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belval commented on Does the stock market know something we don't?   theatlantic.com/economy/a... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee
gruez · 17 days ago
>In the US the official inflation figure between 2019 and 2025 was 28%, but I feel like most people "on the ground" are seeing a much higher inflation rate in housing, food and transportation.

People's vibes are notoriously inaccurate. The most famous one is perceptions of crime, which (prior to covid) been dropping for decades, but you wouldn't get that impression from asking the average joe on the street. Same if you asked people basic economic figures like whether the stock market is up or down.

belval · 17 days ago
Maybe you are right actually, I fact checked myself and seems like while there is a slight underestimate, it's still nowhere near the stock market returns (roughly 100%).

Housing (34%): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS New car (38%): https://caredge.com/guides/new-car-price-trends-in-2025 Food (29%): https://www.in2013dollars.com/Food-and-beverages/price-infla...

belval commented on Does the stock market know something we don't?   theatlantic.com/economy/a... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee
belval · 17 days ago
I wonder if this isn't just a matter of inflation being under reported because it's an easy metric to game while revenue and profits from companies are not.

In the US the official inflation figure between 2019 and 2025 was 28%, but I feel like most people "on the ground" are seeing a much higher inflation rate in housing, food and transportation.

So the stock market is effectively a somewhat doped inflation indicator because SP500 outperforms in general.

belval commented on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down   pcgamer.com/games/masterc... · Posted by u/croes
throw10920 · 20 days ago
Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?

For the sake of reducing complexity in an already very complex world, I'd rather that it be illegal to require an email address to sign up for an account (or, alternatively, make it illegal to require an account for things like making a reservation at a restaurant) then being provided with an email by the USPS.

Doubly so given the interactions that I've had with digital services provided by my country's government and the bad (and in several cases extremely bad) experiences that I've had with them.

To be clear - I don't object to e.g. an address from the USPS complementing my existing email - I just don't want to be forced to use it for anything due to it being given some special properties that normal email providers aren't.

belval · 20 days ago
> Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?

No because these things are genuinely useful. As much as people lament that we are going cashless, it's very convenient to be able to just carry one card and it's genuinely useful to just give my email as an identifier when registering for stuff.

Regulating their necessity means forcing people to accept cash and then using this as a reason why MasterCard and Visa should be allowed exist. In practice if something is that ingrained into daily interaction, then it should have something like the common carrier rules, set the fee to a static percentage of the transaction and that's it. The current 50% profit margins rent-seeking approach is just inefficient.

belval commented on Air Canada returned lost bag, it now had knife,toiletries, ticket scanner inside   cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou... · Posted by u/andy99
neom · a month ago
I can't get over how bad Air Canada is, compared to porter or even west jet I'm surprised anyone flys them, the people who work for them are clearly angry and the service is always expensive and bad. My most recent travel adventure with them, they fly out of someone else gates/desks at SJO, this is not messaged anywhere - I got to the airport early, and walked around trying to find the Air Canada desk, asking people, nobody seemed to know, checkin closes at 7, it's 6:55...finally find the checkin desk, Swiss Port branded (?) with an Air Canada uniform person, I swear to god she hit enter as she saw me running towards her and closed the flight, yes, I arrived at the desk exactly at 7:01. I called Air Canada and all I said was "how do I find the air Canada checkin desk in SJO?" and the response was, I kid you not, "why are you calling in to find that out?" I explained the situation, put me on hold, came back and explained that Air Canada only has a small team there, and no branded desks, and then in a very scolding tone (really, I was shocked): it was "my responsibility to figure this out in advance of travel, sir". I asked if they could help me rebook, told to "do it online".

Yeah sure, all my own fault I suppose, but also...bugger off Air Canada. </rant>

Noel recently covered Air Canada vs Porter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_acPeCOY1I

belval · a month ago
Not a big fan of Air Canada, but if you are flying out of Montreal (YUL) I find that they have the best airport integration overall by a wide margin. For international flights (excluding the US), my record from drop-off at the airport to sitting at the gate was 15 minutes and it never was more than 45 minutes. Their infotainment system is also pretty good overall, never had a dead screen in +10 flights at this point.

But I feel like the average person flying only a few times a year makes this very difficult to evaluate properly. My only experience with WestJet was abysmal, same for Delta. United was ok. Transat (much smaller) was good.

belval commented on Intel CEO Letter to Employees   morethanmoore.substack.co... · Posted by u/fancy_pantser
wmf · a month ago
Four layers instead of eight? A large company could easily have IC -> manager -> senior manager -> director -> VP -> SVP -> CxO. Maybe Intel was even worse.
belval · a month ago
You should see Amazon, some are CEO (Jassy) -> AWS CEO -> SVP -> VP -> VP -> Director -> Sr Manager -> Sr Manager -> Sr Manager -> Manager -> IC
belval commented on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience   myvolvoex90.com/... · Posted by u/prova_modena
xyx0826 · a month ago
I applaud his efforts to document this what must’ve been a nightmare of a case for him. But it felt like a lot of the wording is speculative or hyperbolic in nature and aggressively tries to paint Volvo in a bad light. For example:

“Analysis of Volvo's Final Response: This response … confirms Volvo's complete abandonment of customer responsibility…This is Volvo's definition of ‘customer care’ in 2025.”

“Center Display Failure - Critical Interface Blackout: Main Controls Inaccessible”

“Climate Control Malfunction - Climate System Override: Controls Unresponsive Despite Interface Status”

“Complete Center Screen Malfunction - Total System Breakdown: Hard Reset Failed to Restore Screen”

I know little about Volvo or this case; I’m choosing to offer them some benefits of doubt. Comms and decision making are prone to break down on the corporate ladder. Volvo had no doubt fumbled his case badly but I’m not convinced it is indicative of the company’s overall customer support policy. Sure, the main touchscreen had failed. But how is this an “override” of HVAC or a “total system breakdown”? And what’s the “system” anyways? On top of all that, these subtitle summaries smell like AI.

I don’t deny that Volvo has a lot to answer for. Though the choice of these instigating descriptions might not be the best one giving the author is actively pursuing litigation.

belval · a month ago
Eh the author is coming from a place of emotion (considering the effort put into the website) so I would definitely cut them some slack on the fairness of their reporting. The owner is telling their story, not a journalist.

> But how is this an “override” of HVAC or a “total system breakdown”?

Complete failure of the throttle would fall within total system breakdown to me.

> Comms and decision making are prone to break down on the corporate ladder.

Businesses do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, they aren't human. If their support ladder broke down to this point that it is fair game to name and shame and up to them to do a PR push and fix their support.

belval commented on Intel Announces It's Shutting Down Clear Linux   phoronix.com/news/Intel-E... · Posted by u/gpi
hibert · a month ago
If you don't have these kinds of projects you eventually don't have market share in DCs. It only gets easier for purchasers like me to say no Intel when they haven't provided Intel specific optimizations so viewing that as side project or donation is misguided and not consistent with how Linus describes their relationship.
belval · a month ago
Which would be a valid point if they were competitive with AMD but that's not the case right now. Not having competitive CPUs is what is killing Intel in the DC.

Stuff like clear linux is sprinkles on the sunday, if you don't even have the ice cream it doesn't matter how good your sprinkles are.

belval commented on Intel Announces It's Shutting Down Clear Linux   phoronix.com/news/Intel-E... · Posted by u/gpi
xemdetia · a month ago
I think the thing you missed is how aggressive their firings had been. It is quite possible that they no longer have capacity to maintain a distribution. Public reporting indicates 5,000 people let go... but probably more were guided to leave.

If that is the case then terminating Clear Linux as a distribution might be the responsible thing if they were the source of direction for the distro. This was also a PoC distro as opposed to seeking enterprise workloads so it also seems reasonable that after the innovations that were good were adopted by more mainstream distros they no longer served a purpose.

I still expect to see a steady stream of kernel patches for new chips and features. I just would place headcount loss and accomplishing everything they set out to do with the distro over FOSS malice. Unlike many of the ghosts of malicious corp open source this doesn't fit exactly in my view.

belval · a month ago
It baffles me how unreasonable some of the commenters are. Intel is trying to stop bleeding money and are cutting everything that's not core to their business. Side projects like clear Linux not being on the chopping block would be such a slap in the face of every employee that lost their job in the last year.
belval commented on Jürgen Schmidhuber:the Father of Generative AI Without Turing Award   jazzyear.com/article_info... · Posted by u/kleiba
belval · 2 months ago
Every so often Schmidhuber is brought back to the front-page of HN, people will argue that he "invented it all" while others will say that he's a-posteriori claiming all the good ideas were his.

Relativity Priority Dispute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, things can be invented and reinvented and ideas can appear twice in a vacuum.

belval commented on After millions of years, why are carnivorous plants still so small?   smithsonianmag.com/articl... · Posted by u/gmays
flir · 2 months ago
Hm. What about hydroponics? Lower risk of fungal infections there.
belval · 2 months ago
In a clean room maybe, but honestly hydroponics usually makes things like that worse, not better and I say that as someone who's had a set up for over ~5 years at this point.

At the end of the day it's a pit of water with nutrient that is usually somewhat warm. You can control algae with hydrogen peroxide but there is always some water that will stagnate somewhere and lead to some mold level. It's really best to grow plants with a clear growth => harvest cycle so that you can periodically re-sanitize everything.

u/belval

KarmaCake day7733November 29, 2019
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