The logic isn't flawed. If you are a European investor, then you care about the returns in your currency, and the fact is your pile of money only grew by 4%.
Inversely, as a US investor, if you invested 100€ in the eurostoxx 50, your pile of money would have grown to about $140 (20% index growth, 15% dollar debasement). It absolutely makes a difference, that's $20 more in your pocket compared to the index.
Your comparison with temperatures is wrong. Celsius and Fahrenheit are fixed units, whereas the value of currencies fluctuate.
It is flawed because it's conflating two different independent variables. It's also looking for a specific weak point where there is none, more as if it is trying to state a narrative.
If you want to talk about EURUSD then just state it.
It makes sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of a European investor. e.g. You start with 1000 EUR, convert and buy into an S&P500 fund, wait a year, sell and convert back to EUR.
Celsius and Fahrenheit doesn't work as an analogy because the rate does not change over time as it does with currencies.
I think it depends on whether you're planning on holding it in currency or using the currency to buy other things. Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P? If more the latter, then converting to EUR is just a very temporary exchange and its nominal amount doesn't exactly matter.
> Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P?
I don't understand this question, are you asking if material goods and services in Europe, which uses EUR, "somewhat" follows the S&P, a US stock market index?
If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European) it doesn't make sense to compare your SPY position vs EURUSD because you have to use those USD to buy something or pay some debt.
> If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European)
Approximately no individual does this. Some companies may hold some foreign currency reserves, but even there it is not _particularly_ common in most cases.
As a European, I have never, in 40 years, had any USD, except a small amount of paper currency. If I'm buying something made in the US, I'm probably buying from a local vendor, or else will convert on the fly. If I'm visiting the US, I'll convert on the fly (this is even cheap, now, thanks to neo-banks). I own a bunch of US equity, but indirectly via a euro-denominated global market index fund. This is fairly standard. In general it's only common for individuals to hold foreign currency where the local currency is particularly unstable.
> If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European)
Do people do this? Up until some months ago, I was heavily invested in some US companies, and I never actually held USD in my accounts at any point. I used EUR to buy those stocks, the conversion happening together with the purchase, and same thing when I sold them, I received EUR ultimately.
I know I could have another account in my bank with USD set to the currency, I just don't know why'd anyone would want to, when you can convert at the point of sale/purchase. Of course, if you're doing forex trading or whatever, that might make sense, but I don't think generally people hold USD to buy/sell US stocks, because you don't have to.
> Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P?
... Wait, why would you expect the price of goods to follow the valuation of, well, any market index, never mind one specific foreign market index? Like, I don't understand why you think that would happen. If anything, you'd expect a minor inverse relationship, at least on a global scale; rapid growth of cost of goods indicates inflation, which implies central bank tightening, which tends to depress stock values a bit.
I mean, for retail investors outside the US, the question you're asking boils down to „does purchasing power parity follow popular US domestic market indices?“, to which the answer is a resounding no.
There may be some offset for goods imported from the US, but that's a minority of consumer goods globally, and even then, the purchase currency will usually still be the local fiat, and then the attractiveness of the US index fund still has to be weighed against the performance of non-US-based indices in that same local currency as opportunity cost.
Also an American investor, really; an American investor who'd pulled out of S&P and moved to Eurostoxx at the time would have made something like 40% in their local currency (about half of it due to the decline of the dollar).
If you are in USA and invest outside USA. Do you look at returns in USD or in nominal value of the market you invested in? Say there is hyperinflation where you invested. You should be extremely happy. After all the nominal value of your investment is massively up. Even if USD value is now fraction...
The roi is unfortunately not the same if you earn your money in euros and need to pay your taxes in euros. At one point one has to do a forex trade and that will be a loss for the euro investor
Only if you convert it at a loss and are unable to wait for USD to recover. If (and it is, admittedly, a big assumption) we assume that USD and EUR are broadly stable currencies over the long term, then short term changes in the ratio don't matter for long term investors. You're buying a share of productive capacity, the currency it is listed in doesn't matter.
It's reasonable to assume they're broadly stable, but being broadly stable doesn't mean a drop will "recover". There's no specific ratio that the currencies are being pushed to. Permanent changes in the baseline can and do happen.
> You're buying a share of productive capacity, the currency it is listed in doesn't matter.
But I don't own a fixed percentage of production, I own a fixed number of shares and the number of shares can change. If the number of shares doubles, then my investment is worth half as much.
> But I don't own a fixed percentage of production, I own a fixed number of shares and the number of shares can change. If the number of shares doubles, then my investment is worth half as much.
How is that related to currency changes? That can happen anyway regardless of the currency.
It can happen in other situations, but the fact that it always happens with currency fluctuations is what's important here. When the dollar loses value, everything I own that's anchored to dollars loses value too. "buying a share of productive capacity" implies a counteracting effect, but there isn't one, because the amount of productive capacity represented by each share shrinks too.
yes, but could one also argue that due to currency weakening, the S&P's growth can simply be due to the weakened currency?
If I can say something has an "absolute" value of X, but I denominate it in USD, which is normally 1:1 to X, then it's value in USD in X.
but if USD drops to being worth half an X, but its absolute value hasn't changed, it will now appear to be worth 2X in USD.
so why can't one argue, if the dollar weakened by 15%, but everything else being equal, one would expect dollar denominated stocks to appreciate (in dollars) by the same amount? And if the dollar would strengthen, we would expect the stock price to depreciate?
Because the SP500 is a better indicator of the market than USD. Also if you look at the global dollar index, it is right at par historically.
The companies in the 500 are mostly global companies, if the USD shrunk so much they would either be losing money, or it doesn't matter because the US market is so strong it dwarfs the others.
> The companies in the 500 are mostly global companies
Isn't that saying exactly what the parent comment mentioned? Since those companies are global, the growth of the S&P 500 which is USD denominated will track the devaluation of the USD as the underlying companies haven't lost value, the dollar has, and the S&P 500 would track that as growth in percentage to balance it.
I don't understand why they would be losing money since as you said they're global, and more untethered to the USD than the S&P 500.
This is clearly the USD Global index dropping a few basis points, which is an active strategy. Look at the USD Index over 15 year period, there is nothing wrong with USD today.
I'm not arguing if the S&P is a better indicator of the US economy than USD or not.
What I'm asking, to me it seems if the USD drops in value, but everything else stays the same (i.e. GOOG hasn't lost any real value if measured in any other currency for instance). I'd expect GOOG to rise in USD terms (as its value has stayed constant).
Why wouldn't this be true (yes, there are a bunch of assumptions/complexities, and perhaps those assumptions/complexities break the argument), but at a very simplistic level is what I said wrong?
The USD and EURO being nearly on par was the exception. And given the current admins stated goals, I’m not sure we’re going to see the USD strengthen anytime soon. In fact, it’s more likely to get weaker.
> If (and it is, admittedly, a big assumption) we assume that USD and EUR are broadly stable currencies over the long term
Yeah, er, that's a very big if. There's no real reason to assume that, and history doesn't really bear it out.
If anything in the near term you'd probably expect the USD to weaken further vs the Euro; Trump seems _very_ keen to install a fed chair who'll cut rates even where not supported by inflation and employment numbers, whereas the ECB is more disciplined and less subject to political interference.
You're the one making a big assumption: that this is a short term movement in the dollar.
Trump has made it clear he wants a cheaper dollar to make US exports more competitive and JPM is forecasting another 10% drop in the value of the dollar this year.
Just because the dollar and euro have been roughly level for over a decade doesn't mean that will remain true, currencies often go through pretty fast changes in relative values every few decades as their financial and geopolitical positions change.
The pound drop around 2007~2009 is a good example of one such sudden but long term price shift.
Of course not. It's only censorship if the rules are censoring rules. Just because a billionaire right wing extremist cries "cEnSoRsHiP" everytime people who criticise him aren't imprisoned doesn't mean it is.
That’s because our mass protests are focused on the overseas concentration camps, illegal detainment and arrests, and the other authoritarian moves our president has made. It’s true that Americans in general care little about foreign policy. It’s not an anti-Europe thing, it’s just that people care about stuff that more immediately affects them. European countries are smaller and more integrated, so foreign policy has a more immediate affect on them. Foreign policy has a dramatic affect on Americans lives, but it’s usually indirect and therefore not top of mind for the average citizen. That doesn’t mean we like our government’s foreign policy. And all that’s without mentioning that many believe the Greenland talk is not serious, and simply a distraction, and therefore mass protests would actually be playing into the admins hands.
Then you’re not paying attention. The US is currently experiencing the largest wave of mass protests in its history. The corporate media is simply ignoring it. Practically every trump administration action has triggered nation-wide protests.
European citizens under US sanctions are being erased economically and socially within the EU. This is not to mention the systemic dismantling of the ICC at an individual level. The US has sanctioned six ICC judges this year, along with the court’s chief prosecutor and two deputy prosecutors.
Prior to Trump, most of the ~15,000 individuals on the US sanctions list were members of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Mafia, or warlords and despot leaders of authoritarian regimes.
The state department justification relates either to their roles in the Afghanistan investigation or them facilitating the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity. As a result they now can't book a hotel, use credit cards or access everyday services. As Nicolas Guillou says 'You are effectively blacklisted by much of the world's banking system'
As the Le Monde article concludes, while it is the prerogative of the US government to exercise sovereignty on its own territory, it is unacceptable, however, that European citizens – some of them above any suspicion in the eyes of their own authorities – lose everything at home due to excessive caution on the part of European companies in relation to spiteful US foreign policy.
The ICC sanctions are targeted (and only a couple of people), but they prove it can be applied to anyone, without merit and without due process. This is also why Europe needs to get rid of their dependence on Visa/Mastercard.
Also, if companies serve their customers, governments serve their civilians. If you want to argue bad faith, governments serve national interest, while companies serve themselves, and ultimately the jurisdiction they fall under. What do you think better aligns with my interests as a Dutch person: the interests of the Dutch government, or the interests of the United States government? Do you believe Google will best serve me as a Dutch person, or the US government?
All the arguments about 'European government bad' assume bad faith. They discount we have some of the most democratic, liberal governments in existence. Unlike countries such as Russia, China, and even the United States. But the only government (apart from a State such as California) which consistently protected civilian rights online is the EU, a couple of European countries, and some other ones in the free West (Canada, I am not sure about Japan and South Korea).
> As a result they now can't book a hotel, use credit cards or access everyday services. As Nicolas Guillou says 'You are effectively blacklisted by much of the world's banking system'
Totally agree that this is absurd and disportionate, especially as a consequence of a US decision.
I mean, it's one thing to sanction a foreign billionaire: freezing their assets, thus preventing them from wielding their power in our borders is perfectly reasonable... But for a normal citizen living within your borders, freezing everything and preventing them from working is disenfranchising them and denying them all personal property rights (without judicial process!)
There are a bunch of examples of people in Europe who have also been sanctioned because of their political work. The first two that come to mind:
If we're moving away from USA tech, I hope that we're not blindly trusting stuff simply being hosted in EU, but rather use the opportunity to spread our eggs in more jurisdiction baskets (rather than only the EU basket)
Who is 'we'? Which data are you referring to? (If you mean e.g. Samsung Galaxy with GrapheneOS, by all means.)
We need to consider a few factors.
If you are from EU, and you want GDPR to be enforced, you need to work with countries which follow your local law. The USA is hinting at no longer doing so, since it retaliates with sanctions.
Now, where would you host, and why? Norway seems like an interesting target, since they are very high on renewable energy. Norway isn't part of EU, but part of the EEA. Latency with Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Australia isn't going to be ideal. But if the company behind it is from there, and they have a local presence in Europe, why not? Could even work with proprietary software. FOSS can help here.
Hardware is a difficult target. It is near impossible to avoid China in this regard. And if you do, you often end up with US products. OSHW can help, but it is rather uncommon. We also have a constraint: we need energy efficient in Europe.
It it's something public/political like a Lemmy/Mastodon instance, I would pick a foreign jurisdiction which is unlikely to enforce something like the UK's OSA or USA and EU sanctions... I don't know where it would be best, some country in the Balkans, maybe?
If it's a service (even commercial) meant to be used only by a few people that I have direct (personal or business) relationships, I'd just ask their preferences (and bias towards the cheapest jurisdiction for hosting).
If it's something B2C, hosting exclusively outside of Europe would probably just make things more difficult to me, so it'd probably be within the EU (Hetzner?)
You are much more likely to be repressed/harrassed/arrested by your local government than a foreign government. So a local government knowing your behavior is more likely to lead to bad consequences than a foreign government knowing.
Of course, that might change in the future. Hypothetical example, the US government bans you from using any US cloud services because of what you did in private.
Though that's not exactly exclusive to governments either, Google banning you from GMail and Google Docs because of your YouTube uploads is already a thing.
There is certainly plenty of retaliation happening against non-compliant speech and people. The federal government has been used as a weapon against pro Palestinian activists, people are being imprisoned by Ice on the day of their citizenship ceremony, "enemy" officials like Leticia James face politically motivated investigations, universities are being bullied into ideological compliance and on and on.
They need to follow the law such as GDPR. American companies have to as well, but if they won't, will they be held accountable? Or will there be even more sanctions?
Anna Archive is a notable project. Wikipedia displays links to projects. It's not about "being used as DNS" but about providing basic info about the topic, URL being an important part of it.
Your point is that... Wikpedia editors choice to have articles about sex acts is morally inconsistent with a choice not to have direct links to a site a based around harassing, stalking, doxing, etc that has been directly tied to multiple suicides?
I don't see the connection frankly.
PS. English Wikipedia also does not appear to have an "Anal Creampie" article, let alone one with an animation.
The picture clearly depicts--and believe it or not I never thought I'd write these words on the Hacker News internet forum sponsored by YCombinator--a vaginal creampie, not an anal one, nor does it seem to be, as you'd previously implied, animated.
As much as I'd like to claim the values [1] that Wikimedia (the foundation behind wikipedia) supports as a progressive - I think they're quite independent of the progressive/conservative spectrum.
well I guess if they claim it themselves. I heard Israel doesnt think its comitting genocide, that Russia is rightously doing gods work. Whom did i hear it from? well, themselves of course!
As Stephen Colbert once said, "Everyone knows reality has a clear liberal bias."
When conservatism has explicitly turned against enlightenment values, the opposite would be anti-conservative. I'm glad someone hasn't given up the fight.
But this mechanism is used to circumvent DNS blockade. Wikipedia may be next to moderate if they can force DNS providers and even the org registrar to give in, wikipedia could fold too.
DNS is another layer. The URLs shown on Wikipedia will still have to be resolved to IP addresses, which is where DNS comes in. Referring to Wikipedia for the URLs/domains does nothing to circumvent DNS blockades.
Evenn though its onelayer down - the same tactics that were used to suspend/takeover domains would still apply , at the end of the day one still has to get the IPv4/IPv6 address from someone(who can be coerced).
When Trump pressures RIPE NCC or APNIC to deregister an IP address block, that's the end of the internet as we know it, and the return to national networks with very limited interconnection. Even Russia still has address registrations despite being sanctioned.
Alternatively they pressure USA ISPs to block the addresses. That's already regularly done but it probably won't be enough to satisfy the extortion industrial complex which is out for blood.
A quick look at the last few administrations is all anyone needs to see how this one interprets the powers and duties that come with the office.
One of my favorite phrases coined during the last Trump administration was something like, "not just wrong, but wrong beyond normal parameters." It basically meant exactly what we are discussing here; namely, being an outlier of some sort.
I specifically mentioned foreign policy. There, I don't remember a single US government that was not a net negative for the rest of the world (Israel excluded).
It circumvents the purpose of the DNS block which is meant to prevent people from easily finding the site. Anna's Archive can easily register new domain names and put them on Wikipedia, thus allowing people to easily discover the new location of the site.
Of course many sites can serve as "DNS" - Reddit, Github, X, basically anywhere you can put a URL. So DNS blocking is relatively useless.
> Linking to illegal services can be illegal, that’s why.
What is illegal in one country can be illegal everywhere.
I don't remember Wikipedia removing LGBTIAQ++ articles just because that's illegal in Iran.
If a government thinks Wikipedia is illegal in their country, they can force local ISP providers to block it, but it's not Wikipedia's responsibility [1] to censor itself.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a US corporation. There are national chapters in some other countries, which are corporations in the respective country. The internet isn't the Wild West; websites are subject to the laws of the countries they operate in.
Countries can pressure them for many reasons, fairly or not. Under pressure, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales interfered with a page about the war in Gaza (though I don't know th outcome of that).
You realize they are speaking in favor of their competitors? This isn’t corporate shilling. It’s an engineer speaking against the interests of his own company because the on the ground reality of AI is making us all look in the mirror.
How many is it? Your link gets us to 1, and it's from months ago. I expected you to link the number since you're claiming it's high.
Supposedly there's been 500k deportations, and 2.5m "self-deportations" in 2025, so what would be high here?
Edit: I also googled that man's name. A quick read of nbcs article suggests it's not clear he's a citizen. The judge said he "had a substantial claim to citizenship," which means nothing either way. He was born in Thailand.
"In his Nov. 3 brief, [a lawyer] contends Souvannarath stayed in the United States for 19 years after his removal order without challenging it or seeking proof of citizenship."
So, to answer his question: not realistic at all that you'll get deported as a citizen. That's without fact checking you. I haven't seen anything about actual citizens being removed, including in the sibling comment claiming it with a reference.
> Besides, how realistic is a fear that a law abiding citizen would be endangered by the ICE?
Perhaps you are having trouble following the conversation. The argument put forth by OP is that ICE is endangering american citizens. That is factually true.
I didn’t sneak anything in - you failed to follow a thread. Why are you trying to put that on me? It’s okay to admit fault and take responsibility. It is obvious at this point that you do not care or won’t take the time to understand the conversation or respond in good faith.
My concern covers all LEO fucking with American citizens, especially the masked and unidentified ones.
So anyway, per your link: 170 citizens "wrapped up" by ice during between 327,000 and 605,000 deportations, depending on which source you like (I linked them in a different response to you in another thread).
Between .0005% and .0003% chance that if ICE grabs someone up, they're a citizen. I think that's a pretty good record, actually. I don't think it's very alarming.
We have 348 million citizens, 170 got held for...days! While we conducted the most effective deportation of illegals in history.
I'm pretty sure ICE isn't going to accidentally get me. This problem may as well be non-existent.
What's real is actual citizens wrapped up in actual bullshit with regular LEO. With probably several orders of magnitude difference, wouldn't you agree? Maybe thousands per day, instead of 170 per year? Costing folks more than a few days' detention.
I think that's extremely alarming, given the fact they are trying to deport people as fast as possible so they don't have time for a hearing in front of a judge. The hearing that they are supposedly guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the Constitution!
Why do you think deportation is the only thing that matters? We've seen ICE fuck up the lives of American citizens by destroying their property, illegally holding them, arresting entire buildings etc in Chicago. And there is zero recourse for these blatant violations. How about you open up your wallet and pay for their crimes if you're willing to go to bat for them so hard?
Tracking expenses doesn't take more than 5-10 minutes per day, if you do it daily. With the correct workflow, it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes per month. There are even apps that would do that for you without any effort, though not so perfectly as fine tuned apps.
And now, the enlightenment part: how is expense tracking preventing you from making more money than visiting hecker news, reddit, social media, listening to the radio, watching TV, reading the news, or a million other things? Do you really spend all your waking hours earning more money so tracking expenses for a few minutes would make you make less?
This begs the question though, of why individuals still need to do this like a 17th century clerk, when it costs their counterparties fractions of a man-second. Imagine if their was a law which said, every business that takes a credit card has to supply the consumer with the data in standard, machine-processable format (ie not pdf) via their credit account (IE, not making obtaining their email address a condition).
Or you could parse PDFs and give them an email address. If you want to live like a 17th century clerk because of rules you've made up in your own head that you must follow like an equally outdated religion where the Sun rotates around the Earth, I'm sorry, but that really seems like it's on you. Personally I'd rather join the modern era and not do that, but to each their own.
And then, we pretend we are surprised why the majority of adults don't care about privacy.
Why would they? They grew up being 100% controlled with 0 privacy. They don't even know it doesn't have to be like that. Then, it was their parents violating their privacy, now it's government and corporations.
Privacy is a privilege granted relative to age and maturity.
Most 5-year olds should be allowed to close the bathroom door while doing their business, they should not be permitted to access the internet privately.
A five year old is not prepared to engage online with privacy. They have not had the necessary training yet. They will not get that training unless you are there to show them how to negotiate that world. They will not magically learn how to protect themselves if you just leave them to figure it out themselves.
I was never controlled in any way that may remotely violate my privacy. In fact, glad that nothing ever happened to me, because it could have. But for a long time I was not worried about my online visibility…
It's the same as complaining that the temperature increased more in Fahrenheit than in Celsius.
EDIT: The total value is the same regardless of the fluctuations of currencies used to represent the value. Those are two independent issues.
Currencies fluctuate even if you keep them in checking accounts without investing them.
And yes, if you measure distance in feet, your son will go every year further away than you because his feet keep growing, while yours stay the same.
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