The biggest thing that stood out to me was the mismatch between revenue and spending at different levels of government. 90% of spending with only 50% of tax revenue for regional government compared to 10% spending with 50% for the central government. I suppose that’s the mechanism they’re using to centrally manage the economy, by controlling fund transfers to lower levels of government?

Including personal debt and corporate debt, this will also put China above 300% net debt to GDP. That seems really high, but I couldn’t easily find equivalent values for other countries to compare against. Canada has 100% consumer debt to GDP, 107% government debt to GDP, and corporate debt of $2 trillion / $3 trillion GDP is about 67%. (And I think Canada is considered over-leveraged compared to peer countries).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Really interesting avenue of research; who’d have thought that discounting future value, as a concept, would come from clergy in a tenuous political and financial position with the Reformation and the start of inflation.

I’m not an economic history expert by any stretch, but isn’t the 1600s the early start of the industrial revolution? Was the industrial revolution the cause of inflation? That would make sense, since it would be a major break in the value of capital in the short term to increase profits in the long term.

To add to what the other poster said:

I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that noise cancellation works by inverting sounds waves to deaden the sound. So, like, if you add sin(x) and –sin(x) you get 0.

This system is actively adding inverted sound waves to cancel most sounds. What makes this system unique is that it samples the voice and uses the unique “voice print” to selectively not invert the sound waves from the targeted voice.

Or that’s what I’m getting from reading this, as a layman.

Yeah, this is where I’m at. O365, Teams, OneDrive, Azure, evening.

Except that my “personal” device is my work device. (I get a stipend to maintain my own tech.)

My Steam Deck runs Linux, at least?

Related, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is a fantastic, timeless science fiction short story.

Nice, thanks! 2019 should be good enough; the guides I was looking at were suggesting much older versions for WINE compatibility.

I just need to look into OneDrive, now.

I wonder if there’s a debloated version of Windows 11 that removes the TPM requirement…

Regardless, I’m this | | close to switching to Linux; I just need to make sure I can get OneDrive and full MS Office running in Linux reliably, since I need both for work. The Steam Deck has convinced me that I don’t need Windows anymore for gaming, so it’s only work holding me back. (Work pays me a stipend to maintain my own work computer hardware, so I do work on “my” machine.)

Edit: Looks like it’s actually pretty easy to do.

ngl, I had to read the article before I could parse it.

This makes more sense to my brain:

“Reddit updates branding 6 months after mass user protests ahead of rumoured IPO”

When we’re talking about asset categories, then the assumption is that we’re talking about the full market. Sure , a company can go bankrupt, but an asset class can’t. If the S&P500 “goes bankrupt” then money is worthless anyway.

Also not sure what you mean about price not mattering when you sell… The price you sell it for less the price you paid for it is literally the return on investment. They’re the only two prices that matter.

And re: keeping an underperforming asset class forever I’m in complete agreement. That’s why I said not to hold cash or bonds. Both those asset classes will underperform forever. If you aren’t fully invested then, in average, you’re losing out on the average gains if the asset class.

I think you might be alluding to timing the market? In that case you’re “speculating”, not “investing”. Speculation is making a(n educated) guess about market directions. Investment is earning an expected return over time on capital.

I think this is more of a challenge of psychology. You need to mentally flip red numbers from “losses” to that asset class “being on sale”.

Let me explain:

• In the long run, all asset classes will see gains. We know this.
• The price of assets only matters when you buy or sell.
• We know that different asset classes are partially uncorrelated—in fact, the less correlated the better.

Take those three points together and you’ll realize that rebalancing a portfolio to sell off “winners” to buy “losers” is actually optimal. In the long run, the asset classes will see their average long-term returns, but when you rebalance, you’re always selling high and buying low. And those assets you pick up “on sale” will, on average, outperform.

The less popular view I have is to keep 0% cash and 0% bonds on long investment horizons, which means all retirement funds. Even when you retire, you still will be drawing down for a long time. Long enough for stocks to outperform.

It’s all to do with the terms of the contract and collateral.

Bonds are guaranteed by the collateral of the ownership of the company. If the company defaults on their loan, then ownership transfers to the bond holders, so the bond holders now own all the equity in the company (and previous equity holders get nothing.)

There are no collections agents for companies because once they default, all of that is essentially triggered automatically contractually. There’s a bit of wiggle room with negotiating changing terms on the loans and such before a default happens, but that’s the broad strokes.

RCS falls back to SMS/MMS, so it’s not another app, it’s a replacement for texting (and iMessage).

iMessage is, basically, just a proprietary way of doing what RCS is designed to do, so Apple can use peer pressure to get teens (and adults) to exclusivity buy iPhones so their messages are the “right” colour.

Great article. I just shared it with a friend and said this to him:

I just read a great long-form essay on the interconnected technology stacks and phone support models in US Retail Banking.

TL;DR: Banks are fucking complicated and expensive to run and cruft built up in systems over years lead to lots of “interesting” edge cases at the boundaries of systems.

This reminds me of some science fiction I read must be decades ago now, about some sort of “fixer” who had to resolve the problems in the systems that ran society.

This is the goal of developed nations around the world ratcheting up interest rates; they wanted to shift the demand curve to the left. And, of course, discretionary spending will be the most affected, which includes most technology.

Isn’t it CPU overhead for the encryption? It needs to encrypt like 3-400 MB/s, so it seems pretty reasonable that it’s a lot slower. The drive’s lifespan shouldn’t be affected for any reason I can think of.

How does rooting “cripple” security? You still need to give Superuser permission to apps on an individual basis. So long as you only give Superuser permission to widely-used open-source apps, what’s the “crippling” change?

Or do you mean having an unlocked bootloader, which gives anyone with physical access to your device tools to unlock your phone? That’s related, but different, from rooting. And you can lock your bootloader and keep root access, so they aren’t interchangeable.

More than that, these need to be in the public domain. This is our shared cultural heritage being held hostage, and 99.9% of it doesn’t even earn anyone anything at all.

Copyright should be 30 years. Long enough to extract any reasonable economic value from the work, but a time scale that gives balance to public benefit.

For Canadians, there are lots of alternatives, too.

I like Wealth Simple the best. Their business model is pay by donation when you’re done (optional), or they try to funnel you into their investment platform. The tax service is basically a loss leader to try to get people to invest with them, and there’s an ad screen near the end trying to get you to use your return to set up an investment account with them. Completely skipable in one click.

The CRA has a list of other options, too:

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/digital-services-individuals/netfile-overview/certified-software-netfile-program.html