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I’m pretty sure that people like John Carmack, Donald Knuth, or Fabrice Bellard are not spending money on PR firms.


I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. Carmack has been covered by multiple PR departments, sometimes simultaneously, throughout his career. Knuth literally has publishers doing that work and I don't know what you think the Nobel committee or ACM Turing Awards are for. That's their entire purpose, to promote these people for their accomplishments. It's not like they hide that. And what do you know, Bellard isn't even remotely as popular as those others. I wonder why.


You also need to factor in the time value of money: if the winemaker sells you a 2022 release in 2022, they get paid immediately.

Also factor in temperature and humidity controlled storage (a kitchen fridge will not do), insurance against disasters, backup power generation, and so on. If you think aged wines are overpriced, it is easy to cut out the middleman and age it yourself — so my guess is that the market is reasonably efficient.


> You also need to factor in the time value of money: if the winemaker sells you a 2022 release in 2022, they get paid immediately.

This is right, I forgot about this: at 5% interest rates, 5 years of storage is actually 25% of the original price, which is probably substantial factor.

> Also factor in temperature and humidity controlled storage (a kitchen fridge will not do),

My kitchen fridge example was only meant to provide an estimate for the cost. Controlling humidity upwards is not expensive at all, it’s even cheaper in fact than controlling temperature.

> insurance against disasters, backup power generation, and so on.

These are extremely cheap at scale. You don’t really need backup power generation, the wine won’t spoil from few hours or even days of inappropriate temperature.

> If you think aged wines are overpriced, it is easy to cut out the middleman and age it yourself — so my guess is that the market is reasonably efficient.

My point was rather that the mere cost of storage is not the main part of the premium. Capital cost is probably significantly higher, but what is probably even higher still is speculation premium: not all wine vintages are appreciating equally, and if you just buy random wines, they will likely won’t appreciate all equally over time.


> Alameda is helmed by quants from Jane Street etc.,

The CEO worked at Jane Street for less than 18 months and appears to have had a fairly junior role there. I'm sure they are smart folks but there's a limit to how much you can learn in 18 months, in your first job after college.


Nobody is leaving Jane Street after 18 months - straight out of college, of their own accord.


Was it only 18 months?

Wikipedia states: ...he returned there full-time after graduating [in 2014]. In September 2017, Bankman-Fried quit Jane Street...

Seems closer to 3 years, but it doesn't state whether he started there immediately after graduating or not.

What do you suggest are the reasons for his leaving?


GP was talking about the CEO of Alameda, who, according to page linked by GGP, is

> Caroline Ellison, CEO > Before joining Alameda in 2018, Caroline worked at Jane Street as a trader on the equities desk.

You seem to be talking about SBF.


Huh? Leaving Jane Street to start crypto trading isn't what I would do, but it seems to have worked out well for them. Why does that suggest they didn't choose to leave?


What are you implying?


My statement is clear with no implications at all.


He was fired


Is that a fact, or are you stating that is the implication of the parent comment?


The latter, I didn't even read TFA.

Sorry if my prior message was confusing, but why would a top tier company let go one of their best performers after just a half and a year out fresh of college?


Also not equivalent in terms of tax treatment.


The assets of the company are exactly the same, except that $1*num-shares that was previously on the company's balance sheet is no longer there. The company is less valuable and so the stock goes down.

Having an attractive dividend policy can make a stock more valuable to certain investors, but the act of actually paying out a scheduled dividend basically only makes the stock price go down.


> Is the right to life no longer a human right?

That's not what "the right to life" means. There are lots of policy decisions which have tradeoffs that result in more or less life lost. For example, the government could require that all car engines have a maximum speed of 25 MPH. That would empirically reduce the # of lives lost in automobile accidents, but society has judged the tradeoff (in terms of convenience, transportation time/cost, etc.) to not be worth it -- and that tradeoff does not constitute "violating the right to life".


I’d love to hear more about your experience working in a professional kitchen.


I think the wireless pairing/device switching experience with AirPods is a big reason (not the only reason) why they are so popular.


Curious if you have any evidence for that claim. Looking at https://www.card.iastate.edu/ag_policy_review/article/?a=107 (Figure 1) suggests that rural vs urban unemployment rates have historically been quite similar; if anything, unemployment rates in rural areas were slightly higher than in urban areas. That changed during COVID but that appears to be a historical anomaly.


I don't think Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post has gone badly so far.


Not much for WaPo perhaps, but for bezos that put him in the target sights of lot of people

Many of them state sponsored like Saudi government which targeted him after kashtogi.

He also got hacked and his dick pics were maybe compromised.

Those hacks could have accelerated his divorce too.


And yet, in a remarkable display of self unawareness, WaPo has declared[1] that Musk's move "Could Be Bad News for Free Speech."

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/elon-musks-twitter-i...


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