You have to consider why Milei was elected in the first place - a dramatic break from typical Peronist politics with a historic 55% of the vote.
The picture in Argentina was not rosy before Milei took office, it was a country on the verge of hyperinflationary collapse, with a population declining through emigration, a largely informal economy in decline, and people struggling to keep up with dramatic inflation.
I don’t know of another case where hyperinflation was arrested without introducing a new currency. Milei has apparently done it by simply cutting spending, which naturally comes with some pain as the subsidies and government employment are curtailed, but a sound currency sets the stage for distributed investment, lending, entrepreneurship and growth.
More recent policy changes have focused on opening up the country to exports and imports, which will be key to bringing about prosperity through growth in industry, and bringing prices into line with international norms.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/javier-milei-d...
I'm not rendering a verdict on Milei. I don't know enough about his status quo ante; my priors are that Argentina was an economic basket case before, so I'm not predisposed to defend his predecessors. I have longtime friends from Argentina that absolutely loathe Milei, but they don't read HN so I feel pretty safe being open here.
I'm just commenting on this specific article, in which the author repeatedly makes firsthand contact with the immediate outcomes of Milei's policies, finds them to be generally bad, and concludes that the experience is evidence that things are going well.
I feel like the overall trend in global elections of the last few years is to blame global problems on local politicians. It's correct that Argentina's fiscal situation has long been difficult. But if it improves, is that on Milei? Or is it just waiting out the worst of a bad economic boom-bust cycle? Rather like waiting for the weather to improve, then the politician says he brought the sunshine.
> But if it improves, is that on Milei? Or is it just waiting out the worst of a bad economic boom-bust cycle?
This might be a valid observation in most other countries, but Argentina has been a basket case for ages. It’s defaulted nine times in a little over 200 years, and two of those defaults were in 2014 and 2020. I think this is one of those cases where you might could attribute a dramatic one or two year turnaround to the person actually doing something new (spending less).
In the case of Argentina they literally are waiting for the weather to improve. Much of their economy is based on agricultural exports and crops have suffered from drought lately.
Inflation in Argentina is still not under control. If the current number continues, they will have 30%~ yearly inflation. Argentina already saw this number before numerous time, including under Macri government.
In Argentina, the informal (free market) peso to dollar rate is called the “blue dollar,” it rose from about 200 to 1200 pesos per dollar in the 2 years prior to Milei taking office and has held relatively steady since: https://bluedollar.net/informal-rate/
Yes, I'm aware of that. Doesn't change the fact that inflation is still high.
But the real issue is, the "oficial" dollar rate is controlled by Central Bank, and it won't be for long. When, as he promised, he let the peso float totally free, we'll really know even if the inflation can continue at 30% yearly.
Let alone, together with this, the growth of this year, that will likely pressure the inflation. They managed to reduce the inflation to 2.7% monthly, while the country was in a 3% GDP recession.
Several sources report more recent data showing a drop to 37-39%.
The picture in Argentina was not rosy before Milei took office, it was a country on the verge of hyperinflationary collapse. Given that starting position, IMO it’s remarkable how quickly things have turned around.
My numbers are from December, did we really see a drop of 15% in a month? One of us has to be wrong, and I don't see many sources claiming your numbers, the X one you gave is clearly partisan, opening with "MILEI DELIVERS".
At scale, we can restore the soil the same way it was built up in the first place, through rotational grazing of ruminants. I keep chickens to that effect and am planning on sheep. Very low-effort, highly productive animals, each, even apart from their soil building.
Indeed, I think a lot of people undervalue or are unaware of how important the soil microbiome is. That can't be restored at scale and requires the active participation of the other parts of the ecosystem, particularly the digestive tracts of animals. It's a complex interplay.
If you've ever seen cowpies sprouting grass out in some arid, quasi-desert environment, it's because their droppings contain grass seeds, insect eggs, worms, bacteria, fungal spores, and raw nutrients. Droppings are like ecosystem spores; they can help the originating ecosystem bootstrap itself in a new area, complete with hundreds if not thousands of species of microbiota, plants, insects, etc. Life is a team sport.
Also lets not forget dude! Buffalo create wallows which adds such an amazing diversity to the landscape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wallow . Get this! Wallows are estimated at 5/acre across the prairie (obviously before buffalo disappeared and land plowed under). Let's bring back the Buffalo!
Here’s a short list of meaningful causes which have been advanced in my lifetime by groups of single issue voters at the local and state levels:
* making gay marriage broadly available
* making concealed carry (and Constitutional carry) broadly available
* removing barriers to housing construction in cities across the land (the Yimby movement)
* making the Idaho stop law applicable to 10 states
* changing the voting method from plurality to approval or IRV in several cities and states
Voting is one of the important ways our government is steered, cynicism in this area is self-defeating. Instead, band with a group of single issue voters who elevate one issue over all others, and vote for whomever aligns with that issue, if their election prospects are threatened, they will support you, as with my favorite quote from a politician: “when I feel the heat, I see the light.”
This didn't sit quite right with me and I think I've pinned down why.
The nature of code is that it is communication: it communicates action to the computer and behavior to the reader. Variable names are not for the computer, they are for the reader, so, whenever possible, the names we use should be meaningful to the reader.
If the name requires specialized knowledge, such as "what does this name mean," it is lingo, which is sometimes necessary, but should be regarded as a smell, as it is often better to use language which does not require specialized knowledge, so that the reader will be able to make sense of it without a thesaurus.
According to the concept Domain-Driven Design, we should be using names from the domain itself in the program. So what could be the proper name here?
Well, EPD is short for Extended Position Description, which is a notation for representing a particular board state. SAN is short for Standard Algebraic Notation, which is used to encode a particular move.
So an EPD SAN is a particular board position when a particular move is applied to it. I propose to call the combination a "play" which is the act of moving from a particular board position. The code would then be:
let difficulty_by_play = //...;
let existing_plays = //...;
let unique_moves_by_play = //...;
fn play_to_condition((epd, san_plus): &Play) -> _ //...;
The result is legible, the concept is meaningful, and a naive reader could make sense of the variables and operations. No cognitive / conceptual overhead.
The more abstract and technical the subject matter the less likely that it will mirror a familiar real world experience and have a good word.
Using a real world name can actually be distracting because it may suggest attributes and behaviors which are not true of the thing.
This is why math papers use Greek letters. There is no words for “the amount of space where if the function is close enough than the cube of that function value will be within the initial tolerance requiring” so they just use “delta” and you learn the exact meaning of delta from its definition and usage.
I think this advice about “readable code” comes from every day business problems where there is a close correspondence between code processes and business processes.
Complex programs require expertise to understand, and only hubris would make you think longer names would substitute for studying the subject. Even “string” is technical jargon.
Yes, but if you don’t already know programming or a related field you won’t know that.
So according to modern naming convention it’s a bad name because of gate keeping, ivory tower, etc along with: thread, kernel, float, register, ascii, etc
We have to invent domain-specific language when there is no existing term for an important concept. Each of the terms you mention except ascii (which is an acronym) is imbued with contextual meaning: thread of execution, kernel as in essential core, float as in floating point, register is in that which records and reflects. I’m willing to bet I will find similar pre-computer uses if I go looking.
Which is to say they represent a different approach than simply making up a word devoid of meaning.
There is an upper limit on the aggregate value of money - somehow related to the amount of stored value in the economy. On the other hand, there is no lower limit on the value of a dollar.
If bitcoin reaches $1B it will be through some combination of dollar depreciation and bitcoin appreciation.
This is hysterical because four years ago everyone was clamoring on about how the non-fungability of NFTs was the secret sauce to why they’d accrue monetary value.
Taking arguments from the most delusional crypto bros at the time and trying to sell them as something that "everyone" was saying about NFTs in general isn't a way to engage in good faith discussion.
Some NFTs/art might appreciate in value, but most NFTs/"art" are worthless on the open market.
Transacting bitcoin via the lightning network is instant.
Capital gains is a matter of policy and is likely to change at some point as bitcoin succeeds.
New coins are minted with every block. But perhaps you mean to suggest that it's "stable" or "predictable." The emission rate of bitcoin is predictable - but this is predicated on the stability/predictability of the community of miners/stakers. It seems extremely irrational now, but if something were to change such that the community decided to drastically increase or decrease the block reward, they could indeed do so if they found consensus.
> its supply is not responsive to price.
While this is probably true, the value of mining equipment is directly related to the exchange rate of bitcoin (and perhaps its recent rate of increase/decrease). This doesn't impact supply, but it does impact the network OpEx.
Well, not just predictable but hard capped at 21M, about 19.8M (or ~94%) of which have already been mined. So in some sense, inflation tax can't exceed ~6% over all time.
(I don't think it's a sustainable model, as security essentially decays over time, unless fees become extremely high which doesn't seem like a great outcome either. But that's another matter...)
There are a few answers to the long-term security budget:
1) We could maintain fees through compression, that is, by making each on-chain transaction representative of many off-chain transactions. This is beginning to happen with the lightning network, and other technologies are in the works to advance this concept.
2) Mining will become more integrated with other industrial and residential processes, which will reduce the cost of security, from a compensation standpoint. Think bitcoin miner water and space heaters in many homes, etc.
3) It's also likely that in the future institutions that rely heavily on bitcoin will voluntarily subsidize security to some extent, for the same reason they invest in vaults for other instruments. Personally I'm planning to start running a lottery miner at home just for the fun of it.
(2) is interesting, but I'm not sure if resistance heaters will remain common in the long term, as heat pumps become more widely available?
Also this seems like a sort of free-electricity scenario (mining with electricity that was going to be used anyway), but I'm not sure free electricity would reduce mining costs? Wouldn't hardness adjust so that it then becomes all about hardware CapEx (assuming amortized CapEx remains significant)?
I figure mining costs are around 1% of the market cap, and can't go that much lower without serious security risks. So the ecosystem needs to fund that in some way, whether it's through inflation, fees, or donations.
With fees, I also worry they'll be too unpredictable. Like there might be enough demand to justify $20B/year in fees, but it's a function of supply as well, and if scaling solutions like Lightning Network work "too well" (with people rarely needing to settle on-chain) we might end up with way lower fees.
The picture in Argentina was not rosy before Milei took office, it was a country on the verge of hyperinflationary collapse, with a population declining through emigration, a largely informal economy in decline, and people struggling to keep up with dramatic inflation.
I don’t know of another case where hyperinflation was arrested without introducing a new currency. Milei has apparently done it by simply cutting spending, which naturally comes with some pain as the subsidies and government employment are curtailed, but a sound currency sets the stage for distributed investment, lending, entrepreneurship and growth.
More recent policy changes have focused on opening up the country to exports and imports, which will be key to bringing about prosperity through growth in industry, and bringing prices into line with international norms. https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/javier-milei-d...
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