Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#681

Post by plaguepilled » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:16 AM UTC

I realise this is a highly subjective claim, but what frustrates me to no end is not that tech is getting money, but the choices that are being made around capital allocation.

Its understandable that tech is currently seen as a bubble. There's a lot of dubious products sucking up funding. But there are legitimate tech advances right now that do not receive enough funding and labour to be efficiently produced, and they do not receive that funding IN PART because other company pitches do.

Here is a list of tech initiatives which I believe should be funded or supported MUCH more aggressively. It is non exhaustive.

Tech / business side: - Low power CMOS alternatives - Linux and other core FOSS maintenance - Organising a stable ABI for rust - molten salt battery tech - Nationalising more key infrastructure - Nationalising food production - Machine learning for chemistry, mining, and metallurgy to improve efficiency and reduce emissions

Consumer/citizen side: - tools to visualise and manage data privacy - better data privacy laws - improved government website UI - a non google browser

While again, I am just a single data point, I suspect there are many others who are fatigued by the detachment that some of the tech sphere has to material effects in their community.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#682

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #604

dangrossman wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. I sold a car of mine to Carvana in October. I returned the license plate to the DMV immediately, which is how they're notified that you no longer own the vehi…

>The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. Sounds like your state has a big problem. In my state (New York), appointments are generally available within a week and walk-ins are welcome, but those with…

[deleted]

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#683

Post by spacexsucks » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

plaguepilled wrote: post #681

I realise this is a highly subjective claim, but what frustrates me to no end is not that tech is getting money, but the choices that are being made around capital allocation. Its understandable that tech is currently seen as a bubble. There's a lot of dubious products sucking up funding. But there are legitimate tech advances right now that do not receive enough funding and labour to be efficiently produced, and the…

You are not a sinke data point. I am with you 100%

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#684

Post by maigret » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

shrimpx wrote: post #443

maigret wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dollar cost averaging is timing the market. No this is the exact opposite. It’s like passive vs active https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/markettiming.asp

That definition is incomplete. It makes it sound like you have to be constantly moving funds around to time the market, vs "buy and hold". But you can certainly time the market using "buy and hold", by waiting for the right moment to buy. And even if you buy "asap", you're still employing a market-timing strategy, that "buying asap is better than buying later". Dollar-cost averaging is a form of timing the market, be…

> you can certainly time the market using "buy and hold", by waiting for the right moment to buy.

Yes that is timing the market because you wait for a certain time point, as opposed to just buy once you have enough liquidity.

> Dollar-cost averaging is a form of timing the market

No it’s not. It’s like saying passive is a form of active investment because some group of people pick the stocks that come into an index. Timing the market is betting on a given change, while dollar cost averaging is based on empirical analysis and is independent of the events the investor thinks will happen.

I mean the difference is actually simple and clear. One investor is telling “I bet something will happen soon“, the other “I have no idea what will happen”. It could hardly be more clear cut.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#685

Post by weatherlite » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #140

prohobo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, it is full of bullshit. Just because it happens to align with my ego doesn't mean I'm wrong to say it. I would say the same thing even if I did get funded.

Again, that is your specific opinion that is not shared by everyone.

> Again, that is your specific opinion that is not shared by everyone.

Well, the market agreed with you up until few months ago, now it really does seem like we had quite a few bullshit companies. Not all of them of course, but lots.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#686

Post by robocat » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:39 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #78

lumost wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Across every investment class there has been a trend of buyers needing to become more financially irresponsible in order to participate in the market. Need to buy a house? bid 20% more than asking, if you don't - someone else will.. in cash. Need to build a ride-hailing app? prepare to pay people to ride indefinitely. Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue. All around, there ha…

It's not irresponsible to bid 20% over asking. Asking is deliberately underpriced, because it is excellent advertising in a hot RE market. It's irresponsible to bid 20% over what the house is worth (which has nothing to do with asking price), just because you got emotionally attached to the house, and started a bidding war with another person emotionally attached to the house.

> It's irresponsible to bid 20% over what the house is worth . . . emotionally attached

If you are young it can be perfectly sensible to bid far more for a home you love. An “overpayment” is paid over many years of happy living, which can be a worthwhile trade.

Living in a cheap economically sensible shithole for too many years is a bad idea, unless you have no other choice financially. The problem is making sure you buy a home that makes you happy. Overcapitalisation is sensible if you can afford it, and if you truely do get valuable pleasure from living in your home.

Yes, do take care to avoid the mistake of buying a home and getting chained into a situation you end up hating.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#687

Post by belkarx » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #332

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management people have built careers and fortunes in tech running sinking companies. Even within FAANG, many people build careers while working on sinking products (Most products in Google are revenue negative...)

According to the article, FAANG is an obsolete acronym, it's now MAMAA...

I feel like people are going to keep using FAANG for a good while just because 1) MAMAA is not as recognizable yet, and 2) FAANG has the generalized meaning of "big tech company" and most people get that

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#688

Post by adam_arthur » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

dntrkv wrote: post #672

adam_arthur wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

And there were a ton of voices saying the exact opposite. That we must do everything we can to avoid another 2008. There will always be the voices on both sides, the problem is that it's not always easy to know who to listen to at the time. > The feel good policy of spending excessively and avoiding inflation fighting has proven to fail many times in history There are many examples of the opposite. The question isn't…

It's basic math. Society lost x in purchasing power through lost wages via unemployment, and you inject 10x in stimulus, what do you think is going to happen?

This was Larry Summers' argument, backed with real numbers. Nobody passing these bills ever considered whether it was too much. You have the two top economists for both Clinton and Obama saying it was too much and being outspoken about the issues with how the bill was constructed. I don't know where current politicians lost all economic sense along the way, but it was the zeitgeist of the moment to spend as recklessly as possible

All they had to do was replace lost income for unemployed, and leave pretty much everything else untouched and things would have been fine. No need for debt forbearance, because you've supported income for those who lost their jobs. But needs to be structured such that incentive to return to work.

Now most of the impact of the stimulus will be destroyed by inflation

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#689

Post by _pmf_ » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #384

Closi wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure where you are getting those numbers from. Ford had $37b in revenue Q4. Tesla had $16b. Tesla makes a 27.4% gross margin on that revenue though, while Ford has a gross margin of 4.8%. > Tesla is an impressive company that's managed to finally be profitable. Although technically true, this is a little misleading as it implies that Tesla is barely profitable - in reality they have moved from 'finally beco…

tesla does not need to advertise, does not need dealerships this also why Elon wants to buy twitter, besides the issue of free speech. it means PR for his companies.

> tesla does not need to advertise

What do you think Elon's shenanigans are exactly?

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#690

Post by dotopotoro » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #621

kd913 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those other endeavors scale significantly more efficiently and are a necessity. Gold is a requirement for industrial purposes, for jewellry, for chemical processes for medication. Visa/Mastercard perform many hundred of thousand transactions per second. BTC is limited to 350k per day, and consumes the equivalent CO2 impact as Austria. It can't and won't ever scale, which leaves it open to market manipulation and cent…

>Gold is a requirement for industrial purposes, for jewellry, for chemical processes for medication. https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in... That might be true but 46.64% of gold demand is for "investment", and a further 8.58% is for "central banks". In other words, most gold produced is hoarded and not used for anything productive. If you're against bitcoin because you think it's a non-produc…

Even if hoarded at the moment, energy spent mining the gold was not lost. Gold can be sold tomorrow for its practical uses. Energy powering Bitcoin transactions is gone. (Like the the energy powering bank servers)