Not to side track too much from this discussion, but I looked at that PolyMarket event: "US civil war before 2027?" Currently, it is priced at 91.3 USD cents for No. If you bet 100 USD, the payout for No will be 109.43. That is very good return -- ~9.5% for 12 months of lending (as PolyMarket required full payment at the time of trade). That is twice the (retail) risk free rate at the moment. I am actually tempted to buy a large part of the order book. Am I missing something obvious?
Also, if you enjoy troll humor, the comments section is very funny.
Considering reports like "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela" [1] one risk is poorly written small print, meaning you might not actually be betting on the thing you think you're betting on. This could also err in your favour, of course - but it's still a source of risk.
There's also the risks involved in cryptocurrency generally - it's the wild west, rife with scams, hacks, unexpected fees, and paperwork.
And thirdly, prediction markets often lack market depth, so if you want to invest a non-trivial amount the price can move a lot. You want to gamble $2,000 to win $190? No problem. You want to gamble $200,000 maybe no-one will take your bet. Can you be bothered to go through all the KYC paperwork rigmarole for $190 ?
To list a few: the risk of Polymarket going under, the risk of Polymarket mishandling your money, the risk of Polygon going under, the risk of Ethereum going under, the risk of USDC depegging, the risk of interests going up, and, most obvious of all, the risk of a civil war.
PolyMarket bets are becoming ever more problematic the wider it gets known, carrying the manipulation incentives from stock markets into every bettable aspect of society.
> Total garbage. Spread by a $9bn company with a 1m-follower account, a post viewed by 4.5m people. Pure disinformation for financial gain, with serious consequences for actual human lives.
Shashank Joshi - @shashj - Jan 12 - https://x.com/shashj/status/2010766014829478393
Not at all. Do you really think there is a risk of civil war in the United States in 2026? To me: It sounds like crazy people. I will make that be all day long!
If you haven't been paying attention to American politics, there are currently widespread protests due to a woman being shot by ICE last week. It looks like the current administration may be seeking violent unrest in the hopes of delaying elections.
Not wrong, but don't forget there are many militias with itchy trigger fingers all over the political spectrum here, though admittedly some parties have more affiliated with them than others. It's not a stretch to assume should fighting in the streets escalate beyond ICE shenanigans that larger armies would not quickly congeal from the pocket groups and individuals.
> there are many militias with itchy trigger fingers all over the political spectrum here
That’s still not a civil war in the conventional sense. If it gets entrenched and coördinated it could be come something we’ll debate, e.g. the Troubles. But insurgency != civil war.
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Civil wars are large-scale mobilizations. That’s what makes them uniquely destructive. Insurgencies are also destructive, but in a categorically-different way.
I am, under the right circumstance. I'm not a pacificist, at least not historically. Although, we can banter all day with tough words, but the reality is that none of us can really predict how we will react to a situation until we are in it.
Interesting - I found this quantitative historical study [0] showing that while a civil war does significantly increase the likelihood of inflation, only 36% of countries analyzed which had a civil war between 1975-1999 ended up in an inflationary crisis. And with the USD having such a strong foundation, I would expect the risk to be significantly lower.
I am speculating wildly but I would expect the exact opposite due to different actors trying to destabilize the US to the point of no recovery in such an event.
I love comments like this. You pop out of your (presumably New Zealand) prepper bomb shelter to get enough WiFi signal to make a post. I will bet against people like you all day long and make lots of money. How much are you willing to bet that there will be civil war in the US in 2026? Let's meet on PolyMarket!
There were large protests in the wake of a law enforcement officer killing someone in 2020 too. Notably, there was not a civil war, even though the Trump administration used the protests as cover for bad behavior then too
2020 was a single accidental case as the result of a poor system. Many people even from within the system on all levels agreed something went wrong and apologized. Today's situation is different, as the whole system is weaponized on purpose from one specific layer/group against the other layers/groups of the system. It's an internal conflict within the system itself, and a prime-example for justifying a civil war. And at the time Trump was still on the leash of his own adminstration.
There are a few like this. You can bet on Jesus not coming back in the calendar year for a little pocket money.
Funny, because a bit like the yes side of the civil war scenario, if JC comes back and someone is the sort of person to bet that he will, then do they really need the payout in those circumstances; and will the gambling website be in a position to pay out?
Polymarket and other prediction markets dont take risk on the trades. Two sides are needed to make a market so you’re likely to get your payout. So all the people taking the “safe” bet lose their collateral and the winners get the proceeds if the unlikely event happens.
> Not all of Apple‘s chips need to be fabbed at the smallest size, those could certainly go elsewhere.
When I saw that TSMC continues to run old fabs, I immediately thought about this idea. I am sure when Apple is designing various chips for their products, they design for a specific node based on available capacity. Not all chips need to be the smallest node size.
Another thing: I am seeing a bunch of comments here alluding to Apple changing fabs. While I am not an expert, it is surely much harder than people understand. The precise process of how transistors are made is different in each fab. I highly doubt it is trivial to change fabs.
My understanding, and I’m a layman, is it basically requires making new masks. And that’s not trivial.
I guess you’d be doing that anyway with a brand new chip. But still probably easier to work with the tools/fab you know well.
I suppose you’d have to do it just switching nodes at TSMC. Which is why the A13 (or whatever) probably never moves to smaller nodes.
Sometimes Apple updates the chip in a product that doesn’t seem to need it, like the AppleTV. I wonder if it’s because the old node is going away and it’s easier to just use a newer chip that was designed for the newer node.
> 4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
This is a very mature, balanced take. If I may advise: Try some experiments on yourself. You already know how you feel and how you socialise without drinking. Try drinking various amounts in different social settings. How does it feel? Do you like yourself and your life more before? Then go back. Else, continue experimenting until you find a sweet spot.
My experience is similar. I think there is a combination of "some gyms are more social" and "some people are good at breaking the ice with strangers". On social media, I frequently hear people say stuff like: "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." I am not doubting their story, but it doesn't happen to me.
> remote work ruined my mental health
I'm sorry to hear it. I'm not here to start a holy war about remote work. Can you share some details? For me, remote work has me very quickly "falling apart" -- showering at 2PM or not at all. Going to the office forces some structure into my life and everything else flows from that. To be clear: I understand that a lot of people love remote work.
> "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym."
Their definition of "a friend" can wildly vary from yours. Especially if such relationship is cultivated only at the gym. I'd hardly call it "friendship".
Remote work has allowed me to build the structure I need to function and perform at a high level. I have severe ADHD and do not fit well into conventional office environments, not because I lack capability, but because my work is most effective when done on my own terms and schedule. I've worked remotely on and off for most of my life (I grew up on a farm, so "working from home" was already quite natural to me.)
This is also colored a little by the fact that remote work is no longer really just an optional for me. Due to a spinal cord injury, I need flexibility to manage just ongoing existence, rehabilitation, and frequent medical appointments. An in-office role simply isn’t compatible with those realities, though the most recent surgeries do make it more viable than it was even twelve months ago.
I’m fortunate to work for a remote organisation that recognises this arrangement as mutually beneficial: I’m able to do my best work, and they get the full value of my expertise.
With all of that being said, I know people whom are far more aligned with you. Remote work is not particuarly beneficial for them, they indeed need an externally inforced structure and so would be best (and happiest) in office. I would never tell them otherwise and nor would they do the same to me.
I am thankful for the most part that many (though not all) of us somewhat have the ability to work in the way in which is best for us (and those employing us.)
I like this post. It is well-balanced. Unfortunatley, we don't see enough of this in discussions of Rust vs $lang. Can you share a specific example of where the "unit cost of performance" in Rust is worse than C++?
The simplest example is `memcpy(dst, src, len)` and similar iterative byte copying operations. If the function did not use noalias, the compiler wouldn't be free to optimize individual byte read/writes into register-sized writes, as the destination may overlap with the source. In practice this means 8x more CPU instructions per copy operation on a 64-bit machine.
Note that memcpy specifically may already be implemented this way under the hood because it requires noalias; but I imagine similar iterative copying operations can be optimized in a like manner ad-hoc when aliasing information is baked in like it is with Rust.
Say you have 2 pointers (that might overlap). You (or the compiler) keep one value read from the first pointer in a register, since the value is needed multiple times.
You then write access the second pointer. Now the value you kept in the register is invalidated since you might have overwritten it through the overlapping pointers.
You raise a good point here. When I think about writing multi-threaded code, three things come to mind about why it is so easy in Java and C#: (1) The standard library has lots of support for concurrency. (2) Garbage collection. (3) Debuggers have excellent support for multi-threaded code.
> When writing single-threaded code takes 90% of effort of writing multi-threaded one
That "when" is doing some heavy lifting! More seriously: You raise a very interesting point. When I moved from C++ to Java (10+ years ago), I was initially so nervous to add threads to my Java code. Why? Because it was (then) difficult and dangerous to do it in C++. C++ debuggers were awful, so I didn't think I could debug problems with multi-threaded C++ code. (Of course, the C++ ecosystem has drastically improved in the last 10 years, so I am sure it is now much more pleasant (and safe) to write multi-threaded C++ code.) When I finally sat down to add threads to some Java code, I could not believe how easy it was, including debugging. As a result, going forward, I was much more likely to add threads to my Java... or even start with a multi-threaded design, even if there is only a modest performance improvement.
Also, if you enjoy troll humor, the comments section is very funny.
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