brainwad

6 ms·

91.
by brainwad 2mo ago
The government already runs a 24/7 news station as well as 2 primetime news shows and accompanying websites, radio programs, etc. Why it needs to intervene to prop up the private news media is beyond me. But at least if the funding com
92.
by brainwad 2mo ago
The profit margin on ads for both Alphabet and Meta is around 50%, so this just a 5% tax on operating profit.
93.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Tech people often do work for free - the open source software movement is built on free labour.
94.
by brainwad 2mo ago
They don't need tech companies to distribute their news; they have websites and apps that people can and do visit directly. It's just that people who actually want to read news is a minority, and they'd also like the eyeballs
95.
by brainwad 2mo ago
There are only 2 serious private news orgs in the whole country (News Corp and Nine), so this won't be a problem.
96.
by brainwad 2mo ago
As an Aussie expat who uses Facebook to keep in contact with my friends and family: yes, it would be bad. Social networking tools have real positive effects on the world, let us not forget that.
97.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Presumably not; the same national income would just be redistributed from shareholders to insurees (or shareholders of companies that pay for employee health insurance).
98.
by brainwad 2mo ago
This could equally be explained by wanting to be perceived as more moderate/centrist. Which would make sense for someone in a leadership position.
99.
by brainwad 2mo ago
The NV link doesn't work either. I suspect geoblocking. That study is measuring the effect of the introduction of _any_ modern online betting to these jurisdictions; before it was legalised there was no equivalent other than going to a
100.
by brainwad 2mo ago
I can't read your link (it 403s), but there's no fundamental line separating things that are clearly financial instruments but are nonetheless cash-settled derivatives on binary propositions (e.g. credit default swaps), ones that
101.
by brainwad 2mo ago
There no requirement to be long the underlying before buying them though. And most people trading options aren't using them this way. Hedging is a legitimacy figleaf for options, everyone knows that most of the volume is in speculation
102.
by brainwad 2mo ago
If you consider not just money, but utility, then there is already a lot of pre-existing risk that sports derivatives could hedge. Theoretically, fans should short their team to be utility-neutral whether their team wins or loses. However i
103.
by brainwad 2mo ago
It falls out of regulating OTC swaps as commodities derivatives, even when they are not actually derivative of a commodity (e.g. forex swaps or credit default swaps). If whether a set of bonds defaults by a certain date is a commodity, then
104.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Everyone points to the gaming exemption, but is that not supposed to cover, well, games - the classic casino table games like blackjack, poker, craps, roulette, etc? I don't really see how horse or sports betting is gaming.
105.
by brainwad 2mo ago
But federal law preempts state law, and the federal regulator, the CFTC, has now decided that prediction market contracts are indeed swaps if you think about it, and thus under their regulation. If you believe the latter, then New York has
106.
by brainwad 2mo ago
I wouldn't normally call a license key a resource. But to the extent I entertain the hypothetical: illegal windows unlocks aren't scarce, only the legal keys are, because the scarcity is purely legal. People pay for the legal keys
107.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Incentives are also for when a principal just doesn't care about the difference between two possible choices. But maybe other people indirectly do, and an incentive like price can weigh the scales so that people indifferent to the choi
108.
by brainwad 2mo ago
If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them? Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce? And the same for all other commodities...
109.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Well, for one, the world changes around us in ways that necessitate innovation. But even if it didn't, if life can be better, why wouldn't you want that?
110.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Similar regulations requiring tagging of sponsorships didn't do anything; people just got used to publicly posted content having that warning.
111.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Train carriages, especially older ones, often have metallic windows so they are even worse than a typical plane. Even right up against the window, with the phone directly against it I have failed to get any lock on some trains.
112.
by brainwad 2mo ago
The latest and greatest internally at Google is more or less just Antigravity 2.0 with the latest Gemini models.
113.
by brainwad 2mo ago
I don't know about Chromium specifically, but in general Google requires 2 humans to have looked at every change (normally one is the author, but not necessarily for bot-authored changes).
114.
by brainwad 2mo ago
It's called fraud because the ad host colludes with (or directly controls) the botnet to get lots of clicks on ads hosted on their sites, making them money at the expense of advertisers. If you just want to spam clicks on ads you don&#
115.
by brainwad 2mo ago
I would pay a premium for it. The direct flight is still better than being interrupted halfway through your "night", and then having to trudge through a huge transfer airport just to get on another plane for another 8-14h. Also, t
116.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Yes they would. That's why we get massive queues for alpine crossings during European holidays – German and Dutch tourists trying to get to the beaches in Italy.
117.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Desktop OSes just assume the vertical subtiles (at best with an option between RGB and BGR). TVs and mobile devices don't generally support subpixel rendering at all.
118.
by brainwad 2mo ago
Sometimes the "spirit of the law" seems to be "degrade your offerings until the European competitors who keep pestering us stop". Little consideration ever seems to be given to telling those European businesses to make a
119.
by brainwad 2mo ago
The argument is that the laws are so broad that the EU can always find a violation even when companies try to follow the law, and that they mostly target foreign companies. TBH I find this focus defensible: the big US companies are just so
120.
by brainwad 2mo ago
That would suck, though? Showing places on a map makes so much more sense than burying them in a list of webpages.

More ›