The "return to player" numbers for lottery tickets are on the order of 60% https://wizardofodds.com/are-lottery-players-smart/. Many states have online lottery apps, they do TV and radio ads, etc. Why should that be…
If you read the settlements that come out of these lawsuits, you will pretty much always find an 8 to low 9 figure settlement (that the lawyers get a third of), maybe some superficial policy changes, and $12 checks to…
Is there a widely used phrase which represents the 95-97% range? One did not come to my head.
Yes, I think you can make an argument that the jury verdict was in line with the law... if that's the case then I think the law here is ridiculous. I can read what the law is, we're having a discussion. If the story of…
The argument that research was suppressed and this is somehow damning is absurd on its face. The most obvious reason being that they obviously didn't do a very good job of suppressing it given that we hear this claim…
The average park in America is only like 5-10 acres. And of that only certain areas may have playstructures / basketball courts / benches / other things that people can actually use. So sufficiently loud audio can ruin…
That same line of reasoning could apply to music on planes. No one really needs to use a particular airline at a particular time or use a public park at any given time. It ceases to be a public place if a small group of…
The tax avoidance schemes used by most major US companies are to avoid US taxes on foreign income. Most developed countries have territorial tax systems so their companies do not even need to use these fancy legal…
Does Leslie Groves deserve (some) credit for the Manhattan Project? Obviously there were people under him doing the actual day to day physics and chemistry work, but if a less effective person was in charge, the whole…
How much worse could you get from a society where 80% of people are living in extreme poverty and where in a good year inflation is 250%? Maduro was not some great guarantor of stability who kept a divided society…
Venezuela was not a society held together by a strongman unlike Iraq/Libya/Syria. It also does not have the religious or tribal divides those places did. The country was already on the brink of collapse from a…
Sadly I am not in a position to hire anyone but just a heads up that if I click your resume link I get a Microsoft login page
Relatedly about another member of the same group: > Penchukov’s political connections helped him evade prosecution by Ukrainian cybercrime investigators for many years. The late son of former Ukrainian President Victor…
It took 10 years for Madoff victims to get most of their money back and he was literally just depositing the money into his checking account. He also almost certainly had much fewer victims than this guy did. Based on…
Citizenship by investment revenue was 20% of St Kitts’ GDP in 2023. Look at the Henley & Partners website - pretty much every developed country (much of EU, Singapore, Switzerland, many Asian countries) offer at least…
You can buy Austrian citizenship for ~5M EUR. Cyprus and Malta offered similar schemes at much lower prices until recently. Italy incentivizes people to move their tax residence there by letting them pay a 200k EUR lump…
It would seem that accumulating stuff is a waste of time at a point much lower than one billion. On the other hand, giving every Debian maintainer $500 a month is ~$5M a year. Add in Gentoo, Alpine, and other things I…
I see what you mean. I feel like it's a collective action problem. If Myanmar had its security situation together, the incentive to meddle would be much lower. No one funds rebel groups just for the sake of it, except…
Do policy people see any light at the end of the tunnel for Myanmar? I feel like we just need to give intelligence + a couple billion in weapons to a Burmese version of Dostum. Make it a condition of receiving aid that…
Well in all fairness to China/India, they might prefer to work with a legitimate government, but the legitimate government of Myanmar (when it existed) has always been completely dysfunctional. It also has never really…
They backed a group of militias to invade areas where this was happening [0]. They also pressured family members of tens of thousands Chinese in northern Myanmar to return [1]. China literally waltzed into Kokang and…
When a decently sized percentage of it goes to "independent monitors" almost entirely run by ex-DOJ revolving door types, yeah. See https://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/companies-payoffs-wa... And some think that…
I still don't understand the Polymarket business model. Why take the legal risk of $3 billion in volume as an unlicensed commodities exchange if you're not even going to get paid for it? 1% would be $30,000,000!
This! And where do people think open source funding, hackathons, bug bounties for software that's not even theirs, oss-fuzz, really incredible but not necessarily profitable research like Project Zero comes from?…
This interpretation is at odds with what happens in Rotterdam aka cocaine ground zero (or is it Antwerp now?). It's the most automated port in the world. They still routinely bust port insiders who help crooks there.…
The "return to player" numbers for lottery tickets are on the order of 60% https://wizardofodds.com/are-lottery-players-smart/. Many states have online lottery apps, they do TV and radio ads, etc. Why should that be…
If you read the settlements that come out of these lawsuits, you will pretty much always find an 8 to low 9 figure settlement (that the lawyers get a third of), maybe some superficial policy changes, and $12 checks to…
Is there a widely used phrase which represents the 95-97% range? One did not come to my head.
Yes, I think you can make an argument that the jury verdict was in line with the law... if that's the case then I think the law here is ridiculous. I can read what the law is, we're having a discussion. If the story of…
The argument that research was suppressed and this is somehow damning is absurd on its face. The most obvious reason being that they obviously didn't do a very good job of suppressing it given that we hear this claim…
The average park in America is only like 5-10 acres. And of that only certain areas may have playstructures / basketball courts / benches / other things that people can actually use. So sufficiently loud audio can ruin…
That same line of reasoning could apply to music on planes. No one really needs to use a particular airline at a particular time or use a public park at any given time. It ceases to be a public place if a small group of…
The tax avoidance schemes used by most major US companies are to avoid US taxes on foreign income. Most developed countries have territorial tax systems so their companies do not even need to use these fancy legal…
Does Leslie Groves deserve (some) credit for the Manhattan Project? Obviously there were people under him doing the actual day to day physics and chemistry work, but if a less effective person was in charge, the whole…
How much worse could you get from a society where 80% of people are living in extreme poverty and where in a good year inflation is 250%? Maduro was not some great guarantor of stability who kept a divided society…
Venezuela was not a society held together by a strongman unlike Iraq/Libya/Syria. It also does not have the religious or tribal divides those places did. The country was already on the brink of collapse from a…
Sadly I am not in a position to hire anyone but just a heads up that if I click your resume link I get a Microsoft login page
Relatedly about another member of the same group: > Penchukov’s political connections helped him evade prosecution by Ukrainian cybercrime investigators for many years. The late son of former Ukrainian President Victor…
It took 10 years for Madoff victims to get most of their money back and he was literally just depositing the money into his checking account. He also almost certainly had much fewer victims than this guy did. Based on…
Citizenship by investment revenue was 20% of St Kitts’ GDP in 2023. Look at the Henley & Partners website - pretty much every developed country (much of EU, Singapore, Switzerland, many Asian countries) offer at least…
You can buy Austrian citizenship for ~5M EUR. Cyprus and Malta offered similar schemes at much lower prices until recently. Italy incentivizes people to move their tax residence there by letting them pay a 200k EUR lump…
It would seem that accumulating stuff is a waste of time at a point much lower than one billion. On the other hand, giving every Debian maintainer $500 a month is ~$5M a year. Add in Gentoo, Alpine, and other things I…
I see what you mean. I feel like it's a collective action problem. If Myanmar had its security situation together, the incentive to meddle would be much lower. No one funds rebel groups just for the sake of it, except…
Do policy people see any light at the end of the tunnel for Myanmar? I feel like we just need to give intelligence + a couple billion in weapons to a Burmese version of Dostum. Make it a condition of receiving aid that…
Well in all fairness to China/India, they might prefer to work with a legitimate government, but the legitimate government of Myanmar (when it existed) has always been completely dysfunctional. It also has never really…
They backed a group of militias to invade areas where this was happening [0]. They also pressured family members of tens of thousands Chinese in northern Myanmar to return [1]. China literally waltzed into Kokang and…
When a decently sized percentage of it goes to "independent monitors" almost entirely run by ex-DOJ revolving door types, yeah. See https://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/companies-payoffs-wa... And some think that…
I still don't understand the Polymarket business model. Why take the legal risk of $3 billion in volume as an unlicensed commodities exchange if you're not even going to get paid for it? 1% would be $30,000,000!
This! And where do people think open source funding, hackathons, bug bounties for software that's not even theirs, oss-fuzz, really incredible but not necessarily profitable research like Project Zero comes from?…
This interpretation is at odds with what happens in Rotterdam aka cocaine ground zero (or is it Antwerp now?). It's the most automated port in the world. They still routinely bust port insiders who help crooks there.…