I mean, the guy was constantly high on nootropics and they had no idea what actual investments FTX made. I'd imagine most of the time was just spent untangling that web, his case was more or less a slam dunk.

I find it so weird that you say public companies being 'evil' (which is to turn a profit) is a problem, yet you also say you'd like for companies to exist on the public market so that the public can access some of the upside.

I didn't say that?

It's the old totalitarian playbook. Make everyone a criminal then selectively apply the law.

There doesn't need to be a solution that works for everyone. It doesn't matter how many barriers you put in place, people will always get scammed - so don't punish the other capable 85%.

You do in fact need a system that works for the vast majority. If your system flat out doesnt work for 15% of the population, you'd have mass riots and unrest.

You mean the capable 15%, not 85% as again users are dumb. That's why governments will always cater to the majority.

And yet people don't realise that Epstein was talking in clear text for years through a gmail account that the government could access - and the powers that be didn't do anything about it. It's got nothing to do with protecting children, it's about controlling and monitoring the population.

Awesome read. I always love Poszar's work, it's a shame that these days he's no longer working at CS - since most of his work is now stuck behind a paywall.

1P is closed source and have had a number of breaches in the past. Bitwarden have had none that I'm aware of, and they're FOSS. I however have been preferring ProtonPass lately (also FOSS) and really like the layout over BW.

> and have had a number of breaches in the past

Do you have a source for this claim of multiple past breaches? The only one I know of is the Okta breach.

For me they're still firmly in the 'one of the best options out there' category because cross-platform usability is incredibly good imho. I will admit it's been quite a while since I migrated from KeyPass so maybe these other options have improved too.

This is either ignorance or throwing shade at 1Password. Outside of their Okta thing (which didn't impact vaults as far as I'm aware, and was more Okta's fault) they never had a compromise. They are definitely an excellent provider.

Because stock trading isn't zero sum.

Yes, it is negative sum after transaction costs and taxes.

No, it's not. Person A buys stock 1, stock one goes from $10 to $15. Person A makes $5. Person B buys it at $15 and then it pays a $1 dividend, person B makes $1. It's not zero sum, everyone can win.

If we're talking trading, it means a short timeframe, let's say over a few days. The stock market doesn't really grow over a few days, it's basically zero sum. So every gain you make is balanced by someone else's loss. The issue is both the sellers and buyers are paying transaction costs and taxes, which makes it actually negative sum.

If person A waited a few days and the stock shot up, then it's basically gambling since no stock has 50% expected returns in a few days. These are the "random" fluctuations in the market. Another person made a similar bet and their stock went to $5 instead, losing money. Overall it's negative sum.

If person A waited a few years instead and their stock went up to $15, sure then it's different. But it's stock investing, not trading. They made a profit because they held stocks, not traded them. You also get dividends for holding stocks, not trading them.

You are only ever expected to make money from trading stocks since you kind of also have to hold the stocks for a bit. Stock traders accidentally invest and that's how they make any money at all compared to pure gamblers.

Note that I am talking about the vast majority of stock traders here but not the financial experts or algo trading firms that try to find inefficiencies and exploit them. They can actually help with price discovery and profit by making the markets more efficient. But even they're only making calculated bets at best much like good poker players. Most regular people have no chance.

That only applies for industries that are growing. And most of the “gambling” happens in options markets which are perfectly zero sum before fees.

You changed the goal posts, the thread started with stock. Derivatives are completely different.

Shrinking industries can still generate profit, and can still give out dividends.

Speech?

Can you be more specific? What sort of thing could you say in the US that would cause government action if you said it in Canada? Those freedoms are fading fast under this administration at any rate.

An interesting article that confirms something I've often been annoyed about - in Australia most of the top universities don't use GPAs but WAMs (weighted average marks).

In a GPA system whether you get 100 or 85, you get an A which results in a 4.0 GPA. In Australia, it's simply a weighted average number (so there is a big difference to employers when reading a resume that has an 85 WAM or a 95 WAM). I guess the flip side 'benefit' is that there's a marginal difference between 84.5 and 85, whereas that's 1 whole GPA point in the US.

To add on to that, from what I've heard, broadly speaking in the US getting an A is the result of turning up to class and doing the homework. Here, you've got to really go above and beyond what they teach you to get anything close to 85. The somewhat aggravating part of that is given how large the foreign student market is here (it's our 3rd biggest export industry), it results in grade inflation at the low end. Teachers/ lecturers will find all sorts of ways to get students an easy 40-60% worth of marks and then absolutely crush students in the final.

In other words, it's very very easy to pass classes, but exceedingly hard to do very well. If I had to approximate, the mean mark in most university classes would be around 60-65 with the standard deviation being something like 8 marks (meaning the top 2.5% of students get above 80ish). Compared to the 60% of students getting A at Harvard.