, including other countries that are not America) is propaganda or not accurate? You're implying a global conspiracy is afoot to besmirch the good Chinese name when everyone has known for a while that they're generally bad actors behind the scenes when it comes to spying and stealing of secrets/IP/tech.

Also, this person's argument is basically... we have proof that Huawei spies on behalf of the Chinese government/military but that's not as bad as a hypothetical where 2 major American corporations who spend tons of money on security do no due diligence to protect their hardware from security breaches from the exact same Chinese government/military. It's an absurd argument conflating a fact with a guess.

What kind of transparency would you like to see from them? For some things, like active secret investigations how would you expect them to act transparently and publicly?

I want to pile on to the other commenters on this review of your takeaways and thank you. This detail and enumerating the specifics really provides a very clear (and relatively concise) picture of what benefits this book has in store for someone. Thanks!

I would have to argue that your situation is a complete outlier and extremely unusual, especially in London which is one of the most expensive places on earth. You're also saying that you've excluded rent to get to your 10K a year number in London but that's a huge part of what you pay I'd imagine so why would you exclude that?

Do you not need to pay taxes on anything, including on the house you've purchased? Do you not need to pay for utilities? What if you are talking about a couple? What if you're talking about a family with kids? Do you not have a cell phone or internet service?

I think you have to explain this over and over because your numbers don't make sense for an actual person and maybe only make sense in a very unusual situation (yours). Blaming it on people not doing the math is pretty hand-wavy. And, more than likely I would say if these numbers do work for anyone they're probably on the youngish side and haven't built up a large amount of things they have to pay for yet.

Let's say you're in the US in an average-ish city and not even one of the most expensive ones. And, let's give you the benefit of the doubt that you've paid off your $300k house. Congrats, you now have to pay homeowners insurance at let's say $600 (on the cheap side) a year. You have to pay taxes on your house as well at let's say $8,000 a year. You've retired early so you don't get medicare or medicaid yet so you need health insurance at let's say on the cheap side $400 a month for $4800 a year. You need food too but let's say you don't eat a ton and only spend $50 a week (That's $7 a day which would be impressive). That's another $2600 a year. I imagine you like having electricity in your house and running water. Probably another $200 a month for that and $30 for gas. That's another $2760 a year. Let's say you've got a cheap phone and cheap internet and combined that's only $100 a month. That's another $1200 a year. This doesn't factor in any form of entertainment/leisure, gas for your car, car insurance, car maintenance, home maintenance, or anything frivolous and I've certainly forgotten many things.

Grand total of $19,960 a year assuming you've paid off the house, which most people haven't if they haven't gotten close to retirement age. And that's just for 1 person. If you're talking a couple then the number grows a lot. If you have kids you support then the number grows massively. And if you've invested your 1 million and get interest on that you're paying tax on that as well, which would cut into your savings.

I'm not saying it's not possible of course, but your claim that 1 million net worth gets you retirement is not really super credible for most people. And at the end you say that if you have annual minimum wage x 25 in the bank you can work fairly infrequently but your original argument was that you could retire. Retiring means you don't have to work for the rest of your life, not that you have a nice buffer and cushion.

You are seemingly arguing that you have insider information that they are buying coins because you happen to know people 'with skin in the game.' That's a hard argument to buy with such a claim and no evidence. And don't get me wrong since I actually thought it was interesting that they would be buying the coins so I'm not even trying to disprove you. You're just not making a solid case.

Second, referring to everyone else that buys coins as 'basement-dwelling kids' is pretty disingenuous and insulting. Middle class people have purchased them. Grandparents have purchased them. Average people have purchased them. Billionaires have purchased them. Snoop Dog, Ashton Kutcher, Gwyneth Paltrow, and many more celebs have purchased them.

You have stated that you can't buy coins at that level (presumably the Fidelity level) the same way you would purchase them off Coinbase, but your example is that they're seeking out people who mined significant quantities of coins years ago. How did they find these people from a bitcoin address? What's the evidence of this? Why do these people have problems selling their coins on Coinbase?

Your arguments about fake cryptocurriences basically boil down to other coins are not exactly Bitcoin so they're something you consider fake. Other coins however are currencies since you can exchange them for things as has happened with many types of coins other than Bitcoin. They might not be as popular but they still can do the same things for the most part.

I don't understand your third point. It doesn't seem here or there.

Someone could certainly create a new coin anonymously. I'm not sure why you think that's not possible. A throw-away email address, a github account paid with a pre-paid card, and some nodes hosted anonymously with the same card and voila you've got yourself a new cloned coin made by someone you don't know.

I don't think your argument that Bitcoin is the only one that satisfies points 1-3 holds water since those points themselves don't seem to hold water either. (And you should check out Litecoin and Ethereum which both do all of the things that Bitcoin does)

I'll be frank and say I still don't understand your last paragraph about the quotes. I now understand that you're not American but you seem to be implying something about American English being different than English elsewhere and using the way Ireland is pronounced doesn't seem to support that. No worries here though... it's not significant so no need for us to waste any more time on it.

I would argue that they in fact are definitely a liability, but one which has been calculated to be worth it if you continue with the acquisition. Just because you buy a company doesn't mean their previous crimes should now magic-wanded away. It would be far too easy to take advantage of that. (If it wasn't clear, I'm agreeing with you 100%)

This is not the same concern you're expressing unfortunately. You're arguing elsewhere that the government punishing outright fraud is manipulating the market and choosing winners and losers. I see nothing about that at your link and nothing that defends your belief in that. He's saying that the fed and the government should step in and make decisions about trying to buoy the market, which is what you want them to do when the economy might go belly up so that people don't all lose their jobs and riot and starve. I do see that it's where you got the phrase 'government should pick winners and losers' from however but the context is vastly different than what the original article we're commenting on is about.

Again... you're injecting some sort of belief that they are manipulating markets and picking winners and losers when there is no such evidence of either of those statements being true including none in the article itself. You're stating that that punishing an organization for fraud is manipulating the market. It seems that you're cloaking that odd argument under the 'behind closed doors' and 'outside of written rules' aspect when they are not connected in any way. One has been created out of whole cloth and the other might actually be pretty valid. You're also hand-wavingly saying 'most other economists' don't agree with that organization policing fraud which multiple others have said (and myself) doesn't seem accurate while not providing any evidence that economists believe that. I'm not sure why you're taking this stance honestly as you're not giving any proof or evidence for any of it.

It seems that if you don't punish them for the bad things the companies they acquired did then companies will just do bad things and then get acquired, even by another subsidiary or holding company just to evade the laws and regulations. Isn't that a huge loophole you'd be opening?

It's not picking winners and losers in any sense of that phrase. They are literally punishing the bank for bad behavior and that's to be expected from what a regulator should be doing. If someone breaks the law and you send that person to jail you're not picking winners and losers in any way. You're meting out discipline as needed to punish the bad behavior and try to make it so that it doesn't happen again.

Also can you show where economists are skeptical of government picking winners and losers since the government has been doing it for ages and the economy has been marching on for a long while. In fact, picking winners and losers in the 2008 recession is what led to moving out of the recession.

Where have you seen that they've bought Bitcoin and are trying to buy more? It would be interesting to see the evidence of this I think.

And as a note... other cryptocurrencies aren't 'fake cryptocurrencies' since they're actually cryptocurrencies. There might be some scams for sure, but ones that are not Bitcoin are just not Bitcoin yet are still currency.

Also, why are you putting quotes around different things like 'fake cryptocurrencies,' 'bitcoin,' 'ethereum,' 'crypto-kitties,' 'kale and pulled pork burgers,' 'bore,' 'ajax came along,' and 'new innovation?' I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to imply there.

Yeah it's a pretty odd article. It seems like things were working as they're supposed to and yet it implies that it's gonna be great now that the regulations have been lifted by the Trump admin. Unfortunately though, I'd imagine the banks will just continue with their bad behavior now that the shackles are off and it seems like there won't be anything in their way to slow down or halt their plans. Doesn't seem like a good thing really...

What's your definition of 'bonkers areas?' Can you show how 1 million net worth gets someone retirement? It seems to me that if you're retiring on 1 million dollars you're going to run out of money pretty easily unless you're living off rice and beans. And in many places with just $40k a year (assuming a 4% withdrawal of the 1 million) you might not be able to even cover your mortgage/rent/property taxes/bills not even factoring in food/healthcare/entertainment. These days people who retire can potentially live another 20 years or so and 1 million in the bank won't cover it at all.