687 karma · joined April 18, 2022
> they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation, or the inability to pay for basic life necessities like bath soap.
Spot instance capacities are a function of the all instance capacity for the same type and on-demand instance usage. Spot instance pricing can influence the quantity demanded of on-demand instances of the same type, and vice-versa.
Anyhow, there’s no way we can figure out whether you’re right or wrong with any reasonable level of certainty.
You are hypothesizing that the price differences produce "lost" revenues.
An alternative hypothesis can be that the price differences produce similar or higher level of revenues for AWS through price segmentation, with Amazon recognizing the lack of adoption of certain spot instance bidding features and auction markets reacting appropriately.
Unless you have the capacity and quantity demanded for each instance types, you can't prove your hypothesis. You are assuming scenario 3 (below) with no insights into price elasticity of the underlying customers.
Example:
Baseline:
A is priced at $3, with capacity of 1000, quantity demanded of 800. B is priced at $2, with capacity of 1000, quantity demanded of 200. Total quantity demanded = 1,000.
Revenues from instance type A = $3 x 800 = $2,400 Revenues from instance type B = $2 x 200 = $ 400
Total revenues = $2,800
Scenario 1: All customers purchase instance B instead due to better price discovery.
Total revenues = $2,000
Amazon loses $800 in revenues, there are no "lost" revenues" recovered.
Scenario 2: Amazon changes instance type B price to $3. Total quantity demand decreases to 900 due to price elasticity of instance type B customers.
Total revenues = $2,700
Amazon loses $100 in revenues, there are no "lost" revenues recovered.
Scenario 3: Amazon changes instance type B price to $3. Total quantity demand remains at 1,000.
Total revenues = $3,000
Amazon recovers $200 in "lost" revenues.
By https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=citilife
Internet actor named "citilife" makes claims about "information laundering".
Who is this individual? Where is the evidence? There should be evidence before such claims are made. What is his name and affiliation? Where can I find this person in the real world? Maybe this actor is wearing a hat? Perhaps it made of sheets of metal? Perhaps tin foil?
To quote the actor to further this inquiry:
>And yes, I think evidence needs to be provided before claims are made. They're just saying "I think it's these guys" ... because?
I think evidence needs to be provided before claims are made. Before "citilife" is just saying "I think it's petty and information laundering". ... because?
> Over a dozen airport websites were impacted by the "denial of service" attack, John Hultquist, head of intelligence analysis at cybersecurity firm Mandian[t], told ABC News. That type of attack essentially overloads sites by jamming them with artificial users.
>” Killnet," a pro-Russian hacker group, is believed to be behind the attack, according to Hultquist. While similar groups have been found to be fronts for state-backed actors, Hultquist said there is no evidence the Russian government was involved in directing this attack.
> turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer
Evidence: VictorPath's reply
> A bank taking an endowment awarding a prize and money to physicists, chemists and biologists, and ramming in to it a prize for economists saying nonsense the bankers like to hear, is the definition of anti-intellectual. The physicists, chemists and biologists are the intellectuals and scientists, the economists are frauds telling the bankers what they want to hear.
Q.E.D.
The FDIC is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve is an agency of the federal government and accountable to Congress.
> Want to reach out with a comment or fact-checking suggestion? Do you see something that needs a correction? Email us at FactCheck@ap.org.
> Specifically, Diamond and Dybvig (1983) presented a theory of maturity transformation and showed that an institution using demand deposits to finance long-term projects is the most efficient arrangement, but that, at the same time, this arrangement has an inherent vulnerability: bank runs may arise
> Diamond (1984) developed a theory of a bank’s provision of delegated monitoring services and showed that banks can ensure that projects with high (but risky) long-run returns obtain funding by monitoring borrowers on behalf of lenders.
> Bernanke (1983) showed, in particular, that the downturn became so deep and so protracted in large part because bank failures destroyed valuable banking relationships, and the resulting credit supply contraction left significant scars in the real economy.
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2022/10/advanced-economic...
> This year’s laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, have significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital.
> Modern banking research clarifies why we have banks, how to make them less vulnerable in crises and how bank collapses exacerbate financial crises. The foundations of this research were laid by Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig in the early 1980s. Their analyses have been of great practical importance in regulating financial markets and dealing with financial crises.
> For the economy to function, savings must be channelled to investments. However, there is a conflict here: savers want instant access to their money in case of unexpected outlays, while businesses and homeowners need to know they will not be forced to repay their loans prematurely. In their theory, Diamond and Dybvig show how banks offer an optimal solution to this problem. By acting as intermediaries that accept deposits from many savers, banks can allow depositors to access their money when they wish, while also offering long-term loans to borrowers.
> However, their analysis also showed how the combination of these two activities makes banks vulnerable to rumours about their imminent collapse. If a large number of savers simultaneously run to the bank to withdraw their money, the rumour may become a self-fulfilling prophecy – a bank run occurs and the bank collapses. These dangerous dynamics can be prevented through the government providing deposit insurance and acting as a lender of last resort to banks.
> Diamond demonstrated how banks perform another societally important function. As intermediaries between many savers and borrowers, banks are better suited to assessing borrowers’ creditworthiness and ensuring that loans are used for good investments.
> Ben Bernanke analysed the Great Depression of the 1930s, the worst economic crisis in modern history. Among other things, he showed how bank runs were a decisive factor in the crisis becoming so deep and prolonged. When the banks collapsed, valuable information about borrowers was lost and could not be recreated quickly. Society’s ability to channel savings to productive investments was thus severely diminished.
> “The laureates’ insights have improved our ability to avoid both serious crises and expensive bailouts,” says Tore Ellingsen, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2022/pre...
> STOCKHOLM (AP) — This year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences has been awarded to the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, and two U.S.-based economists, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, “for research on banks and financial crises
https://apnews.com/article/nobel-economy-bernanke-2bb3eaee67...
However, for investors, we care about profits from capital deployment, or returns from invested capital minus cost of capital. The marginal earnings that leading airlines generate from loyalty programs and business traveler accounts do not make up for the huge demand for capital, thus insufficient to break even the cost of capital.
Airline A can have 100% coverage everywhere in the world and be the largest airline. But if Airline B enters a specific route, there is no advantage to a customer whether they ride with A or B for that specific route. This is why there are so many entrants into the industry.
The biggest factor to the lack of durable profits in the airline industry isn’t labor or unions. It’s the ease of entry into the market which puts tremendous pressure on price. There are no substantial barriers to entry, prices go down until profits are close to zero. So in classical value based investment lingo, it is an industry with no competitive advantages.
The airlines industry in aggregate has never had a ROIC greater than its cost of capital over the long term (>1 yr) for the lifetime of the industry.
Airlines lack substantial economies of scale, customer captivity, captive supply, or regulatory protections. The airline industry is a textbook case of an industry with no durable competitive advantages, thus the only performance factor is operational efficiency.
Insurance on the other hand, there are substantial economies of scale (large fixed costs and also larger insurance companies are more diversified thus less costly/risky) and high customer captivity (high switching cost, high search cost).
Elliot is obsessed with Citrix, and this is furthering their conviction with leverage to boost their opportunity.
The Fed’s only instruments are interest rate and signaling, QE is controlling long tail of the curve. You wanted the Fed to raise rates at the same time when fiscal policy added another $2T in spending?
The more logical argument is perhaps the US shouldn’t have passed ARP and poured gas on the fire.
The US dollar strengthens when (1) the world goes into downturn, and/or (2) when US interest rates rise.
In what scenario would the US dollar not have strengthened? It was inevitable regardless of what the Fed does because of the greenback’s dominance in world reserves and trade. It’s a currency of last resort in times of busts and booms. The dollar smiles.
High performing 1st year associates can get $250k all-in.
McKinsey, Bain and BCG lift pay as talent war heats up https://on.ft.com/3CJyH6W
“The firms, which do not publicly disclose their pay scales, will increase annual base salaries for MBA graduates in the US from $175,000 to between $190,000 and $192,000, according to people familiar with the matter.
Top performers will be in line to receive more than $250,000 in their first year when performance-related and signing bonuses are included.”
It’s about the steps within supply chain, most of Australia’s lithium is refined/processed in China[1].
It will take roughly a decade for other countries to ramp and move back down the learning curve for refining/processing capacity at market cost. China’s control over this bottleneck step won’t change for this decade, as they continue to consolidate state investments.
Yes countries are catching up in sourcing natural resources, but the processing into chemicals and then components are still mostly done in China. For example, most battery cathode materials are made in East Asia, and battery factories import them.
[1] “Most Australian lithium is exported to China, accounting for over 85% of total value in each month of 2021 and over 94% in each month of 2022 (year to date). In June 2022, $1,128m worth of lithium was exported to China, accounting for 97% of the total lithium exports for that month (Figure 4).” https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-australian-exports-...
Many of the EU/U.S. battery factories will import lithium chemicals from China, at least for this decade.
[1]IEA 2022 report, see page 5 on battery materials supply chain share by country: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-supply-chains-of-ev-batte...
[2]WSJ article on China’s monopoly on rare earths: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-set-to-create-new-state-o...
Even in 1991, Roger Revelle—one of the earliest scientists to recognize global warming—cautioned against taking drastic action because of scientific uncertainty[1]. He is not your oil and gas stooge, Revelle authored the seminal paper on CO2 buildup in 1957[2].
> But should the United States assume "leadership" in a hastily-conceived campaign that could cripple the global economy, or would it be more prudent to assure first, through scientific research, that the problem is both real and urgent? We can sum up our conclusions in a simple message: The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this tine [sic].
While in hindsight it seems there was much scientific consensus opposed by industry, much of the skepticism was actually from the scientific community itself on the absence of certainty.
[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.59...
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/tellusa.v9i1.907...
Isn’t this thinking the type of naïveté that got us to the current situation in the first place? The CO2 in our atmosphere increased ~0.01% (absolute percentage of atmosphere) over the last 4 decades.
Scientists 4 decades ago explained away any concerns in the exact same way you did.
Granted, we need all hands on deck (including experiments like this) to reach our decarbonization targets, but let’s not downplay the unknown tail risks involved.
This comment reminds me of the early naïveté about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
CO2 increased from 0.03% to 0.04% of atmosphere? ZERO POINT ZERO ONE percent. And I’m supposed to think that’s a problem?
My guess is this acquisition speeds up the development of Amazon’s internal Consumer Robotics line targeting the elderly. Their “Astro” robot has a lot of trouble navigating the home.
Regardless of whether the mines are outside of China, the refinement/separation step of mined raw materials is done mostly in China (>80% global capacity). In addition to the 3-5 year lead time of building the capacity through new refineries, there’s a significant process optimization learning curve (non-transferable learnings) to move down the cost curve for new refinery entrants.
On central planning, this is well known that China manages raw material prices according to the 5-year plan: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-commodities-idUSKCN...