âoeTau Zeroâ by Poul Anderson

Itâ(TM)s a good sci fi story around this topic

Yep, without having any detailed knowledge of that company the question is do you keep the folks who presided over the slow demise of Intel? Or were they talented people caught in an unforgiving corporate hierarchy.

I know folks on /. like to elevate engineers and technical folks, but once you've been around the block a few times you see that tech folks are just as susceptible to being sucked into stagnating corporate culture as the next person. My hope for Intel is that they are able to use this opportunity of 'hitting rock bottom' to make the deep needed changes. And for these long time, higher level execs the decision is correct (IMHO) to let them go and try something different. Recall that AMD was a mess 15-ish years ago, they were the one set to go bankrupt. But they anticipated and responded to the market and rebounded quite successfully.

100% this. It's original incarnation was as a 'disruptive' house flipper. Went public in 2020 (?) around the heyday of pandemic driven real estate craziness. The overall idea was to have algorithms price houses just based on data, without a realtor, human appraiser, or home inspector being used.

Unlike the now ubiquitous "I buy homes for cash" guys that prey in elderly or people in financial distress with below market offers, OpenDoor was pretty generous with their purchase offers. They told the market that they had smarter algorithms (now called 'AI') , and were smarter about targeted contractors to get the 'flipping' work done quickly and well.

Shocker that their algorithms were shitty spreadsheets and their contractors were the cheapest labor available. In the end they existed only with that initial IPO money, quickly rising home values, and lots of buying/selling churn. We know the rest, Pandemic ends, mortgage rates shoot up, and that rising tide starts draining away. Now they have $2+ billion in debt and were at something like a 3:1 debt to market cap ratio. Now at $9 share created out of sheer unicorn farts their balance sheet is better, but their business model is irrevocably broken.

I assume that someday we will learn that these meme, pump and dump scams were orchestrated by institutional investors looking to save their asses, but no one will be looking into that until 2029 at the earliest.

Disclosure: I bought a small amount of OPEN stock back after it started hitting the skids and I count myself fortunate to have come out even with this meme bump. Like scratch and win lottery fortunate.

Yeah, we need to come up with a name for when there is a post that you really align with, but then in the very last line the author drops some nonsense. Conspiracy theory, why this political party ruined, racial stuff, or just the old standby of gender blaming. Totally unrelated to anything about the subject matter, just something to get off their chest.

Maybe a "Inappropriate non-sequitur" tag. Or something like "The poster was clearly educated but like many in the 2020's has had their brain melted over time by over dosing on social media. "

...for a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Higher on the list of changes IMHO is figuring out the CEO pay thing. It should be structured so that the incentives for the company are aligned with the pay structure and amount. Today it's mostly just casino style win bug and cash out quick.

Off the top of my head I think there should be a generous base salary to satisfy the crowd that thinks CEOs are the bees-knees. then the stock comp or whatever should be geared to pay out at some longer term rate, like 4-5 years before vesting. This would help reduce de facto pump and dump schemes.

So yeah, CEO of Widgets Inc will have to survive on a measly $5 million per year for 4 years until their options start to vest

Also, also, the options pricing needs to be the same for CEO's as it is for all employees. At one big, public, company I worked for the executive comp rules were like 150 pages long and well over 2/3rds of it only dealt with C-suite rules. Needless to say their rules were very different from the rank-file execs (Directors, VP's, etc)

Also also, the comp committees should be replaced with an algorithm. Comp committees are worse than electoral redistricting committees. Just blatantly, unapologetically, corrupt as hell. Both should be solved by an algorithm.

Moving off-topic, but IMHO redistricting should follow these rules
      -be contiguous
      -have equal populations
      -be geographically compact
      -preserve city, county, neighborhood, and community of interest boundaries as much as possible
      -not favor or discriminate against incumbents, candidates, or parties
      (taken from alarm-redist.org with some editing on my part)

CEO salary might include, in no order
      -seniority in prev job. i.e. is this your first CEO job
      -running avg of net profit i.e. stock price is roulette table, show me the real money
      -other stuff with $ metrics. No fake project goals, or environment goals, or HR happiness goals

McKinsey composed a report on this back in 2021. The answer was consolidation. Not interest rates, not over regulation, just big companies buying up the smaller companies.

"A double-click on the exit data reveals that about 95 percent of the exiting companies in our research base had been acquired (Exhibit 3)."
    https://www.mckinsey.com/capab...

This also parallels my qualitative experience. There used to be more airlines, used to be more cell phone providers, used to be more banks, etc

If this is your hobby, great. But I don't think everything that has ever existed in digital format needs to remain with us "..in perpetuity"

"....means this whole part from the early 2000s will remain with us forever."

The spacetime continuity can keep the original copy, no need for us meat bags to also create a spare.

Something like, " You can take my veggie burger when you pry it from my cold dead hand? "

wrt guns in Texas, the GOP politicians are against all regulation whatsoever. Even though its specifically called out in the Constitution, albeit the militia versus the devices.

" A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

But still, I really don't know how the uber-2A folks interpret the phrasing of the second amendment, other than to causally disregard it.

75% of Americans are classified as overweight or obese**. So you save money on a delicious, satisfying meal at home and you save money on the Ozempic shot

**https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult-obesity-facts/index.html

Agree that a president tends to take credit for and get blamed for economic events that are usually not under their control. Business cycles are business cycles and the congress has control of the federal purse strings.

However due to the current president's near total control of his party, it is not a stretch to say that his administration does have more influence than any other modern president. So it is fair IMHO to apply credit (good or bad) to the administration in this case. My opinion is that there is trouble brewing. These things take time to appear in full force, just like the pandemic-spending induced inflation took some months to hit, so will the following problematic decisions take some time to manifest

Tariffs
Whatever dollar amount is that will inevitably be passed to consumers. And importantly it is changing the current balance of trade without any sort of plan to go forward other than some hand-waving about Made in the USA

Federal deficit + national debt
The administration and congress will sink this country with their deficit spending and blowing up the economy. They really don't understand bond markets. They keep focusing on the Fed, because it's a simple target "Jerome Powell bad" for simple minds, but global bond markets are the ones that will punish the US. And having an easy-money Fed dig us out of a bond mess with QE or similar will be squirting lighter fluid on the BBQ

Push for easy monetary policy
As noted above, trying to push out career economists for lackeys will just invite the bond ghouls to begin their feasting. Go ask Liz Truss. Oh and the people you might expect to buy bonds like China, India, Eurpoe...you have effectively slapped in the face vis a vis tariffs so no friends on the world stage.

Immigration
The ongoing lax illegal immigration was a travesty on all levels in fairness, humanitarian, national security, budget, etc. The GOP allowed it as a political measure, and the Dems also as a political measure (though their strategy was an utter and catastrophic mis understanding of the voters. Really so incredibly dumb) .

But, same as above, there is no follow-up plan for out to change to a non-illegal immigrant workforce. Construction, farming, daycare, housekeeping, transportation, meat packing, and so on.

Government employment
Red herring. Government rolls have been stable even as overall population increases. And government payroll isn't a huge part of spending anyway. If you aren't going to touch DOD because of weird fake patriotism then you aren't making a dent in discretionary spending. And following the same theme, go ahead and fire a bunch of govt employees but without some sort of transition period or plan, jobless rates will rise as a result. That just arithmetic.

tldr; current administration are a bunch of amateurs and the signs are all flashing Danger.

+1 here.

This talk about eating out being cheaper is sheer madness. There are a ton of YouTubers out there who do this exact thing, take a restaurant item and make it at home, tallying up the costs for each...in detail. This guy is pretty decent: https://youtu.be/QRtoUoBgjDw?s.... And if you decide to be really clever about buying bulk (say dry beans versus canned), Costco meats, that you freeze or vaccum seal into smaller portions, etc...you can make a serious dent in monthly food costs. I do not go this far, yet

Aside from those, I can say without question that in my experience I save a ton of money making food at home. Our family eats out or takeout probably twice per week now. And the most recent time I got fast food on a road trip, at McDonalds, I was shocked at the cost of the Big Mac meal...and of course it was not very tasty at all. Better quality ingredients, better sanitary kitchen, custom made to our tastes...it's a no brainer. Going out is fun for social activities, but for day to day, week night meals. Cooking at home is the way. And again there are a bazillion videos on meal prep, recipes, etc to make it pretty easy for even busy folks. Just a little forward planning and not being super lazy.

Lastly I'll say the same about school lunches. We're done with what has basically become crappy airplane meals served to kids. Expensive and gross.

This. I posted a similar question. The states (regulators) need to do a better job about smoothing the costs over a longer stretch of time. Current ratepayers seem to be getting stuck with a bigger proportion of the upfront, capital, install costs. California, we're talking about California here. they have the highest install of solar + batteries, but the consumers in CA pay the highest KWh rates in the nation. It'd be so much better if solar-heavy CA also had reasonable rates to demonstrate that solar is not just environmentally friendly, its cost-competive

I'm pro solar and do see this (incl battery storage) as the eventual, dominant source of electricity in the future. The cost, environmental benefits, and geo-political benefits are far better than the alternatives, especially in the United States. Can you imagine a world where Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan, Saudi oil is worthless? Such a better planet to inhabit. Heck we could save trillions in avoiding future oil wars alone. China gets it...too bad the US doesn't. The current administrations anti solar, anti wind fetish is bizarre and in the short term damaging.

HOWEVER...declaring that solar is the cheapest power etc, while households pay some of the highest KWh rates for solar creates a logical dissonance. Sorta like a couple years ago when people would point to crime stats, but then see in person their Walgreens/CVS being shoplifted to oblivion A person is saying one thing in the abstract, solar is cheaper, but then my rates I pay from my own wallet are way higher as my utility builds out grid solar. I think the states need to do a better job of smoothing the capital costs over longer stretches of time...like 15-20+ years and not dinging most of the up-front cost on current customers.

Also I wish there were less posts around renewables that are numerically headline tortured especially without comparative context
"Solar and wind accounted for almost 91% of new U.S. electrical generating capacity added in the first five months of 2025"

I get it, trend line is up. Also the same article (report) overall

Nat Gas 42.52%
Coal 14.89%
Wind 11.80%
Solar 11.13%
Nuclear 7.74%
Hydro 7.65%

I'm pro-solar, but grid-scale solar has been poorly implemented by its supporters. This snapshot from https://www.gridstatus.io/ tells the story. It is just a snapshot but is generally reflective of larger trends

At the time of writing this, 1:30p PT California (CASIO ) is running on mostly solar generated electricity. But look at that price(!) Despite the Slashdot claims about how inexpensive solar is compared to other sources, none of that matters if the residential customers see bills that keep going up way faster than inflation.

If solar was in that $30-35 MWh range then this nonsense with the president wouldn't matter. But they can get away with this because people can rightly complain that solar is too expensive at the retail level. The pro-solar crowd blew it (IMHO) by making this a strictly environmental issue, and having the buildout put on the shoulders of today's middle class rate-payer versus figuring out the financing of battery & storage solutions to spread the costs over the life of the installations. i.e. $1 billion capital spread across a 30 year bond + reasonable annual rates versus dumping the cost on the current ratepayer.

ISO Net Load (MW) Price ($/MWh) Main Source
ISONE 10,720 $23.78 Natural Gas
PJM 97,413 $26.52 Gas
NYISO 16,751 $28.15 Natural Gas
IESO 17,589 $32.61 Nuclear
ERCOT 55,349 $35.00 Natural Gas
MISO 87,812 $37.69 Natural Gas
CAISO 15,594 $53.84 Solar == == WTF?
SPP 45,426 $65.08 Natural Gas