The above marginalia.nu just surfaced the following very nice article for me, which neither Google nor Kagi returned in their top 10 search results for the same terms ('thaad aegis hwasong'):
Nasdaq is down 30%. Clearly macro factors like rates and inflation and recessionary pressures are putting pressure on rate sensitive companies generally speaking. You can’t just say it’s ad tracking when dozens of mid and large cap tech stocks are down 30-80% ytd
> This logic has broader implications than most investors realise. Now imagine you will receive $100 a year, for ever. By the reasoning above, this has a finite present value, since compound interest means payments in the distant future are almost worthless. With interest rates at 1%, the payment stream is worth $10,000; at 5%, it is worth $2,000. But as well as reducing the value, the higher rate also changes the distribution of that value. With rates at 1%, less than a tenth of the stream’s value comes from payments made in the first ten years. At 5%, around two-fifths does.
and
> In other words, higher interest rates dramatically alter firms’ incentives when choosing which timeline to invest over. Sacrificing short-term profits for longer-term gains is one thing when you are trying to persuade investors that your superapp, machine-learning algorithm or gene-sequencing widget has the potential to up-end an industry. It is another when even the best-case scenario has its value so heavily skewed towards what can be done in the next decade. Startup founders are used to shaking off derision over implausible, Utopian dreams. It is more of a kick in the teeth to realise that even Utopia is not worth much unless it can be achieved in short order.
Sorry for the long quotes, it was the best I could do, I highly recommend that article in its entirety.
Thanks for this, its confusing for many as to why growth companies(low/no-profit) are getting hit so hard due to rising interest rates and these quotes and the article linked explain the reasoning very well.
However, I think the economist column/article misses some important points:
1: There is a stereotype that corporations only look at the next quarter’s earnings. The article argues the opposite, that corporations are long term focused. The article needs to address that point.
2: Stocks and dividends should be inflation proof (with some assumptions, such as revenues increase with inflation).
3. The article doesn’t seem to mention bonds, even though it talks about constant $ returns. What?
The most interesting part of the article for me was “The original marshmallow test, it turned out, had a flaw. Exclude some children from better-off families (which seems to make them both more willing to delay gratification and more likely to succeed in later life) and much of its predictive power suddenly disappears.” [Slight edits]
The metaverse is their next play to build a world where they are a bit more shielded from Apple/Google/Microsoft's hardware influence. Pivoting a large business is really hard.
I think this, along with a slew of other factors as well.
Meta pivoting to burn money on a VR universe that nobody actually seems to want.
Meta burning FB users by constantly altering their FB news feed, making it less and less a place for friends, and more a place to see endless reposted memes and ads for drop-ship products and stolen IP tshirts.
Meta burning Instagram users by trying to force everyone's favorite photo-sharing app to be a shittier version of TikTok, as well as the above constant feed refactors...
> What makes us more special than other animals? Also nothing, in my view.
If you really believe that then you should go live out in a field and eat grass like oxen rather than writing that comment on the internet. If humans aren't more special, then nothing is special at all.
But "to any person", e.g., a CIA asset in the field might be exposed by a gmail user, thus threatening her/his life, thus pre-emptively disclose the gmailer's info to law enforcement?
Or imagine an idle threat is made off-hand in a private gmail, so pre-emptively disclose that threat to law enforcement?
In the sci-fi Minority Report scenario, Google could use AI language models on all gmail to make a judgment call on "emergent danger of serious physical injury". If I plan to go bunjee jumping with an unreliable provider, Google scans my gmail and tells law enforcement?!?
Yes good examples of how it can be abused. I'm certain the interpretation could be very liberal depending on the person making the decision.
I know a person who was banned from twitter and was nearly fired because he dead-named somebody. The explanation was that it was literal violence against the person he dead-named, because so many trans people self harm if they don't feel that their identity is affirmed. The person who was banned says it was a force of habit because the person had only very recently went public with their new identity, but it did not stop the ban hammer. He almost lost his job as well because the tweet was posted in a public slack channel. HR left it up the person who was dead-named to make the decision, and they decided not to fire him.
I could absolutely see a scenario like the above happening in gmail or some other Google product, and the decision-maker deciding that it was a threat to a person's life and should be disclosed. To some people that makes perfect sense. To others it does not. The point is simply that when we let humans make subjective decisions like that, we get all the downsides of human judgment.
https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/the-rol...
(duckduckgo.com returned it as the 5th returned result (not bad)),
Thanks!