• 1 Post
  • 69 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle
  • Some important info that is missing:

    1. Proposed legislation is far from being an actual law. It has only once passed the committee (1st stage out of 5), after which got sent to be re-written. Now it’s at pre-1st stage.

    2. So far, it has received 2 negative reviews from the administration. First one, from 2022, said it’s redundant, and second one, from 2023 that it’s… still just as redundant as it was.

    3. 2 out of 3 authors have removed their signatures since the first negative review.

    Basically, there’s little to no chance this would ever pass. Our “crazy printer” may be insane, but it only does so if there is an ass to lick.

    I could even link everything if anybody wants me to. Doubt it won’t get removed, but still.


  • Understandable, ty

    To give you some insight, afaik, MacOS is the most horrible to port to because you can’t just compile for it and have to get the hardware first, pay for some sort of key second, and reacquire it every time you fail to port it. All of that is for a very insignificant bit of sales.

    Linux, on the other hand, that I can not explain.




  • Negotiations happen when one or, more likely, two sides don’t see a way to improve their positions with military force.

    The rumors you’re speaking of are a direct consequence of Russia being an autocracy. When you have a country whose ruler doesn’t leave on their own (a dictator), people start speculating on when he’s going to die. These rumors have been going around for about a decade, I believe, and are pretty much meaningless.

    Now, about “securing a legacy.” I think it’s much more trivial than that. Invading Ukraine was a good way to secure presidency for the next 1-2 terms and to eradicate opposition within the country. If that’s the case, then, in a sense, he got what he wanted, although he likely also expected the war to be short and victorious (judging by the state media narrative at the time). That didn’t happen. And now there are other issues at hand for him.


  • I look into those regularly. Those are credible sources that are often used by our scientists, but you have to be very careful with statistics during war periods.

    What do you think the majority of people hear when asked, “Do you support actions of Russian military in Ukraine?”. They hear, “Are you a traitor?” and answer accordingly. The majority (4 out of 5, I believe, if not more) refuse to answer at all. So, it’s not exactly representative.

    What we look at instead is questions that are not this direct. Such as “Do you think Russia should continue or start peace talks?”. The majority (58%) is for peace talks. This number has increased since September 2022 by 10%, whilst the number of pro-war people decreased from 44% to 34%. Their quality also changed. For “absolutely should start peace talks” went from 21% (out of all votes) up to 26%, whilst for “absolutely should continue military actions” went from 29% down to 21%.

    The longer things continue, the less support Russia’s government has. That’s what can be said for certain. The other conclusion we can derive is that war isn’t popular.

    Edit: Oh, and the youth, 67% of the youth (18-24) is for peace talks, 23% pro-war. 65% for ages 25-39, only 25% pro-war.

    The vast majority of pro-war people are elderly. Can you guess who also watches the TV the most? And who the TV is controlled by?

    For the full picture, I’ll also add “they started it, so it’s their responsibility, we had no choice in it” This phrase explains the whole mentality of Russians very well.



  • They’re crap. People will be and are looking for ways to evade restrictions.

    Right now, they’re only limiting speed with certain providers in certain locations. There are at least three ways that I know of to avoid it.

    The thing is, I don’t know how far they’ll take it. Blocking YouTube is a major political risk. Practically, everybody uses it for one reason or another. So, unlike their “special military operation,” this (as mercantile as it sounds) will potentially have a bigger impact on everybody’s lives. But you really can never be sure with our mafia-in-charge anymore.







  • Finance management major here, I’d argue that governments aren’t inherently inefficient.

    On a local level, government organisations are essentially the same as non-profits. The only difference is in who they are accountable to. Even KPI are pretty much the same.

    The inefficiency of a government in contrast to the free market is in its inability to adjust to people’s needs quickly on a global scale. Imagine a company that has to sell a little bit of everything and then some. What kind of resource does it need to have to fully satisfy the demand? It’s practically impossible to make a vertically integrated system that would do this amount of research, let alone organize all the production and supply chains. It doesn’t matter if it’s a government or an entity. They all will drown in beurocracy, except the government is usually stricter as they tend to play it safe.

    Hence, it’s really a non-issue if a government takes control over parts of the market. And because they can’t facilitate it all, they take over socially significant parts of it, like municipality governance, military, and healthcare.

    Also, you (the person reading, not the person I’m responding to) should never be mistaken in thinking that the free market is perfectly efficient. It isn’t. Creating points of inefficiency drives a lot of revenue. Think purposefully limiting demand to drive prices up. This is what’s happening with insulin in the US, for example. If you have perfectly inelastic demands, you can make your product infinitely expensive.




  • Let’s assess the effects this change could cause on real numbers.

    Note: This is a duplicate of a part of a comment I’ve written here above as a response, but I don’t want it to be buried. Hope that’s fine

    I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets)

    • Sales - 29056
    • Freight, transportation, distribution - (974)
    • Cost of goods sold - (19608)
    • EBIT - 8474
    • Interest - (w/e)
    • EBT - 1952
    • Taxes - (670)
    • Net earning - 1282

    Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.

    • Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

    Let’s see what happens to our efficiency if the changes take effect.

    All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

    Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit to productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

    • New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2
    • New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles and/or grants tax privileges.

    So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20.3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

    Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation. If they can manage the inflation, I don’t see why this couldn’t be possible.


  • Edit: you said “but nobody’s explaining the economics to me”, here you go, here’s the basics of corporate financial management with real numbers and a tiny bit of macroeconomics at the end.

    Wait, I don’t get it. You’re saying if you pay a worker 1000$ a week and get revenue of 1100$, then you have a profit margin of 10%. But that’s NOT profit margin (at least not the one one would use for analysis). Not to mention that those numbers are unrealistic because you’d be working at a loss for a very long time, almost guarantee.

    You can’t just pull numbers like that and say, “unprofitable!”. Of course it isn’t. You made it that way.

    Besides, you’re ignoring the rest of the expenses that often outweigh the payroll fund.

    Back to what you called “profit margin,” I’d call it “Return on Payroll Fund.” It’s weird, I don’t like it, it ignores all of the other costs that go into creating a product, don’t use it. In financial management, we use RoS, which is EBIT/Revenue. That’s probably what you were thinking of. Another name for it would be “operating profit margin,” likewise net profit margin would account for ALL of the expenses and not just operating ones.

    Now, let’s look at real numbers. I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets) Sales - 29056 Freight, transportation, distribution - (974) Cost of goods sold - (19608) EBIT - 8474 EBT - 1952 Taxes - (670) Net earning - 1282

    Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.

    Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

    Let’s see what happens to our efficiency once the changes take effect.

    All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

    Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit in productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

    New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2 New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles.

    So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20,3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

    Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation.


  • I was interested in VR for a very long time. Recently, I got to actually try it out.

    I primarily view Apple Vision Pro as a proof of concept type of device. Sales being limited both in quantity and territorially indicate that. It has brought 3 major improvements to the table, compared to other headsets:

    1. Quality of passthrough
    2. User interface
    3. Display quality

    When you think about it, however, it’s not that much to make it an obvious choice over other devices.

    Passthough is needed for navigating through space. It does not help with productivity as your vision would be focused on the interface and not the environment. Remember warping on Quest 3? Much less noticeable than on videos for the exact same reason.

    There is no buts with the user interface and display. They are simply great, best that there is.

    Now, for the part that makes Vision Pro from a great productivity device on paper into a “dev kit available to masses” (I like that description, it does feel that way a lot, ty Ghostalmedia)

    Eye strain is a major issue. It is very difficult to use the device for more than a couple of hours without getting tired. This goes for all of the VR headsets out there. I guess you can get used to it over time, though.

    Limited usability. Quest 2/3, Pico 4, Valve Index, they all do things you wish Vision Pro could. Primarily usage of physical controllers. Imagine sculpturing without controllers because I can’t. Hand tracking is just not up to par.

    Battery solution is another issue. Not being able to swap what is otherwise a Power Bank without disabling the device and being unable to use any other battery than Apple’s own is at the very least annoying. Not exactly an issue if you’re too tired by the time it runs out.

    Finally, the VR space itself is unfortunately not mature enough. There’s a lot of work still to be done. Even when talking games, despite some amazing titles like Half-life Alyx, the vast majority where controls wouldn’t make you dizzy are all pretty much like arcade mini-games, where you either teleport from point to point or not move at all. Developers simply have yet to figure out an organic way of user navigating through virtual space. (Doesn’t mean they aren’t fun, though)

    Overall, I believe Vision Pro isn’t really a mass consumer product, but it did do a lot by bringing more attention to VR as a whole, as well as pointing out additional user-cases for the technology. Because of Vision Pro, Meta started paying more attention to details, which ultimately will benefit the consumer (in fact, it already has yeilded results).


  • CPU 3600, Mobo b450m, GPU 6700(xt), RAM 16Gb 3200mhz

    Something like this: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/WC2VTY

    Comes out at 637€. A little over budget, but that’s also all new parts. It’s definitely enough for 1080p, often 1440p even.

    To get the most out of the budget, I’d definitely be looking at the used market.

    Definitely used 3600 for CPU. They go for very little and will pair nicely even with 3070 class cards.

    Used 6700 or 6700xt for GPU, but since they aren’t as robust as CPUs, do pay closer attention to damages, dust, performance compared to benchmark, and etc.

    Used case, because they don’t matter unless for looks. Just make sure it allows for air to pass through.

    Heatsink can sometimes come together with CPU. I’d be spending no more than 20$ to cool this one. (However, PA120 is kinda too good to pass on, despite being overkill for the CPU).

    RAM may as well be new, they aren’t very expensive. SP Xpower Turbine, Ripjaws, or Kingston Fury 2x8Gb 3200 or 3600 are all good options.

    Motherboard, wouldn’t buy used. And I wouldn’t be buying the lowest chipset either. b550m DS3H would be reasonable here or b450m (“m” means mATX, which are smaller than non-m, and usually cheaper), depending on if you need the extra features of b550 chipset.

    Power Supply should never be bought used, look up tier lists, and go with middle range one for reliability. 550W and over should be enough for the build. Try not to cheap out on these.

    Storage, also never to be bought used. Look for M.2 NVMes. SN770 is best bang for the buck imo, but even Kingston NV2 will do fine. 256Gb is enough for OS and some additional software. Imo, that’s too little. Get at least 500Gb. Ideally, 1Tb. Mind you, you could always add more later.