SirSourdough

It doesn't seem like it's strictly true that they don't charge trading fees.

From their docs, it looks like they charge fees to bet "takers" (as opposed to makers), but exclude the geopolitical and world-events markets where they don't charge fees.

I have to imagine that may be related to some of the blow-back towards prediction markets about profiting on topics like war & their potential for manipulation.

Given it sounds like the bot bets everywhere other than sports, many of those categories would likely have fees in this case.

For those of you who are put off from trying the game by the category for today’s puzzle being sports, note there are other puzzles from prior days with more general topics.

Click the calendar icon at top of page for the archive.

I don’t think the implication was that everyone can be a billionaire with luck - rather that virtually nobody becomes a self-made billionaire without some (and often a lot of) luck.

I think this makes the economic circumstances which allow for a billion dollar company to be created sound rarer than they are.

There have been numerous technologies that have emerged or hit the mainstream in my adult life that have spawned multiple billion dollar companies. EVs/charging, renewables, crypto/fintech, much of “modern” social media, same day/last mile delivery, drones, etc. Probably at least a few that I don’t know exist. Looking back across the history of business and innovation in the 1900s, this doesn’t seem that anomalous.

I think the actionable framing of this is -

- Build skills that are transferable between different industries that allow you to take advantage of the areas of greatest opportunity as they emerge.

- Build a network of likeminded people with complimentary skills who are willing to take a flyer on opportunities with you.

- Make friends with people with money who will fund these efforts, or build a resume that will make you an appealing founder or very, very early employee to VCs.

I do think that the situation of your birth has a major impact on your ability to put yourself in this position - I’m less sure about the timing aspect.

Yes and no. If consuming the lanes as much as possible was the goal, we’d be parked bumper to bumper with no available space to move at all.

We want the throughput of the road to be as high as possible. Broadly, that means maintaining the optimal (minimum) spacing to make the merge safely without changing speed, while maximizing speed.

You may get larger areas where speeds are disrupted, but on the average be going faster. Stop-and-go traffic introduces tons of inefficiencies since drivers need to be much more cautious than in a consistent traffic flow.

The big challenge is that it’s basically impossible to know what the optimal speed is, since it relies on knowing the detailed state of the road and traffic volume miles ahead of what you can see.

Self-driving cars are interesting here since they will open up new opportunities for all the vehicles on the road to co-regulate their speed near to the optimum.

As others mention it really depends on your use case.

If you can charge at home (ideally at 240v), and you don’t drive more than the range of your vehicle in a day regularly, it’s gas that has an inconvenience to overcome. I don’t have a gas pump at my house.

If you are an Uber driver and you do 2-3x the range every day, it’s a different story. But if you can charge for free - which isn’t hugely uncommon currently - you can save a lot of money on gas with an EV, so there are tradeoffs.

Deep integration with the car is the most difficult piece of the Supercharger system to achieve for any other charging network. They have the best in-car and in-app charging experience, with the best routing to chargers and scheduling tools. Most networks still require you to use an app or RFID card to start a charge, Tesla you just plug in.

The other is probably just scale of the parent company in terms of being able to build out and service the network. They tend to have more prominent, nicer locations for their stations.

If the drones could meter their own consumption from the line using a utility-approved meter, anyone with a drone with said meter should be able to just tap onto lines at will and get a bill at the end of the month.

Not sure how that plays out in terms of the weight/packaging of the drone but seems feasible for at least larger drones.

Hypothetically, sure, assuming the parent comment that these meshes are sufficient for modelling is correct and that you can find any teens who want a non-digital toy.

I think a good hobbyist application for this would be something like modelling figurines for games, which is already a pretty popular 3D printing application. This would allow people with limited modelling skills to bring fantastical, unique characters to life “easily”.

My dad handed me down our 2001 4Runner when I got my license and it was a great first car as a high school and college kid.

Not enough performance to be that tempting to do anything dumb, tons of space for friends and stuff, go anywhere, sleep in it, easy to maintain… Bumpers were rusted to hell but it had a sunroof and you could roll the rear window down so we were having a great time!

I don’t think the argument being made is that the cost should be proportionate to wealth, but proportionate to impact or alternatives.

If flying private incurs 10x or 100x the externality costs of flying coach, it should be priced (taxed really) to reflect that a significant portion of those externality costs are an unnecessary luxury benefit.

I believe it’s both really. My understanding is the end caps are bolted to a titanium flange, not the carbon fibre hull directly. The titanium flange the caps are bolted to is epoxied to the hull.

I’m sure it’s not the case that any random person can get a quote for something like this, but in the case of Titan the people who can afford the $250k ticket probably can.

I saw a bit of video where they showed the construction- it’s a few inch wide band of carbon fibre wrapped around an inner tube like a spool of thread until it reaches 5” thickness.

I don't really understand this assessment. Half as much is $1,750. That's really not much compared to what people are willing to pay for Apple devices. Basically the price point of an iPad Pro, and I think the potential of the Vision Pros is much higher than the potential of the iPad. It's just a matter of whether they can realize some commercial use-cases like with the iPad.

The Vision Pro is marketed as a device with the potential to replace or significantly augment a laptop and/or TV for a lot of users (I understand there are presently some asterisks needed there). And that's assuming no other novel, high value uses emerge.

Apple sells something like 7 million MacBooks per quarter. Many of them are well more than $2000. I don't think a $2,000 price point is a crazy barrier if the device is able to live up to what it could be.