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Comment: Re:When are the bank runs going to happen? (Score 1) 698

by PingPongBoy (#46413021) Attached to: Bitcoin Exchange Flexcoin Wiped Out By Theft




How well does anyone know their banker or financial advisor?


Comment: Re: Vive le Galt! (Score 1) 695

by PingPongBoy (#46350001) Attached to: Mt. Gox Gone? Apparent Theft Shakes Bitcoin World

Madoff is an excellent example of why handing your money to an individual or small group (just like the ameteurs at Mt. Gox) to keep in your trust is an awful idea. Real banks, the ones with experience not losing all of your money or that are regulated and insured by the U.S. gov't, by comparison, are stable, secure, and at least reliable enough for an economy to run on.

I am suggest, merely hinting, that if someone has earned a reputation for significantly earning vastly better returns compared to the average, and if you have millions to invest, pay him to tell you how he is doing what he is doing.

Comment: Re:Vive le Galt! (Score 1) 695

by PingPongBoy (#46340087) Attached to: Mt. Gox Gone? Apparent Theft Shakes Bitcoin World

I'd argue Bitcoin could be as legitimate a currency as anything else, but the problem is that it's pegged to nothing. It's value is entirely defined by being a get-rich-quick scheme. Sure, there are plenty of people playing similar games with legitimate currencies, but they're not the ones defining its value because those currencies are still tied to more tangible things.

Even real currency seems to be as ephemereal as digital currency. If bank software tragically moved the decimal place or truncated my savings account balance I could lose practically everything. If someone nefarious creates a substantiating transaction or stole/destroyed the computer, it would be even harder to counter.

Wealth has become a measure of the amount of trust and confidence that people have in each other, beyond the measure of economic accumulation. Wealth indicates how much potential there is. It is losing more and more exactness or precision as more and more people are focused on the pace that they can aggregate their own riches.

Theoretically if this trend is to continue, there would be more instances of disputes and less certainty of what the truth is. There have already been a phenomenal amount of scams. It's a little like Russian roulette with a really large number of empty chambers.

To counterbalance this fuzziness, people will have to build their ability to convince other people to transact goods and services despite the degraded certainty of the value of a dollar. This goes beyond a credit rating. Perhaps people will have to build greater defensive positions, of course, at significant personal cost.

Bitcoin is/was to some degree a "test" of how well the world would operate with a novel monetary system disconnected from authority. The idea seems practical enough, though the implementation was flawed. Even though many computers around the world validated transactions, the need for a central server as well as higher performance computing makes Bitcoin useless to the masses and ultimately limits the potential for owners of Bitcoins.

Comment: Re:Employed (Score 1) 712

by PingPongBoy (#46306545) Attached to: Are Bankers Paid Too Much? Are Technology CEOs?

No. His salary was only $1 – which by the way has one of the highest tax rates. His compensation was in the 100s of millions, mostly via stock options which has one of the lowest tax rates. What I want to know is why I can’t be paid in low tax stock options?

You don't want to be paid in stock options anyways. The stock isn't something you can liquidate until it appreciates. If you get paid in stock, the company will see all this stock being sold at high volumes in the market so you can pay for your living expenses. The high volumes of stock will probably make people nervous about paying you high amounts per share, and your bosses wouldn't like the share price to be stuck at a low.

So if you actually believe in your employer, buy the stock with your pay. That's not always a good idea either. People should diversify their acquisitions instead of keeping all their wealth in one area. If you are just one minion in a huge company, and you're already leery because you think your CEO is overpaid, why would you trust him enough to boost his stock value by buying more of the company? Most people would invest their hard earned money in a different sector.

Comment: Re:tl;dr (Score 1) 712

by PingPongBoy (#46306345) Attached to: Are Bankers Paid Too Much? Are Technology CEOs?

How about offering him 50 mil instead and keeping on 700 workers,

OTOH, if those 700 workers are making no profit for the company at all, they should be transferred to profitable positions or laid off regardless of CEO pay.

OTOH you need a real sumbitch in order to chop hundreds or thousands of employees and perhaps still keep the company alive, and these guys don't come cheap.

Comment: Re:tl;dr (Score 1) 712

by PingPongBoy (#46306289) Attached to: Are Bankers Paid Too Much? Are Technology CEOs?

Not really. If you took every dime the CEO of McDonalds made last year, and divide it among the burger flippers employed by McDonalds, it comes out to exactly $8.14 per *year* for each of them.

McDonalds employs a *lot* of burger flippers.

You forgot to mention that is based on the burger flippers staying with the job until the age of 65.

Comment: Re:Lame (Score 1) 108

by PingPongBoy (#46306029) Attached to: Sochi Drones Are Shooting the Olympics, Not Terrorists

Similar, unauthorized dromes could be reloaded with light and bring it near the crowds or athletes from well outside of any reasonable security perimeter.

That's how competitive it is at the top. Winning is about using any advantage you can get away with, whether it's doping, corrupt judges, or a load of light.

You know, there's a different angle to think of here. Drunken boxing would probably be a fun Olympic sport to watch.

Comment: Re:And this is why (Score 1) 124

by PingPongBoy (#46240729) Attached to: Why P-values Cannot Tell You If a Hypothesis Is Correct

No, all researchers should have be able to pass graduate level statistics courses.

Yes, I realize that most of us would be back at flipping hamburgers or worse, end up going to law school. But to understand what you're doing, you really need to understand statistics.

Einstein was basically a very good statistician.

The null hypothesis is that the world would not be a better place if researchers had such advanced training in statistics.

For example, there was no physical evidence favoring relativity for years after the theory was created. Qualification for research work should be intelligence not ability to do statistics.

Comment: Re:California (Score 1) 374

by PingPongBoy (#46123237) Attached to: California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps

OK, so a civil suit. Sure, you get a trial two to three years from the date of filing the case, because several times your scheduled trial date got bumped to make room for rapists' prosecutions and those take precedence. If you try to do it yourself, you'll almost certainly lose. There are outlier pro se litigants, but mostly, they lose.

The corollary is that if no value was obtained after paying $15,000 the most expeditious allegation is rape.

Comment: Re:California (Score 2) 374

by PingPongBoy (#46123187) Attached to: California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps

If you're charging someone $15000 for a 10 week course, and promising jobs at companies "like Facebook and Google," you probably need to fall under some sort of regulation and compliance.

If you're charging $15k a head, and you're whining about the undue burden of a "hefty" $50k fine, then you have what, 10 clients?

An unregulated school could well be a startup that has cash flow issues due to debt, low exposure, uncertainty, etc. Any extra expense even a fee notoriously regarded as a fine could be a real setback.

Comment: Re:California (Score 1) 374

by PingPongBoy (#46123137) Attached to: California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps

So it may be deduced from your lawyerly insight that there is no economic basis of regulating a hitherto unregulated school. It is safe to assume that anyone smart enough to believe themselves able to benefit from education would be able to protect themselves from schemers. I suspect that the government was not keen to be involved even in this case. The difficulty of litigation was probably the reason for a reluctant regulator to step in.

I've been to some courses offered by private educators. The bang for the buck was not great, and I wouldn't have gone to one of these except my employer wanted us to go. A couple of weeks at this place was enough to pay for a year of university tuition, all for something I could have found out from a manual. I actually would have preferred to be at work.

So if anyone is paying with their own money, there would have to be compelling evidence that the rewards justify the means. People being people, some people may tried these schools and felt hard done by and complained after failing to be refunded.

The way to have an unregulated educational system might be fairly simple though. Let the school provide loans, and if the education is not up to standard the loans will not be paid. Typical students quail at the thought of debt but if these schools live up to their advertising, the business model ought to be successful.

Comment: Re:North Korea (Score 1) 222

by PingPongBoy (#45969231) Attached to: Doomsday Clock Remains at Five Minutes to Midnight

Looking at the Doomsday Clock graph over the years there is a cyclic pattern. A gradual decline to doom is suddenly followed by a sharp rise, as though collectively the world recoils. But the forces for and against war and destruction are not instant, but rather take years of lead time. The process is much like the forces underlying earthquakes. Plates are moved by deep forces and sometimes they stick and unstick, but sometimes they get stuck long enough to build up enough energy to release violently. The cyclic ripple of the clock as well as the earthquake analogy suggests that a more detailed interface should also be compiled to show decisions and actions that work for and against war.

1 Sagan = Billions & Billions