Google "Dark pools". Currently they account for slightly over half of all US transaction volume. Yes, they're still regulated; no, we do not have visibility inside them.

You confirmed my worst fears when you pointed out that technically, the tokenized shares arent legally required to be backed by real shares. Hahah. Wow. Full stop. Record scratch. The rest of the analysis is pointless. Thats a loophole that scammers can drive an Enron-sized oil tanker through to harvest money from rubes. Im sure this will get a very positive response from the current regulators, of course.

Caveat emptor.

I can already, completely above-board, sell someone a block of DRS'd IBM shares for crypto if I want to. Let's all be clear this isn't about denominating stocks in Bitcoin.

Rather, this is effectively about recording stock transactions on a blockchain. Nothing more and nothing less than swapping a distributed transaction log for a traditional ledger.

The implication is clear, the SEC is at least considering the idea of creating shares as a token cryptocurrency. In this case, the tokens are backed by real shares. That's not a technical requirement, though, and a future company might someday skip the major exchanges entirely to list only as a token. To be clear, there's nothing sacred about the exchanges and their "house rules"; there's nothing inherently wrong with using a blockchain vs a ledger; and to reiterate, this has nothing to do with "buying stocks with Bitcoin".

On that last point, I consider OKXICE's decision to accept payment in some nondescript "stablecoins" as extremely unfortunate. Not because I'm a cryptophobe, but because it muddies the waters as to the viability of the core concept of tokenized equity itself - Though that's a bit of a tautology, given stocks are already "tokenized equity". Whether we denominate them in USD or BTC or cowrie shells is an entirely separate issue.

the extended warranty ("applecare") is basically begging to flush their investment down the toilet.

I have a lot of faith in Apple, but this is an entirely new product category for them. This is the situation where the extended platinum-plated warranty makes total sense. If you're spending 2k on a phone, an extra hundred bucks a year is gotta be pocket change, anyways.

It was priced at 250 times trailing earnings, now down to 100 times. A badly needed and insufficient correction, not a bubble bursting

How dare the people who create your revenue streams demand reasonable working conditions?

Of course employers are welcome to set the terms under which they'll give us money. And similarly, we're free to set the terms under which we'll accept their money. That's how it works.

Personally, I love companies announcing draconian new RTO policies - There aren't many better indicators their stock price is going to spike short-term then tank a few quarters later. But that has nothing to do with working for those companies. On that front, it's just a hard "no", to the point I'm seriously considering becoming a professional "interview troll" once I retire!

I hate ads more than the average bear, but I have to admit, I have no idea where people are seeing these either. Are "ads" someone intentionally loads and watches really ads, or are they merely short-form content?

That said, if these are everywhere and the very fact I'm using FF with uBlock Origin is the exact reason I haven't seen these... That is the sort of viral advertising most companies dream of.

Are you saying we are not justified in our malcontent towards the assholes in charge when they have been more then forward with their intent to replace us all with AI and robots?

Sure, it's a lot of marketing bullshit as it's not remotely capable of all that, and yet, look how quickly frontier models have advanced with programming and media generation? Not only are the models getting better, but they are becoming more efficient. You can turn out some pretty awesome stuff with just an 8gb video card. 16gb even more so.

As far as the robots go, have you seen some of the stuff coming out of Asia? I can't wait to see what they bring out next. It's both remarkable and terrifying at the same time.

Oh, and don't forget the push with self driving cars. The days of general population driving are numbered. It will be interesting to see how that transition goes but the potential is there. Not just cars but also freight trucks. Material movers will take longer, but warehouse to warehouse or warehouse to store, that's coming. We even have robots that can build and wrap product pallets. It's pretty impressive and it all amounts to fewer humans needed.

And when those are the only jobs, the wages will be driven down to nothing when everyone knows how to do those jobs.

It really depends on time lines. They could "sunset" the human species with some sort of virus that makes us infertile. We won't die overnight, but without new births it won't take long for the collapse to happen.

The rich of course will already have the vaccine, along with their ai robotics.

It's scary because this is entirely possible.

There's a fuckton of cigarettes manufactured every year. "If all your friends jumped off a bridge"... Good riddance!

LPT: You can also turn your phone to watch the content. I know, mind blown, right? Pass it along!

I'm not saying I would or wouldn't take this particular buyout, but as you point out, it's not a safe assumption the default severance would be the same absent this artificially sweetened offer. At a quick glance, New Jersey is the only US state that requires any severance at all, beyond making employees whole for time worked and paying out accrued PTO. Many do have additional requirements around mass layoffs, but nothing comes anywhere near two weeks per year of service. Even NJ, as the best-of-the-best (honestly surprised it's not CA or MA, but not in this case), only requires one week per year of employment.

That said, I see the GP's argument come up quite often in any online discussion of layoffs, and it took me years to finally figure out, this topic basically comes down to a simple class issue: If someone is a moderately well-paid salaried employee, a severance offer is almost always going to beat UI by miles (and as you also pointed out, that's not a mutually exclusive choice, UI just picks up after severance ends). If someone is a low-paid nonexempt worker, by contrast, severance is usually nonexistent and employers playing games around UI claim appeals are a lot more common.

There's also other benefits to consider, most importantly health insurance. Severance offers usually allow employees to keep their group health insurance during the severance period, while COBRA is eye-wateringly expensive even for someone formerly paid well.

The highest UI check in the country is in Washington state, and only comes out to $1208/week, for a maximum of 26 weeks (barring certain exceptional circumstances). A Principal Engineer (level 65) at Microsoft averages just shy of $246k/year and this buyout is offering up to 39 weeks total.

Weekly, that's $4.7k vs $1.2k. Total, that's $184k vs 31k.

I can guarantee nobody smart enough to be an engineer at Microsoft (as much as we might make fun of their culture and products) is dumb enough to fail that one-question math exam.

We're basically at the point where if you use Oxford commas, or write with any eloquence at all, you're flagged as AI. Because humans write slop, according to these checkers. If you don't misspell every third word, fuck you, you robot.

We're idiots in the aggregate, and we're scrambling desperately to make sure those of us who aren't idiots at the individual level are punished for it.

Include the cartels from the outset, make it profitable for them, and probably still save money over what it costs to bribe politicians into compliance inside the US. Win-win-win.