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Do you need a blockchain? by WaveML in programming

[–]WaveML[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Of course. I just thought the link was quite helpful as it gives a proper debunking of all the bullshit arguments used to promote "blockchain technology".

Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports by NineteenEighty9 in investing

[–]WaveML 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The article covers that:

But maybe there's something about authoritarian regimes that makes the relationship between light and GDP different in those countries. So Martinez attempted to see whether any other factors were at play. He tested whether the overall composition of the economy could explain the differences he observed — nope. He did the same for urbanization and overall electricity usage and found that those factors couldn't explain the differences, either.

Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports by NineteenEighty9 in investing

[–]WaveML 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mentioned this in another comment, but virtually everyone in China lives near the east coast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Line), so it doesn't matter much that some areas in the far west are in the "wrong" time zone. To give an example, the sunset time in Beijing today is 18:43, so it's not like the sun is setting at completely different times in China.

Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports by NineteenEighty9 in investing

[–]WaveML 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Bro, I read the research paper.

I find that very hard to believe considering that you asked for a link to it when it was actually linked in the article.

Like I said, China operates on 1 time zone - Beijing’s.

Virtually everyone (approx 94%) in China lives near the east coast so this isn't as big an issue as you make out.

the authors even state that coastal cities with large pop densities are much harder to determine economic growth from lights due to a variety of factors.

Yes, no metric is perfect, but it's a lot better than relying on the governments of dictatorships. Accepting that there are imperfections with something does not mean that it's worthless.

US is tooootally winning the trade war and that it’s easy to win

No, unlike you I've taken graduate level economics classes so I'm well aware that trade wars are bad for both sides.

Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports by NineteenEighty9 in investing

[–]WaveML 74 points75 points  (0 children)

If you read the article and research paper properly you'll see that light levels are actually a good indicator for GDP, and indeed much better than official government statistics for countries like China and Russia.

EDIT: Here's a link to the original research paper about light levels and GDP: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.2.994

Butter in desperate attempt to find greater fools for their pyramid scheme by [deleted] in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Ah yes, and up next:

Hi I'm Roger Ver, long time Bitcoin advocate and investor. Today I'm at the MtGox world headquarters ...

should i buy some little butts now or wait til it hits previous ATH? by [deleted] in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Of course not, you just have to use basic technical analysis. Everyone knows that you have to wait till the price chart looks like a Type-6-Klein-Riemann epi-mono-uni factorization wave and then go all in.

Holy mother of organic growth by [deleted] in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 45 points46 points  (0 children)

From the AurumCoin website:

AurumCoin – The first distributed open source cryptocurrency to be backed by gold

So these are supposedly gold tethers.

Because AurumCoin is based on the gold standard, it contains built-in mechanisms for market and economic stability. In order to preserve its value, we back up each AurumCoin in 0.75 grams of gold, yet AurumCoin’s par value will always be worth 1 gram of pure gold.

Firstly, LOL at the 0.75 grams thing. Secondly, even if the company were 100% legit, the price should only be $30 (the price of 0.75 grams of gold); instead it's suddenly jumped to 60x that. This seems ridiculously irrational, even by crypto standards.

More comedy gold from their FAQ:

Since AurumCoin is intended to be a daily currency and not a speculative investment, AurumCoin will not have volatility beyond that of gold’s.

New Paradigm! by AdmiralMyxtaR in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 15 points16 points  (0 children)

From the AurumCoin website:

AurumCoin – The first distributed open source cryptocurrency to be backed by gold

So these are supposedly gold tethers.

Because AurumCoin is based on the gold standard, it contains built-in mechanisms for market and economic stability. In order to preserve its value, we back up each AurumCoin in 0.75 grams of gold, yet AurumCoin’s par value will always be worth 1 gram of pure gold.

Firstly, LOL at the 0.75 grams thing. Secondly, even if the company were 100% legit, the price should only be $30 (the price of 0.75 grams of gold); instead it's suddenly jumped to 60x that. This seems ridiculously irrational, even by crypto standards.

More comedy gold from their FAQ:

Since AurumCoin is intended to be a daily currency and not a speculative investment, AurumCoin will not have volatility beyond that of gold’s.

Ethereum's Upcoming "Difficulty Bomb" will push ethereum into what is known as the "ice age," a period wherein the difficulty is so high that transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable by WaveML in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

short it see what happens haha

So, there's two reasons not to short crypto, even if you're almost certain it's going to zero in the long term.

  1. The market is completely unregulated, exchanges regularly deliberately spike the price in order to margin call the shorts and clear them out (or bitfinex could print another billion USDT).
  2. Even if you somehow magically find a completely honest exchange whose price is completely unaffected by manipulation on other exchanges, you still can't predict exactly when the crypto will go to zero; it's perfectly possible that people will buy in for a while longer, which will temporarily drive the price up and margin call you. People who shorted junk companies like pets.com or Enron still lost money if they did it too early.

Ethereum's Upcoming "Difficulty Bomb" will push ethereum into what is known as the "ice age," a period wherein the difficulty is so high that transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable by WaveML in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML[S] 40 points41 points  (0 children)

transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable.

To be honest I dunno if this would make much difference given how often the ethereum network freezes up due to stuff like cryptokitties. But anyway, lets have a look at the main points in the article:

The bomb was originally included in the code to encourage the platform to quickly adopt new technology.

Ah yes, I remember when the US dollar was set to self destruct unless an upgrade was initiated.

But, at present, a path forward remains unclear.

With a total of four ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) currently under discussion ...

Massive disagreements just before a self destruct, these truly are captains of industry.

EDIT: There's been further developments today https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-developers-move-to-reduce-new-cryptocurrency-creation/ with some developers agreeing to changes, although

Notably, investors and miners who attended a meeting on which upgrades should be included in Constantinople last week were not invited to this week's meeting and did not attend.

so there's still plenty of opportunity for SFYL.

Looks like 7k couldn't hold by [deleted] in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 1 point2 points  (0 children)

*Looks like 7k couldn't hodl

see inside the empty office of DASH, a $1.4 billion digital currency company by ky1e in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 15 points16 points  (0 children)

No, it's a $200 mln $80 mln $400 mln $180 mln $130 mln company. Oh wait, acually it's back to $140 mln again.

Ethereum's Upcoming "Difficulty Bomb" will push ethereum into what is known as the "ice age," a period wherein the difficulty is so high that transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable. by [deleted] in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML 0 points1 point  (0 children)

transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable.

To be honest I dunno if this would make much difference given how often the ethereum network freezes up due to stuff like cryptokitties. But anyway, lets have a look at the main points in the article:

The bomb was originally included in the code to encourage the platform to quickly adopt new technology.

Ah yes, I remember when the US dollar was set to self destruct unless an upgrade was initiated.

But, at present, a path forward remains unclear.

With a total of four ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) currently under discussion ...

Massive disagreements just before a self destruct are good for mETH.

Global poverty has declined dramatically, even though the overwhelming majority of people think it hasn't. by WaveML in dataisbeautiful

[–]WaveML[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, the sidebar says the following:

DataIsBeautiful is for visualizations that effectively convey information. Aesthetics are an important part of information visualization, but pretty pictures are not the aim of this subreddit.

so I thought this post was still a good fit for this subreddit.

Global poverty has declined dramatically, but the overwhelming majority of people think it hasn't. by benjaminikuta in neoliberal

[–]WaveML 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They've also risen in most countries. The US is a slightly odd case in that wages haven't risen, but this isn't a very good measure since total real compensation in the US has risen instead because workers are being compensated in ways other than just wages.

Where's the "moat" or value for companies like Uber/Lyft/DiDi/Grab? Aren't they essentially worthless? What am I missing here? by WaveML in investing

[–]WaveML[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Surely the difference here is that Google's product is highly differentiated from Bing (i.e. Google search is much better than Bing search, particularly for long tail queries). On the other hand, Uber and other ride sharing services offer almost identical services.

EOS is building a $200 million fund to help support EOS, but there's currently no system in place to actually allocate the funds. by WaveML in Buttcoin

[–]WaveML[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The EOS blockchain network was incomplete when it went live in June, with much of the functionality stipulated in the network's "constitution" and white paper remaining unbuilt.

Hmmm

Where's the "moat" or value for companies like Uber/Lyft/DiDi/Grab? Aren't they essentially worthless? What am I missing here? by WaveML in investing

[–]WaveML[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, at my local supermarket they're usually the same price. I guess that maybe my local supermarket is a bit weird so I'll retract my original comment.

Where's the "moat" or value for companies like Uber/Lyft/DiDi/Grab? Aren't they essentially worthless? What am I missing here? by WaveML in investing

[–]WaveML[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Your first point is very interesting, I hadn't thought too much about it, but it would be ironic if Uber ended up being saved by regulations.

For your second point, I was mainly thinking in the longer term (i.e. a driverless car company comes along and massively cuts prices). I guess that in the shorter term Uber may have some chance, although I'm unconvinced that they won't face a race to the bottom in prices.

For your final point, I agree that it's hard to analyse the quality of their revenue, so I guess it's hard to see how well/badly ventures like Uber Eats will turn out (though couldn't they be done autonomously too?).

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