Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Demoralization is just Beginning

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 812 posts

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#531

Post by wahnfrieden »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #524
wahnfrieden wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://hyphenonline.com/2024/10/04/ava-moayeri-germany-pro-... https://www.yahoo.com/news/police-berlin-raid-flats-pro-1333... https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-raid-homes-of-pro-palest...

In the subtitle of the DW link: "One of the suspects was accused of a violent attack on a state politician." Seems like this was not just about posting memes.

The articles are about a handful of cases. You ignored all the others which were non violent and picked the irrelevant detail to share deceitfully as representative of the rest.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#532

Post by matltc »

jmyeet wrote: post #517
netsharc wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't even see that the value in gold is what we assign to it. Almost no different to the value of cryptocoins. He doesn't notice the contradiction: > Back the dollar by gold (not socially constructed crypto) Gold is worth so much in dollars because everyone thinks everyone else also wants it. Sure you can process it for some industrial use, but most of the worth is because "Someone else will also find this wort…

To be fair, you can't just manufacture more gold. I mean you can dig more up or buy more but you're limited to how much gold there is. That's the argument used. There seems to be over 200,000 metric tons of it ever mined. What many gold bugs and crypto bros don't seem to understand is that: 1. The US dollar was never 100% backed by silver (originally) or gold; 2. What really backs the US dollar is the US military. Th…

Of course the same can be said for BTC: finite supply, needs to be mined.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#533

Post by sdsd »

lxgr wrote: post #113
nextos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of a…

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Seems like you understand the point after all :) US tertiary education is the perfect export good: Like other intellectual property, it's almost infinitely fungible, and parents from all over the world will part with staggering amounts of money for it.…

It's not just money - the ability to educate the rest of the world's elites is a form of soft power.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#534

Post by agentultra »

RivieraKid wrote: post #440

This started out interesting but then the red flags started to pop up. Going to jail in Europe for posting memes, gold standard, salivating over doing something that benefits the US and hurts countries that are already poorer than the US. He has strong opinions on economics, but doesn't understand it. His points about economics are partially true but either subtly incorrect or interpreted incorrectly.

I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points.

No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard.

Seems like geohot should stick to jail breaking iPhones and mocking programmers and CTF challenges… and maybe read a few more books and attend some lectures if he wants to continue deepening his understanding of economics and political science.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#535

Post by swiftcoder »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #434
jgilias wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Brain drain, despite the name, is not really a zero-sum game. The people who move rarely lose all contact with the host country. They gain invaluable experience, know-how, and contacts that some of them eventually bring back to the host country. I know of more than one example where someone has been “brain-drained” to the states, who has subsequently moved back to start a success…

> The people who move rarely lose all contact with the host country. They gain invaluable experience, know-how, and contacts that some of them eventually bring back to the host country. How many Europeans who emigrated to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries returned to their countries after making it big in America? Is any of Europe's economic development since then attributable to them?

This is a difficult comparison to make, given that Europe experienced a >5% total population loss in that period due to two world wars, and half of Europe remained behind the iron curtain for another ~30 years. For a significant portion of emigrants, there wasn't a whole lot to return to.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#536

Post by KaiserPro »

Rhapso wrote: post #391
KaiserPro wrote: post #349

Going back to a gold standard will limit the money supply. This means that there will be less capital for building $thing. A gold standard means that when the economy gets overheated it pops, then contracts and you get deflation. This makes crashes last longer and harder. It requires greater fiscal discipline to overcome. The problem with the USA "empire" is that for a trading empire to work you need a plan, and stic…

If you are trying to pin a currency to a standard, gold isn't great. Its value is almost entirely speculative and it lacks meaninful intrinsic value at this point. If you demand to leave fiat currency, an aluminum or steel standard might make more sense. Rare earth metals, or even just petroleum would be my proposal. Maybe someday we will have a duterium pinned currency.

I think we need to move away from thinking of money as a store of wealth, but a indication of value. (wealth is a side effect, it will of course always be a store of wealth.)

Pegging currency to gold or silver gives it the illusion of being of a fixed value, that can't be gamed or changed. However history says otherwise. Its continuously mined, and there are industrial uses so Gold and silver's actual value will still fluctuate.

plus whilst tradeable gold is normally stored in vaults, there is still a boat load of "free" gold that can move around and cause monetary problems. Its a side plot of one of the James Bond books.

You also have to remember that even if there is a physical backed standard, banks still need to lend, which means that in practice it'll still be a fiat currency, just not centrally controlled.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#537

Post by dudefeliciano »

ZeroTalent wrote: post #506
hermitcrab wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does say at the bottom of the page "A home for poorly researched ideas". So I don't think even he is very confident in what he is saying. I assume they are just trying to be provocative. Judging by the number of comments here, it worked.

This is called lamphshading. Lampshading is when someone acknowledges a flaw or controversial aspect upfront, often humorously or ironically, to deflect criticism or give the appearance of humility or openness. Saying something like "A home for poorly researched ideas" while actually propagating extremist, controversial, or misleading content is a tactic intended to: disarm critics, avoid accountability, and create p…

Joe Rogan does this all the time "Well I'm just an idiot who don't know nothing about nothing, but let me proceed to divulge the following BS to hundreds of millions of people as if it were an uncontroversial fact. When I get fact checked we can laugh it off together."

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#538

Post by tucnak »

alecco wrote: post #350

He is a bit naive in general but he is mostly right. 1. Hyperfinancialization was a huge mistake (e.g. a house should not be an investment) 2. ZIRP was a huge mistake: revenue matters, the current SP500 P/E ratio is insane. [1] 3. Manufacturing matters if you want to keep the blue collar people engaged economically. It's bewildering how US Democrats turned their back on their political base, the proletariat. [1] http…

Surely there's more to economics than controlling who you get to marry brother!

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#539

Post by card_zero »

Clubber wrote: post #460
dudefeliciano wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there any reliable source for that "going to jail in europe for posting memes"? I keep seeing this argument in online arguments, but can not find a credible source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925 https://www.cheshire.police.uk/news/cheshire/news/articles/2... These things seem abhorrent to Americans who have nearly unlimited free speech protection.

Hmm, I found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070315091415/http://news.com.c...

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Drawn up in 2005, passed by Bush in 2006.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#540

Post by fbn79 »

If I understand correctly, the definition of "largest trading partner" in the graphic is misleading because it is based exclusively on physical goods. But the US exports to many countries an impressive amount of digital services (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple). If we take into account the value of these services I think that many parts of the map would return to blue.
Post reply on HN