Well, I mean (a) it is unwise to accumulate a big pile of paper money (or the equivalent in a bank), like a common Disney duck plutocrat; if you do this, you will in the long run lose money in real terms. By design. Money (or at least modern money; things were somewhat different in persistently-deflationary pre-industrial economies) is not designed for investment. Money should not be the comparison; it’s a tool, not an investment vehicle.
But (b) money is given some real grounding by states; you can pay tax with it, in particular. It’s not much, and it’s not bulletproof, but by comparison to cryptocurrency, well, it’s _something_.
But really, it makes no sense as an argument that hoarding cryptocurrency is a good idea, because hoarding _money_ is, notoriously, a _bad_ idea.
Modern money has operated as you describe for less than one human lifetime. It might not work long-term, and indeed there are significant reasons for worry that it won't. Not that it _can't_ in principle, but that it _won't_ due to mismanagement and misaligned political incentives. A future alternate system might well have deflationary characteristics.
If you mean Bretton Woods, that is in many ways an implementation detail. Ignoring the Great Depression (which probably _should_ be treated as a special case), and brief (~1 year) shocks after WW1 and 2, the last time the US, to take an example, saw _persistent_ deflation was the late 19th century.
> Gold has its uses. It’s a pretty metal and has practical uses in engineering and medicine.
Would you say gold’s value is determined mostly by its practical use? Because it seems demand is largely driven by speculation as an alternative currency.
I don't see who is refusing to sell you a phone with various attachments that make a workable computer (especially given 3rd party providers). I just bought such with an iPad. You could do something along the same lines with an iPhone I suppose but I'd probably find it unsatisfactory. Still on the fence whether the iPad is still a fully satisfactory companion device for traveling in general.
In the Apple ecosystem, the one “refusing to sell you…” is Apple, and not only the required peripherals but also not making the software work that way. Because if they did, then you wouldn’t need to buy a Mac.
Macs are not especially relevant to Apple revenue at this point. iPad plus magnetic keyboard is getting pretty close. Still not sure that better multitasking would push me over the edge to not wanting a MacBook for serious day-to-day multitasking work.
I do think they're trending in that direction but I actually like that they're not pushing people faster than feels comfortable. I expect to see a convergence of iPads and at least MacBook Airs but we're not quite there yet.
I think it's the right call since there isn't much competition in GPU industry anyway. Sure, Intel is far behind. But they need to start somewhere in order to break ground.
Strictly speaking strategically, my intuition is that they will learn from this, course correct and then would start making progress.
The idea of another competitive GPU manufacturer is nice. But it is hard to bring into existence. Intel is not in a position to invest lots of money and sustained effort into products for which the market is captured and controlled by a much bigger and more competent company on top of its game. Not even AMD can get more market share, and they are much more competent in the GPU technology. Unless NVIDIA and AMD make serious mistakes, Intel GPUs will remain a 3rd rate product.
> "They need to start somewhere in order to break ground"
Intel has big problems and it's not clear they should occupy themselves with this. They should stabilize, and the most plausible way to do that is to cut the weak parts, and get back to what they were good at - performant secure x86_64 CPUs, maybe some new innovative CPUs with low consumption, maybe memory/solid state drives.
That's a very low margin and cyclical market since memory/SSDs are basically commodities. I don't think Intel would have any chance surviving in such a market they just have way to much bloat/R&D spending. Which is not a bad thing as long as you can produce better than products than the competition.
Yeah, but they can saturate fabs and provide income, which they need. Intel can't produce better CPU/GPU products than their competition now. Their design and manufacturing of CPUs has serious problems for years now. The big money in GPUs is already captured by NVIDIA, and it's hard to see how Intel can challenge that - people want NVIDIA and CUDA. So Intel should cut down and focus the remaining bloat and R&D spending on the areas where it's plausible they can get competitive in a reasonable time. That is CPUs, and maybe memory and SSDs - they have X-Point which was great, just marketed and priced wrong.
If you happen to restart one of the instances that was hanging in the infinite thread, you can wait a very long time until the Java container actually decides to kill itself because it did not finish its graceful shutdown within the alotted timeout period. Some Java containers have a default of 300s for this.
In this circumstance kill -9 is faster by a lot ;)
Also we had circumstances where the affected Java container did not stop even if the timeout was reached because the misbehaving thread did consume the whole cpu and none was left for the supervisor thread. Then you can only kill the host process of the JVM.
I don't agree. K&R 2nd edition only goes up to C89, while C99 added tons of language changes which make C a much friendlier (and dare I say: safer) language (the two biggies are designated-init and compound-literals, but also tons of smaller things, like declaring variables anywhere, "for (int...", a proper bool type, fixed width integer types (uint8_t, ...) etc etc...) - I would even go as far to say that C99 is the most important C version and almost feels like a new language compared to C89 (after C99 the changes were mostly incremental though).
The 90s were the decade when C saw its biggest improvements, and K&R 2nd edition stops just short of that.
(the book is still a good read as an interesting historical artifact - it contains a lot of wisdom that goes beyond language details - but as a language reference or learning resource it is hopelessly outdated)
C17 is the best version to target. It is a bugfix version of C11, so the feature set is older and more widely available than the date suggests. C11 includes atomics which are necessary for multicore programming.
What I have noticed companies do is resume emails after a year or so. They probably think people would forget about unsubscribing them after a year, and for the most part they are right.
If I catch any of these email lists not respecting my unsubscribing, I immediately mark them as "spam".
Gmail then doesn't send them to my inbox anymore. I don't think just one person marking them as spam hurts them, but at least I feel gratified and my ego is satisfied.
I've started replying to the emails when I unsubscribe. Just gibberish or the word "unsubscribe" or something. That way if they email me again I can complain to them with the exact date that I unsubscribed. I feel like I'm turning into a grouchy old man, but I've caught more than a few companies this way over the years and it brings me joy when I do.
In eurolandia one usually sicks GDPR on their behinds. Low level scum may ignore it at their peril and companies with high exposure will comply really fast.
Works great except for the gas company, electric and water company, phone company, airlines, cloud provider, os provider, and everyone else that mixes the 5% of legit business that you can’t afford to ignore or miss with the 95% of marketing content that you want to get rid of.
Since it’s usually opaque how “mark as spam” and “block” actually works, and since the origin of the mailing lists can be reconfigured any time.. I still feel like I’m endlessly spammed by all the assholes I have to do business with, or else I’m going to miss a bill or a flight.
It does work, because the companies will realize that gmail no longer delivers their emails and that they need to change their behavior. Also for example AWS SES (Simple Email Service) will give you clear warnings if it detects that recipients mark their email as spam (it seems that for example gmail delivers this information somehow to SES).
My utility doesn't seem to market to me. What the heck are they sending email to you for? "Use more electricity!" "Build a new house!" "Get a hot tub?"
I'm not sure if it would be called "marketing" but my power company would send "you're using more energy than your neighbors" (I worked from home) and "think about why you use the most energy at night" (in the winter) emails which were no better than spam.
My gas company has the equivalent of a mileage program. You earn points per cubic meter of gas you consume, that can then be redeemed for expensive meals at restaurants and stuff.
Yes it's very stupid.
My telco does as well, and I got a free Nintendo Switch from them for just having fiber internet that I would need anyway (the telco just owns the fiber, the ISP then goes over that open fiber, so I pay two different companies, it's the former that has the point program despite being the definition of a dumb pipe)
This is the way. Often times clicking unsubscribe is just sending them a notice that your address is an active inbox. They can abuse that knowledge or resell it. Better to mark as spam.
One thing that probably happens, as some who attends a lot of events or at least used to, is that you end up getting repopulated in a lot of mailings through purchased lists or badge scans.
I really like the hide my email feature in iCloud for this reason. I’ve had to burn an email after making a campaign donation this year. They email you and put you on a million lists but then they also share your email with every other campaign in the ticket. It’s obscene.
Or they interpret any kind of interaction after a while of inactivity as "yes please sign me up for all your newsletters, even though I previously explicitly told you to unsubscribe me"
The worst for this is Shopify. If you've ever given your email to shopify, they will absolutely share it to a page you visit, even if you don't check out.
Throw something in the cart at a random website? Now you're on their mailing list and get reminders to finish checking out. Doesn't matter that you never consented. I don't know how this isn't a violate of the CAN-SPAM act
I’ve looked into this a bit- I believe it’s related to the checkout page loading with a default of “Agrees to Marketing”.
What happens- at scale and I have to believe deliberately- is the “checkout created” event with that flag set to true is considered as “opted-in” by the marketing automation platforms everyone uses, like Klayvio.
Even if you immediately un-check it, un-checking doesn’t trigger an unsubscribe event, since you never submitted the form in the first place.
And because your Shopify session is now shared across stores, your email address gets opted-into marketing just visiting a checkout page.
It's up to the store owner to actually default to "agrees to marketing". I'm not sure if Shopify is to blame when it's the owner that used an illegitimate opt-out for that setting instead of an opt-in.
And of course, follow-up mails for abandoned carts are an optional setting too.
The default for “Agrees to marketing” controls if the box defaults to checked on checkout, so I do think if the store disabled that you wouldn’t be subscribed.
My theory is it started by accident- if you get a notification that says, “this checkout, this email, agrees to marketing: true”, it sure reads like an opt-in, and it used to be reliable. But it’s not anymore, because your email is already attached to the checkout when its created.
“Agrees to Marketing” pre-dates the global Shop session by years, it’s plausibly an ecosystem bug; one with no real motivation to solve until customers start talking (more)
From my small company experience, this is more likely incompetence than maliciousness. Spreadsheets get passed around and remerged back into the blob. Mind you, I don't mean to excuse this behavior. Just to understand it. And of course, unsubscribe processes will be near the bottom of anyone's priority list until the complaints and threats begin to mount.
This is where we need something like GDPR, which makes it so that they can't auto subscribe you to a new list whenever they feel like resubscribing you.
Many mailing list SaaS in India use http urls for unsubscribe, and submitting again, including (otherwise) technically excellent apps. Somehow Gmail devs chose to show http urls as valid.
User-reported spam in gmail is actually very efficacious. Aside from the logic gmail applies to your inbox specifically, Google's current violation threshold for those reports is .03%. Beyond that, those reports start to pull down sender IP and domain reputation, which impacts overall deliverablity to anyone's gmail inbox.
This is why I am quick to report spam, even if they are a "legitimate" business. Utility company / paypal / whoever wants to send me spam? I sincerely hope they are impeded from sending email to anybody.
My experience with the spam button is 1) they never ever go into my inbox again if they do keep sending, and 2) as someone who has had emails marked as spam (from people who actively clicked the sign up to my newsletter button) your ability to send email gets neutered pretty quickly.
I use my own domain so I can return mails as bounced, which mail providers don't like, since it may indicate attempting to send unsolicited mail to loads of addresses.
it's not me, it's you. Screw you if you send me mail I don't want!
Reporting spam does not block the email from being received by my client -- it only blocks the mail from being seen in the inbox, but it still shows up in the spam box.
I don't send mail that gets reported as spam in the first place. Or, if it does, then I haven't been meaningfully affected because I can still send and receive the email I want to.
> I don't send mail that gets reported as spam in the first place.
I ran a newsletter where people had to opt in to receiving it. It was announce news for a video game. You only ended up on this list if you entered your email, clicked join list, and then clicked the link in the email we sent to you to confirm subscription. We had a big unsubscribe button at the very top of the email. We still regularly got people who hit report spam on us, presumably as a way of saying g they didn’t want the email anymore.
They're probably expecting their email provider to take that info and use it somewhere upstream of their own individual account. Which, as you've pointed out, does happen.
Maybe they don't believe that it happens often enough or something, but the thresholds do need to be reasonably high since, as you pointed out, some people hit the button whether it's justified or not. If the threshold for email provider action was too low, you'd end up not being able to send to anyone with Gmail because one guy forgot he signed up to a list (or signed up and immediately reported it as spam to spite the sender).
The person you replied to also sounds like they may be using an offline or third-party email client, though. There's a difference between a "Report Spam" button somewhere your email provider controls, and a "Mark as Spam" button in your third-party email client. I'd assume there's some kind of protocol that could potentially allow third-party clients to report it back to the email provider, but would also assume it may not be as reliable as first-party interfaces.
> They're probably expecting their email provider to take that info and use it somewhere upstream of their own individual account.
Report spam, as a generic feature? It's an okay starting point "as-is" but useless for preventing malicious use and it hasn't meaningfully improved since launch.
Specifically for google: allow users to block whole domains; I can already do that on my own mailserver, why can't I do that on Google's? Then, block mail from foreign countries -- or at least countries that I don't care about; I can block whole ASNs on my mailserver, why can't I on Google's? That then leaves only mail that I can bring legal action to.
Another iteration: when you "unsubscribe", then keep a record of it, and also show the history of emails that you've received from them on a confirmation dialog. Show me anything interesting like purchases, warranties, appointments, etc. When confirmed, keep a record of it. Show me a list of _all_ of the things I've unsubscribed from. If email is still received, automatic report spam and block the domain. Oh, that means that mailing lists must come from the same domain that sales are made on.
Another iteration: a subscription should require a confirmation. Let the email server recognize the confirmation, and block emails whose unsubscribe links aren't in the list of confirmations. That means an unsubscription link should go to the same domain that a subscription was confirmed on.
That's just a few spitballed ideas. Spam reporting functionality is clearly iterable, but it hasn't meaningfully changed for decades. It's still primarily done through opaque "reputation" scores and little else.
I don't want "report spam" which doesn't give me feedback and continues to let spam onto the wire to my client, and isn't powerful enough to use to block bad actors from trivially getting to my inbox. I don't want to be expected to (and trained to) click on unverified links which take me to somewhere I don't recognize, and could take me somewhere malicious. I expect more from the largest email provider(s) in the world.
You can either search first, then create a filter, or create the filter and then set your specific search terms/scope. The only downside of filters is that they only apply to incoming mail; you can't apply them to already existing mails, but you can use the same search terms as a kind of mask, then use the select all checkbox, then click the link to select all mail that matches the search instead of just selecting all mail on current page/view.
I’m not accusing you of this, but I will mark things as spam even if I signed myself up if what they’re delivering is just garbage.
It’s usually not newsletters for me, but small niche companies who sell very specific things and feel a weird urge to have a weekly newsletter. It’s like all they sell is 2 models of guitar capo, but they still feel the need to send me weekly updates on I don’t even know what.
The kind of things where I not only don’t want the emails, but I want to register that I feel I was misled when I signed up.
If you actually want to block emails, you need an email security gateway or some control over inbound anti-spam policies (ie pay for Google Workspace or another email service). Consumer email is not intended to give you full control.
What makes you say that? In my experience, the spam button works fantastically. There is a gym of some kind that has me on their mailing list, refuses to honor unsubscribe, and sends me probably 2-6 emails a month. They've been doing this for years, but Google correctly gets every single one into spam because I marked one (several?) as spam years ago.
Most, if not all, political junk email also ends up in my spam folder after judicious use of the spam button a few years ago.
If you were using self-hosted e-mail everywhere, then it would be quite obvious that large providers like Google do massively benefit from those user reports when filtering spam.
Did you mean section 5.6? That's LLMs and RL. Section 5.4 is Imitation Learning.