This seems inevitable from a software engineering perspective. Automobile software/firmware sounds HARD. There are so many simultaneous, multi-factor processes being controlled, and mostly with firmware, and all the stories coming out of teams responsible for automobile software/firmware indicate that their level of competence is roughly what you would expect if the technical leadership is hired by managers who's background is in the unrelated field of automobiles.
I bet that our lives are largely spared at this time only through the competence of the automobile QA discipline.
> technical leadership is hired by managers who's background is in the unrelated field of automobiles.
... On top of that, I think there is a bit of a generational gap between firmware engineers. I have worked with several firmware engineers who were artists at optimizing single threaded superloops and miracle workers at squeezing in yet another feature and become tech leads, only to find they have an infinite blank canvas. Some don't actually have the wisdom to not use the new freedom to paint themselves into a corner. A lot of the old projects are trivial now, but dealing with bureaucratic application-level protocols in firmware without getting requires a set of skills and tricks that don't often translate well from what Cloud/App developers are doing.
The only way Tether can be stablized through "arbitrage" is if there is a risk-free way to trade 1 Tether for 1 USD.
For the average user, there is no direct way to cash out your Tether for 1:1 USD. I imagine that big clients do have the ability to trade Tether for USD. Because of that, they will buy up discounted Tethers on exchanges and redeem them to Tether Company for 1 USD each.
HOWEVER, this clearly relies on Tether Company providing that exchange. If Tether Company STOPS allowing the big guys to do this arbitrage, then suddenly the house of cards would collapse very quickly. The longer Tether stays below 1 USD, the more pressure is being put on their company by arbitrageurs.
Furthermore, we know that Tether has made a loan to Bitfinex for $900M. The Tether Company therefore only has cash on hand for about 2/3 of the outstanding Tether, assuming they had 1:1 reserves prior to lending cash to Bitfinex.
There are plenty of ways to arb without actual settlement to USD. Look up "statistical arb".
Even without stat, all you have to do is go USDT <> USD <> BTC or similar and take the arb across multiple pairs. It's a game of musical chairs until someone with enough cash decides to break the peg
That's not arbitrage though. Kraken has a market rate. The only way to arbitrage the USDT / USD rate is if you have a reliable place to sell USDT at 1:1.
At some point in the future there could be sentient technology that we communicate with.
It seems to me that there could be flashes of sentience in technology that occur well before that time..before we understand that there's someone listening. That would be a lonely lot indeed.
Isn't this just a matter of, "Recognize when you're using config for something dynamic and refactor because config is no longer the best tool for that job"? And you can continue using yaml (or whatever config format you're using) wherever config remains the right tool for the job.
I bet that our lives are largely spared at this time only through the competence of the automobile QA discipline.