technically....

expect that "liquidity" will evaporate when you find out that the exchanges that run this shit were all gambling with money and don't have said "liquidity" to cash out those stable coins when you want to... happened before (with relatively tightly regulated banks, especially in comparison to crypto and exchanges)

so yes, you are absolutely correct, as long as there isn't a run on the stable coins, or others and there is blind trust, they'll remain stable.

they are trying some new stuff/techniques now where they'll drop the price low enough and just long enough to get on the best seller list for the duration of the prime days sale. (noticed this with certain power tool manufacturers)

Most sellers also didn't get the message that the prime days sale lasts longer than a few hours... and tons of sellers were just changing the prices up and down every few hours... with a bulk of the items going to prices even higher than when the sale started just 24 hours later.

There are items you can get on sale during the sale/event, but to find steep savings, you really need to be looking, tracking and be lucky. So like with most "sales"

so, casually eating up .5% of the entire US electrical capacity in one deal... that's just processing.. not including cooling and operations... 6 Gigawatts is equivalent to two states of UTAH. or just Oregon. Depending on the facility design, there might be an additional .6 to 3 gigawatts needed for overhead. So, this deal will need about 6-9 nuclear reactors to power. Where is this generating capacity going to come from? I hope these will replace older chips, and not add...

These numbers are insane... and weird that we went from compute power, to just electrical power. Which when applied to computers is just a stupid metric to use... but sure...i guess for AI chips, might be more difficult to find a standard metric for the processors... But electricity used is just weird.

On a side note, weird that Microsoft decided to shift away from AMD for their Ai processors (and go for internally designed ones), only for OpenAI (a partner of Msft) to pick up the AMD chips.

I thought it stemmed from the fact that these organizations are purchasing power generation facilities, or part stake holders in them.

Msft with their plan to revive three mile island and be sole recipient of all it's power generation, others with plans to purchase SMRs and other power generation facilities once construction is complete. A litany of renewable power generation projects owned by them.

Personally, I see this as a failure of public and private enterprise in actually providing for market needs. Power companies failed to add capacity (sure as hell raked in the profits and charged for "adding capacity". Governments failed to ensure enough capacity was being added.

Then these corps come in, buy up existing infrastructure pennies on the dollar, originally funded heavily by public money, built in an environment when it was cheaper and quicker to build things (less red tape, cheaper materials, cheaper labor)... and are taking away capacity needed BY the public. Now, for the rest of the population to get electricity, they need to invest heavily into new projects, fight for decades in courts about regulations, and it'll be 25 years before a new watt of capacity is added. All this will result in the corporations getting cheap electricity for themselves, higher rates for everyone else, and the public is left to pay through the nose .

used to dislike Torvalds... but the older I get, the more his ways/views aligns with mine. He simply has no tolerance for people wasting time with stupidity and has been true to that with his work. If you're going to paste a link, it NEEDS to add something of value. If it simply circle jerks itself with not added context/new information, then they can fuck off. It's akin to msft and their updates and looking them up... often, the links circle back into each other not clarifying what it actually is... You'll end up running in circles trying to figure out what they're actually for.

"Anyone, we repeat anyone, can build a data center" really? with what stable and cheap power, plus water for cooling in a traditionally hot/dry environment struggling to provide water as it is.

The US with it's developed and relatively modern power grid is struggling to provide the power for the data center boom driven by AI... The only nation with relative comfort in the power generation sector that can support this growth is China. And they are shoveling money and resources into adding capacity. India is screwed on this front for at least the next 20 years and that is IF they had a nation level, strategic, massive investment in modernizing and adding capacity to their grid.

India, even if it has viable AI solutions (and not a bunch of techs sitting on the other side of the prompt) to provide willing buyers... is retarded by a lack of infrastructure, domestic $$$ (users/companies to purchase access to the AI service), corruption (bribes are needed for nearly anything), and domestic regulatory red tape that already hinders domestic firms, but is especially hostile to foreign firms. At least China has a way around this- partner with domestic firms and you can operate there, you'll eventually be supplanted by a domestic clone.. but at least you have some foothold there... India - you can't even partner... unless your definition of partnering is handing over all IP/tech rights, and still paying for everything... and hoping to still be involved if the venture becomes successful.... but left holding the bill if/when it goes bust.

On an aside, doubtful the government is keen on replicating the effects AI has had on the job market in tech and other jobs that India relies on heavily. Massive job losses everywhere AI is adopted... What will happen to India when suddenly millions of people are out of relatively well paying jobs? and it won't be 1 or 2 million people... it will be a massive wave of unemployment. They have no short term incentive to see this sector work. Long term, all nations need it - few have the mechanisms/resources to absorb the short term negative effects on society. Ai has the potential to do for the digital age what industrialization did for manufacturing and agriculture.

You may have the physical product, but if the vendor fails to provide the service that was to come with that product at time of payment... they are still not delivering the thing you paid for...

The charge back is not for not getting the product... it's for not getting the product you were sold and what you paid for. Never suggested saying it was a fraudulent transaction and that it wasn't you doing the transaction. That would be fraud on your part. Holding the vendor accountable for their failure to provide what you paid for is holding them accountable for their fraud. Bait and switch is fraud... they can feel better by changing the terms on their end and thinking it's all okay... but that's not how it works.

Working at time of sale is also not the same. I can buy a 1 year subscription to a service... if the vendor stops providing that service after 6 months (although they were paid for 12) and refuse to refund me the money... you better believe it... i am getting that money back... The vendor failed to provide the service/product paid for... Charge backs are not just to remove the risk of fraud from impacting you when someone makes a fraudulent purchase using your card, but to also hold bad vendors accountable when they take money for something they don't deliver on. For the sellers to be able to be paid by Visa, Amex, MC, etc..... they sign a contract with the payment processor/CC network that stipulates their code of conduct, and prohibits bait and switch schemes.

People using their credit cards depends on an eco system of retailers that people can trust. The charge back mechanism helps protect the users when the vendors fail to fix the issue, and to establish that safe eco system. Bad vendors are punished. The credit card company will do their investigation, and in this case, not sure how they would side with the vendor when the service they are providing is not what the card holder paid for.

*there is a 90/120 day cut off depending the the card company, but it is usually for fraudulent transaction disputes... for subscriptions or ongoing services... the terms are usually for duration of and not the usual 90/120 day cut off...

It depends on the credit card company and their policies/investigation. But if you attempt to fix the issue with the vendor, and they fail to resolve it after they pull this bait and switch BS... Charge back would be the mechanism to try before doing a class action lawsuit.

Can't stress this enough... not suggesting lying and doing it in bad faith.

favorite tool when crap like this happens - credit card charge back... the seller failed to deliver services as agreed. It really does destroy the seller and their reputation with payment processors to the point where they stop being supported... best benefit of using a credit card for purchases. This has the benefit of also being cheaper and faster than a lawyer.

if the product offering is risky for your bank... why is it being offered? Traditionally, banks are risk averse.

Not sure i understand this... people deposit money... you offer stable coin with an interest pay out you can't afford.. you are afraid that the ponzi scheme you want to offer is not supported with enough deposits down the line to offset the payouts...

did i miss something? (i suspect lots)

we've been down this road of short term risky greedy profits... and massive push to do things as quickly and as large as possible while regulations play catchup to stop it.... usually only after the house of cards has collapsed, leaving the people on the hook for the loses while the organizers get away with it (again).

isn't the involvement of Chinese gov in the chip manufacturing what makes them a national security risk to source chips from those manufacturers... if the US government has financial ties like this, not sure about the message being sent to the world about the security of the stuff coming out of Intel. They could have done this in many other ways... low interest loans and assistance in developing manufacturing in the US... guarantee of amount of purchases to ensure the manufacturing hits the scales needed to be financially viable.

Instead, the idea is to invest billions in the company to maybe build facilities, employ a few hundred workers, and hopefully operate plants for decades... while now also buying stock to help prop it up.... Intel has lost money and is dropping in value... why are they now putting more bad money after bad money...

lots of other manufacturers exist... fund domestic start ups... create an environment for them to develop and grow...

this just seems like flushing a huge pile of cash down the drain with minimal chance of any benefit.

used to do these and when done correctly is useful in actually dropping compromise rates and user clicks on malicious links. There were actual, noticeable differences in user behavior.

but only if done intelligently, not as a gotcha ya, not as a punitive thing, and with leadership understanding the purpose- EDUCATION and security

If you're out to trick your users, and then punish them- you're missing the objective. It needs to be done in good faith.

If you don't know how to implement these, or they aren't working- engage with a 3rd party like KnowBe4 (don't love them, but they had success with training of teams at our clients) I've seen some cases where companies literally sent out phishing testing emails from their HR department email on day one of new user onboarding... how fucked up can you be?... The email was from HR, with onboarding info, and users name. But it was a test. When a company does crap like this.. every e-mail you get.. you call HR or IT and ask- hey is this legit? they'll quickly learn to train differently. The metrics should be a delta - no. of clicks or responses on day one... and 1 year later... if the count dropped, you're doing good.. .keep going... if you are counting the success based on how many users you can trick with emails that can only be validated by actually checking headers or by calling the sender.. you're an idiot. And if your infra is setup to let through spoofed e-mails while doing this training, you're an idiot.

DKIM,DMARC,SPF, and impersonation protection (amongst some of the tech available).. get those done correctly before training... and clear out all those allow lists- IP's, domains, senders.. etc... Amazing what basics can do for e-mail security.

a good chunk of people read out loud, just under their breath... same with typing some people will have a barely noticeable external dialogue while actually typing.

for this to work, you'd be eliminating a process used by people to generate what they will eventually write... not to mention the numerous issues with speech recognition not being able to grasp accents, speech issues, the fact a good chunk of people don't even pronounce words correctly... and you're truly fucked if you suffer from any cognitive/medical issues that impact speech- dyslexia, adhd, aphasia, etc...

on a security front... great when the next malware will be a sound file in the background of some song, or ad, movie... to make your computer provide access to a TA.... won't even need to be detectable by human hearing... just by the mic...

progress for sake of progress is idiotic... it needs to solve some problem, or make something better/more accurate/more efficient.

this sounds like innovation for innovations sake, change for sake of change... you aren't "innovating, you're dying" corporate mentality bullshit...

I tried looking it up and couldn't find any stats close to your 29.8%.... the most i found was a 13.5% Economy growth since 2020, and a 24% inflation rate over same period.

But the time period is interesting to pick, it's right as the markets started to rebound from Covid effects.

If you were invested in the S&P, you would have seen an 81.3% growth in that period. But that growth is out of reach of most people in the US.

reading between the line... sounds like Musk is going to move into advanced chip manufacturing in the future.

Usually when a company wants to be this closely integrated, it's not for "efficiency"... but to learn and start doing their own manufacturing down the line

the rolling over BNPL debt into credit card debt isn't in their interest as much as making the use of BNPL as inconvenient as possible... the amount of people that could just use the credit card vs BNPL vs the fraction of the people using BNPL wanting to make a payment with a credit card... the former is much larger than the latter. IF they make it inconvenient, and riskier to your credit rating... you're much more likely to just use THEIR credit card.

Using BNPL for rapidly consumed good like groceries differs from one using a credit card at the grocery store how? i can just as easily pay that off over 6 months if i wanted to. BNPL would be great for holiday dinner purchases.. usually multiple time the normal outlay... and if you can pay it off over time with no additional cost to you... it sure does make life easier.
Not sure if i'm understanding the people that order a burger from macdonalds on a deferred payment... other than that it does work as a sort of over draft on your card with usually no interest of usage fee. So same effect, less cost to the consumer.

And on principle, i'm completely against a financial institution judging my spending/payment habits... they should only give a shit if i can pay my bills on time and the amount I am supposed to pay... If i choose to spend my money on bullshit, and pay with my credit card, that's my business... they shouldn't have an opinion on that unless i don't pay my credit card bills in time/off. If i use BNPL or do a cash advance and burn the fucken goods, but make the payments... my credit rating/their risk should not be impacted.

This shit started with what industries/businesses are allowed to do business with and if the payment processors will process the money (sex trade workers on pornhub, or onlyfans... now steam)... now it's a move against what/how consumers spend their money on (BNPL)... soon they'll ding your credit because you buy too much alcohol, or cigarettes... or drugs.. or porn... or outright not allow you to use their credit card for such purchases.