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vpears87

34 karma · joined October 20, 2013

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vpears87··on The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday
Lol unhinged.

I read a book in undergrad written in 2004 that predicted 2032...so not too far off.

John Archibald Wheeler, known for popularizing the term "black hole", posited that observers are not merely passive witnesses but active participants in bringing the universe into existence through the act of observation.

Seems similar. Though this thought is likely applied at the quantum scale. And I hardly know math.

I see other quotes, so here is one from Contact:

David Drumlin: I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that's an understatement. What you don't know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.

Ellie Arroway: Funny, I've always believed that the world is what we make of it.

vpears87··on Tell HN: Azure outage
At least MSFT is consistent: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ is down as well
vpears87··on Navigating the Path to Management: Tips for Software Engineers
Making the leap from being one of the folks in the cubicles to the one steering the ship can be as thrilling as it is daunting.

Here’s how you can strap in and navigate this transition smoothly, armed with your technical prowess and a newfound managerial toolkit.

vpears87··on DoorDash from Application to IPO
Just eyeballing this, but trading at $180 gives DoorDash a market cap of $60 billion. The IPO priced it at $30 billion.

Uber's market cap is $95 billion.

Lyft's market cap is $14 billion.

UPS's market cap is $120 billion.

Delta's market cap is $40 billion.

So with this naive analysis, I assume there is a lot of potential in last mile delivery. And moving things is more profitable than moving people. Or moving things is stickier than moving people.

In general, curious to wonder how durable this trend is. Or their proprietary gifts. And the pivots they take in the future. They are capturing a lot of taste and preference data on top of logistics.

vpears87··on Dickhead of the Week: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri
That's it right there, business models which align with (or are constrained by) society's values.
vpears87··on 1% rule
Applies well to political involvement of any kind. Or just any social organization supporting a cause
vpears87··on Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China
Wealth is relative to others in society. If the pie grows, I maybe better off in absolute dollars. But if the percentage of the pie I control decreases, I am relatively poorer. Comparing how much wealthier/happier/successful/beautiful I am to my previous self is niether as satisfying nor as real as comparing to those immediately around me.

I also wouldn't think a conspiracy is necessary. Just lobby to write tax, tariff, and property laws out in the open that benefit one class of people/industry more than another.

vpears87··on Reactive GraphQL
Agree. React is a library. Meteor could complement React as a framework much like angular.
vpears87··on How Mobile is Disrupting Even the Most Successful Internet Products
110 times a day? Wow! The user interaction and ongoing connectivity that mobile provides is incredible.
vpears87··on Employment in America: WTF is going on?
I agree. Labor is viewed as a cost rather than investment.

You can find this paradigm in many econ/business courses. You invest in capital; you pay for labor.

vpears87··on Employment in America: WTF is going on?
Unemployment is primarily caused by monetary policy and secondarily by fiscal. And due to structural issues of an economy, there is a natural rate of unemployment.

Lending is the lifeblood of any economy. If you play around with the rates, significant outcomes can happen. And the Federal Reserve, through the FOMC, has been influencing the interest actively since 1979.

vpears87··on Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss
Cats would cost less people to assemble the product. Beef up those margins.
vpears87··on Why a Latte Costs $3.75. It’s Business Time
Theoretically though, you are in a market where individuals have specialized skills and learned how to perform their skill at the highest efficiency level. Each person along the supply chain has competed against and put out of business someone else who was less efficient. Suggesting otherwise is creating a market that invites predatory and/or trust related pricing. That cup of coffee should be as cheap or cheaper than my cup at home.

As for the costs, the varying factors to make a cup at home holds true as well. A retailer had me pay the varies fees, fixed and variable, both bean and machine, to make a profit.

About the only conflict that exists to producing a cheap cup of coffee (or, for my for urbane friends, 'latte') is the rent. Here, you are competing with the various retail options that a landlord could also sell in that location. So, that coffee shop could also be an Apple Store which commands both high margins and high revenue per transaction.

At that point, it becomes the market's choice as to what best serves the community's interest. Do we pay for a coffee shop or an Apple store?

I know my choice. Coffee shop.

As a side note, credit card processing fees as a variable cost should vary indirectly to sales.