an old-school, old-timey, big-name, bricks-and-mortar auditing firm, it’s a crapcoin.
Well, the USDCoin is audited by just such a firm. It's not one of the Big 4, but I believe Grant Thornton is one of the world's ten largest brick-and-mortar firms.
There is not much advantage in it for the sponsors of USD Coin, other than some sense of beneficence, because the backing instruments in their case are not providing much return on capital.
Why would anyone hold stablecoins instead of the currency they're linked to, kept under a mattress? Is it a death wish sort of thing?
A big reason for stablecoins to exist is that they help avoid the need for numerous conversions between dollars and tokens. Instead, those transactions become token-for-token, which involves lower transaction fees. It also keeps the transactions entirely within blockchain systems for easier coding, and (somewhat) more predictable outcomes.
I say "predictable" but of course the risk of disaster, especially for Tether, seems high to me.
This week there was a pretty good opinion piece in The Economist about the FTX debacle being a bright spot for "decentralized exchanges". In those entities, transactions are by necessity token-for-token. In the more normal exchanges, like Finance, most traded volume is also removed from notional dollars, being found instead as futures contracts.
I'm not actually much a believer in the value of cryptocurrencies, but if I am wrong and there is value in cryptocurrencies then there is also value in well-collateralized stablecoins.
All of the "Interactive" features are going to require an Internet connection, though....
I run an antenna + digital tuner setup (used to be Myth but I gave up and switched to Channels).
In practice, nearly everyone who does this also uses an internet connection because getting programming schedules over the internet is much better than getting them from the over-the-air broadcasts. (OTA scheduling info does not go as far into the future and does not seem to update as reliably).
Of course, these Interactive features will be different order of magnitude of connection. It would be perfectly possible to get programming schedules over dialup, but these will be, well, interactive, and probably require lower latencies and higher bandwidths.
I don't want a home cine. I just want to hook up my TV and watch movies on it like we always did in the 1980's and 1990's. I don't want to have to do advanced research to be able to hear. My dad and my father-in-law really don't want to have to do research.
The results most people are looking for is not theater quality surround sound.
by attorneys to court houses to file class action lawsuits that make them millions and get the plaintiffs a coupon.
True in most cases, but I must say, I cashed a $400 check from Facebook this year due to one of those class actions.
I'm glad this Linux web site is still up on the Internet and doesn't cost me billions of dollars to post to for some reason. If only Apple were visible somewhere on the internet so they could be criticized and forced into being open; you know? (Nice hostname..)
Anyway, here's an important news article from 2017 via 2010 detailing why the company will be having problems until they acknowledge more about their operations:
Life and death in Apple's forbidden city
In an extract from his new book, Brian Merchant reveals how he gained access to Longhua, the vast complex where iPhones are made and where, in 2010, unhappy workers started killing themselves
It's printed on the back of every iPhone: "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China". US law dictates that products manufactured in China must be labelled as such and Apple's inclusion of the phrase renders the statement uniquely illustrative of one of the planet's starkest economic divides - the cutting edge is conceived and designed in Silicon Valley, but it is assembled by hand in China.
In 2010, Longhua assembly-line workers began killing themselves. Worker after worker threw themselves off the towering dorm buildings, sometimes in broad daylight, in tragic displays of desperation - and in protest at the work conditions inside. There were 18 reported suicide attempts that year alone and 14 confirmed deaths. Twenty more workers were talked down by Foxconn officials.
The epidemic caused a media sensation - suicides and sweatshop conditions in the House of iPhone. Suicide notes and survivors told of immense stress, long workdays and harsh managers who were prone to humiliate workers for mistakes, of unfair fines and unkept promises of benefits.
As someone who works a lot in Python, C/C++ and R (and so goes back and forth from bracket- to whitespace-delimited), I have never felt very strongly on the whitespace issue. On the whole I guess I kind of like it.
I have wondered what type of coder get's all riled up about whitespace-delimited blocks....
...The only knock against whitespace is silly programmers expecting to cut and paste code directly from whitespace-munching systems like the web.
..and I think you have identified a significant population of such coders.
Zuckerberg may even be right about WhatsApp being more secure. But I am certainly not going to believe that statement based on his say-so.
If he followed up with: "To show the support from the executive branch, all executive salaries will be cut to put them inline with average employee salaries, and we'll be forgoing executive stock this year, and continue to do so until this rough patch, is over.", then I might have some respect for support for him,
He probably said exactly that in private during the board meeting, and they all had a nice chuckle.
You're not wrong, but those who focus on perks are focused on the wrong thing, IMO.
Throughout my career, I've never considered bonuses and snacks to be part of my employment package. I focus on the bottom line, what is the base pay..
I wish I could be as rational about it as you, but I have to say -- now that I work at a place with in-house baristas I would give up a crazy amount of salary (thousands per year) to keep that perk.
Stock image sites make their money by selling licenses to copyrighted images. AI generated art has been specifically ruled by courts to NOT be copyrightable. Which means they would have no legal leverage to enforce their licensing for AI generated artwork.
tl;dr: AI artwork breaks their business model in a way they have no legal remedy for except excluding it from their platforms
PREVENTING *all* excess warming by decarbonization would cost a few trillion dollars spread over the next couple of decades and is pretty much finished once you've done that requiring no further 'excess' investment to maintain.
MITIGATING (only) runaway arctic warming by this method would cost at least $11 billion dollars a year - for the next several thousand years (longer than the entire history of 'modern civilization') - costing (order of) 100 trillion dollars net. And requires stable, motivated, and financially capable governments do it that entire time because if you stop you jump from '0' to '100' in less than a decade. I note NO large government in the world has existed for more than a few centuries at this point.
In case of SK...the real problem is the same as everywhere else. Urbanisation, extreme culture of comfort and safety driven by female preferences and massive propaganda apparatus having shifted to telling women that they don't need men, they need careers.
You don't know South Korea very well. It has one of the most misogynistic, traditionalist cultures in all of advanced Western economies.
Given that fact, South Korea is a better demonstration of how poor societal treatment of women can reduce birthrates, at least in societies where they are given enough freedom to select their own mates and use birth control without male permission.
The GM Sunraycer was only the winner of the 1st World Solar Challenge in 1987, but there's have been 100's of cars built like it for solar challenges around the world since then, including 16 different ones built just by my alma mater, the University of Michigan. Many have competed in the 15 World Solar Challenges that have happened since that 1st one, as well as multiple American, South African, and European Solar Challenges, among quite a few others.
Keep in mind, all of these cars, including Sunraycer, are race cars first. They are designed to be the most efficient vehicles possible because the amount of power available is still quite small. Modern solar powered race cars don't look quite like Sunraycer due to changes in race regulations and rules, but they are still the same in that they are basic ultra-efficient electric cars, with a battery, that just happens to also be charged with solar cells. All of them start a race with a full battery (normally about 5kWh), charged from a normal electric source, and then run the race purely on solar power.
There are challenges that aim the regulations at making more "practical" solar powered race cars (including a class within the World Solar Challenge) that hold multiple passengers or cargo. But these are still race cars, with specific usage scenarios for charging and no attempts at crash protection or other regulated features that are needed for a production car.
As much as I love solar powered car racing, I will be one of the first to say there will never be a practical solar powered car that the general public can use. Between the lack of power, the fragility of solar cells in general, the limits on weight due to crash protection regulations (among other regulations), and general usage scenarios that don't lend themselves to what solar powered car needs, it's just never going to be realistic.
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on. -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
