For all the pride that South Korea has around its successes, how good of a society can it be, if it is an abject failure when it comes to repopulation?
Won't this just devolve into a "live to die another day" situation? Most likley just a few days later?
I feel super skeptical about these "billionaire survival" compounds because they are going to require a lot of work for survival (read: hired hands). And where are these hands going to come from? If SHTF won't their pilots, drivers, security details, maids, cooks, gardeners, maintenance/mechanics crews, etc abandon them to tend to their own families? Or are these billionaires finding orphans who have no allegiance to anyone but the billionaires? Not to mention this is going to require some kind of "military style" command to prevent mutiny and ensure compliance under the threat of force. Sure, the billionaires can bury themselves in a comfortable (even luxury) bunker eating dehydrated rations for many many years, but I think I'd rather die that point. They can hide out on their yachts for about week before they run out of diesel and food, and then crew commits a mutiny.
It all seems like a really stupid expensive LARP or Howard Hughes style paranoia. IMO if SHTF for real those bunkers are worthless.
The biggest advantage of a bunker would be the first year of survival. You can comfortably wait while the population resolves itself, and later emerge with a group of trusted people (agriculturists, scientists, doctors) who are much healthier, loaded with weapons, and available to start a new society.
>Unless the housing supply increases this will just be a temporary thing.
The housing supply will increase dramatically in the next decade, not by building but by attrition.
More than 55% of all homes in America are owned by Silent Gens or Boomers[0]. That figure includes non-SFHs, of SFHs I've read they own >70% of (lost my source unfortunately). They are going to start dying of en masse within the next decade. That means A LOT of SFH are going to hit the market, all around the same time.
The share of millenials and genzers who are financially fit to even purchase a home are going to be far less than the amount of people who are dying.
For the non-believers, it's all written in the demographics. Unless we import a shit load of migrants who can also afford expensive real estate, or we print money so that institutions can buy these properties, the prices are going to sink like crazy.
Well their kids could live in them, or sell it and buy a different house to live in. Forecasting what the effect of that supply will be on prices seems hard to me. Housing units per capita is lower than it was 20 years ago[0] and I think if you could find a longer time series you would see the pattern continue back many decades. That timeseries also includes all housing, not just SFH. I think if you just looked at SFH the decline would be more dramatic.
Unlikely. There's a very high likelihood the house will have to be sold, either to pay off debts of the deceased (or bereaved), or because the children already have their own lives going, or because they don't want to assume the tax burden, or simply because each child wants their share to do with as they please.
>or sell it and buy a different house to live
This is what's going to happen. All of these property will be sold. A very small percentage will be assumed by the children because of the all issues mentioned above.
> The share of millenials and genzers who are financially fit to even purchase a home are going to be far less than the amount of people who are dying.
I don't understand this sentence.
The number of houses that get sold or transferred to living people is of course exactly the same as the number of houses vacated by people who died. It can't be anything else since houses don't evaporate when the owner dies.
> Just because you die doesn't mean your house is paid off or you don't have some kind of reverse mortgage on it.
That doesn't change anything with respect to the existence of the house. Someone might take a loss (the heir or a bank) but no matter, the house continues to exist and someone else will end up owning it.
> Just the yearly taxes on my home would be a significant burden to many.
If nobody can afford it that just means the price (and thus tax) will drop until someone can.
1) Not 55% from your article. Youngest boomer is 59. That's about middle of the 55-64. So split the difference, it's 43.8%. Millenials are larger than boomers. Gen X is larger than Silent generation. If your thesis of them not being able to buy when they die off is correct, well, see #2 and #4 below.
2) People that inherit don't have to sell. Many will simply rent as it could be tax advantageous. Or they move in.
3) Construction costs (labor, materials) will inflate minimizing new supply.
4) The Fed has no choice but to bring rates back down and keep printing. National debt is $33T which is crazy but unfunded liabilities are 211T! We're well on our way to paying 1T in annual interest. 65% of spending is mandatory. Debt historically % of GDP is 46.9%. End of 2022 - 97%. [1]. Interest rates cannot remain historically elevated and the only way out of the debt load is to print print print. This helps assets and affordability (debt service) for investors and the genx, millenials to acquire. The US and world got drunk off a cheap dollar.
So I disagree on the macro of your thesis. Certainly some areas will be affected though with boomer/silent passings but that will be due to a demographic change in demand, gen x and younger not desiring those areas for numerous reasons.
I'll be holding assets as inflation continues, and probably rips again in the near future. It will be traditional inflation (actual economy) or inflation in the financial economy (stocks, assets). One or both have to rip from inflation. There's no way out of the debt load.
> Unless we import a shit load of migrants who can also afford expensive real estate, or we print money so that institutions can buy these properties, the prices are going to sink like crazy.
Likely the powers that be will print money to hand over to institutions to gobble up real estate who will then rent out the properties to the incoming mass migration wave into the US. Most of these new arrivals have a almost zero percent chance of becoming home owners with the current pricing and wage suppression going on.
It seems to me various real estate investment groups have essentially unlimited lines of credit to buy up properties. On the commercial side they seemingly can ride out many of their units being empty for YEARS.
>> They are going to start dying of en masse within the next decade. That means A LOT of SFH are going to hit the market, all around the same time.
80% of the silent generation is already dead along with 33% of the baby boomers. Between them, around 8,000 people die every day, and that has been going on for quite a while.
When do you expect this to start having an effect on prices?
It's basically analogous to what Valve is doing with steam. Windows has a monopoly on PC gaming and Valve does not want to be subject to any future restrictions or requirements that may be enforced in the future, so they funded andfacilitated gaming on Linux based PCs.
Analogously, Microsoft doesn't want to be subject to the duopoly of Google and Apple with mobile (gaming), so they want their cloud steaming platform available on competitors.
First: I'm happy that Steam has put effort into Linux!
Then, as a bit of a tangent:
Windows only has a "monopoly" on PC gaming because Apple refuses to licence their operating system for non-Apple hardware - and because Linux just isn't mainstream enough.
If you could buy OSX just like you can buy Windows and install it on your home built PC, I'm confident the landscape would at least be somewhat different.
(It is certainly possible to install osx yourself on your own PC hardware, if you put your pirate hat on and are happy with massively outdated GPU drivers etc - or at least it was half a decade ago when I checked last).
Of course Apple would also have to develop some care for gamers.
“Windows has a lock on PC gaming because macOS isn’t available for PCs. Of course, macOS would have to radically chamge to be even remotely usable as a gaming competitor to Windows.”
If macOS is that bad for gaming, no gamer is going to use it even if it was available for PCs.
Disagree. My argument is that Apple have been ignoring it pretty much completely.
If a significant user base of PC users had OSX, then with a bit of TLC/ development from Apple I'm sure it'd be a very viable platform for gaming as well.
I.e. Microsoft are going a crap load of work behind the scenes to provide the best gaming experience, so Apple would have to step up their (sorry) game to compete.
> Disagree. My argument is that Apple have been ignoring it pretty much completely.
Worse than ignorning really. Games for windows from years ago largely still work. Games for Mac Os X don't because Apple regularly breaks compatability. This means the long tail of late sales won't happen without more developer effort, which isn't usually available.
I second toast0's point. Apple didn't ignore desktop gaming, they actively gave the middle finger to the whole community, repeatedly, and iOS was the only bridge that was thrown to restore some kind of decent relationship.
See nvidia basically banned from the macos ecosystem, or the whole fight with Epic as they couldn't come to any resemblance of a compromise.
Imo the bigger point that you’re missing is that Mac OS wouldn’t be Mac OS without limiting its hardware compatibility. Its stability and usability is directly tied to just having to support so few hardware profiles compared to the nightmare Microsoft has to deal with for decades.
Also as others have already pointed out, Apple has historically hated games. The only reason they tolerate it now is because of the massive revenue it brings with iOS
I think that apple is going to break into gaming in a big way in the next 5-10 years. A small target range of carefully-curated hardware is a HUGE advantage in game development.
Devs will be able to optimize for apple machines in much the same way that they currently optimize for consoles, and you'll be able to know exactly how a game will perform on your system before buying it.
There is only so much optimization you can do before you run into the limits of the hardware.
I wouldn’t mind a 30% markup for an apple gaming pc, but based on the markups the currently charge for compute… I’d expect the top of the line $2k PC I built this year to cost $4k-$6k if it came from apple. I’m extremely skeptical of the vision for the same reason. You need raw power for driving high end displays.
They will probably compete in the console market though. Kinda like how their headphones compete in the “rich but not knowledgeable about audio” demographic. Actually, I’m kinda selling my self on this. I should buy more apple stock.
They're not top end AAA games by any means, but both Factorio and World of Warcraft have highly performant native Silicon builds that drive my high refresh rate display @ 1440p quite happily, without even making the fans spin up noticeably.
Microsoft poured money into game tools since the 90s, published a large library of in-house games themselves, litigated and demolished it's competition (both Apple and Linux), and courted every single hardware manufacturer in existence. XBox as a console came into being from this massive investment.
> because Apple refuses to licence their operating system for non-Apple hardware
Reminder that Microsoft poached Bungie, who developed Marathon and others exclusively for Macintosh, to develop Halo for PC and XBox exclusive releases.
> Windows only has a "monopoly" on PC gaming because Apple refuses to licence their operating system for non-Apple hardware - and because Linux just isn't mainstream enough.
I mean, defend it or don't but it doesn't make it a not-monopoly that its competitors are not able to compete effectively for various reasons.
AAPL can, but doesnt. A lot of hand waving over hardware, is misdirection. AAPL can curate limited support for consumer hardware same as their custom hardware, but they dont want to negotiate AND stop relying on ridiculous markup. The issue is momentum. AAPL has demonstrated this is the way and gaming...with new random features becoming popular based on consumer hardware breakthroughs, doesnt feed into their existing, stable, pipelines of profit.
TL;DR Gaming is partially fed by innovation in hardware and AAPL hates that.
I have no idea what you are saying. I don't think we are having an exchange about the same things, or at least not the same context.
ie The reason AAPL's board doesn't want to support 3rd party hardware, which is usually based around the newest gaming technology from potential competitors, is some opposite reason?
> it doesn't make it (MSFT) a not-monopoly that its competitors are not able to compete effectively for various reasons.
My assertion is that AAPL could, but won't. The monopoly of MSFT in the gaming sphere is because of a sort of happy coincidence between a massive company willing to support third party hardware (MSFT) and another massive company that depends on not supporting it, to maintain a stranglehold on their market (AAPL) and all the minor players who can't afford to support hardware at scale for a prolonged period of time, to compete with MSFT...even thought a few have for a short time and fell behind or were acquired.
I mean, Apple's refusal to license their OS for non-Apple hardware is unambiguously the correct decision. From Apple's perspective there are countless downsides and zero upsides to doing otherwise.
Apple is going to be huge in gaming in the mid-term future. If you have a limited, controlled hardware range, developers can tune Apple-targeted games in the same way that they tune console games. They can guarantee that everything works exactly as intended, which has been the achilles' heel of PC gaming since time immemorial.
I grew up a hardcore gamer and vehement apple-hater, but over the past decade, Apple has become the most competent consumer hardware company on earth and I'm super excited for the future here.
I just can’t imagine Apple building and selling a replacement for a 4080 gpu and top line amd/intel cpu. And if they do they markup would be insane. Look at what they currently charge for compute as an example. Price vs performance ratio between apple and pc is too high to be viable.
So if apple does get into gaming it’s going to be incredibly gimped and ten years behind the tech curve. (Or at the level of consoles) Which might be competitive against that market.
But I am extremely skeptical that apple will compete with top of the line pc gaming in a meaningful way. Pushing +100 fps at 4k is not easy or cheap, and if apple wants to win enthusiasts (or even have decent looking VR for the vision) they’ll need to offer significant compute at a competitive price. So basically, they’ll need to completely change their economics model… and I don’t think they’ll do that.
Even with Apple's "limited" HW, just on the iPhone it's like Sony releasing a new PlayStation every year. Add Mac in and it's like Sony's past decade in consoles every 12-18 months. Plus you add in the fact iOS users balk at paying $5 for a game, Mac gamers are a blip and Apple's penchant disregard for backwards compatibility and love to overcharge for storage and you really don't get a great recipe for gaming.
I think the key to their strategy is the line "more fragmented set of device stores/platform is better for us."
Nadella is acknowledging that being an app means the platform hosting the app has a lot of leverage. Apple could potentially prevent Microsoft from releasing an update on any of the apps they publish on the App Store. Apple and Google essentially play a gatekeeping role between many Microsoft Users and Microsoft itself. This is big for Microsoft because they have a huge install base on Android/iPhone/iPad, and have some exposure to macOS. Teams without iPhone won't work. This is a topic Microsoft is specifically sensitive too because of it's history.
Nadella is saying it's worth investing in less popular devices in hopes that they become a bigger competition again iPhone and Android. In fact, Nadella is hoping Meta takes a small but meaningful portion of the market.
Satya says that the more different competing platforms exist, the better it is for MS and their cloud services ie MS services will be eventually be available on all those platforms like Meta’s Quest charging subscription fees
Imo it’s inline with Satya’s Microsoft Everywhere strategy. Office and Xbox are everywhere now with the cloud
I think it's being posted in light of the USG's pending antitrust lawsuit against Google[1].
(However, that case concerns digital advertising, and this document seems to have been produced by discovery in a different case. So I'm not sure if it's relevant beyond the general theme of "Google considers other companies competitors.")
The significance I saw was Microsoft trying to project being the good guy for upcoming regulations of digital marketplaces. I thought they had a strategy to separate themselves from Apple and Google, and this confirms that. They keep getting the game console stores exempted from consideration.
In San Bruno, CA a portion of the mall there is dedicated to small experiences for children (a miniature play town, a bounce room, etc). I've taken my toddler there and it was pretty fun.
Pure commoditized retail isn't going to cut it anymore. I think another component is that the rent is going to have to be very cheap in order to lower the bar to entry and encourage rapid innovations in this space. If I were Simon (or a similar property group), I might dedicate a certain percentage of my mall spaces to "incubate" these new ideas by offer cheap or nearly free rent.
There was a place in North Texas (Frisco or Plano) that had a miniature indoor town, where kids could play as various professions, from hair stylist to firefighter to banker and other things. It struck me as a pretty neat use of what used to be a multi-story department store space, though there wasn't much geared toward my daughter who was two at the time. Still, making use of the fairly-recently built space instead of just abandoning it seemed like a decent ethical choice, and they seemed to be doing OK, despite the ongoing pandemic.
I think the owners might want to rethink that. Malls aren't a great business to be in right now, but I'm not too sure office space is that hot either given the work-from-home transition. Condos and other housing seem to still be a good business to be in though.
Yeah, it's not super well executed by any means and its relegated to a very small section of the mall, but I still believe the idea is good and could be successful if nurtured correctly.
>"players can make far more than that playing in leagues overseas"
THEN GO PLAY OVERSEAS!!!! Half of the people on HackerNews are immigrants to one country or another.
Why should we feel sympathy for this woman? People go overseas for better opportunities all the time. Why should I feel sympathy for her brining illegal drugs into Russia? She's can't follow the law there, so now America has to come break her out?
You need access to the software that runs those SOCs which is owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm isn't just going to give the sourcecode of those SOCs for Google engineers to tinker around with it. It creates all kinds of crazy legal problems.
It's not just the main Android OS that needs to be patched, the chips have their own proprietary software too.
The problem is that after 3 years, most of those chips have gone EOL and QC wants to put their resources into developing new chips because that's where the revenue comes from (e.g. how they pay their employees). Meanwhile new security flaws keep getting discovered on EOL chips that provide zero new revenue.
So what do you want here? Do you want the break neck pace of innovation to continue which is ultimately very good for everyone? Or should we spend all of our time making sure your Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022? At some point you just have to move on and that's just the trade you make for all technology. You can't simultaneously benefit from this cycle and then bemoan it. If all we ever did was make security patches for your Commodore and AppleIIc you wouldn't have a Pixel3.
> So what do you want here? Do you want the break neck pace of innovation to continue which is ultimately very good for everyone? Or should we spend all of our time making sure your Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022?
I want my perfectly good phone, that I bought 3 years ago, to still get updates. In all honestly, my old Motorola G4 would still be a good phone if it had more storage (and didn't eat SD cards).
Everything about my Pixel 3a (which is EOL in 4 months), works absolutely perfect for all my needs. Great camera, still very good battery life, plenty of storage / power. This is forced obsolescence for a device that is more than capable of handling most everyone's mobile workload. And, as a mobile minimalist, mine especially.
This kinda shit makes me want to go back to a fucking flip phone. I'll probably roll the dice with Lineage or Calyx, but the absurdity of all this is really frustrating.
Ultimately most people don't need the rapid pace of new chips. The pixel 3 level is sufficient for the foreseeable future.
There isnt a binary innovation or support. Just as we have LTS branches of software we should have LTS firmware. I would buy a LTS device in a heartbeat. But there are those who want the bleeding edge and they should be catered for too.
> Or should we spend all of our time making sure your Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022
Microsoft's timilene for OS support is easily 10 to 20 years. Windows XP was released in 2001. It's final ecurity support ended in 2019. 18 years later.
I know, it's hard for modern "programmers" to fathom such a level of commitment.
> You need access to the software that runs those SOCs which is owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm isn't just going to give the sourcecode of those SOCs for Google engineers to tinker around with it. It creates all kinds of crazy legal problems
Alphabet cannot buy Qualcomm for the same reason Nvidia could not buy Arm.
If your implication is that someone market cap equals negotiating leverage you would only be right if Alphabet was the only elephant that Qualcomm was in bed with.
Point taken, however: modern apps don't run on 80s hardware, but they do run on a Pixel 3. The line in the sand just needs to align a bit more with the physical capabilities, for e-waste reasons.
just a lot less (overt) slurs and slightly more intelligible formatting