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Saturday, Nov 26, 2011 - 21:31 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Over

I learnt this week how something can be over before it begins. While it struck me like a Corinthian pillar (in more ways than might be guessed), there was little regret, as I had done all that I reasonably could have. Well, except the most obvious thing, but although I am not a man of particularly many principles, the few that I have I intend to keep.

I learnt too that some things don't count for much (then again, I knew well, but chose to be hypocritical about it), and that for not wholly rational beings, knowledge can be a dangerous - or at least, counterproductive - thing. It is all rather bothersome, and as a quick glance at actuarial tables reminds me, I do not have many more decades to give.

And then there are the positives, though I would have sacrificed them in a heartbeat: being largely inured to what would otherwise be seen as long-term failure, which should come in useful in research; freedom to attain full social potential (eh, why would I want that?); and a nudge towards accepting that it's alright not to give of as much as one takes (at least in this domain)

Well, it wasn't a complete surprise. And what do you know, the MP3-playing sunglasses came in, to make the whole affair slightly easier to take. Of course, with my myopia, I can't see anything with them on, but I'll KIV that (and use them as eyeshades for the meantime)


Deal with it


On

On the non-personal front, much-hyped Next Big Thing Groupon has stumbled after its IPO, which has been partly put down to its relatively high number of employees (and corresponding labour costs), other than it sometimes not being a good deal for retailers, who may have thought that they were in for risk reduction (since successful Groupon deals guarantee a minimum volume of sales), and instead find themselves horrendously overbooked (since there is apparently no upper limit, which makes no sense at all)

Their other problem is, as usual, copycat competition, which every Sorta-Big Thing has to fend off. One thing I have come to realise is that many such platforms are clonable to a very large extent, given a motivated team of programmers (though the job can be stressful). This is easier for certain offerings than others, however (try recreating Google from scratch, instead of say Myspace), and being first mover does help in gripping market share - for a while, at least.

A recent track-worthy startup would be Dwolla, which hawks the very simple line of flat-fee transactions. This might not sound revolutionary, until one realises that credit card companies charge interchange fees that include a percentage of the transaction, so when paying for a $10000 item by card, for instance, a couple hundred bucks is skimmed off the top, just like that.

It is easy to wonder how exactly processing a $10000 transaction can be that much more expensive than a $100 one (which would in contrast cost only a couple of dollars in fees), especially when it appears to be the reverse when accepting fixed deposits (as previously covered), where smaller individual transactions garnered less interest presumably as they incurred the same overheads as larger ones.

While a Groupon for deposits might appear welcome, a quick check reveals that this deposit-quantity-discrimination no longer occurs, at least for now, and with rates hovering from 0.1 to 0.2% (yes, you read that right, one-tenth of one percent), it is questionable why people even bother. With the invisible inflation tax hovering about 5% locally, the purchasing power of savings would be halved in about 14 years if this trend persists. 9-9-9 almost sounds good now.

For myself, I'm not too bothered since I'm used to not buying crap I don't need (excepting MP3-playing sunglasses and perhaps hamsters with freakin' laser beams shooting out of their eyes); such as more technology not necessarily improving learning outcomes, as I argued in my MOE interview eons ago. Duh, I was a student myself, I knew what I used the class computers for (hint: mostly hosting Liero deathmatches on the projector)

More from this week: Hark, a vagrant, the funniest way to read history that I have come upon in awhile, and more evidence that intelligence (and probably other traits) is genetic to a significant extent (uh oh?)


Off

Mr. Ham (0/1100 seeds): A hundred on Fulham to draw Arsenal (at 3.90)

FAKEBERT (944/1100 seeds): 100 seeds on Tottenham (-1.5) vs. West Bromwich Albion (at 3.50)



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