thedevil

My more pessimistic estimates put the losses at more than the FDIC had at the time and I have no idea what happens when the FDIC runs out of money.

It probably wasn't rational but I was really scared.

I don't know much about crypto.

I do know that 1) a payment system with transactions that take more than a few seconds and cost more than a few pennies is not a good payment system for most things. 2) I've never heard anyone talking about using crypto for anything but speculation or paying for ransomware. Even on the internet, I've mostly heard of speculation, ransomware prostitution and buying drugs. 3) Regulators don't like payment systems for ransomware, prostitution and buying drugs. 4) Assets whose prices are based on speculation eventually fall.

I could be missing something. As I said, I don't know much about crypto-currencies. Please nobody bet on my comment alone. Also, timing collapses is difficult. Bubbles can last for more than a decade.

Yeah, I assumed that some large investors (e.g. hedge funds) would have someone skilled in accounting shenanigans and would make big bets to move the market to reflect the information that was publicly available.

Around 2008, I read some public filings by banks. I made only two back-of-the-napkin adjustments: 1) I combined off-balance sheet assets and liabilities into the balance sheet, and 2) I changed the expected % losses to approximately that of Wells Fargo.

With those two simple adjustments, I saw that some big banks were in the hole by (combined) tens of billions of dollars.

The market prices for these banks made it clear that major investors either didn't read or didn't understand the data in the public filings.

Fun fact 1: My bank WaMu which was itself was maybe $0-$10B in the red so I immediately withdrew $2K in panic. I found that money hidden in my filing cabinet about 5 years ago.

Fun fact 2: What was even more crazy is that a famous private equity firm (I think TPG) had just dumped in billions of dollars into WaMu but that still didn't fill the hole (and why would such a big firm be less sophisticated than a nobody like me?)

Fun fact 3: FDIC had ~$50B at the time, which maybe wouldn't cover the losses at the pessimistic end of my estimates.

Fun fact 4: In accounting classes, I identified 3 very shady areas of accounting: options, off-balance sheet entities, and pensions. I believe the first two have since been fixed but I think pension accounting is still very shady so... beware.

Disclaimer: I studied finance and accounting in school and read 10-Ks in my spare time in the early 2000s so I have some knowledge of accounting shenanigans. I also had some experience in real estate. But that's about all the expertise it took.

(Several edits made to improve readability.)

> actually jewish-marxists plots

Where did you see the word "Jewish". I didn't see it when I read the text, it's not in the relevant footnote, and I did a search and didn't find it.

Regarding the Marxist part: I'm not an expert on this but I believe it's called "critical theory" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory.

I didn't see any link in the Economist, but I think this is the original source:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm

You're cherry picking the data to match your conclusions. To be fair, so is the article. And your "revealed preference" justification for cherry-picking sounds compelling. But I still disagree.

When I was a teenager, I observed interactions around me and came to the same conclusion that most women prefer the top few men and most men prefer any woman average or better.

So I have confirmation bias similar to the author (on this point. I don't necessarily agree with the author on other points)

But let me suggest why the different data point to different conclusions. When I was younger, I tried (very poorly) to flirt with the most beautiful women but was thrilled when any girl in the top 50% showed interest in me. I wasn't that picky, but it's more fun to get rejected by the prettiest girl than to be rejected by the average girl and rejection was pretty much the guaranteed outcome either way.

"Revealed preference" in who I'd date was, in my opinion, a lot more meaningful than "revealed preference" in who I'd approach.

The people in power have to fear losing elections. The system was specifically designed so the masses can force change without violence.

Supporting terrorism to override that system is awful, regardless of how you feel about capitalism.

> Occupy and anti-Trump protestors should study and learn how that works. You see to have effective peaceful protests, there has to be a credible threat of extreme and overwhelming violence that will follow unless the government listens. Government should be afraid of the people.

Please don't encourage violence.

The anti-Trumpers aren't fighting corruption, they're fighting democracy and their fellow citizens.

Note that I'm anti-Trump myself - I voted against him and find him to be an embarrassment. But that's no justification for putting on masks and beating up random people. Nor is it an excuse for encouraging others to do the same.

Note that China was a juggernaut up until a few hundred years ago.

https://infogram.com/share-of-world-gdp-throughout-history-1...

* luck has more to do with results than we think

* "focus on the process, which we can control, rather than the result"

This is also well explained by Scott Adams: "Goals are for losers... try systems that improve your odds of success."

I'm just switching to regular wireless service and giving up the things I like about Google Voice.

Because of these, Alexa O'Brien, Microstopped, and a few other incidents I've seen on HN, I've become very concerned about Google's power over my life, arbitrary moral decisions, and lack of customer service.

Within a week I will take my phone number out of Google Voice. I plan to change emails in the coming months as well. I've started to do regular backups of my Google Drive. I've also started to do any searches on controversial topics in Firefox on DuckDuckGo. If any of my side projects become valuable enough, I'll probably move them off GCS as well.

I'm a little weird in the way I think, so maybe I'm the only one so concerned. I'm probably too paranoid. But sometimes I lose a little sleep thinking about the potential consequences of Google randomly closing my account.

While this came out today, Pence also made similar statements in the summer.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/vice-president-pence-visi...

Nonetheless, I think him repeating the claims a second time signals more commitment.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's basic psychology that should be taught in school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism

Edit: And it's something to keep in mind with politics. The other side is not nearly as evil or stupid as you think they are, nor is your side as righteous or clever.

Edit 2: It also fuels racism and xenophobia.

Edit 3: Which reminds me, PG's essay on identity: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Somewhat tangential, but does anyone know why Russia likes the word "geopolitics" so much? Does it mirror a Russian word with a similar meaning?

In my experience, it's used so much by Russian propaganda sources and so rarely elsewhere that it serves as a good fingerprint of the Kremlin's influence. If someone uses it, I know there's a good chance that either they're Russian (and read Russian news) or that they read/watch RT.

Slavery hasn't been a factor for a century and a half. Natural resources play a meaningful role, but there's plenty of poor countries with resources. And the indigenous people before didn't have a juggernaut economy from those resources.

Slavery and a stolen continent are horrible, but they don't explain what happened economically.

Paul Graham claimed in 2004 that the winning candidate each presidential election is actually the candidate with the charisma.

http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html

Since then, Obama beat McCain and Romney and Trump beat Clinton.

While it's hard on the ears to hear that Trump is charismatic, the reality is that his social intelligence is off the charts. That's why Scott Adams predicted early that he would win (as did I and I won some money betting on it even while I voted against him).

I don't see president-level charisma in Zuckerberg, although I'm not sure because i haven't watched him that much. I know at least one person who is really fascinated by him so maybe it's worth a second look.

I was about to post the same. Last time I used this technique, I hit 3/3.

I was able to get this to work in the command line (after gcloud components update). This is an exciting feature!

Thanks for the support! And thanks for all the good work on AppEngine!

And thanks to other commenters too!

Thanks for the quick response! I'll double check them later today.

Me too. If anyone figures this out, I'd love to hear more.

Maybe. If I were the real hacker wanting to prove it, I'd maybe leak a few celebrities without previously leaked SSNs. I think at least one of them would unintentionally verify it for the public by getting upset and ranting on Twitter. If that didn't work, I'd try something else.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert on security. I just like applying my things-I-might-do technique.

If I were the real hacker, I would prove it by leaking information that wasn't already public.

If I were someone pretending to be the real hacker, I would show a screenshot of SSNs that I could find with Google (e.g. Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates).

I haven't read it either, just skimmed. Maybe I'm overly concerned. It's not devoid of math, but it's certainly very light on math. And the supply and demand isn't until chapter 8 while inequality is 1.1.

But much more concerning is "1.9 Capitalism, causation and history’s hockey stick".

It starts off questioning whether capitalism actually did cause the great hockey stick. It then presents the German case study pretty fairly but then ends: "We cannot conclude from the German natural experiment that capitalism always promotes rapid economic growth while central planning is a recipe for relative stagnation."

While it's true that one case study isn't conclusive (and the absolute term "always" was used to weaken the hypothesis), the closing paragraph leaves the reader with the impression that we only have one data point so we're not that sure which approach works better.

Edit: On the other hand, it is honest about price controls. And it does actually incorporate supply and demand curves in later sections where appropriate.

> issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change...

> groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.

> in many cases this material comes after lengthy explanations of more traditional topics: supply-and-demand curves, consumer preferences, the theory of the firm, gains from trade, and the efficiency properties of atomized, competitive markets

This is very concerning. If you don't understand things like supply and demand curves and relative advantage, you can't understand economics. There's very good reason Mankiw starts with these basics.

If the math gets thrown out for ideological reasons, then economics will become the next sociology.

This list is close to mine.

I would also add:

- Influence: the Psychology of persuasion

- Selfish Gene

- Emotional Design

- Antifragile

- How To Fail At Everything And Still Win Big

> as soon as the company raises prices to cover costs ... new entrants (and revived old entrants) would quickly come into the market

Is it really that easy to create an Uber competitor once it's established a monopoly? If you're a driver, would you spend your time on an upstart with very few customers and similar prices? And if you're a passenger, would you use an upstart with few drivers? I'd have to have a significant financial incentive to do so (and that amount represents the excess profit Uber can charge).

This is what Warren Buffett calls an "economic moat", caused by what Silicon Valley calls "network effects". Those effect looks pretty powerful in Uber's case. I think a competitor would have to come in with heavy subsidies (heavier than what Uber offers now) once Uber is established.

Why do you think it will be cheaper to take monopoly power from Uber once they are established than it is for Uber now to establish monopoly power? I think it goes the other way.

Of course, Uber could be thrown off by regulation or lawsuits or a technological shift. Without one of those, I would pretty confidently bet on Uber.

This made me wonder: What does it take to become a protected/victim group?

Ugly and socially-unskilled people are not protected/victim groups even though their lives are harder.

My current hypothesis is that the main reason that a group gets that status is that they have an emotionally compelling victim-story (although I think there's some randomness due to political movements).

Under this hypothesis, the struggles of the ugly and socially-unskilled may be less emotionally compelling because they are less likable and so we have less empathy for them.

Disclaimer: All of this is just descriptive speculation. I don't very well understand the relative struggles of different groups and don't endorse poor treatment of anyone. And I'd love for anyone to show flaws in my hypothesis or present a better one.

> Why did we fire you?

> You’ve driven the point home with your “Goolag” T-shirt and new twitter handle, @Fired4Truth.

> You're wrong.

> I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary

> Your chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered what you based your argument on.

> We try to hire people who are willing to follow where the facts lead, whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly got it wrong.

This is how political bloggers write. It's not how executives write.

Bloggers fan the flames for readership. Executives face legal and PR risks.