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Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

economist.com

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Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#641

Post by repiret »

xxpor wrote: post #531
Thlom wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF? This must be because of willful political sabotage? The license plate should follow the car and ownership should be changed online as part of the transaction. It sounds incredibly wasteful that every time a car changes ownership the seller must hand over the plates in person to the DMV. And is there no national registry of cars or data sharing between states? Strange that a car can be registered twice. If your d…

>The license plate should follow the car and ownership should be changed online as part of the transaction. It sounds incredibly wasteful that every time a car changes ownership the seller must hand over the plates in person to the DMV. There's too many personalized plates and other exceptions in the US to make that viable.

Except that’s exactly how it works in many states. If you want to keep your personalized plate, you have to jump through hoops, but it defaults to go with the car in the two states I’ve lived in.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#642

Post by Brybry »

nobody9999 wrote: post #597
JJMcJ wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all DMV problems are due to understaffing, not any laziness or incompetence on the part of the people who work there. In California the DMV experience was greatly improved by having appointments, and for walk in, you get a number and at least have an idea when you'll be called, so you can sit in a waiting area, not have to stand for hours. COVID has reduced staffing so that makes appointments harder to get. Al…

>Also, imagining that corporate offices are models of efficiency is an error. Absolutely! I used to work for a Fortune 50 company (that shall remain nameless here) and was moving various groups (mostly marketing and research) away from mainframe batch processing (this was the mid 1990s) toward distributed (Unix) systems. The inefficiency and waste were just unbelievable. The corporation had tried to move their custom…

My dad worked at a public university where his department would charge for services provided to other departments at the university.

At the end of the year the department's surplus went to a general fund (and I think this was also a factor in deciding future budget allocations for the department).

So everyone in his department was incentivized to buy equipment they didn't actually need so that they didn't "lose" their money.

The old, perfectly working, hardware would be put out into hallways and get thrown away in the trash.

Granted a public university is a lot different from an actual government department.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#643

Post by 3np »

Animats wrote: post #244

This may be the end of meme investments. Low-end crypto products are collapsing. Some now have a lot of zeroes after the decimal point. * LUNA coin, the backing of UST, dropped from $183 to $0.0001178. UST itself is no longer tradeable. Its blockchain has been turned off. (Apparently that can happen.) * SLP coin, the currency of Axie Infinity's play to earn game, dropped from $0.30 or so to $0.005607. Remember when A…

Both projects have had major recent incidents that would have made them collapse/drop regardless of hype-cycle.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#644

Post by [deleted] »

DragonStrength wrote: post #475
shrimpx wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All-cash is basically the new norm. It’s paradoxical that all-cash became the norm in a period where mortgage rates were at all time lows…

Well, only if you ignore how we got there. Housing output took far too long to recover after 2008, and on top of that, many homeowners felt entitled to the gains they lost during the recession because that is what the American Dream promised. We could also pull on the demographic weirdness of the moment as Baby Boomers only finally cede political power, skipping a generation. What have all are priorities concerned si…

[deleted]

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#645

Post by danielvaughn »

worik wrote: post #563
danielvaughn wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code is an expression of a business solution. The meat of any application is in the business rules it enables and enforces. In a very well oiled machine it might be possible to just receive some behavioral requirements and get to it, but in my experience that isn't the norm. To be an effective engineer, you need to have a solid understanding of how the code you're writing solves the needs of the company.

Unpacking that: > Code is an expression of a business solution At some very high level that may be true. The person who makes the final decision on what code I work on (who happens to be the brother of the CEO, poor fellow!) may have to consider "business requirements", but only lightly. We implement what we are told to implement. I am a worker. > The meat of any application is in the business rules it enables and en…

You’re not unpacking anything in what I said, you’re just disagreeing with each point, and each disagreement is mostly rooted in a misunderstanding of what I’m saying.

My point is that the code, and all it’s material constructs that you pointed out (loops, allocation etc), do not exist apart from the business, because it’s the only reason those things exist in the first place. I’m not sure how much experience you have, but if you have enough, you should know how easy it is for an engineering team to become disconnected with the goals of the company. I’ve seen devs waste literal months on things that, had the primary stakeholders known about it, they’d never have agreed to.

Now, you could look at that situation and envy the job security. Sure you could just see yourself as just a cog in the machine, with no responsibility whatsoever in wondering why the fuck you’re doing what you’re doing. But I certainly would not hire you.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#646

Post by bombcar »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #521
olddustytrail wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. It was a joke. I thought someone with the username compiler-guy might appreciate it but I guess not. Edit: otoh I've been a bit grumpy myself this week so who am I to judge. It wasn't a very good joke. I'll tell you the "youthful porpoise" one next time

Why wait? Now I'm curious.

The one I’ve heard ends with “transporting underaged gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises”

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#647

Post by adam_arthur »

shakezula wrote: post #634
adam_arthur wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. It should have been done, but to a much lesser magnitude. That is plainly obvious to any rational minded person. The Fed also should have considered velocity in employment gains. They basically waited until labor market was already overheated to do anything... which means many are likely to lose their jobs in the fight with inflation now. Unfortunately the basic law of economics and real productivity…

> That is plainly obvious to any rational minded person No, it’s not. There was a real economic crisis, and hindsight alone allows you to take that position.

There were 4 major bills passed, as well as many executive actions. This was not a one time piece of legislation that caused inflation.

The latest major bill, $2T dollars worth, was passed 1 full year after Covid lockdowns started... at a time where markets were reaching bubble levels, housing was appreciating at a double digit rate, unemployment rate was already dropping .5-1% per month.

Student loans are still in forbearance even today, despite being proven to be largely regressive and contributing to inflation (billions a month in spending power). Those who didn't go to college are footing the bill for this. It seems you're not a very rational minded individual... or simply misinformed of the timeline.

Many people don't seem to understand that a labor market this tight is a death knell to the downtrodden. They will be laid off when unemployment spikes after the Fed achieves their inflation fighting goals. Defeating the entire purpose of the stimulus and effectively making that money wasted, while we're left with high inflation and worse wealth inequality than ever before.

The feel good policy of spending excessively and avoiding inflation fighting has proven to fail many times in history. The 1970's in the US being the most relevant.

Also worth noting, that Larry Summers, the treasury secretary under Clinton argued exactly that the ARP would be inflationary. There were many voices calling this out that were ignored

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#648

Post by diob »

traskjd wrote: post #463
diob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also comes from feeling financially secure enough to be comfortable asking those questions. Early in my career I wouldn't have, but at this point I have enough money that I can afford to be more discerning.

Ultimate test of a good place though if you ask when young. I asked for my first grad role. I asked a lot of probing questions. 3 years in I was running teams and setting up operations for the business in another country for them. I even told them I’d be leaving to start my own business after this job (and did). This resonated because I was speaking to their founder at the time and knew we’d be cut from the same clot…

I think you missed my point, some (possibly most) literally can't afford to do what you're suggesting early in their life. It comes from a place of financial and psychological security.

I suppose it also depends on your country, but at least here in the USA, that's hard to come by (especially for the lower / middle class).

Being able to be discerning about a job is a privilege that not everyone has. As someone who finally can, I'm happy to acknowledge that rather than pretend other folks are doing something wrong.

I don't disagree that they'd be dodging a bullet, but some folks have to take a bullet to get health insurance, pay the bills, and god knows what else given their circumstances :)

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#649

Post by 3np »

Ekaros wrote: post #543
Animats wrote: post #244

This may be the end of meme investments. Low-end crypto products are collapsing. Some now have a lot of zeroes after the decimal point. * LUNA coin, the backing of UST, dropped from $183 to $0.0001178. UST itself is no longer tradeable. Its blockchain has been turned off. (Apparently that can happen.) * SLP coin, the currency of Axie Infinity's play to earn game, dropped from $0.30 or so to $0.005607. Remember when A…

Now I have serious question. Which big stable coins could just stop being on chain? That is stop all transactions, that aren't just some database entries?

There's no "stopping being on chain" (not sure exactly what you mean by that).

But as for stopping all transactions:

None of the other major ones have their own blockchain but are smart contracts on other chains. However, at least both USDC and USDT have mechanisms in their smart contracts to freeze accounts and transactions. I have not looked up TrueUSD, not sure how that works.

DAI does not.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#650

Post by harambae »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #618
chiefalchemist wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, The Fed goes over the top with what they can do and Congress refuses to lean in on its supervision of The Fed. Imagine that. You refuse to do your job and you still have a job. Only in America.

Dear Down-voter Congress has the power to monitor and "regulate" The Fed. That is, The Fed is not - or isn't supposed to be - completely autonomous. It has oversight, or should. The reality is, it does not. Congress lets The Fed run wild. That might be the status quo, but it's not how it legally needs to be. So yes, Congress isn't doing their job. And no one (read: the media) is questioning that negligence. Again, on…

>only in America

I agree with everything else, but Europe is dealing with even worse inflation than the US and the ECB is being even more dovish.

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