It's sad no one can buy employees shares yet, since Uber doesn't report to the SEC. The thing this tender offer does is allow smaller, poorer holders a price base to negotiate a loan from the bank. The loan is backed by the asset - the shares. It is a weird way to think about debt if you aren't an accounting or finance professional.
This article just made me go check my coinbase account. Of course i did $20,080 worth of transactions and the worst part is the coins I transferred in Coinbase assigned a cost basis of $2-5 for some reason...God I wish I had purchased.5 bitcoins for $2.38.
Now it looks like I have almost $15,000 in capital gains. Wonderful.
Our company is a vendor on it and it is a PITA. I don't expect anything new to be better. It's going to be the same garbage crap. My favorite part is they demand proof that you are giving the government the lowest price you charge any customer. Then they make you do hours of paperwork for any small order. And finally they audit the living crap out of you. They asked us to provide detailed quotes from every sale we had made to EVERY CUSTOMER (Government and commercial) for the WHOLE YEAR. Hundred of thousands of transactions... I can't wait until this new program comes out:P
Obviously no one around here cares about the reason bitcoin broke records and the massive developments changing its core software. Bitcoin is going to have its first major hardfork in a long time and become something much better.
Bitcoin Segwit2x is a proposed change which is intended to improve the speed and cost of Bitcoin transactions. The Segwit opens up new possibilities like the Lightning Network, Tumblebit, Schnorr Signatures, Confidential Transactions, Cross-chain atomic swaps, and so on.
I don't think any of those crazy terms are the important part. What most people don't seem to get around here is that bitcoin and blockchain technology evolves and changes like any other piece of software, so your complaints today could be gone tomorrow by writing a few lines of code.
People are failing to see the big picture. Imagine if Facebook started paying you in cryptocurrency (FACE) for every post and picture you posted. Then they created a market where advertisers could buy the tokens and use them to buy ad space. A crazy feedback loops would develop as people addicted to FB turned posting their kid's pics into full-time jobs and Facebook's world domination would be complete.
They FTC is going to go NUTS when they go into any jewelry store. When they figure out that they didn't really save $4,000 on that engagement ring... all hell will break loose.
I guess I'm one of those normal millenials who literally just spent the week in Spain eating avocado, manchego and jamon toast. I had no problem with the 40k downpayment on my new house at the age of 27. I made $28k per year in 2008. I'm up to $40k now.
The thing I didn't have was student loan debt or any medical problems. I feel very sorry for my friends with $40k in student loans. They won't be able to invest in a house until later. They never got the chance to invest in the stock market post 2008. They got ripped off.
IBM will pay people the same, but now the employees will have a commute to and from work. This will add about 1-2 hours per day to the employee's "work". Even if IBM's claims are true that this will increase creativity/productivity, it is at considerable expense to every employee. What a great way to shake down your employees.
Gamestop owns a sizable chunk of the download business (about $1 billion of digital downloads per year). They also own a chunk of Steam and benefit by selling Steam cards and digital codes and will sell the Xbox cards.
I don't think the closing of stores is new, that is inevitable. Gamestop's plan to convert old stores to ThinkGeek stores is probably going to go the way of Sharper Image...
The console refresh cycle is just beginning though. I know it's impossible for/. readers to comprehend, but not everyone thinks computers and digital downloads are "easy".
Instead of buying from Amazon, all those customers bought from the small business website selling the same items. That $150 million didn't just disappear.
They house price to income ratio is almost double what it was in the 80s.
Duh, if people are making the same amount but houses cost almost twice as much, they won't buy one. If they find one they can afford, they probably won't move.
If you think of the house price to income ratio as metric to determine the "value" you are getting for buying a home at market prices that year, value has dropped substantially. Unless, of course you think the price to income ratio can go up indefinitely.
People keep bring up comments like "I wouldn't work". That's not what I'm worried about. I live in the South. Here, if you gave people a UBI, they would just farm in their backyards and smoke meth...which is what they already do, but I digress.
I would love to be able to subsistence farm, eat everything I grow and still collect a UBI to pay my mortgage. What is supposed to inspire me to grow more than I need and sell it? Selling sounds like a pain. I'll work (for myself), but what makes me actually participate in the larger economy? Would you tell people they can't just grow their own wheat, brew their own beer and consume it all while collecting UBI?
People also forget about insurance costs. Your typical insurance policy does not cover the vehicle being used as a taxi. Commercial liability insurance makes driving for Uber well below minimum wage work when vehicle depreciation is also factored in. This is compounded when there is an accident.
When you get into an accident as a passenger in an Uber vehicle, Uber will fight tooth and nail to make sure they don't have to pay anything. So will the insurance company for the driver.
The rich don't horde money. The only situation where hoarding money occurs would be if a "rich" took their dollars and shoved them under a mattress...which is what poor people *actually* do, and why the government is so afraid of deflation (when hiding money under a mattress might actually be profitable). Keeping money in a bank account doesn't mean it sits in a vault somewhere collecting dust. The banks loan the money to people for houses and for cars or to businesses for capital investment.
When poor people get money, they spend it right away on consumer goods. This spending gives a rapid short-term boost to the economy. Long-term investments in capital are great, but when your economy takes a major hit, sometimes you need to "jump start" the economy and get some relief immediately before businesses start laying off people. Some economists argue that a reallocation of resources is good for the long-term health of the economy. However, economic downturns cause a lot of friction. This friction benefits some businesses (the ones that survive), but hurts taxpayers, who eventually have to pay for other people's unemployment insurance, or best-case, have to back subsidized student loans.
This discussion comes up on Slashdot fairly often. I won a scholarship for economics and got a degree in finance. I also was in a corporate mentorship program where I was an intern to the president of insurance company. So here goes...
I know this might blow peoples' minds, but in aggregate, and over long periods of time, "speculators" in every commodity from corn to coffee slightly subsidize producers (in aggregate they lose money). You could write a whole book on why, but I see insurance companies as speculators. They speculate on the probability of a given group's risk of a negative event. If there was unfettered competition, insurance companies would actually slightly subsidize their consumers. It amazes me how many people actually read an article and worry about the profits of insurance companies. Health insurance especially is a government protected oligopoly (monopoly or duopoly in many areas), and we are all suffering from the results of worse health outcomes and higher costs.
The only reason insurance companies profit is because of government intervention, and you can assume any government intervention was written by and for the insurance companies that will profit. Insurance companies could never function without books worth of government regulation and legal precedent that functions about the same (there are literally libraries in most insurance company offices). Otherwise, insurance companies would never be able to stay in business.
I wouldn't mind living in a world without insurance, but that's a political opinion. Insurance benefits people who have good lawyers the most and sick and dying people who can't fight the least.
Normally your broker would send you a 1099 on stock trades...that's fine, but now imagine your credit card sold off very small pieces of stock for every transaction. Now the IRS wants you to fill out that consolidated form 1099 with hundreds of transactions detailing everything you purchased so they can compare that to any capital gains/losses you might have made from buying the bitcoin at a higher or lower price than when you spent the coins...
Ok, different example of how this is a disaster. Imagine you purchased Yen in 2014, but had a Yen credit card that automatically converted the Yen into Dollars. The Yen changed value compared to the Dollar over the past 2 years every second of every day. The IRS now wants your full credit card statement...just in case you made money in Dollars they could tax you on due to the exchange rate between Yen and Dollars.
Now I'm going to have to do dozens of pages of paperwork and give the IRS detailed information on my daily purchases...ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad no one can buy employees shares yet, since Uber doesn't report to the SEC. The thing this tender offer does is allow smaller, poorer holders a price base to negotiate a loan from the bank. The loan is backed by the asset - the shares. It is a weird way to think about debt if you aren't an accounting or finance professional.
Isn't 11k lightbulbs like 1 bitcoin worth of power?
This article just made me go check my coinbase account. Of course i did $20,080 worth of transactions and the worst part is the coins I transferred in Coinbase assigned a cost basis of $2-5 for some reason...God I wish I had purchased .5 bitcoins for $2.38.
Now it looks like I have almost $15,000 in capital gains. Wonderful.
The government already has this, they call it GSA Advantage! https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/a...
Our company is a vendor on it and it is a PITA. I don't expect anything new to be better. It's going to be the same garbage crap. My favorite part is they demand proof that you are giving the government the lowest price you charge any customer. Then they make you do hours of paperwork for any small order. And finally they audit the living crap out of you. They asked us to provide detailed quotes from every sale we had made to EVERY CUSTOMER (Government and commercial) for the WHOLE YEAR. Hundred of thousands of transactions... I can't wait until this new program comes out :P
I have a mining rig...So not my house.
Obviously no one around here cares about the reason bitcoin broke records and the massive developments changing its core software. Bitcoin is going to have its first major hardfork in a long time and become something much better.
Bitcoin Segwit2x is a proposed change which is intended to improve the speed and cost of Bitcoin transactions. The Segwit opens up new possibilities like the Lightning Network, Tumblebit, Schnorr Signatures, Confidential Transactions, Cross-chain atomic swaps, and so on.
I don't think any of those crazy terms are the important part. What most people don't seem to get around here is that bitcoin and blockchain technology evolves and changes like any other piece of software, so your complaints today could be gone tomorrow by writing a few lines of code.
People are failing to see the big picture. Imagine if Facebook started paying you in cryptocurrency (FACE) for every post and picture you posted. Then they created a market where advertisers could buy the tokens and use them to buy ad space. A crazy feedback loops would develop as people addicted to FB turned posting their kid's pics into full-time jobs and Facebook's world domination would be complete.
I might not have a pension or SS when I retire. But I have Bitcoin!!!
They FTC is going to go NUTS when they go into any jewelry store. When they figure out that they didn't really save $4,000 on that engagement ring... all hell will break loose.
When I can finally play Pokemon GO on the Oculus Rift I'll buy one.
I guess I'm one of those normal millenials who literally just spent the week in Spain eating avocado, manchego and jamon toast. I had no problem with the 40k downpayment on my new house at the age of 27. I made $28k per year in 2008. I'm up to $40k now. The thing I didn't have was student loan debt or any medical problems. I feel very sorry for my friends with $40k in student loans. They won't be able to invest in a house until later. They never got the chance to invest in the stock market post 2008. They got ripped off.
IBM will pay people the same, but now the employees will have a commute to and from work. This will add about 1-2 hours per day to the employee's "work". Even if IBM's claims are true that this will increase creativity/productivity, it is at considerable expense to every employee. What a great way to shake down your employees.
I raise my children in a commercial only household and collect the $0.38 per month I get from Google adwords. The kids don't know the difference.
Gamestop owns a sizable chunk of the download business (about $1 billion of digital downloads per year). They also own a chunk of Steam and benefit by selling Steam cards and digital codes and will sell the Xbox cards. I don't think the closing of stores is new, that is inevitable. Gamestop's plan to convert old stores to ThinkGeek stores is probably going to go the way of Sharper Image... The console refresh cycle is just beginning though. I know it's impossible for /. readers to comprehend, but not everyone thinks computers and digital downloads are "easy".
*coughs* Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Instead of buying from Amazon, all those customers bought from the small business website selling the same items. That $150 million didn't just disappear.
They house price to income ratio is almost double what it was in the 80s.
Duh, if people are making the same amount but houses cost almost twice as much, they won't buy one. If they find one they can afford, they probably won't move.
If you think of the house price to income ratio as metric to determine the "value" you are getting for buying a home at market prices that year, value has dropped substantially. Unless, of course you think the price to income ratio can go up indefinitely.
The Economist has some great interactive charts. http://www.economist.com/blogs...
People keep bring up comments like "I wouldn't work". That's not what I'm worried about. I live in the South. Here, if you gave people a UBI, they would just farm in their backyards and smoke meth...which is what they already do, but I digress. I would love to be able to subsistence farm, eat everything I grow and still collect a UBI to pay my mortgage. What is supposed to inspire me to grow more than I need and sell it? Selling sounds like a pain. I'll work (for myself), but what makes me actually participate in the larger economy? Would you tell people they can't just grow their own wheat, brew their own beer and consume it all while collecting UBI?
People also forget about insurance costs. Your typical insurance policy does not cover the vehicle being used as a taxi. Commercial liability insurance makes driving for Uber well below minimum wage work when vehicle depreciation is also factored in. This is compounded when there is an accident. When you get into an accident as a passenger in an Uber vehicle, Uber will fight tooth and nail to make sure they don't have to pay anything. So will the insurance company for the driver.
Why don't they just fill the artillery with pennies and have homeless people pick them up? Problem solved.
Have any of you seen Pepper the Robot? https://www.ald.softbankroboti...
You have a better chance of getting murdered by a drone in WWIII than you do of ever getting anything close to UBI.
When robots replace your job you will be left to die, period. When you use the last of your energy to rise up, you will be killed. The end.
The rich don't horde money. The only situation where hoarding money occurs would be if a "rich" took their dollars and shoved them under a mattress...which is what poor people *actually* do, and why the government is so afraid of deflation (when hiding money under a mattress might actually be profitable). Keeping money in a bank account doesn't mean it sits in a vault somewhere collecting dust. The banks loan the money to people for houses and for cars or to businesses for capital investment.
When poor people get money, they spend it right away on consumer goods. This spending gives a rapid short-term boost to the economy. Long-term investments in capital are great, but when your economy takes a major hit, sometimes you need to "jump start" the economy and get some relief immediately before businesses start laying off people. Some economists argue that a reallocation of resources is good for the long-term health of the economy. However, economic downturns cause a lot of friction. This friction benefits some businesses (the ones that survive), but hurts taxpayers, who eventually have to pay for other people's unemployment insurance, or best-case, have to back subsidized student loans.
This discussion comes up on Slashdot fairly often. I won a scholarship for economics and got a degree in finance. I also was in a corporate mentorship program where I was an intern to the president of insurance company. So here goes... I know this might blow peoples' minds, but in aggregate, and over long periods of time, "speculators" in every commodity from corn to coffee slightly subsidize producers (in aggregate they lose money). You could write a whole book on why, but I see insurance companies as speculators. They speculate on the probability of a given group's risk of a negative event. If there was unfettered competition, insurance companies would actually slightly subsidize their consumers. It amazes me how many people actually read an article and worry about the profits of insurance companies. Health insurance especially is a government protected oligopoly (monopoly or duopoly in many areas), and we are all suffering from the results of worse health outcomes and higher costs. The only reason insurance companies profit is because of government intervention, and you can assume any government intervention was written by and for the insurance companies that will profit. Insurance companies could never function without books worth of government regulation and legal precedent that functions about the same (there are literally libraries in most insurance company offices). Otherwise, insurance companies would never be able to stay in business. I wouldn't mind living in a world without insurance, but that's a political opinion. Insurance benefits people who have good lawyers the most and sick and dying people who can't fight the least.
Normally your broker would send you a 1099 on stock trades...that's fine, but now imagine your credit card sold off very small pieces of stock for every transaction. Now the IRS wants you to fill out that consolidated form 1099 with hundreds of transactions detailing everything you purchased so they can compare that to any capital gains/losses you might have made from buying the bitcoin at a higher or lower price than when you spent the coins... Ok, different example of how this is a disaster. Imagine you purchased Yen in 2014, but had a Yen credit card that automatically converted the Yen into Dollars. The Yen changed value compared to the Dollar over the past 2 years every second of every day. The IRS now wants your full credit card statement...just in case you made money in Dollars they could tax you on due to the exchange rate between Yen and Dollars. Now I'm going to have to do dozens of pages of paperwork and give the IRS detailed information on my daily purchases...ugh.