I also think he's mostly right but even solved problems can still see much improvement. Take for example algorithmic improvements to improve speed or reduce memory requirements. Then there's also massive power usage improvements to be had by re-implementing existing solutions using more efficient languages [1].
And some of them will be from poisoned data, not just an explicit prompt by the site-owner. A whole new form of spam--excuse me--"AI Engine Optimization."
Scaling horizontally undoubtedly introduces complexity but it also comes with some upsides:
* DB backups are now (much) faster.
* Smaller backups means faster restores which reduces your RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
* If you have a well architectured application a catastrophic DB failure will now only impact a portion of your userbase instead of all of them.
There are probably more good reasons but these are the ones I could think of now.
Is high availability or easier backups why people look to horizontal scaling though? I don't think that's ever been a primary reason for any story I've read. It's a great "bonus", but I can't think that it would be a compelling reason to choose horizontal vs vertical scaling.
While that’s true the article mentions that the definition of “hours with sunlight” they are using is when more than 120w per m2 hits the earth. Around where I grew up the sun would rise around 10AM and then set around 2PM. Not nearly enough to meet power demands.
Increasing profit margins is a reliable way to increase stock prices, which is (at this stage of capitalism) the most powerful force directing the allocation of capital. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop with far-reaching power throughout the economy.
Allocation of capital matters for startups. Most large companies aren’t issuing new stock, so profit margins only affect secondary markets for their stock.
You're trying to muddy the waters by calling it gambling. Gaming and digital loot boxes are different. Even if they share some similarities. Gambling is far, far more destructive than digital loot boxes in games. No need to conflate the two.
Please, downplay the impact of serious diseases some more. I'm sure your "it's not gambling even though it's basically a rigged lottery" argument will convince everyone here. Even plain old video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis by the WHO, to say nothing of literal gambling.
Every TRANSACTION involving a CS:GO (CS2 now) skin gives valve a cut. An entire offshore gambling INDUSTRY exists around treating these skins as value bearing tokens you can deposit, gamble away, and cash out. They then take the enormous profit that unregulated gambling always generates, and pushes it towards degenerate gambler streamers who regularly have thousands of literal children watch their stream, where they often gamble with a rigged account made for them by the gambling companies so they can show artificial success to, once again, 12 year olds.
They pay these streamers millions of dollars, up to and including one of the streamers moving to a different country with more lax gambling laws so they could continue to gamble on the companies dime (because they are a degenerate gambler) in order to hook children on gambling.
The skins work exactly like crypto in this case, except the on-ramp is a game that millions of children play (I don't care "it's not aimed at kids", you don't need to be 18 to buy a steam gift card at the store for the skins, and the game itself is free, which is a huge lure for children without an allowance) and it is entirely unregulated.
This entire system is being used to purposely trap gambling addicts at a very young age to milk them for as long as possible in the gambling industry, for every dime they are worth, and until they have used up all possible credit they can find just to keep pressing that addiction button. Twitch is in on it too.
How is it not gambling? You put in something you need to buy with money to receive an item you can trade for money. Sounds awfully similar to me like you go to a casino, get some chips to wager and then later trade the remaining chips back for money. Regardless of whether the "official" law states it's gambling or not from a moral perspective they are pretty much identical.
> to receive an item you can later trade for money.
A person could reasonably argue can be exchanged vs primarily intended as a stand in for cash is important. If the items are intended as actual items people value then that's more defensible than say chips that only exist to be cashed out. (And I'm not familiar enough to know whether that's the case here)
I would maybe agree with you if the marketplace were not operated by Valve. But it is. This makes very clear that the one of the intended use cases of the skins is to be sold. Which is understandable, it's very likely Valves makes in the order of a billion dollars just from the marketplace.
Yeah, the US is an outlier. In most countries the government doesn't back mortgage loans so we have to refinance after a few years. Basically every mortgage in countries like Canada and the UK is what the US would consider an "ARM".
1. https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle...
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