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smarm52 commented on Sorry, Inflation Still Lives   wsj.com/opinion/inflation... · Posted by u/cs702
smarm52 · 5 months ago
Well of course it does, "Quantitative easing" is common practice.

> a central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

At least one cause of inflation is "increasing the money supply".

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.

smarm52 commented on YouTube used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality   bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/quantified
smarm52 · 6 months ago
So, when do they start inserting ads?

Imagine splicing in an ad of the content creator shilling for Pepsi into a video.

That leads to customized "in media" ads, and ads that are "targeted" at users by having their favorite Youtubers be unwitting mouthpieces for advertisers.

I look forward to the eventual deepfake of a person of color spouting ad copy for right-wing fascists.

smarm52 commented on 14 Million People Could Die in Next 5 Years Due to USAID Cuts, Study Finds   gizmodo.com/14-million-pe... · Posted by u/perihelions
tracker1 · 7 months ago
Most of the USAID spending that was cut should be funded by charity contributions. I'm just not a fan of foreign spending using taxpayer funding at all. There's plenty of room for charity in the world, and less bureaucracy in the middle.
smarm52 · 7 months ago
The primary purpose of Foreign Aid isn't about charity.

McGillivray, F., & Smith, A. (2008). Punishing the prince: a theory of interstate relations, political institutions, and leader change. Princeton University Press.

It's about influencing governments. It's a really nice way to "bribe" foreign officials for things that a government wants.

smarm52 commented on Are Young People Having Enough Sex?   newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/tysone
smarm52 · 7 months ago
It's hard to get in the mood when there's all of *gestures broadly at everything* is going on.

Amazing that the author tip toed around that part of it.

smarm52 commented on Sauron, a new home-security system for the terrified tech elite   washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/cbzbc
smarm52 · a year ago
So, a single closed system point of failure used for security? What possibly could go wrong.
smarm52 commented on A Kid Made $50k Dumping Crypto He'd Created. Then Came the Backlash   wired.com/story/memecoin-... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
bradley13 · a year ago
What idiots buy a memecoin from some random dude online, especially on a site that is literally about creating zillions of worthless memecoins? "A fool and his money are soon parted." They have zero basis to be angry.

tl;dr: Good for the kid, though I hope he learned a little lesson about security.

smarm52 · a year ago
+1 that.

Also, it seems like one of the popular ways to make money with crypto is this sort of "pump and dump" scheme, and so the "investors" should have been aware of the pattern at least.

smarm52 commented on Scientists and engineers have created a carbon-14 diamond battery   bbc.com/news/articles/cx2... · Posted by u/taimurkazmi
smarm52 · a year ago
Can't find a paper on the subject, but the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has a promo video which shows off (what they claim is) a proof of concept device. So the team seems to have some serious money and influence behind them:

https://www.adsadvance.co.uk/university-of-bristol-and-ukaea...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGVt4sUnnw

Then since batteries are in demand, cheap ones doubly so, and ones that don't rely on rare Earth minerals from Chine triply so, they should have a wide market to tap into to make them profitable. Then also, as the UK is a NATO country, an invention like this could reasonably be argued to be a national security issue, which implies (very lucrative) government contracts.

smarm52 commented on Gen Z hates working from home (2022)   businessinsider.com/gen-z... · Posted by u/MiguelX413
smarm52 · a year ago
Such a stupid headline. The quote is:

> According to a national work-from-home survey by economists at three universities, less than a quarter of 20-somethings who can do their jobs remotely want to do so full time.

https://archive.ph/Ayjyk

Which isn't backed up by the data:

> The Gap Between How Much Employees Want to Work from Home and Employer Plans Fluctuates Near 0.5 Days

> Employers Offer Fewer Fully Remote Jobs and More Fully Onsite Jobs Than Employees Want

> Workers In Their 50s and 60s Are Fully On Site and Fully Remote More Often Than Younger Workers

> SWAA Respondents Prefer Hybrid WFH (2-3 Days/Week) Over Fully In-Person Work By A Margin of 3.8-to-1 (With 57.4% of respondents preferring to work from home as compared with working on site every workday)

> Even the Least WFH-Friendly Age and Education Groups Favor Hybrid WFH Over Fully In-Person Work by Wide Margins

https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/WFHResear...

I'm sure there's some "creative" reading of the data that supports the headline, but it's non-obvious how, and certainly not in keeping with any reasonable interpretation of the data and reality.

Stretching credulity, this part: "less than a quarter of 20-somethings who can do their jobs remotely want to do so full time." could be related to the data item "SWAA Respondents Prefer Hybrid WFH (2-3 Days/Week) Over Fully In-Person Work By A Margin of 3.8-to-1", as a reading of the survey question compared working 2-3 days *in total* as compared to working full-time on site:

> "How would you feel about WFH 2 or 3 days a week, compared to working at your employer's site every workday?"

And so the headline may be based on this single poorly worded question.

u/smarm52

KarmaCake day230May 20, 2024View Original