Ok. So Kalshi has for a long time now taken the position that markets would resolve this way in event of death. This is so they aren't accused of running a functional assassination market. This is in contrast to PredictIt, their rival, which has had a policy of paying out on deaths. This is essentially what Kalshi means when they are quoted in the summary above "If Ali Khamenei dies, the market will resolve based on the last traded price prior to confirmed reporting of death." So, there is a slight complication here in reality, which is they resolve the shares based on the last trade, not the amount someone traded them for initially.

Huh? No. This is the entire way a prediction market works. If one person buys a yes share at price X, then someone else has to have bought a no share at price 1-X. That's what ensures there is always enough to pay out. No one, even the people filing this lawsuit, is claiming that Kalshi lied about running an actual prediction market, and that would be a much bigger deal. What this lawsuit is claiming is that Kalshi did not adequately emphasize their death policy so someone could buy leave shares not realizing that they would not have a full payout in event of death.

No it doesn't reduce their losses. Here let's do a concrete example. Let's say you have one person who has bought 10 shares at 60 cents for Khameini to leave. That means someone else had 10 shares at 40 cents for Khameini to stay. Now, what the death clause means is that rather than the people with 60 cents to get a full payout and the people with 40 cents get nothing, instead the 60 cent people get 60 cents back a share and the 40 cent people get their 40 cents per a share back. So the total payout here is the same. Does that make sense?

If you want to make that argument for sports gambling, then sure go ahead. Sports gambling is wildly addictive, very popular and set up in ways which maximize addiction. And of course, it has no positive externalities. But none of that applies to prediction markets. Labeling prediction markets as "gambling" misses all of that.

Modern panels work better, so the surface area problem is not as much of a problem as it used to be, even though it is still an issue. But all the other problems remain. One is moving panels which means that they get all the extra wear and tear from vibration and exposure to dust, grit and gravel from the road. And they add extra mass to the car. Easier to just have the panels on a fixed location like a house, and charge off of that. If the panels were really efficient enough, it might benefit someone with an apartment who cannot add panels to a house, but that's a marginal case, and even then isn't going to work that well. The fact that the summary needs to explicitly talk about hypermilling reflects how this isn't really anywhere near being a reasonable car for a general market.

Kalshi had specific terms of this sort before this event. It was a known difference between Kalshi and PredictIt for example. Moreover, Kalshi isn't getting some extra profit from this, since the way this goes, they pay back everything to people who bought yes or not. It is very hard to call something a scam when the business operating it doesn't make any profit from it. But even if that weren't the case, that would make Kalshi a scam, not prediction markets in general. So this fails at two levels to be a scam.

That you don't like something doesn't make it a scam.

That's not true. And your assumption that this must somehow be true reflects your general lack of understanding or knowledge of how prediction markets function. The market get small fees and also get to keep the interest from money on the market. That's how the "house" wins here. In a prediction market, each claim is a 2-sided one with one person owning a yes share, and one owning a no share. This is substantially different than a traditional casino where the house has odds built in its favor.

This is a legitimate question, and there's some question of whether they do. However, there are a lot of differences between this and gambling, including the fact that these can produce genuinely useful data. For example, prediction markets on diseases can give guidance on whether a given disease outbreak is likely. But it is also worth noting that in the US right now, sports gambling is essentially completely legal. So even if you think this is akin to gambling, it isn't clear why that should be an issue.

People can put money in for a few reasons. The most basic is that they enjoy doing it, which in that regard is similar to actual gambling. But it also can be because people think they understand a market well and looking at the numbers simply think the market is wrong. This isn't substantially different than someone short-selling a stock which they think is overvalued.

This is not accurate. You are using the word "wager" as a conclusory general term. This is essentially a variant of the non-central fallacy https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world. First, things like sports gambling is bad because it corrupts sports and is highly addictive. Prediction markets don't have that element. And no, they aren't the same sort of real world thing. There's a massive difference between sports games which might as well be weighted roulette wheels which have no connection to the external world and predicting things that matter and where the prediction market can be actually useful. For example, prediction markets on the likelihood of a given disease outbreak can help actually help figure out where medical resources should go.

This is confused. The premise of prediction markets is not at all that. The premise is that people will take a careful look at the available information and make estimates accordingly. Of course there's a problem if people engage in corrupt behavior using insider information. That's a problem with a stock market also. Our response isn't to outlaw stock markets. Instead we have laws against insider trading. What you've outlined is an argument for a law against insider trading on prediction markets. It may help also to note in that context that the recent examples of people in the US government engaging in insider trading on Kalshi about Venezuela and Iran, likely broke many different security regulations and probably some federal laws. The problem isn't a prediction market. The problem is that we have a wildly corrupt administration that doesn't care if its people make money in ways that endangers US troops or leak classified info.

Absolutely not. That you don't like LLM AI is not justification for this. Heck, you could be completely correct, and it would still be the case that this is a terrible idea. Picking a specific company and trying to functionally damage or destroy it because it won't modify a contract the Pentagon made is terrible. Remember when Republicans complained about the government picking "winners and losers" in companies? Well this is that by 10 times as bad with a side-order of using the government to go after a company because the President and the Secretary of Defense don't like the CEO's politics. That should be alarming. Of course, because this Trump, this just alarming activity number 552.

Your basic point about Israel and the surrounding countries has validity, and it is reinforced by the fact that Israel is now at peace with Egypt and Jordan, when both countries essentially got tired of fighting Israel and decided they had other issues to worry about, and so signed peace treaties. Iran is obviously very different, and since both countries have been functionally at war with each other for decades now, complaining about Israel attacking Iran doesn't seem that off. But two parts of your comment aren't really that accurate. First, knee-jerk anti-Israel attitudes while they are in parts of the left also appear in parts of the right. And second, the comparison between immigrants to the Israeli settlers isn't really reasonable. The settlers are a genuine problem, and the problem doesn't have to do with them being immigrants, but the fact that they are pushing, often violently, other people out of areas in the West Bank. And very few people even on much of the left would claim that "migration is never wrong" but are in favor likely of much more immigration than you would be.

The really cool possibility is that we may be able to use this to detect a supernova's neutrinos before the light arrives. This happened once before in 1987 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A but in that case the supernova was very close and the tech was poor enough that we didn't realize the supernova neutrinos had arrived before hand until days after. If we could have this happen again we could know to point conventional optical telescopes at a supernova before the light arrived and get to see the first light from a supernova in detail which would be potentially highly informative. However, it is important to note that this doesn't work via neutrinos going faster than light in a vacuum. The OPERA experiment which seemed to show that a few years ago was in error. These neutrinos get there faster than light because they get a head start of a few hours, starting at the very beginning of the supernova from the star's core, while it takes light a few hours going out from the core bouncing off of the dense plasma. The neutrinos barely interact with any matter, so they don't get blocked the same way. Upgrading IceCube increases the chance that we'll get to see this with a somewhat far away supernova.

No. A prediction market is not the same thing. First, one can buy and sell specific claims with other people, unlike bets where one makes them and is done. Second, and this is important: prediction markets connect to real world issues (not just is the ball going to land on Red 22) and so incorporate real world information and provide the ability to actually help predict things in useful ways.

We're not really near the point where most genuinely interesting quantum algorithm can be implemented on a quantum computer. We don't have enough high fidelity qubits. That situation is changing. Rose's law is an analog here to Moore's law which says that the number of qubits doubles roughly every 18 to 24 months. Coherence is also an issue, but that's also improving. Aside from these considerations, it is very common even for the algorithms and protocols which are small enough to be implemented, it is very common for one group to do the theoretical work behind the algorithm and then a bit later a more hands-on group does the actual physical implementation.

Slashverts have been an issue for over a decade here.

So tentative answer is increase in productivity in some sectors but not all, and no widespread unemployment, but also not a clear massive boost in productivity. So both the largest worries about AI in terms of replacing people and the largest claims that this technology is all junk turn out to be likely not correct, but with more data still needed to be sure. So the question then becomes will this evidence impact at all the positions of either the AI-hypesters or the anti-AI groups at all, or alternatively will both groups just ignore it or try to spin it to fit their preexisting position?

Well, that's consistent, so I will have to give you credit for that. You are aware that pretty much no one does this and we've never insisted that high electricity using corporations do this, yes?