Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Veda

1997/1998 crisis vs 2020/2021

Veda — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 23:45:28 +0800

1997/1998:
I was a schoolboy then. From what I remembered, the malls were empty during this crisis (I suppose coz ppl no money, not coz of virus)
Stock markets badly affected for many months, property got firesales.

What I heard from older ppl:
Rich folks are the ones badly affected (coz biz, stocks, property jatuh teruk?). Some ex-rich ppk reduced to selling sandwiches.
Lots of tales of women sell bodies to pay car installments, etc.

2020/2021:
Malls got lots of ppl even during MCO 2.0, 3.0, FMCO. I live next to a small mall, so I should know.

Stock markets dived, like a freaking roller coaster, in March 2020. Since the, it's up up up. But from Feb 2021, range bound (means no dramatic moves upwards or downwards).
Property prices slide down a bit ... maybe got some good deals on offer ... but so far no wholesale firesales.

Unemployment - I read a lot of sad stories, but in (small) my circle ....some, including me, suffer pay cuts but nobody I know lost their jobs. Some even resigned or change jobs.

This times, didn't hear much tales of women sell bodies to make ends meet. Know an older friend who 'sponsored' an ex-air stewardess but that's all. Maybe cause fear of virus, MCOs, gig economy and e-commerce means they do not have to resort to such things?

Credit card payment default

Veda — Tue, 05 May 2020 21:50:30 +0800

Company still haven't banked in my celery.

Momma in hometown wants to help but she does not have online banking or ATM card ..... needs to go to her bank in a PH-controlled state which is still closed.

Can't wait for the company anymore, payment due in a few days - if I don't pay, will damage my credit score.

So I applied today for my bank's credit card relief scheme to turn this month's installment into term loan with effective/real interest of 13%.

Means I have pay a few hundred extra over the next few months ... on top of the cuts to my company perks. Ouch!

Of course I have investments, but this is the wrong time to sell.

#dugaanhidup #iwon'tjustsurviveiwillthrive

Uncle told me

Veda — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 00:02:49 +0800

An older friend who has experienced the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis told me got a lot of ppl doing FL to make ends meet (pay car installments etc) during that time.

He expects the same thing to happen again, worldwide.

Thing is, many of us will be jobless and struggling to survive, where can even think of FL?

All I can say is ... interesting times.

2 people who wronged me got into accidents

Veda — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 16:58:03 +0800

First, someone who frequently abused me when I was a child (yes, I was a abused child) got hit by a car and was hospitalised. But he'll live lah.

A couple of days later, a senior who refused to approve my claims got involved in a car accident. He is uninjured but his car is damaged and a woman in the other car was injured. Then, the senior's son was hospitalised with some mystery illness.

Strange, isn't it. Obviously, I don't feel sad for those who wronged me. I am wondering if I have just gained a "guardian"?

Maslan vs LGE

Veda — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 17:18:23 +0800

If they contest against each other in my area, I'll vote for Maslan. He's such a likeable guy with his recipes.

Stocks, property, bitcoin/crypto

Veda — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:29:19 +0800

Crap. It's the end of our dreams, death of our hopes.

A lot of dreamers have to go back to being kuli liao.

Dream of travelling the world to experience to food, drinks, women, culture, sights all gone ... or at least postponed.

Rate my date

Veda — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:25:21 +0800

It's during a trip to a neighbouring country.

I'll probably close the thread and delete the pic after a while.

Couple have sex outside kindergarten in Singapore

Veda — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 18:16:04 +0800

QUOTE

A COUPLE were caught on camera having sex outside a kindergarten in Singapore just after midnight on March 15.

The act was witnessed by a taxi driver identified only as Zai, who was scolded by the woman when he told them off.

"I drove past a lane in Nathan Road and surprisingly, saw a couple having sex by the side of the road, opposite Fraser Suites," Zaiw was quoted by a Singapore portal as saying.

"The woman was naked and the guy was caressing her. Moments later, the lady performed a sex act on him openly in public.

"Honestly, it went on for like 45 minutes, throughout the whole time while I was waiting for my passenger.

"The couple ignored passers-by who took photos of them. When I asked them what they were doing, the woman told me to 'f**k off'. What a life, yeah?"

Witnesses who capture videos and photos uploaded them on the social media.

Sos (with DRILL): http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2018/03/18/...arten-singapore

Btw I also have seen couples piap piap in public b4, in Taman Jaya

Woman asked me to confront 5 men in a bar

Veda — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 21:52:13 +0800

I was at a Chinese New Year open house at a femes bar. Free food and beer, yo!

While Q'ing up, a couple of half-drunk guys up front cut the Q to join their friends.

The lady in front of me was not happy, she turned to me, said what the guys are doing are not fair, asked me to tell them off.

Guess what I did?

This is not the first time women asked me to get into a confrontation with another guy for them. A PR manager at a KL hotel and my own female underling also tried to manipulate me into a face-off with other guy.

Which beauty queen u like to tap?

Veda — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 16:48:07 +0800

Which beauty queen u like to tap?

The Blockchain Pipe Dream

Veda — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 16:56:08 +0800

Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentar...n-byrne-2018-03

QUOTE

The Blockchain Pipe Dream
Mar 5, 2018 NOURIEL ROUBINI , PRESTON BYRNE

Even after a sharp correction earlier this year, the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has remained unsustainably high, and techno-libertarians have continued to insist that blockchain technologies will revolutionize the way business is done. In fact, blockchain might just be the most over-hyped technology of all time.

NEW YORK – Predictions that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will fail typically elicit a broader defense of the underlying blockchain technology. Yes, the argument goes, over half of all “initial coin offerings” to date have already failed, and most of the 1,500-plus cryptocurrencies also will fail, but “blockchain” will nonetheless revolutionize finance and human interactions generally.

In reality, blockchain is one of the most overhyped technologies ever. For starters, blockchains are less efficient than existing databases. When someone says they are running something “on a blockchain,” what they usually mean is that they are running one instance of a software application that is replicated across many other devices.

The required storage space and computational power is substantially greater, and the latency higher, than in the case of a centralized application. Blockchains that incorporate “proof-of-stake” or “zero-knowledge” technologies require that all transactions be verified cryptographically, which slows them down. Blockchains that use “proof-of-work,” as many popular cryptocurrencies do, raise yet another problem: they require a huge amount of raw energy to secure them. This explains why Bitcoin “mining” operations in Iceland are on track to consume more energy this year than all Icelandic households combined.

Blockchains can make sense in cases where the speed/verifiability tradeoff is actually worth it, but this is rarely how the technology is marketed. Blockchain investment propositions routinely make wild promises to overthrow entire industries, such as cloud computing, without acknowledging the technology’s obvious limitations.

Consider the many schemes that rest on the claim that blockchains are a distributed, universal “world computer.” That claim assumes that banks, which already use efficient systems to process millions of transactions per day, have reason to migrate to a markedly slower and less efficient single cryptocurrency. This contradicts everything we know about the financial industry’s use of software. Financial institutions, particularly those engaged in algorithmic trading, need fast and efficient transaction processing. For their purposes, a single globally distributed blockchain such as Ethereum would never be useful.

Another false assumption is that blockchain represents something akin to a new universal protocol, like TCP-IP or HTML were for the Internet. Such claims imply that this or that blockchain will serve as the basis for most of the world’s transactions and communications in the future. Again, this makes little sense when one considers how blockchains actually work. For one thing, blockchains themselves rely on protocols like TCP-IP, so it isn’t clear how they would ever serve as a replacement.

Furthermore, unlike base-level protocols, blockchains are “stateful,” meaning they store every valid communication that has ever been sent to them. As a result, well-designed blockchains need to consider the limitations of their users’ hardware and guard against spamming. This explains why Bitcoin Core, the Bitcoin software client, processes only 5-7 transactions per second, compared to Visa, which reliably processes 25,000 transactions per second.

Just as we cannot record all of the world’s transactions in a single centralized database, nor shall we do so in a single distributed database. Indeed, the problem of “blockchain scaling” is still more or less unsolved, and is likely to remain so for a long time.

Although we can be fairly sure that blockchain will not unseat TCP-IP, a particular blockchain component – such as Tezos or Ethereum’s smart-contract languages – could eventually set a standard for specific applications, just as Enterprise Linux and Windows did for PC operating systems. But betting on a particular “coin,” as many investors currently are, is not the same thing as betting on adoption of a larger “protocol.” Given what we know about how open-source software is used, there is little reason to think that the value to enterprises of specific blockchain applications will capitalize directly into only one or a few coins.

A third false claim concerns the “trustless” utopia that blockchain will supposedly create by eliminating the need for financial or other reliable intermediaries. This is absurd for a simple reason: every financial contract in existence today can either be modified or deliberately breached by the participating parties. Automating away these possibilities with rigid “trustless” terms is commercially non-viable, not least because it would require all financial agreements to be cash collateralized at 100%, which is insane from a cost-of-capital perspective.

Moreover, it turns out that many likely appropriate applications of blockchain in finance – such as in securitization or supply-chain monitoring – will require intermediaries after all, because there will inevitably be circumstances where unforeseen contingencies arise, demanding the exercise of discretion. The most important thing blockchain will do in such a situation is ensure that all parties to a transaction are in agreement with one another about its status and their obligations.

It is high time to end the hype. Bitcoin is a slow, energy-inefficient dinosaur that will never be able to process transactions as quickly or inexpensively as an Excel spreadsheet. Ethereum’s plans for an insecure proof-of-stake authentication system will render it vulnerable to manipulation by influential insiders. And Ripple’s technology for cross-border interbank financial transfers will soon be left in the dust by SWIFT, a non-blockchain consortium that all of the world’s major financial institutions already use. Similarly, centralized e-payment systems with almost no transaction costs – Faster Payments, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Venmo, Paypal, Square – are already being used by billions of people around the world.

Today’s “coin mania” is not unlike the railway mania at the dawn of the industrial revolution in the mid-nineteenth century. On its own, blockchain is hardly revolutionary. In conjunction with the secure, remote automation of financial and machine processes, however, it can have potentially far-reaching implications.

Ultimately, blockchain’s uses will be limited to specific, well-defined, and complex applications that require transparency and tamper-resistance more than they require speed – for example, communication with self-driving cars or drones. As for most of the coins, they are little different from railway stocks in the 1840s, which went bust when that bubble – like most bubbles – burst.

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

Preston Byrne is a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and Sole Member at Tomram Consulting.

Office boy earns RM3k + 2.5 months bonus

Veda — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 23:37:19 +0800

The office boy in my company earns RM3k per month + 2.5 months bonus.

Some more this office boy is classified as OKU because he injured his head when young.

I bet this is more than most fresh grads salary.

I thot many Mahresians dun like black ppl

Veda — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 23:00:30 +0800

i confess that at first I don't want to watch the film because even I, a relatively enlightened and liberal person, was not too keen on a movie where most of the cast are black. Was thinking of watching Bruce Willis' Death Wish or some horror movie.

But it's 5.50pm and got RM10 promotion. If I watch Death Wish have to wait until 8pm and have to pay RM16. So I pick Black Panther lo.

Pleasantly surprised to find the movie really good. The cinema hall is relatively packed ... ppl of all races, though an older crowd. Didn't notice any young amoi or awek.

By the way, in the Infinity war trailer, I think Thanos was addressing PH fanatics when he said:

QUOTE

In time, you will know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail all the same. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.

Five reasons why folks in Selangor should vote BN

Veda — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 22:21:11 +0800

Totally agree! Especially about Selangor's water problems. Let's kick out PH in GE14!

Sos panas: https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018...should-vote-bn/

QUOTE

HULU SELANGOR: Barisan Nasional will explain to voters in Selangor the five main weaknesses of the state government, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

They are the state's failure to overcome a water supply shortage, high taxes imposed by the state on property and development, poor rubbish collection, pollution and the spread of diseases such as dengue which Selangor tops.

"These are the five reasons we tell the rakyat (why Barisan should be voted to power in Selangor).

"We will tell them that we cannot solve these problems one by one, not unless we have political power," the Barisan chairman said when launching Selangor Barisan's general election machinery here Wednesday.

Also present were Barisan and Umno leaders, including MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and MIC president Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.

Najib said voters should realise that development in the Klang Valley could become more effective and integrated if both Selangor and the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur were under the administration of Barisan Nasional.

Second Life

Veda — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 18:41:31 +0800

Anybody playing this?

http://secondlife.com/

Heard got adult section.

Ayam gonna create the avatar of a big black man with 10". This has always been my fantasy

Multiple personality disorder

Veda — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 18:16:11 +0800

Know someone who has it.

Main/original personality: "JC" 41 year old otaku who always stays in his room, always decline invitations to go out, always stare at computer screen, mediocre at work

Alt personality 1: "Brian Lee" Eurasian world traveller, ex-journalist, successful investor, are game for trying something new, the person "JC" wanted to be.

Alt personality 2: "Jamal Idi Amin" "big black man" dominant, gangster, crime lord, ravager of women, "JC's darkside brought to life

Alt personality 3: "Natasha" educated lady who has a fetish for rough, dark skinned (and Arab) men, S&M, and taking it in the backside.

Quite scary. When the personality changes, the voice changes, the body can sometimes appear bigger like when Jamal takes over.

You can read more stories about this disorder here.
https://listverse.com/2015/03/16/10-famous-...ntity-disorder/

#Inb4 that someone is actually TS.

Expats love ‘cheap’ Malaysia

Veda — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 17:09:55 +0800

QUOTE

FORMER consultant Martin Long loves Penang. His house in Tanjung Bunga is bigger than the one he had in Australia.

He is paying less for private education and healthcare in Penang but feels that the services he’s getting are almost on a par with Australia.

Ever since moving to Malaysia, he’s taken more holidays in Southeast Asia and the family eat out more often than they used to back home.

The 51-year-old is one the thousands of expats a recent survey said are happier after they moved to Malaysia. The top most reasons for this are the ease in looking for accommodation and of setting up schooling and healthcare.

Yet while 44% of expats said they are happier in Malaysia, working and middle-class Malaysians said they are being squeezed by the higher living costs.

Seven out eight families met by The Malaysian Insight said that they can’t afford better homes and are constantly worried about skyrocketing food prices.

Read more here:
https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/s/38614/

Penang is hell

Veda — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 16:56:37 +0800

This is Veda's annual report about his reluctant trip to Penang to visit his familee.

It's hot like hell in Penang - 34 darjah Celcious, yo. Feels lethargic. It's not like that in PJ, I can't wait to leave Penang.

About GE14, after talking to the blue collar locals to find out sentiments on the ground, I regretfully report that the locals told me they will vote for Pakatan, despite the "problems" like floods, etc.

Why, oh why?

Pakatan will hold on with a comfortable majority, though they may lose a few seats.

Personally, I prefer PAS or BN lah.

Economist: Bitcoin “the mother of all bubbles”

Veda — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 16:53:52 +0800

Roubini is the economist credited with predicting the 2008 global financial crisis

QUOTE

Blockchain’s Broken Promises
Jan 26, 2018 NOURIEL ROUBINI
Boosters of blockchain technology compare its early days to the early days of the Internet. But whereas the Internet quickly gave rise to email, the World Wide Web, and millions of commercial ventures, blockchain's only application – cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin – does not even fulfill its stated purpose.

NEW YORK – The financial-services industry has been undergoing a revolution. But the driving force is not overhyped blockchain applications such as Bitcoin. It is a revolution built on artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things.

Already, thousands of real businesses are using these technologies to disrupt every aspect of financial intermediation. Dozens of online-payment services – PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Venmo, and so forth – have hundreds of millions of daily users. And financial institutions are making precise lending decisions in seconds rather than weeks, thanks to a wealth of online data on individuals and firms. With time, such data-driven improvements in credit allocation could even eliminate cyclical credit-driven booms and busts.

Similarly, insurance underwriting, claims assessment and management, and fraud monitoring have all become faster and more precise. And actively managed portfolios are increasingly being replaced by passive robo-advisers, which can perform just as well or better than conflicted, high-fee financial advisers.

Now, compare this real and ongoing fintech revolution with the record of blockchain, which has existed for almost a decade, and still has only one application: cryptocurrencies. Blockchain’s boosters would argue that its early days resemble the early days of the Internet, before it had commercial applications. But that comparison is simply false. Whereas the Internet quickly gave rise to email, the World Wide Web, and millions of viable commercial ventures used by billions of people, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin do not even fulfill their own stated purpose.1

As a currency, Bitcoin should be a serviceable unit of account, means of payments, and a stable store of value. It is none of those things. No one prices anything in Bitcoin. Few retailers accept it. And it is a poor store of value, because its price can fluctuate by 20-30% in a single day.

Worse, cryptocurrencies in general are based on a false premise. According to its promoters, Bitcoin has a steady-state supply of 21 million units, so it cannot be debased like fiat currencies. But that claim is clearly fraudulent, considering that it has already forked off into three branches: Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Gold. Besides, hundreds of other cryptocurrencies are invented every day, alongside scams known as “initial coin offerings,” which are mostly designed to skirt securities laws. So “stable” cryptos are creating money supply and debasing it at a much faster pace than any major central bank ever has.1

As is typical of a financial bubble, investors are buying cryptocurrencies not to use in transactions, but because they expect them to increase in value. Indeed, if someone actually wanted to use Bitcoin, they would have a hard time doing so. It is so energy-intensive (and thus environmentally toxic) to produce, and carries such high transaction costs, that even Bitcoin conferences do not accept it as a valid form of payment.

Until now, Bitcoin’s only real use has been to facilitate illegal activities such as drug transactions, tax evasion, avoidance of capital controls, or money laundering. Not surprisingly, G20 member states are now working together to regulate cryptocurrencies and eliminate the anonymity they supposedly afford, by requiring that all income- or capital-gains-generating transactions be reported.

After a crackdown by Asian regulators this month, cryptocurrency values fell by 50% from their December peak. They would have collapsed much more had a vast scheme to prop up their price via outright manipulation not been rapidly implemented. But, like in the case of the sub-prime bubble, most US regulators are still asleep at the wheel.

Since the invention of money thousands of years ago, there has never been a monetary system with hundreds of different currencies operating alongside one another. The entire point of money is that it allows parties to transact without having to barter. But for money to have value, and to generate economies of scale, only so many currencies can operate at the same time.

In the US, the reason we do not use euros or yen in addition to dollars is obvious: doing so would be pointless, and it would make the economy far less efficient. The idea that hundreds of cryptocurrencies could viably operate together not only contradicts the very concept of money; it is utterly idiotic.

But so, too, is the idea that even a single cryptocurrency could substitute for fiat money. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, whereas fiat currencies certainly do, because they can be used to pay taxes. Fiat currencies are also protected from value debasement by central banks committed to price stability; and if a fiat currency loses credibility, as in some weak monetary systems with high inflation, it will be swapped out for more stable foreign fiat currencies or real assets.

As it happens, Bitcoin’s supposed advantage is also its Achilles’s heel, because even if it actually did have a steady-state supply of 21 million units, that would disqualify it as a viable currency. Unless the supply of a currency tracks potential nominal GDP, prices will undergo deflation.

That means if a steady-state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. By extension, any nominal debt contract denominated in Bitcoin would rise in real value over time, leading to the kind of debt deflation that economist Irving Fisher believed precipitated the Great Depression. At the same time, nominal wages in Bitcoin would increase forever in real terms, regardless of productivity growth, adding further to the likelihood of an economic disaster.

Clearly, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies represent the mother of all bubbles, which explains why every human being I met between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2017 asked me if they should buy them. Scammers, swindlers, charlatans, and carnival barkers (all conflicted insiders) have tapped into clueless retail investors’ FOMO (“fear of missing out”), and taken them for a ride.

As for the underlying blockchain technology, there are still massive obstacles standing in its way, even if it has more potential than cryptocurrencies. Chief among them is that it lacks the kind of basic common and universal protocols that made the Internet universally accessible (TCP-IP, HTML, and so forth). More fundamentally, its promise of decentralized transactions with no intermediary authority amounts to an untested, Utopian pipedream. No wonder blockchain is ranked close to the peak of the hype cycle of technologies with inflated expectations.2

So, forget about blockchain, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, and start investing in fintech firms with actual business models, which are slogging away to revolutionize the financial-services industry. You won’t get rich overnight; but you’ll have made the smarter investment.

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

Source:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentar...roubini-2018-01

Bitcoin to go back to

Veda — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 17:42:10 +0800

QUOTE

Bitcoin's big wipeout erases US$44b of value in January
THU, FEB 01, 2018

Bitcoin is proving that cryptocurrencies can erase wealth as fast as they create it.

Its January slide knocked US$44.2 billion off the US$200 billion in market value generated in all of last year, the biggest one-month loss in dollar terms in the short history of digital assets.

"Once we got to US$10,000, crypto had adopted this Teflon persona of late that it's always going to find a base and go back up again," Stephen Innes, head of Asia-Pacific trading at Oanda, said from Singapore.

"When we're talking in the realm of riskier assets, and something shaves off 50 per cent of its value, it tells me there's going to be an extension lower. The sad thing is a lot of people will be burned, because they will continue to buy dips."

Since reaching a peak of almost US$20,000 in early December after the introduction of futures contracts on regulated exchanges in the US, a series of negative news has buffeted bitcoin and rival cryptocurrencies, with losses intensifying since the start of 2018.

A record US$500 million heist of an alternate coin at Japanese exchange Coincheck on Jan 26 upped the pressure on regulators to probe business practices within the largely unregulated industry, while the authorities in trading hotbed South Korea continue to debate more serious measures including a ban on such exchanges.

Mr Innes sees the cryptocurrency tumbling further to the US$5,000-to-US$6,000 range before eventually recovering to US$10,000-to-US$15,000.

That road will almost certainly be bumpy given global authorities are only going to increase their scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry from here on, he said. - Bloomberg