NoLinkToMe (u/NoLinkToMe)

NoLinkToMe commented on All it takes is for one to work out alearningaday.blog/2025/1... · Posted by u/herbertl

Aurornis · 20 days ago

This always sounded intuitively correct to me, but looking back over the past two decades basically all of the successful entrepreneurs and business owners I know didn’t come from families with a lot of resources and didn’t have much of a safety net. They just went all in on their goals when they were young and had many years ahead of them to start over if it all went wrong.

Contrast this with some of the people I grew up who came from wealthy families: A lot of their parents pushed them toward entrepreneurship and funded their ventures, but to date I can only think of one business from this cluster of friends that went anywhere. When you come from such resources and wealth that you don’t need to succeed and you can drop the business as soon as it becomes difficult, it’s a different situation.

I don’t know exactly what to make of this, other than to remind myself to keep pushing through the difficult times for things I really want even when I could fall back to an easy path and give up.

NoLinkToMe · 20 days ago

Good to share, but n=1 I suppose. For me (also n=1) it's the opposite in my circle. The ones without resources never went anywhere and reproduced their parents' class. The ones with resources that went into entrepreneurship (and had the possibility of failing and still being fine) are the most successful.

Agreed on your final point though! Tenacity probably is the biggest driver.

NoLinkToMe commented on You will own nothing and be (un)happy racc.blog/you-will-own-no... · Posted by u/showthemfangs

buildfocus · a month ago

That's an impossible model though - you're asking somebody to do unlimited work for you forever, for a fixed one-off price.

In that world nobody should ever ever sell a lifetime license, it's a huge responsibility with strictly limited upside. Imo "Use the current-ish version forever" is the only reasonable expectation, and that's a fair trade.

It's expectations like this that drive subscription models. People do (quite reasonably) want ongoing support and updates, but that takes continual work, so the only way to make that possible is to somehow provide ongoing funding.

NoLinkToMe · a month ago

> that takes continual work, so the only way to make that possible is to somehow provide ongoing funding.

Not really, perpetuities have existed for a long time in finance, even longer has the concept of ‘time value of money’ existed.

You can turn $3m in revenue today into a US treasury bond portfolio that delivers $120k a year. That’s enough to pay for maintenance and minor development of new features.

You can also say: I’ll just charge 120k a year in fees infinitely. But it has the same present value (see time value of money) as 3m today. These worlds are interchangeable, only in the upfront world there is no risk that some of your customers walk away at some point making further upkeep untenable for the remaining customers.

NoLinkToMe commented on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder wsj.com/finance/currencie... · Posted by u/cowboyscott

miohtama · 2 months ago

For the accurate context:

CZ was pardoned for a single charge of failure to have an effective compliance program. No fraud, no victims, no criminal history. No money laundering.

CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform.

Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."

NoLinkToMe · 2 months ago

> Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."

Yes.

If a CEO of any major US or EU bank would overnight decide to terminate its mere 'compliance' program, they would absolutely get convinced.

Big banks spend more than $1 billion each a year on compliance, i.e. abiding by the law. CEOs of banks that don't, get convinced, period.

It's like saying hospitals have been hiring people without credentials as doctors, or airlines hiring people with no credentials as pilots etc etc, and they were convinced for this 'compliance' issue, even though the case did not (try to) determine victims, criminal history or fraud. Yes, that's absolutely normal.

Financial institutions must put in place measures to prevent money laundering, if they don't, they get convinced, even without having to determine whether money laundering took place. Just like a hospital gets convinced if it knowingly as a policy hires people as doctors without credentials, even without having to determine if there were victims. This is completely normal.

NoLinkToMe commented on For centuries massive meals amazed visitors to Korea (2019) atlasobscura.com/articles... · Posted by u/carabiner

kijin · 2 months ago

> the rice bowl in the photo was 3.5 inches tall with a diameter of over 6 inches, holding nearly a liter of rice to be eaten with soup that came in an even larger bowl, with an assortment of side dishes. For one person. In one meal.

1 liter of Korean-style cooked white rice weighs about 500 grams. It contains about 1.5 Calories per gram, judging from the label on my Hetbahn. So that's about 750 Calories tops. The photo doesn't look like white rice, so the caloric content is probably lower.

I would give at most 100 Calories for the soup and all the side dishes combined. The soup is mostly water, with very little solid content. (That chunk you see in the photo is rice. Dude is dunking his rice in the soup to make it softer, because who wants to munch on 1 liter of rough brown rice?) Meanwhile, his side dishes are leafy vegetables like kimchi and namul. Side dishes made of animal products like ham and eggs were considered a luxury until only 60 years ago. Fat was also a luxury, so everything had to be lean. This is in stark contrast to a Western meal, where fatty side dishes contribute a lot of Calories.

So that's about 850 Calories for the whole table, or about one Big Mac with medium fries and a sugar-free drink. Not a particularly heavy meal for an adult male who spends most of his time working in the field.

The reason Koreans ate a lot of rice, fruit, and vegetables is because those foods have low caloric density by modern standards. It's mostly just water and carbohydrates. If not for their high energy expenditure, Koreans would all have died of diabetes.

NoLinkToMe · 2 months ago

What is your take on the comparisons with Japan and the comments left by European visitors, both of whom who likely ate similar ingredients in Asia both of whom were noted to eat a lot less?

To me the article doesn’t really make sense. Either the Korean diet was being overstated (likely, but why if it was consistently noted?), or there was some unexplained extra energetic expenditure by Koreans versus Japanese (unlikely), or Koreans were significantly more fat than Japanese (unlikely).

NoLinkToMe commented on Microsoft only lets you opt out of AI photo scanning 3x a year hardware.slashdot.org/sto... · Posted by u/dmitrygr

jonas21 · 2 months ago

I don't really see the issue. If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once, and that's that. Maybe if you're unsure, you might turn it off, and then back on, and then back off again. But what's the use case where you'd want to do this more than 3x per year?

Presumably, it's somewhat expensive to run face recognition on all of your photos. When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again.

NoLinkToMe · 2 months ago

Agreed, in practice for me there's no real issue.

But that's not necessarily true for everyone. And it doesn't need to be this way, either.

For starters I think it'd help if we understood why they do this. I'm sure there's a cost to the compute MS spends on AI'ing all your photos, turning it off under privacy rules means you need to throw away that compute. And turning it back on creates an additional cost for MS, that they've already spent for nothing. Limiting that makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that I'd expect virtually nobody to turn it on and off over and over again, beyond 3 times, to the point that cost increases by more than a rounding error... like what type of user would do that, and why would that type of user not be exceedingly rare?

And even in that case, it'd make more sense to do it the other way around: you can turn on the feature 3 times per year, and off anytime. i.e. if you abuse it, you lose out on the feature, not your privacy.

So I think it is an issue that could and should be quickly solved.

NoLinkToMe commented on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees travelandtourworld.com/ne... · Posted by u/duxup

jjcob · 3 months ago

You could use the same argument to argue that Basic Economy passengers should be punched in the face when boarding.

Then there's a group A of wimpy rich kids (who pay to prevent getting punched in the face) and a group B who don't mind getting punched in the face (and effectively get a subsidised ticket from group A).

NoLinkToMe · 2 months ago

No you couldn't.

In my example, seats must be assigned. You can't seat people safely in an airplane without seat assignment.

You can assign it as an airline, or you can let the customer assign.

Not all customers care about assignment equally. Thus there is a market. And in a market you allow people to trade their value.

Pay more for preferred seating, or pay less and accept random seating. Both groups win, total welfare increases. Group A values seat-assignment more than money and gets the more valuable of the two. Group A values money more than seat-assignment, and gets the more valuable of the two. It's a classic trade scenario where both win.

The airline merely functions as the marketplace to allow people to trade, and to get to a more optimal scenario (pareto improving) where the total utility/welfare goes up.

Random seating ensures that everyone makes this trade, and thus ensures you get the closest to max pareto efficiency.

Without random seating you'd get the free-rider problem: those who don't care (or care only a little) about seat-assignment, don't get a discount that they value more. These people are not paying for a feature they don't value, and subsidise those people who do value it and are willing to pay for it independently! While those that care a lot about seating, aren't guaranteed the seat they want, despite wanting to pay for it. This decreases total welfare, it's a destruction of value.

Your punching example is different because it's introducing a harm for everyone. Everyone cares about not getting punched, it's below the baseline service. The baseline service is a ticket to safely go from A to B. Seat assignment is an extra feature above the baseline that some want to pay for, and others don't. Not getting punched in the face is a deterioration below the baseline, it's a nonsense idea to introduce it. That's why it's different. I

Of course the market mechanisms will work just the same, that's certainly true. But the morality or logic behind the airline introducing this is completely different.

NoLinkToMe commented on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees travelandtourworld.com/ne... · Posted by u/duxup

0xffff2 · 3 months ago

> You still have to pay for it. And you do that by using the refund money.

You generally don't though? The airline will rebook you directly, even if the flight is on a different airline in my experience.

NoLinkToMe · 3 months ago

I was referring to the case that your ticket gets cancelled, not rebooked. If you are rebooked under the current rules within 3 hours (or 6 for int. flights) no refund is triggered, so that's not a proposed change that this deregulation covers.

NoLinkToMe commented on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees travelandtourworld.com/ne... · Posted by u/duxup

jjcob · 3 months ago

I've long accepted that Airlines charge for "better" seats. I don't care for the "good" seats. I'm happy with whatever seat they put us in.

What you seem to be missing is that some airlines have started to split up groups on purpose. When they assign seats, even if 75% of the seats are still unassigned, they put people who booked together far apart from another to make them pay for seats.

That's where it turns to evil in my opinion. Fortunately "normal" airlines don't do that yet so I know that I can avoid crappy airlines like Ryan or United.

NoLinkToMe · 3 months ago

It's the same concept though isn't it?

It effectively sorts people in group A who cares about seats (and thus pays to prevent random seating) and group B who doesn't care (and effectively gets a subsidised ticket price from A, by giving up their seating preference).

NoLinkToMe commented on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees travelandtourworld.com/ne... · Posted by u/duxup

jjcob · 3 months ago

> If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege

This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

I refuse to fly with United. I understand that there may not be 10 adjacent seats when flying with a big group, but spreading out a family on purpose just so you are more likely to buy an upgrade is evil.

I understand paying for checked luggage because luggage handling costs money. But purposely making the experience worse just so you can charge money for upgrades is evil.

NoLinkToMe · 3 months ago

> This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

The idea is that an airplane needs a certain revenue to run. Suppose it's 10k, and there are 100 passengers. Each passenger thereby pays $100.

However, some passengers (A) wish to sit in a big seat and are willing to pay for it, and others (B) don't care about seat size and are willing to give-up space for a cheaper ticket.

As such, 1 Passenger A may want to pay $250 instead to get a 30% bigger seat, while 3 passengers B give up 10% of their seat size and pay a $50 ticket. The airplane still collects $400 from 4 passengers as before, but the passengers are happier now. They have traded their individual desires, for something less valuable. A desired a bigger seat and thought $150 extra was less valuable than this bigger seat. B desired a $50 cheaper ticket and thought the smaller seat was less valuable. They traded and became happier.

You may say but nah, airlines will simply charge for bigger seats and keep the smaller seats the same price. But they don't, because they must compete with other airlines that don't. If they could do this they would've already.

For seat picking it's the same thing. A prefers to pay to sit close to a friend or partner. B doesn't care and prefers a cheaper ticket. Thus A pays a bit more, B pays a bit less.

I've always had to pay for seating as long as I can remember, I never cared enough (except long international flights), so I enjoy slightly cheaper prices than a world where there was no choice. It's not as evil as it may seem at first glance.

NoLinkToMe commented on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees travelandtourworld.com/ne... · Posted by u/duxup

lxgr · 3 months ago

Playing devil's advocate for a moment: I could imagine airlines wanting to not allow for a full refund if passengers can be booked on a "reasonably similar" connection. (I've done this myself in the past, as far as I remember; changes of a few minutes in either direction often make an entire booking refundable.)

The problem here of course would be the definition of "reasonably similar". Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.

NoLinkToMe · 3 months ago

I don't follow the point. Suppose we live in a perfect world where exactly similar alternative flights are always available the moment yours gets cancelled. You still have to pay for it. And you do that by using the refund money.

Cancelling a flight without refunding it, just means profiting at the expense of the customer.

Businesses are able to insure their limited cost of cancellations, and price their tickets to absord these insurance costs (which are ultimately born by the ticket-payer).

Deregulating this point just puts all the risk and burden with millions of individual customers, some of whom cannot easily carry the cost of unexpected events, and aren't professional parties that can and routinely do enter into properly-negotiated insurance products to mitigate their risk.

> 've done this myself in the past, as far as I remember; changes of a few minutes in either direction often make an entire booking refundable.)

My understanding is that refunds eligibility starts at a >3 hour change, meaning an alternative timetable of 2 hours doesn't trigger an automatic refund right now. Further, even in the case of a significant change (>3h), the refund isn't automatic, it is only paid once the customer refuses an alternative booking or compensation. For international flights it's even 6 hours instead of 3.

> Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.

I do agree on this point, context really matters. And I think in theory it makes sense to offer price-differentation based on the context. i.e. if I am slow-travelling for 4 months, I'd be happy taking a 10% cheaper ticket (no-insurance), and have no recourse if there is an 8 hour delay.

Whereas earlier this month when travelling overseas for a wedding the day prior, I'd have paid a 10% extra fee to insure my travel time, to ensure I have recourse to travel with a limited (<2h) delay no matter what or be significantly compensated.

But that's still all theory, at some point differentiation on everything leads to complex and difficult decision making for customers. Fun in a Sim computer game, not so fun when booking a flight is a 20-step process with 200 pages of T&C that I have to assess against my personal situation.