This topic keeps coming up so I'll summarize some points I've alrady made [1].
1. The size of this market manipulation can be measured by the gap between spot or physical oil prices (which generally aren't public) and the future or paper price [2]. Historically these have tracked each other so close it was a non-issue. Now it's a huge issue;
2. Part of the gap can be attributed to the financial markets being in denial [3] and the market itself being in extreme backwardation. That simply means the spot price is significantly higher than the future price. It indiciates some sort of market dysfunction (or delusion). We saw this in the silver market last year.
All credit for this wanton insider trading goes back to the Supreme Court inventing presidential immunity out of thin air [4][5] and a Congress that has completely abdicated any kind of constitutional responsibility.
You might think there might be some kind of criminal prosecution or at least investigation by government agencies of the players involved. Well, sycophants and crackpots have put in charge of those agencies (eg Michael Selig of the CFTC [6]).
1. Drones are a relatively recent evolution but are really a continuation of asymmetric warfare that has been wildly successful post-1945. The US has been woefully unprepared for cheap, mass-produced drones that, as evidenced by these satellite images, are equivalent to high-precision missiles in terms of effectiveness but are substantially cheaper;
2. Censoring these images serves no military purpose. Iran, China and Russia (among others) have access to accurate satellite imagery so censoring these images really just belies a fear of public opinion. Any cost estimates of this war given by the administration (which tend to be $1-2B/day) don't seem to include repairing and replacing lost weapons, radars, facilities, aircraft and other base infrastructure. That's going to be billions more;
3. It seems clear that this war so ill-considered and the US was so unprepared that (IMHO) will go down as the biggest strategic blunder in US history as the US military and Gulf security guarantees have shown to be a paper tiger and there is no military out of this conflict short of the use of nuclear weapons;
4. Despite claims to the contrary, the US does not appear to have air superiority over Iran. The evidence for this is the continued use of missiles and other so-called "stand off" weapons (ie fired at range to avoid SAMs and anti-aircraft batteries);
5. Despite administration claims to the contrary, there are now desperate shortages of munitions for missile defences, Tomahawk missiles and various other missiles. Some of these had already been dseriously depleted in the 12 day War. This has made things substantially worse and it will likely take years to replenish supplies;
6. The future of Gulf bases and secruity guarantees is now unclear given it's now been demonstrated that the US can't protect them; and
7. I'm not sure the UAE (and Duabi in particular) ever recovers from this. The image that Dubai is some stable center for business and finance in the MIddle East has been shattered. Will the wealthy come back knowing the US can't protect Dubai? I honestly don't know. Dubai is a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" (to quote Star Wars). It's key in Iran evading sanctions, Russia evading sanctions and instrumental in the South Sudan genocide (ie there's a trade between UAE arms from the US and stolen South Sudanese gold from the RSF). The UAE has left OPEC. I honestly don't know if this will be a good or bad decision long-term.
There are 3 players in this war and they all have very different goals. Israel wants to wreck Iran. The US wants out. Iran simply needs to survive. I'm not sure where we go from here. To back down, the US would need to split with Israel and that's a pill likely too difficult to swallow given that Israel is the only reason we're in this war at all.
Looming over all this is the upcoming summit between the US and China, currently set for next week. It's already been delayed once because of this war. Having this situation unresolved is going to greatly weaken the American negotiating position. The US may well want to delay it again. If so, (IMHO) China may well cancel it entirely.
There is noise for years that China will eventually take over Taiwan. Date set to be 2028 or so. How else to prepare for that than run this war, figure out your weak points and work to fix them.
So maybe US got taught a lesson, but saying it will take years to replenish seems extreme. If that's what it takes, then maybe US was never a superpower and then the 2028 war (hypothetical) would have been a shock. If it got taught lessons, it should use these lessons to improve its capabilities - building drones, resupplying weapons, and fix whatever else is needed. And I am not sure I understand the meaning of phrase "air superiority". It does not mean bombing everything below and taking un-necessary risks. The fact that 7-20 soldiers got killed (and similarly low numbers on Iranian side compared to the Iraq war), is a testament to their ability to reduce risk. Any war will have deaths, but this provided US a stress test like the bankers should have received in 2008.
The question is whether the military and political leadership can learn those lessons or will they pass it on to the next administration. If what is being said is true, this requires a Covid level mobilization effort.
I don't accept the premise that China intends to invade Taiwan. Or, rather, that claims certainly requires some proof. This is an idea that the US has been pushing but maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't take fearmongering from the guy who runs the protection racket and sells all the weapons.
The first problem is that China simply doesn't have that military capability. Water is an incredible barrier, even in modern warfare. There are roughly 100 miles of open ocean between mainland China and Taiwan. China would need to transport somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million troops at a minimum with all th elogistics, air support, etc that that entails. They don't have that Navy. They're not building that Navy. Do you have any idea how badly Taiwan or the US could disrupt supply lines over 100 miles of ocean?
At its height, Nazi Germany's army was something like 8 to 10 million soldiers IIRC. You can see the white cliffs of Dover from Calais on a clear day. It's a distance of 17 miles. And that was completely impassable in an era without radar where the Germans essentially had air superiority. Now nobody has that military, not the US, not China, for a large-scale amphibious landing.
Second, China has no need to invade Taiwan. China thinks very long term. They believe this issue will be resolved in the future, possibly far in the futrure. And all but 10 countries agree with them. This is the so-called "One China" policy. It's the official policy of some ~180 countries including the US and all of Europe.
If they had the military and they chose to use it, it would do untold damage to them diplomatically and economically when the world already agrees with them. Think of it like Russia invading Ukraine. Suddenly formerly neutral countries like Finland and Sweden and lining up to join NATO. Do you think that helped Russia's security situation, economy or diplomatic relations?
Lastly, and this is the point where people really get in their feelings for some reason, China has no modern history of imperialism and military intervention. The standard rejoined is "But Tibet!!!". Yeah, that was 1950. There were some other minor border disputes with Vietnam and I think the USSR. This is all projection because the US loves doing imperialism and military intervention. China doesn't have that history.
So, for a country that can't invade, has no need to and has no history of doing similar, one really should question where this idea is coming from.
China had a border conflict with India in 2020 which resulted in dozens of deaths.
China is engaged in a major border conflict in the South China Sea. So far it's just water canons and ramming boats, but there are reports of deaths.
I sincerely hope you are right, but - as we've seen with Russia - once they get rid of all the people who can say no, dictators make incredibly poor decisions. Better to prepare for war.
China has been involved in other conflicts, notably Vietnam and Korea. I don't put them in the category of imperialist ambitions however, for several reasons.
First, they're in China's backyard. China doesn't want a hostile imperial power on their border any more than Russia or the US does. Just look at the Monroe Doctrine, which now apparently includes kidnapping Venezuela's president.
Second, in those cases China was helping defend a nation from an invader, The Korean peninsula is a little more complicated. The Western version of this conflict is that the North Korea just upped and invaded one day for literally no reason. A more accurate history would have to include the military dictatorship the US installed on the peninsula when it was freed from Japanese occupation post-WW2.
As for the islands, which are in the South China Sea I might add, I'm more sympathetic to China's position here. That position is that the US is engaging in a deliberate strategy of maritime containment through a ring of islands and military bases, called the Island Chain Strategy [1]. It's not a secret. I personally think this is a pointless and unjustifiable strategy, built on a false premise (of containing Chinese imperialism).
The Phillipines are a US client state. So is Japan. So is Taiwan. So is it any wonder than China is grabbing these islands before the US or one of its clients occupies and militarizes them? I mean really... what business does the US have interfering with islands off the coast of China?
The Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Ukraine are all democracies. If the people there want to associate with the US or Europe, that's their business.
That thing you just did there - "they're in China's backyard" - that's imperialism. You're trying to justify the imposing China's will on a population that does not want them.
With this kind of bias, I can't trust a thing you say. It's a shame, because I really like the view of China as a peaceful beheamoth. Unfortunately it's all lies.
You are thinking of air supremacy, not air superiority. We clearly have air superiority. We can conduct operations of our choosing in the places/times we choose, we just can't do it with no ability for enemy intervention. This is also true for the straits, we have superiority but need supremacy for civilian shipping to consider transiting.
First, I agree with you on the drones. They're a new entrant to the battlefield and the US has had to learn to adapt.
You're viewing Iran as a simple country vs. country war. This war is not about just Iran, this war is about energy, technology, and dominance against Russia and China.
Iran is a destabilizing power in the middle east. Not only does it control a bunch of oil itself, but it controls the Strait of Hormuz. This chokepoint means that Iran has had the oppprtunity to disrupt the world's energy supply. If you think you think this isn't a global risk then you don't understand the global economy. Instability in the global economy is a risk to US dominance.
The US has a very strong partner in Israel not only as an outpost, but as a technological partner and a strong intelligence partner. You might read articles about Israel making trouble in the region, but most of this has no true basis. In fact the Arab countries around Israel have enjoyed peace with Israel for quite some time. Further, the other Arab nations (especially the ones that aren't Russia/China aligned) want stability like the UAE, Bahrain, and even SA and they are sick of proxies in the region being used to create instability. They want to sell their oil and they want US and Israeli technology.
There's no question that Iran is/was a threat to Israel - that's well documented. There's no question that Iran is/was a threat to US forces in the middle east, that's documented too.
So, who's the biggest winner if Iran ceases to be a destabilizing force in the middle east and no longer has a chokehold on global energy supply - the US. This truly reenforces US dominance.
Somehow you see this as making China stronger - it doesn't do that. At best it drives Russia closer to China but that has already happened.
Right now the US is energy dominant in almost all categories. Having a strong foothold in the Gulf especially loosely controlling the SoH would solidify this.
Quick side note - air superiority means that you can fly planes around the country without major risks of being shot down. The US maintains complete air superiority since essentially this started. Until the ceasefire they were able to bomb targets at will.
> This chokepoint means that Iran has had the opportunity to disrupt the world's energy supply.
So this is a war to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, which made Iran close the Strait of Hormuz for the very first time ever, did I get this right.
Are you jewish coincidentally? Because in order to not get it you‘d have to engage in very motivated reasoning.
Accusing Iran of destabilizing the region when the whole reason this war (and therefore the closure of the strait) has happened is because of Israel is certainly some chutzpah.
I'm not Jewish or even a fan of Israel, but I think "you‘d have to engage in very motivated reasoning" to not get that this war started a long time ago.
The recent hostilities are just one small part of it. Everyone shares some of the blame. And Iran has sponsored many attacks on Israel.
And yet oil was flowing freely for decades because Iran had no reason to pick a fight. All your theoretical doesn’t reflect the real world. Israel started a war the US can’t finish, and even if we were to turn Iran into a parking lot, ignoring the fact the rest of the world would outright shun us, we would literally be in no better shape than before we got into this mess.
Trump is an idiot and thought starting a war would help his odds in the midterm elections, and he needed a bigger distraction from the Epstein files. That’s the beginning and end of it. Any claims that this was some strategic move to assert US dominance is a poor attempt grasping at straws.
I don't think the rest of the world would "outright shun us." I think that the rest of the world that you're describing are mainly European countries that are highly dependent on Gulf oil access. They need to be careful not to publicly anger anyone in the Gulf who might cut off their supply.
Your argument is that Israel started a war that Trump is finishing to divert from Epstein ties but that's tying together a bunch of conspiracy theories.
> mainly European countries that are highly dependent on Gulf oil access.
Uh, no. Europe gets a tiny fraction of their oil from the middle eastern countries currently being affected and none of their natural gas.
> Your argument is that Israel started a war that Trump is finishing to divert from Epstein ties but that's tying together a bunch of conspiracy theories.
If you think the Epstein files are a “conspiracy theory” I guess we can end the discussion now because much like your claims Europe is dependent on the Middle East for energy, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
And do you really think Israel starts this without US backing? The war they’ve asked every president since Bush about starting but were told no by every predecessor to Trump, including Trump himself when he didn’t need a distraction his first term.
You're right, I should have been more clear. There isn't a crude shock that would come from the middle east to Europe. That would be more an economic shock because of the demand from China/India on that crude which would then drive up the global price of the commodity. This in turn would create an economic shock - one that would be hard for Europe to withstand (as opposed to the US).
And, while that's true of crude itself, more refined oil products are heavily imported from the ME to Europe - I'm sure you've seen the news on jet fuel.
I do think that saying "oh, Trump did this so we stopped looking at the Epstein files" is a conspiracy theory. Doesn't mean it can't be right - just means that it's just conjecture.
All I did above was provide a different perspective - don't like it? Feel free to move along.
For anyone that doesn't know, then president Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law in 1988 that banned all car imports into the US unless the car is at least 25 yaers old.
Why? Because US Mercedez-Benz dealers were selling their cars at too high a price and a lot of Americans were importing them directly from Germany. So the dealers associations lobbied Congress for a ban.
I've seen this succintly and accurately described this way: "No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel" [1].
If you think about it, once you build a solar panel, it just produces power for the next 20-30 years. Then you buy another one and replace it. To get oil or natural gas, you need to drill a well. That well requires constant labor. What many don't seem to know is that oil wells decline in production over time. It's called the "decline rate". For the Permian Basin (source of the US shale revolution), the decline rate is 15-20% per year. So a well producing 1000bpd (barrels per day) will be producing ~500bpd in 3 years. That means you have to constantly be drilling new wells.
Oil wells (and resource extractors like mines in general) are great wealth concentrators. Solar panels are not. So the point of that quote is that a limited resource creates wealth and is limited but also war is profitable (for the weapons manufacturers) so every incentie lays in continued fossil fuel use because it's constantly minting new billionaires.
One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one. To some extent, so is truck freight (although China is busy electrifying this too [2]). There are a lot of non-energy uses too eg plastics, industrial, chemicals, construction. So fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon but we sure could take a leaf out of Chin's commitment to renewable energy [3][4][5].
Instead we get nonsense like warnings to Europe of a dangerous dependency on Chinese clean tech [6].
> One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one.
The status of "fossil fuels" isn't crucial to these uses, it's just cheaper. You can just make kerosene, but you wouldn't because you already use fossil fuels for power. However if you have abundant energy without fossil fuels and you want kerosene for some reason you can make it for $$$$
Doesn't China have most of the exotic rare earths and stuff that you need in order to build solar panels and systems? I am not anti-solar, but I also don't think China is some guaranteed-friendly party that the whole world can trust not to wield their power once they have it.
I assume anyone who doesn't immediately recognize their planned takeover of Taiwan next year will have a hard time getting any type of raw materials like that.
Doesn't China have most of the exotic rare earths and stuff that you need in order to build solar panels and systems?
Solar panels do not require rare earth elements. Some types of permanent magnets require rare earth elements, and some of those magnets are used in wind turbines, which might be where this confusion comes from since wind turbines and solar panels are frequently mentioned together. (Although even most wind turbines do not use rare earth magnets.)
Crystalline silicon solar panels account for more than 95% of the global solar market. These are mostly made of glass, aluminum, silicon, and polymers. The rarest element typically used in them is silver, for metallic pastes used to form cell contacts. China is a significant but not dominant silver producer. In 2024 it accounted for about 13% of world silver production:
China currently provides a the great majority of that stuff partly because nobody else has bothered to produce much. China doesn't have a majority of world reserves (although the USGS says it's close), just a majority of production.
As another commenter put it, a solar panel is a drill bit not oil. What's the alternative here? Are you arguing we maintaint the dependence on fossil fuels, which can be switched off any day, because of some hypothetical future where China might stop selling "drill bits" (that last 30 years)? That's why this argument is so silly.
As for rare earths, they aren't as rare as the suppliers would seem to suggest. The difference is that China has invested in rare earth extraction and processing and really nobody else has. Likewise, the solar investment was an intentional policy goal. Imagine where the US might be if the $8T+ spent on the so-called Global War on Terror had been spent on renewable infrastructure instead.
As for China behaving in such a belligerent fashion, I'm sorry but let's just compare. Here's a list of US military actions since 1945 [1] and a history of US-led, backed or supplied regime change [2]. The fearmongering around China is just so... manufactured.
I'm not arguing against solar or pro-oil in any way. I meant only to point out that imagining an all-PV future as eliminating conflict over resources would be a mistake.
And I was corrected about how much we need China for solar panels - though with them being a hugely dominant current producer of the panels themselves, I still think they have moderate leverage. But indeed limited if other countries theoretically can build out a PV industry without China's blessing.
And I'd like to acknowledge the 'drill bit' metaphor. Would still be painful to not be able to replace solar panels that are constantly aging out, but not nearly as painful as losing a portion of oil or gas supply has been lately.
I'm reminded of the prescient 2005 commentary of George Carlin: "it's a big club and you ain't in it" [1].
Hollywood, in particular, is almost completely nepo baby captured. This is an oft-repeated trend where an industry goes into decline and the children of those who originally succeeded end up dominating it. I think there's a lot of this in politics too, particularly because government jobs (including staffers on campaigns and for representatives) don't pay a lot so you really have to come from an affluent background to afford to live.
It used to be that if you wanted to be a cast member on SNL you had to go to Harvard because of the Harvard Lampoon.
I've seen this issue with the doctor pipeline too. Various analyses show that coming from a high socioeconomic background is a massive advantage, even with med schools trying to provide more opportunities to candidates from a lower socioeconomic background. A few med schools now because of endowments have gone tuition-free but even here it seems (it's early days) like wealthier candidates get more of these opportunities. As a wealthier person you don't need to "waste" time on a job. You can do resume-packing activities (research, volunteering).
So circling back, elite education's role (IMHO) is to be exclusionary. It's to maintain this structure. "Social proof" is extremely important because a lot of opportunities in life aren't about talent or skill but connections and social factors. You go to Stanford and do CS and you get time in front of VCs. You get to know people who will start future unicorns through all their opportunities and connections. You will be one of these people or be an early employee.
If you're an academic, I once heard a friend in academia tell me "you'll never be unemployed in academic with a Harvard undergrad degree". Faculties like to boast about things like this. There's some hyperbole here but again, there's also some truth and it's social proof.
Look at the median age of a US homebuyer, currently 59 [2]. The only young people buying houses are in the upper percentiles of income, come from a wealthy background or their parents are otherwise paying for it because they bought a house in the 1980s and sat on it.
So back to Carlin, a lot of people end up intentionally or unintentionally defending this system through wanting the best for their children but in doing so, society is unravelling. Also, most of the people who prop up the current system just aren't in the club despite what they think.
So I randomly ended up buying a lot of computer gear last year because I killed a perfectly fine 4 year old PC and couldn't decide what I wanted to replace it. I thought at the time "this is an expensive mistake" but you look at the prices I paid for parts a year ago and it's mind-blowing eg:
- 4TB Samsung Pro 990 SSD for $150 (now $940)
- 64GB DDR kit for a laptop $180 (now $700)
- 64GB DDR5 CL30 kit for a desktop $200 (now $950)
- 9800X3D/5070Ti PC $1800
- 2TB Samsung Pro 990 $95 I think? I honestly don't even remember why I bought this
It's really depressing now. Normally at this point in the NViida product cycle we'd be expected a 50x0 Super series. I think it's all but confirmed we won't see those until next year. I think the 50x0 series will last a lot longer than the 40x0 series.
So it's going to be interesting to see what happens when this hits phone makers who also need RAM. There certainly won't be a RAM increase this year and there'll likely be a price bump. Apple may be able to absorb this to some degree because of anyone I expect them to have long term contracts.
Still, Apple has temporarily delisted the base 16GB Mac Mini and removed the 512GB Mac Studio so they aren't unaffected.
But I think this SSD/RAM price hike has basically killed the Steam Machine, which is sad. Valve obviously didn't lock in long-term contracts before announcing it. Woops. The Steam Deck is also a hard find as a result.
We've seen an almost unprecedented price hike on the PS5, which is an almost 6 year old console at this point. I wouldn't exxpect a PS6 before 2028 at the earliest.
We've had RAM price spikes before, usually because of supply crunches (eg years ago I seem to remember a fire taking out one of the major suppliers).
I honestly don't expect any of this to get better until we have an increasingly likely global recession and the AI bubble pops. OpenAI and Anthropic may not be able to cash out in time to avoid all this.
This touches on many issues. It's kind of a confused narrative. Predatory practices against minors (in particular), sign up dark patterns, addictive behavior (eg infinite scroll). I don't think you should bundle all of these together like this.
For example, infinite scroll is a product of a news feed and a news feed is algorithmic. What this produces and what it reinforces in the user is one thing but not really related to some small grey text in an Amazon Prime sign up.
So let's break it down. Some of the issues are:
1. Intent to sign up.
2. Difficulty in cancelling a service. This is what I call the "gym model". Easy to sign up, hard to cancel. This can be handled. California, for example, requires companies to offer online cancellation. Most other states don't. This is so much an issue you'll regularly find advice from people to change their address to California so they get that option. There's no reason why every state or the federal government couldn't do that.
3. Selling of your data. Not really touched here but it's going to be a big issue going forward;
4. Addictive behavior to maximize time spent on platform; and
5. What should we allow or disallow for minors. This is going to be a big issue. We're only at the start of the Age Verification Era (like it or not). But IMHO no company should be talking about how to maximize time spent for 13 year olds. And no advertiser should be able to advertise to minors; and
6. Not really touched here but I'm going to add it anyway. IMHO we give tech companies a free pass for algorithms as some kind of mystical, neutral black box. But everything an "algorithm" does represents a decision humans made to get a certain behavior from what training data is used, what they're optimizing for (eg interactions or time spent) and what features they create.
Platforms now essentially get liability protection from publishing content even though they elevate or suppress content based on what it contains. IMHO this is no different than someone deciding what to publish and being liable for it.
Disney can do whatever it wants if it restores and releases a 4K version of the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy, something the fan base has wanted for decades at this point. I won't hold my breath.
Very large companies are generally very bad at consistently producing original content because everything in a corporat eenvironment skews towards not taking any risks. Big companies want a repeatable formula. It's why we get to many sequels and reboots with depressingly few new properties. HBO has been the exception to the rule. I would've also said Apple TV tends to corporatize content into being inoffensive. Modern Family (even though it wasn't an Apple production) is kind of like the perfect Apple TV content. But we have things like Severance and Silo so maybe there's hope.
Anyway, the retconning and corporatization around Star Wars has been depressing to watch. The whole "Han shot first" was a line in the sand more than 30 years old that seemed to stem from George Lucas's desire for a lighter classification for the films. The Phantom Menace of course was very much aimed at a younger audience even though the plot revolved around a tax treaty dispute of all things.
The sequel trilogy was for me, as an original Star Wars fan, deeply depressing. I honestly haven't even watched the last one where Carrie Fisher did her best Mary Poppins. And honestly the whole prmise of midichlorians (from the original trilogy) and inheritance of Force ability was really offensive and against the original spirit of Star Wars. I mean as anyone example of corporatization the name "Rey" was chosen to be easily pronounceable in many languages.
Look where we started. The inspiration for Star Wars was the Viet Cong resisting American imperialism in Vietnam (direct from George Lucas) [1].
Disney produced beloved classics like The Jungle Book, Aladdin and Snow White. In the 2000s, they seemed unable to continue this creativity and it became an amalgam of Pixar and the MCU (and later Lucasfilm). Pixar was a culturally antiestablishmment company started by Steve Jobs (yes, yes, he bought a London computer graphics division). The MCU took decades of creativity in the superhero space and basically turned into 2000s era patriotic films. You can guess why the timing.
Oh it's worth adding the Star Wars originally had an expanded universe that was kinda managed by Lucasfilm. Disney abandoned this on purchasing Lucasfilm and some fans were very upset. This included Chewbacca having a wife and family back home. It was all fan fiction, basically.
Disney could very much use the Star Wars milieu to tell stories relevant to our times. The 2025 Superman movie did this for example. and it made some people very upset. But Disney absolutely will not do that. So I really don't think it matters what they try and do.
> Disney can do whatever it wants if it restores and releases a 4K version of the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy, something the fan base has wanted for decades at this point. I won't hold my breath.
We have 4k77 and the follow-up projects. I doubt Disney would release anything I’d prefer to those. They would probably find a way to make their version slightly worse.
The only baffling thing is taht it took this long.
In the physical world, we can limit the types of businesses. We can limit access to them. Casinos, adult entertainment, drinking establishments, etc require efort to go to and there's enforcement (not always effective, obviously) to keep, say, minors out.
The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling is just a negative. There is nothing positive about this. Gambling preys on desperate people and gambling addiction quite often leads to suicide.
So I think it was inevitable that lawmakers would get involved. The only question now is what kinds of restrictions we get, how they work and what the enforcement mechanisms are. Some will say "this is a parenting issue". That's shown to be completely insufficient.
My point is that fighting this is (IMHO) a losing battle.
There are a lot of predictable outcomes here. For example, Meta thinks age verification should be enforced at the OS level. Shocker. The company that has no OS thinks OS should be responsible and, more importantly, liable.
IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs.
I also think the minors simply shouldn't be able to create Apple or Google accounts. Child accounts should belong to an adult account and that adult is responsible for setting the age correctly. The child account should become an adult account when they turn 18.
Attacking VPNs, as Utah is doing here, is... a choice. I don't think that's a winning strategy but we will see.
I also think that location of a user is going to be increasingly enforced and verified. NVidia actually does something like this to try and block their cards being used in China. The cards will ping various locations to try and establish location. I think sites will start doing that too.
Take social media sites like Twitter, for example. There are obviously bots. But there are also people in developing nations who have figured out they can monetize being controversial. I think it would actually be value if we know that Debra the MAGA influencer is actually in Nigeria.
> The Internet has broken down that structure such that there are no limitations and, like it or not, that's really harmful. Widespread access to sports betting and crypto gambling [...]
Your analysis disregards the evidence of several decades in which the Internet existed, but gambling was still broadly illegal and getting around those laws was anything but trivial (since blocking financial flows is, or at least used to be, pretty effective).
Now it's explicitly legal in many states, and I think this can explain for the recent boom much more than the availability of offshore on-chain betting.
> IMHO private companies shouldn't be trusted with verifying IDs. The government should do that because, you know, they're the ones who issued the IDs.
This requires trusting the government in the first place. Easy in some places; not so much in others.
> Your analysis disregards the evidence of several decades in which the Internet existed, but gambling was still broadly illegal and getting around those laws was anything but trivial (since blocking financial flows is, or at least used to be, pretty effective).
I'm not sure what the point of this comment is because it basically translates to "getting around gambling restrictions used to be difficult but it no longer is", which is my point. What does it matter how things used to be if crypto in particular makes financial flows trivial so it's not that way anymore?
> This requires trusting the government in the first place. Easy in some places; not so much in others.
Well, here are you options:
1. No ID verification. A lot of people might consider that ideal but I think it's DOA;
2. A private company, which includes the likes of the Peter Thiel-backed company, verifying IDs; or
3. The government, which, again, is the entity that issues the IDs so, by definition, you're not giving them anything they don't already know.
The government is a strictly better option than a private company because, apparently I need to repeat this, they already have the information because they issued the IDs.
My point is that this recent popularity of gambling is largely a result of the explicit decision by legislators in many US states to legalize online gambling. I don’t think crypto factored in that much.
Whenever you add a touchscreen to something it makes the UI/UX a software issue instead of a hardware issue. You can ship updates. You can cheap out on UI/UX designing because you can ship it later. So you find commonly used features buried 4 menus deep. You also find that the positions of things in menus will randomly change by OTA updates.
Touch screens are (IMHO) terrible for cars because there's no tactile feedback that allows you to use them without looking at the screen. Dials, buttons and switches can be felt and used. It goes beyond being lazy. It's unsafe.
The only reason we got trouch screens in cars at all is cost-cutting.
1. The size of this market manipulation can be measured by the gap between spot or physical oil prices (which generally aren't public) and the future or paper price [2]. Historically these have tracked each other so close it was a non-issue. Now it's a huge issue;
2. Part of the gap can be attributed to the financial markets being in denial [3] and the market itself being in extreme backwardation. That simply means the spot price is significantly higher than the future price. It indiciates some sort of market dysfunction (or delusion). We saw this in the silver market last year.
All credit for this wanton insider trading goes back to the Supreme Court inventing presidential immunity out of thin air [4][5] and a Congress that has completely abdicated any kind of constitutional responsibility.
You might think there might be some kind of criminal prosecution or at least investigation by government agencies of the players involved. Well, sycophants and crackpots have put in charge of those agencies (eg Michael Selig of the CFTC [6]).
And if that fails, just buy a pardon [7].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955623
[2]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-interpret-wartime-oil-pric...
[3]: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Reality-Finall...
[4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/supreme-co...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
[6]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/12/michael-selig-predi...
[7]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-...
reply