Meta makes money by selling ads. they want people to be more glued into their platforms and sharing stuff. they hope that people will use their model to make content to share
OpenAI’s models are, quality wise, pretty far ahead of competition. So that’s what they’re spending so much money on. There’s a history of creating things that are expensive then rapidly bringing down the cost, which is what they’ve been doing rather than creating GPT-5
I mean technically it could. For example, to buy goods from China in AU, I need to pay in USD./
For 100 USD in goods, I could have to send AUD cross border to receive 100 USD and then definitely have to send 100 USD cross border to China - nominally triggering 200 USD in payment volume for 100 USD in GDP.
And then for companies using a Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich... well, the volume adds up.
I asked because it seems logically impossible since cross border payments are included in the aggregate of the world gdp. The same mechanism you are describing for the velocity of money also works inside national borders
Most people in the world can definitely not use cryptocurrencies.
Maybe the average nonprivileged will succeed once or twice, but this is like going to Vegas and using the martingale system: It'll make you win consistently, right up to the point where you lose everything you have.
I've always found the "what about the third world" arguments bizarre. As if villages and huts are filled with technical geniuses who will never lose their passwords.
And if not wallet keys, then all the blockchain mini-banks who give you no recourse if you lose your second factor, and don't have to because they're not regulated.
And that's the mini-banks who aren't plain rugpulls, or get hacked.
The people who are privileged enough to successfully be able to use cryptocurrencies are also privileged enough to even more successfully use proper banking.
No they are not, in what world can you transfer money instantly and settle it across borders in seconds? I'd love to see an insecure bitcoin transaction as well.
I don't know much about crypto or cross-border payments.
Is there current crypto solutions that work better than something like transferwise if i wanted to transfer USD to EUR for instance? (cheaper?, faster?, simpler?, reliable?)
Except in one aspect: Because cryptocurrency for these purposes at best use a loophole in AML/KYC laws, at worst just plain break them, if you do it right there's less risk of getting caught (guilty or innocently) in mandated money laundering tripwires.
I've had banks call me about source of funds, and sometimes require proof, for large "unusual" transactions. I was an innocent victim of these audits. It delayed my transactions by maybe minutes.
Yes, probably some percentage of people who've lost money, through no fault of their own, to these extra checks. But for every single one of those there are at least thousands who've lost cryptocurrency due to them not having these checks and audits.
And on top of that of course cryptocurrency transactions are much fewer and move less value.
Yes. Bitcoin - It's cheaper, faster, simpler and more reliable.
It's not just faster on the front end. It settles pretty much instantly on the back end as well, so no counter party risk like in the case of using banks.
you still have currency risk and exchange rate slippage, but even worse because you are introducing a third currency. Any "innovation" crypto does in cross border payments is skirting regulation which clearly will not scale well. Regulators will just crack down when the market is sufficiently large for their attention.
If I need to move money between countries, it certainly is by far the easiest. Traveling in India trying to get my friend money has been an awful headache. With cryptocurrency, it's quite simple
Have you looked into Hawala systems? Unofficial, trust-based money transfer agents can transfer money with a phone call. Have been doing it for decades in India, for sure, since before computers were common. Still works, and no need to risk volatile crypto coins or trust exchanges.
A football hooligan a racist I wouldn't believe it till I see it /s
There is a difference between having racist people in population and having whole system set up rules to discriminate negatively against part of population.
US healthcare for the top 1/4 is far better than what public healthcare is like in most of Western Europe.
In the US if you have good healtchare you have exceptionally fast access to among the world's best healthcare services. You also have a freedom of (ab)use when it comes to utilizing healthcare services; it's a luxury you do not get in most of Europe, where service rationing and very long wait times are normal in the public healthcare sphere (also true in Canada). There are trade-offs in all of these systems.
It sucks if you're in the middle ~40% in the US. It's spectacular if you're in the top 1/4 and your health insurance is covered by your employer.
> Of the Dutch adults surveyed, 59 percent said that they were very confident of receiving high quality and safe health care, compared to only 35 percent of the American adults surveyed.
Since you were replying to a comment about Holland this seemed relevant. Don't know about a general study covering all of Europe or something.
But I guess that's where the "if you're employed by a bigcorp" part comes in. You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious.
> You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious.
Not exactly - larger organizations in the US are able to negotiate better rates with insurance companies. So it's more so that your buck goes further than it is you paying more bucks ;)
the issue i have with this argument, is that it makes healthcare for those who are not in a privileged non existant. (with the boatload of social issues that come with it).
Sure, you might get proper and very good healthcare, but what about those around you in your community?
As an argument in favour of privatised healthcare, this is valid, but in the context of Europeans moving to the US, it doesn't seem relevant. The US is not going to reform its healthcare just because a few Germans don't immigrate.
The very non-privileged get moderately ok, free healthcare via Medicaid (along with numerous other programs for poorer people, including coverage for children, SS disability and so on). That covers the poorest/worst off quarter of the US population approximately.
It's the working poor and middle class that really get screwed with the US system. The well-off pay taxes to cover the free healthcare system that the US has. The working poor and middle class often can't afford the healthcare system, are more frequently at risk while unemployed, and their employers are less likely to provide good coverage as a benefit.
I'd like to understand this better. If I was a software engineer for 20 years and had cover and savings etc then was between jobs for a few months for whatever reason and got into a car crash how would that work.
Would I get medicare/aid?
Are all people students / unemployed expected to be paying monthly premiums to get any kind of cover?
I have had healthcare in the US for a serious accident, but I had travel insurance (UK based) which likely saved me 100,000s of dollars. Fortunately they paid up without question. I'm not sure how that would have worked if I was just some regular student from the US travelling around, would I be bankrupted for life or hoping for crowdfunding? Sounds like if you have an accident in the US you need to be rich or popular (or maybe really poor).
Even if we argue the very disagreeable notion that European healthcare is:
1) heterogeneous
2) subpar
3) public only
Then we’re still left with the fact that most big companies do offer private health coverage in Europe. Mostly this is for less than life threatening illnesses, psychological help and physiotherapy.
Well that notion is wrong anyway because every European country has their own system. Some are mainly public with a purely optional private option, like Spain. Some are kinda forced private because otherwise you have to wait for years, like Ireland. Some are absolutely mandatory private like the Netherlands.
And yes in most countries some classes are purely private. I think Britain is a big exception though I've heard the NHS is also not what it used to be.
> If you're employed by a top company in the US, your health insurance is generally much better quality than most public option in Europe
Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO.
The bigger assumption would be that a person with a good employer plan today, had no health conditions that went under-treated as a child and are more acute in adulthood.
Someone in a UHC country may not have top-quality access to care, but it is the simple act of access to primary care itself that can have conditions diagnosed and treated early. That in turn will have a compound effect on QOL, even if you do earn the Tim Cook-level coverage plan when you're 50.
> Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO.
Companies are required to offer the same benefits to all employees, so yes you do get the same health insurance as the CFO.
This is one reason that companies keep pushing low-level labor jobs to contractors or falsely separate contracting companies. They want to attract software engineers with good health insurance, but avoid offering it to their janitors.
I think this article totally misses out on the UI/UX benefits of an SVG. For example, I've been able to implement amazing animations that require little effort from me and allow designers to really show off their talents.
SVGs may not be perfect, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons. When I work on the frontend, I think there are very few use cases where I have to worry about the readability of an SVG. The author also kind of lost me at JSON-based graphics.
