I think you might have misread the graphs as they clearly support the title. There are two types
One type (e.g. chart 1 and 4) showing the holdings by governments and central banks, which are clearly falling. The other shows holdings by foreign entities, which is also explained to include many US offshore funds and foreign subsidiaries, so actually still US entities that are holding these treasuries. Here the picture is more amorphous with overall foreign treasury holdings rising in the past years with a dip basically for a number of countries since last year for most countries.
I read it as clearly governments reducing treasuries with investors in some markets still absorbing some.
The only real dumping has happened from Japan, which is fighting to defend the yen, and China, which is obviously repositioning though to a way lesser degree than a nation dumping an adversary’s bonds would.
The story is just another way of saying we’re issuing more debt. Central banks aren’t reducing exposure. They just didn’t increase them with our own finances, which makes sense, our finances don’t increase their reserve requirements.
Holdings by France, Taiwan, and India have also decreased year over year. Based on the charts, it could be the start of a reversal, but charts are charts and we’ll just have to see.
Brazil is on a long term downtrend although they may be bottoming out.
Norway just proposed reducing bond holdings in its sovereign fund.
It’s not as clear cut as you’re making it out to be. I think the headline may be overstated, but the article does a reasonable job of making the point.
> it could be the start of a reversal, but charts are charts and we’ll just have to see
This is the correct conclusion. Currently, there is no discernable signal. Given American politics, I'd be shocked if we didn't see folks trying to diversify central-bank holdings.
But as long as America runs a trade imbalance, we'll be dumping dollars abroad, and those dollars will work their ways into their countries' banking systems from which they'll work into their central banks, and unless their governments want to strengthen their currency (unlikely for an exporter), they're going to hold those dollars, and if you're holding dollars as an asset, holding the currency type versus the pays-a-yield type is just giving free money to Washington.
> Norway just proposed reducing bond holdings in its sovereign fund
That was explicitly a portfolio-weighting move. They're reducing buying of Treasuries in favour of higher-yielding agency bonds. Their total exposure to U.S. credit isn't being cut. It was just being re-weighted away from Treasuries at a time when they weren't yielding as much as they are now.
All true and good clarification. There is definitely a phase shift happening that is worth paying attention to, but it’s not yet a crisis, and it may not precipitate one.
I think it's telling of your bubble that you think anyone who works in tech has heard of YC or Stallman.
As for Yudkowsky and Alexander, I've known about them for at least a decade, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks who are "seriously interested in AI" haven't heard of them.
Personally I appreciate when things are written in plain language rather than using insider jargon, even when the intended audience likely knows what the jargon means.
> If the code is simple, the tests aren't much extra work.
Disagree. Even if it isn't much work to write (which is debatable), it still carries costs: CI takes longer to run, and the tests have to be carried and maintained (and possibly updated if the code itself changes).
> High test coverage doesn't mean your code is good, but it at least reduces the rate at which you accidentally break stuff.
Sure, for the most part. But that doesn't mean "more test code" is always a good thing. Tests aren't free, even for simple code.
Sure, but all the time I'll ask Claude a question, and then I'll see it fetch 5-10 different URLs to come up with answer. I certainly would not be fetching those URLs at that rate if I were doing it myself. I would probably be visiting those pages, one by one, over the span of 10-20 minutes.
As would I when researching anything myself. I'll do a web search, and if I see some highly relevant results, I'll middle-click them so they open in a new tab, and I'll easily do 5+ at a time, before then going to read the first one.
Same with browsing HN, btw. I have a row of 9 HN tabs open, all of them opened at the same time, as I scrolled the front page and middle-clicked on thread link to anything interesting.
I agree that the focus on decentralization is a distraction, but Mastodon and Bluesky are perfectly fine alternatives that are just as easy to use as Twitter.
The fact that they have not succeeded in attracting a critical mass of Twitter users to jump ship is all the evidence we need to show that network effects are real, and overcoming them is really hard.
Also, I don't think most people on Twitter "want" to move. I think most people don't care about Musk or his politics, at least not enough to care about leaving his social media site. (And a significant chunk of people in the US, at least, likely are in Musk's camp anyway.)
I expect that the percentage of politicians and public services/institutions who have even heard of xcancel is incredibly small.
The real way to combat this is to write to your representative. The best way is probably to ask questions about something you care about, and when they reply "I've posted about this on X", tell them you are unable/unwilling to use that platform, and as a government official they should not be using a closed service as the sole means of communicating with constituents.
Of course, that probably still won't work, since politicians are lazy, and most care more about fundraising and getting re-elected than doing their jobs, but it's probably the best you can do.
> The real way to combat this is to write to your representative.
I always kind of chuckle at this advice. Is there any case of a representative changing their mind on an issue because someone wrote to them about it? I've written to representatives in the past and you are always going to get one of two outcomes:
1. If you are writing in support of something the representative already agrees with, you'll get a form letter back saying:
"Thank you for your input. Representative Jones fully supports initiative X and is fighting to enact it in Congress!"
2. If you are writing in support of something the representative disagrees with, you'll get a form letter back saying: "Thank you for your input. While your input is valuable, Representative Jones is adamantly against initiative X and will not be supporting it in Congress."
I think of lawmakers as unchanging boxes of fixed beliefs and you only get to vote for and change the contents of that box every N years. The real way to combat this is to elect representative who already align with what you want.
My experience of being on the other end of this is quite old (2001-2002) but I doubt the fundamental dynamics have changed.
There are some things for which your representative absolutely has a fixed vote, either because they personally have a strong view or because political constraints (district demographics, internal party pressure, whatever) are significant. For other things, they will likely pattern match against their broad inclinations (for free trade, anti taxes, for green energy, whatever) at least as an initial position. For many issues, though, your representative probably doesn't care much at all, by default.
But the ways things move from the second or third boxes to the first are pressure (enough voters/co-partisans/whoever caring makes inaction politically expensive), money (election campaigns cost cash and so cash buys attention if not actual votes on legislation), or convincement.
If enough people write on some esoteric subject someone in the rep's office will notice, because tracking political issues is part of their job. Staffers help shape reps' policy positions and voting behaviour, at least in part because reps are too busy to pay attention to everything that comes up. And if the campaign is big and noisy enough that it threatens to become a major electoral issue then that will also force a decision one way or another. So it is possible to influence positions and behaviour, but not on every issue and very likely not if you're doing it alone (and don't write large cheques).
You'll definitely get a form letter for anything they have a form letter for, though. And even without then the actual letter is likely written by an intern or junior staffer (or I guess GAI these days). But then when I was reading incoming mail most of that was form letters and pre-printed campaign postcards too, so it was difficult to feel too regretful that the replies were mostly mass-produced rather than artisanal.
Politicians are lazy, sure. I also believe that hearing sustained and prolonged resistance to X as a communication platform will make a difference. It's real grassroots effort.
Ad hominem would be if the GP was making a personal attack on you. Saying a question is "silly" is not that.
Downvoting can also mean that the downvoter doesn't think it's worth the time to engage with prose. It's a bit arrogant to assume that a downvote means someone can't come up with a cogent argument against you; the fact that you make that assumption points even more strongly at the idea that it's not worth arguing with you.
I would say that classifying an argument as "silly" without any supporting evidence is borderline ad hominem because it doesn't make a substantive critique of the assertion, and instead colors the character of the opposition. But that shouldn't take away from your position.
As for your suggestion that I am being arrogant, I can see where you're coming from but I also feel as though I'm within the bounds of fairness to push for a reasoned response (instead of an emotional appeal).
All that said, thanks for replying in a way that advances the discourse. Much appreciated.
100k/s is consistent with on the order of lower 10s of millions of devices, with most checking every 10 or so minutes, and a few misconfigured ones hammering the server at a high frequency.
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