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mircea_popescu: mod6 consider it with numbers. if a guy's survival probability is 95% and the discount rate is 5%, then for every coin he pays to service his debt, HALF covers the 95% and the other half the actual opportunity cost.
mircea_popescu: nobody teaches these (basic, really, should be highschool) notions, and so people don't understand how humanity is, and was built. but bonds are a very sensitive actuarial tool, they react amplifiedly to death danger. whereas equity is a very sensitive to gains. and more generally, finance is worth studying altogether, it makes one smarter.
mircea_popescu: the only possible solution is convertible debt, ie, if they strike it big, you have some sort of claim, for the risk you took. and that is why all start-up debt is really convertible bonds in practice.
mircea_popescu: so now ... the COST of carrying capital as debt goes up immensely as soon as survival rates drop very slightly. start-up are notoriously unsurvivey, and so their debt would cost so much as to ensure their failure.
mircea_popescu: my capital will then cost 1 * 1.05 * 3 = 4.15. so he has to pay 3.15 to get the 1.
mircea_popescu: if i lend a btc to a guy, in a market where the discount rate (what AVERAGE capital returns are as per a, like the "cost of hotel rooms in this season/city) is 5% and whose survival rate is 33%
mircea_popescu: like, the bill for the use of a hotel room is made up of a) the opportunity cost (what that room would have made if not given to you but to another) and b) the indemnity cost (ie, what all you wore down, ruined, stained and destroyed in there)
mircea_popescu: mod6 let's do a side trip here and learn pricing of capital. so what would you say is included in the bill for the use of capital ?
mircea_popescu: "you know what's better than tattoos ?" "hm ?" "scars" "but why ?" "at least they're genuine."
mircea_popescu: anyway ; there's a lot of business experience in disparate fields that has to be handled, and often the handling drives unexpected results and so on. part and parcel of the problem is that bitcoin ain't consumer finance and few people have any notion of anything else in that whole wide field.
mircea_popescu: i am assuming so too. if the bill is balk-worthy we figure something out.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes forward it to phf directly ; phf sorry for the bondogle, send me the bill for the mailing ; danielpbarron invoice bbisp cc mod6 for the pile.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes phf currently has two dozen that either fly to you or back to dbp, so which is it ?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform apparently i have to flag you as F on them ; for which we have to both be in. so at your leisure.
mircea_popescu: they're pretty fucking cool. apparently there's many species, BUT! most of them have a buzz haircut!
mircea_popescu: danielpbarron if they dun want them, do you take backsies ?
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes / mod6 do you want these ? (which one of you do i talk about re day to day bbisp bidniss ?).
mircea_popescu: so in no case what he needs is middle management ; moreover i expect half his problems come from inept fiatworld having its usual "one solution to end all problems".
mircea_popescu: so nsa doesn't in this sense have the same sort of problem. it's a crisis of faith not of management.
mircea_popescu: there's a fundamental difference there bb, in that isp is a thing whereas most of what we're making is noit a thing. making a thing requires following the recipe, whereas making not-yet-a-thing is basically figuring out a recipe.
mircea_popescu: that aside : danielpbarron phf what ever became of those fgs ?
☟︎ mircea_popescu: otherwise, i think it's sufficiently self-obvious that nobody wants more crappy items. we've enough of those around to last a century. but i also won't sit still while being railroaded into a false choice between crappy items and never items ; if for no other reason then because too many people depend on me being at least slightly smarter than that.
mircea_popescu: what fucking short order, the end of a five year plan is nigh on in sight! by a cool account he's not gotten better at it, arguably he's even gotten worse at it, wut the everloving fuck do ?! tell me, and make sense while doing the telling!
mircea_popescu: originally i was going to just call it off, have it liquidated and so on. because yes eventually it has to come to this, nsa was started on the premise that "here is a talented engineer who evidently has little ability to take direction or manage himself, but which we're construing as due to poor prior context and expect will remedy itself, by itself, in short order".
mircea_popescu: so no, how about we don't discuss the random nonsense some 9yo captive inside stan would in his panicked despair have us rather occupy ourselves with. instead, exactly in trinque's practical terms : what the fuck am i going to do with a s.nsa resting on the clavicle of a grown man with 9yo shoulders!
mircea_popescu: the slowest release schedule in the world and all the rest of the stuff people don't say because they're affraid i might crack them one if they did say it certainly aren't driving anything into anything, rite. because we're playing Alf's Beginner Transaction Psychopathology and it's all explained in there in the inside of the top of the box!
☟︎ mircea_popescu: suffice to point out that evidently enough the whole binome as described is adaptive rather than designed. and it MUST be examined, and it must be repaired, rather than indulging in just as childish deflection. o noes, ~i~ of all people want to drive s.nsa into a wall, fancy that wonder!
mircea_popescu: i don't, for the record, think there's anything even vaguely like malice involved. i think it's simply ambered childishness, which he has managed to preserve unexamined so long into his adult life because he's never before found himself among people intelligent enough to force him to examine it. the signs of this are ubiquitous and i won't belabour,
mircea_popescu: the other issue is that the exacting standards part of the binome aren't exacting to a ~rational~ standard, they're exacting to a psychogenic standard. he's perfectly willing to take steps to alienproof his sub because he's seen alien pirates board a sub in a B movie once, that's the standard, what he can ~imagine~ occuring, not so much what he has good reason to believe may occur.
mircea_popescu: to him, it's not worth to take three seconds of his own time to think $random item through ; but to him it is also worth taking three days of another man's time (and often enough, the misfortunate other man is he himself!) to do nothing in particular with them.
mircea_popescu: think of it, the ~same guy~ who's saying ridiculous, and ridiculously unexamined things about boats, the
http protocol and so on is also the same man willing to have mod6 do days' worth of testing with items swapped around to establish nothing in particular.
mircea_popescu:
http://btcbase.org/log/2018-02-18#1784630 << i think this isn't a satisfactory description of the issue for two reasons. one is that the man doesn't have merely very exacting standards, but a binome of which half is exacting standards and the other half is looser than a crack whore's butthole.
☝︎ mircea_popescu: this in general, leaving aside the apparent situation whereby in my particular case your bonds are actually ~worthless, so it's not even clear how it'd solute your risk at all.
mircea_popescu: because it's somewhat common. your potential customer is necessarily underwriting your counterparty risk. you have unclear capital structure and unpublished "commitments to each other" ; neither of these is of the nature of reducing the cost of that counterparty risk.
mircea_popescu: does it matter to you how well capitalised the parker-storager is ?
mircea_popescu: ok. suppose you wish to travel for two weeks, and leave it in parking-storage.
mircea_popescu: aaanyway. this whole "potential subscribers" is easily enough said, but you've apparently created quite a credit crunch for the item. because "well, let's send bbisp a box" "what if they go under ?" "i guess we underwrite some bonds" "but they DONT WANT your bonds!" "um..."
mircea_popescu: lobbes i dunno that submission has anything to do with anything, tbh. the principal issue is that he fucked up, again, in the same way, and is sticking to this nopenopenopenope line.
mircea_popescu: in other news my grapefruit, natural etcetera mouthwash now has a "gluten free" sticker added.
mircea_popescu: well, in all honesty after the bizarro revelations i'm mostly waiting for said discussion, of what you intend to do etc.
mircea_popescu: well anyway. i'm guessing ima read it in the monthlies or w/e.
mircea_popescu: anyway. as he points out, not really much skin off my back either way. but consider that on one hand you're not exactly private investors there, seeing how fwiu you've involved the foundation's capital actually ? so you're stuck to some measure of public dealing an' tranparency as'd befit such a lofty entity in its first actual commitment ? and on the other hand, bbisp kinda depends on good public perception.
mircea_popescu: but getting back to the previous lulz,
http://btcbase.org/log/2018-02-17#1784318 is remarkably nutty. so you liquidate my bonds at an (avoidable) cost of .8, in exchange for a 50% equity position and... what commitment exactly ? if for instance you need money next month, what do you do ?
☝︎ mircea_popescu: in the vein computers attempted to "ibm compat", except chosen by us not by ibm.
mircea_popescu: be it os, kernel, gcc, whatever. so ideally there'd be a "this is the correct processor/ram/disk/motherboard" etc.
mircea_popescu: anyway, the idea here is that it'd be ~nice~ if we had a complete list of these responses. "my x dun werk" "use y".
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes setting a standard doesn't mean anyone's ~forced~ to follow it.
mircea_popescu: "my computer dun werk" should have a "use this config" ready response.
mircea_popescu: well... you know how we've been trying to go "here, use THIS gentoo" for a while (to maybe some results so far) ? \
mircea_popescu: so basically is the idea that you'll just do whatever and we're missing this opportunity to attempt an' standardize iron ?
☟︎ mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes ok, but which are you buying ? or what's teh strategy exactly ?
mircea_popescu: well, that was pretty dumb on their part, i guess, but whatever, experience is apparently difficult to process.
mircea_popescu: speaking of which, dja have some sort of decision yet ben_vulpes / mod6 ? are you goint to offer box rentals ? what kind ?
mircea_popescu: i guess, perhaps, the standard for time frittering. but that's well set already, so.
mircea_popescu: and i wouldn't trust asciilifeform to write it now, in any case.
mircea_popescu: we still don't have a proper item on which to base hardware strategy.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes i have nfi. could take too much power, could whatever the fuck.
mircea_popescu: so for now, waiting to see what bbisp decides to do re hardware, and vageuly considering getting out-of-house expertise.
mircea_popescu: and seeing how you're the fellow who asks me how many items do i want to fit in ben_vulpes 's one item slot, i have serious doubts about your cogency anyway.
mircea_popescu: anyway. the situation is that s.nsa naively bought some iron at your recommendation at some prior point. meanwhile you refused to deliver the "here's the mega-article comparing all hardware, which will guide future republican hardware building.
mircea_popescu: anyway. it's unclear to me these are even dc worthy in any sense.
mircea_popescu: so how many of 1, 2 or 3 do i want to fit in a 1u slot ?
mircea_popescu: that doesn't say much. what exactly has been arranged, where ?
mircea_popescu: iirc a) they were nsa boxes and b) the problem there was transportation, after you managed to get them locked out of the phf flight that ended up not happening