Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
haha, it’s starting to happen: even fucking fortune is running a piece that throwing big piles of money on ever-larger training has done exactly fuckall to make this nonsense go anywhere
Excuse me but I need the tech industry to hold up just long enough to fulfill my mid-life-crisis goal of moving to another country. Please refrain from crashing until then.
Thanks.
I can make a report on your case file but I don’t think they’ve replaced the 7 process supervisors they fired last year. there’s only Jo now and they seem to be in the office 24x7
cc @dgerard
Not really a sneer, nor that related to techbro stuff directly, but I noticed that the profile of Chris Kluwe (who got himself arrested protesting against MAGA) has both warcraft in his profile name and prob paints miniatures looking at his avatar. Another stab in the nerd vs jock theory.
google’s on their shit again
can’t sneer it properly just yet, there’s a lot
Im reading AI as AL, so meet your new research assistant
The most naked attempt yet at allowing billionaires to live on without the rest of us.
What infuriates me the most, for some reason, is how nobody seems to care that the robots leave the fridge door open for so long. I guess it’s some form of solace that, even with the resources and tech to live on without us the billionaires still don’t understand ecosystems or ecology. Waste energy training a machine to do the same thing a human can do but slower and more wastefully, just so you can order the machine around without worrying about it’s feelings… I call this some form of solace as it means, even if they do away with us plebs, climate change will get’em as well - and whatever remaining life on Earth will be able to take a breather for the first time in centuries.
The New York Times Pitchbot enters our territory:
We wanted to understand the future of AI. So we talked to three Hawk Tuah cryptocurrency investors at a White Castle in Toms River.
Write a brief article titled “ICE Prosecutor Linked to Anonymous White Supremacist X Profile: Report”
Some manager is going to see the metrics on that article vaguely think about the word viral and take the absolute wrong conclusions.
Kelsey Piper continues to bluecheck:
What would some good unifying demands be for a hostile takeover of the Democratic party by centrists/moderates?
As opposed to the spineless collaborators who run it now?
We should make acquiring ID documents free and incredibly easy and straightforward and then impose voter ID laws, paper ballots and ballot security improvements along with an expansion of polling places so everyone participates but we lay the ‘was it a fair election’ qs to rest.
Presuming that Republicans ever asked “was it a fair election?!” in good faith, like a true jabroni.
i know that it’s about conservative crackheadery re:allegations of election fraud, but it’s lowkey unhinged that americans don’t have national ID. i also know that republicans blocked it, because they don’t want problems solved, they want to stay mad about them. in poland for example, it’s a requirement to have ID, it’s valid for 10 years and it’s free of charge. passport costs $10 to get and it takes a month, sometimes less, from filing a form to getting one. there’s also a govt service where you can get some things done remotely, including govt supplied digital signature that you can use to sign files and is legally equivalent to regular signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUAP
Yeah, the controversy over federal ID cards is completely bafflying to me as well, and I imagine like many things in the US it’s some sort of libertarian bugbear or something? But considering the President has now mandated that one’s federal identity is fixed at birth by the angels, it turned out to be a blessing.
The reason is that any government mandated ID is clearly the Mark of the Beast and will be used to bring upon a thousand years of darkness.
You think that’s fringe nonsense and you’d be right on the nonsense part, but that’s literally what Ronny Reagan said while he was president
god damn
I definitely heard it presented as a libertarian bugbear. The American right tends to treat the federal government like it’s Schrodinger’s State. When it does something they like it’s an inviolable declaration of our values and identity as a nation, the truest guarantor of liberty and blah blah blah. When it does literally anything else it’s a sinister plot to hand over even more control over your life to unelected bureaucrats!
Freedom is when nothing works, got it
See also with the Elon stuff the (pretend-) concern over gov agencies knowing your SSN. Like, what?
from what i understand, lack of single national ID gives (part of?) legal justification for this bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_caging that republicans use for voter suppression. idk details, american would have to weigh in
I mean, a single national ID card would be one way of preventing this so long as there was a trustworthy way of ensuring that it was updated with everybody’s actual address and the like. I don’t know that we would implement it in such a way as to have that, leading ultimately to another target for this kind of activity rather than a shield from it.
Nightmare scenario with the current administration would be such a thing being tied to citizenship somehow. Mail comes back undelivered and suddenly you have to dig out your birth certificate and explain things to some shitheel from ICE?
but there already is some form of address that govt knows, in most of cases, right? when govt needs to deliver something to you, like, say, court order, they need some address
out there it works like this: there is a legal requirement to have registered an address. it’s on you, because when it’s not done, some important papers might end up somewhere where you have no idea they might be. it’s not in ID, and based on this couple of things are determined like voter lists per district or what tax office are you associated with
Wow I can’t believe I’m still learning new ways the United States do voter suppression. Imagine if they put all that creativity in something other than white supremacy!
deleted by creator
National ID wouldn’t change that unless voter local registration and change-of-address updates were all rigidly and securely integrated.
So long as voter registration is a locally-managed list of names and addresses it’s possible to go in and arbitrarily declare some of the registrations void.
OK this is just my unresearched opinion as an American but I really don’t know what I’m talking about so keep that in mind and treat it as vibes more than research. It’s messy and I haven’t learned about any of it since highschool (and my highschool left a lot of important parts out):
A bunch of uninformed rambling
US states aren’t thought of as countries for good reason, but in the country’s legal framework that kind of how they work – just with a lot of work to make borders almost a non-issue, shared citizenship, shared economy, etc. This means that historically a lot of stuff that would be associated with a country (ID, driving permit, residency, military) either only happens at the state level; or happens at both the state and the federal level.
In the constitution the federal government is supposed to stick to it’s lane as well: any powers which aren’t explicitly given to the federal government are reserved for the states (10th amendment). Though in practice the federal government has a lot of powers.
That’s the background and helps explain both the lack of a (compulsory) national ID and how there can be state level election shenanigans:
For national ID this was indeed a conservative bugbear. They were essentially worried about the government building a dossier on them or something. I don’t remember the details it’s been a long time: Conservatism 15 years ago was an entirely different beast than it is today. It’s kind of hard to even imagine if the conservatives still have the same fears today, if the liberals don’t, or how it would actually play out. Congress being deadlocked for so long means it’s hard to get a vibe on how things would shake out if they started actually passing lots of laws again.
Oh yeah did I mention congress is deadlocked? This both means that the US is essentially operating on decades outdated laws, and that the legislature’s infighting has lead to a power vacuum that the executive and judicial branch have slurped up (which helps explain the current Elon Musk mess)
Anyway election shenanigans: States were historically supposed to be, well, states as in closely aligned countries and this was all set up in the days before fast and easy long distance travel and communication (did I mention America is really big?). This means that each state runs it’s own election (which it can do in any legal way it pleases). The outcome of the election is one or more electors, and those electors are who actually send in their choice for president. There have been cases of “faithless electors” who vote for someone besides the party they represent. Oddly this hasn’t really been seen as a big deal (since the parties choose the electors they tend to be pretty loyal).
The point of the previous paragraph is this is a mess. Like a real mess. It’s law that made some sense 200 years ago (and maybe not even, they were kinda #yolo-ing the constitution at the time) but is really dated. This means there’s lots of room for shenanigans. Can a state legally disqualify voters? Maybe? Sometimes? Kinda? They’re not supposed to be like racist or anything, but determining that depends on a lot of details and shifting supreme court rulings.
okay so in absence of federal ID how do you authenticate anything when dealing with govt things? just by SSN? we have something similar, but years of security malpractice by people who were not trained to do this made these numbers public to probable attackers, so authentication with just that is not considered secure for a couple of years by now. instead, with anything important (like taking a loan, opening bank account, buying a car or real estate etc), you have to also provide your ID number which doesn’t have this problem
but wait there's more
on top of that, for a year of so, govt implemented a switch in that service from upthread, you can also access it offline. this switch allows you to deactivate your SSN-like number so that anything authenticated with that when it’s off is considered legally void, and probably won’t work in the first place because it’s supposed to be checked in national db. when you have to authenticate something legitimately, you can switch it on for a day, then switch it off again. this was in response to incidents of identity theft
for some things, but not all things, you can also use digital signature
Usually SSN yes. In recent years airports and secure federal buildings are starting to require “real IDs” / star cards which are state IDs which meet federal identity verification requirements. I couldn’t be bothered with all that since I already have a passport so my driver’s license says “Federal Limits Apply”.
For thinks like bank loans, state IDs are widely accepted.
I saw that yesterday. I was tempted to post it here but instead I’ve been trying very hard not to think of this eldritch fractal of wrongness. It’s too much, man.
This isn’t even skating towards where the puck is, it’s skating in a fucking swimming pool.
unifying demands
hostile takeover
Pick one, you can’t have both.
What would some good unifying demands be for a hostile takeover of the Democratic party by centrists/moderates?
me, taking this at face value, and understanding the political stances of the democrats, and going by my definition of centrist/moderate that is more correct than whatever the hell Kelsey Piper thinks it means: Oh, this would actually push the democrats left.
Anyway, jesus christ I regret clicking on that name and reading. How the fuck is anyone this stupid. Vox needs to be burned down.
Presuming that Republicans ever asked “was it a fair election?!” in good faith, like a true jabroni.
Imagine saying this after the birther movement remained when the birth certificate was shown. “Just admit you didnt fuck pigs, and this pigfucking will be gone”.
those opinions should come with a whiplash warning, fucking hell
can’t wait to once again hear that someone is sure we’re “just overreacting” and that
star of davidpassbooksvoter ID laws will be totes fine. I’m sure it’ll be a really lovely conversation with a perfectly sensible and caring human. :|
Deep thinker asks why?
Thus spoketh the Yud: “The weird part is that DOGE is happening 0.5-2 years before the point where you actually could get an AGI cluster to go in and judge every molecule of government. Out of all the American generations, why is this happening now, that bare bit too early?”
Yud, you sweet naive smol uwu baby
esianboi, how gullible do you have to be to believe that a) tminus 6 months to AGI kek (do people track these dog shit predictions?) b) the purpose of DOGE is just accountability and definitely not the weaponized manifestation of techno oligarchy ripping apart our society for the copper wiring in the walls?bahahahaha “judge every molecule.” I can’t believe I ever took this guy even slightly seriously.
I swear these dudes really need to supplement their Ayn Rand with some Terry Pratchett…
“All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
– Hogfather
The worst part is I can’t tell if that’s not meant to be taken literally or if it is.
Yud be like: "kek you absolute rubes. ofc I simply meant AI would be like a super accountant. I didn’t literally mean it would be able to analyze gov’t waste from studying the flow of matter at the molecular level… heh, I was just kidding… unless 🥺 ? "
He retweeted somebody saying this:
The cheat code to reading Yudkowsky- at least if you’re not doing death-of-the-author stuff- is that he believes the AI doom stuff with completely literal sincerity. To borrow Orwell’s formulation, he believes in it the way he believes in China.
That thread is quite something, going from “yud is extraordinarily thorough (much more thorough than i could possibly be) in examining the ground directly below a streetlamp, in his search for his keys”, that ‘he believes it like he believes in China’ to ‘honestly, i should be reading him. we have starkly different spiritual premises- and i smugly presume my spiritual premises are informed by better epistemology’
“judge every molecule” and “simulation hypothesis” probably have a bit of a fling going
“The AI is attuned to every molecular vibration and can reconstruct you by extrapolation from a piece of fairy cake” is a necessary premise of the Basilisk that they’ve spent all that time saying they don’t believe in.
Quantum computing will enable the AGI to entangle with all surrounding molecular vibrations! I saw another press release today
ah, the novel QC RSA attack: shaking the algorithm so much it gets annoyed and gives up the plaintext out of desperation
An extreme Boss Baby tweet.
TIL musk has a nobel peace prize nomination for this year
@swlabr @techtakes Anybody can nominate: the true sign that the simulation has been handed over to drunken frat boys will be if he *wins*.
but would it beat peace nobel prize for kissinger?
I thought it might be that kind of deal. I learned of this when I saw a pair of op-eds, one saying a W is deserved and the other saying the nom was insane.
That means that the harm done by these systems compound the more widely they are used as errors pile up at every stage of work, in every sector of the economy. It builds up an ambient radiation of system variability and errors that magnifies every other systemic issue with the modern state and economy.
Wanted to shout these two sentences out in particular. Best summary of my biggest current fears regarding use of “ai”/llm/transformer(?)-based systems.
Interesting slides: Peter Gutmann - Why Quantum Cryptanalysis is Bollocks
Since quantum computers are far outside my expertise, I didn’t realize how far-fetched it currently is to factor large numbers with quantum computers. I already knew it’s not near-future stuff for practical attacks on e.g. real-world RSA keys, but I didn’t know it’s still that theoretical. (Although of course I lack the knowledge to assess whether that presentation is correct in its claims.)
But also, while reading it, I kept thinking how many of the broader points it makes also apply to the AI hype… (for example, the unfounded belief that game-changing breakthroughs will happen soon).
It’s been frustrating to watch Gutmann slowly slide. He hasn’t slid that far yet, I suppose. Don’t discount his voice, but don’t let him be the only resource for you to learn about quantum computing; fundamentally, post-quantum concerns are a sort of hard read in one direction, and Gutmann has decided to try a hard read in the opposite direction.
Page 19, complaining about lattice-based algorithms, is hypocritical; lattice-based approaches are roughly as well-studied as classical cryptography (Feistel networks, RSA) and elliptic curves. Yes, we haven’t proven that lattice-based algorithms have the properties that we want, but we haven’t proven them for classical circuits or over elliptic curves, either, and we nonetheless use those today for TLS and SSH.
Pages 28 and 29 are outright science denial and anti-intellectualism. By quoting Woit and Hossenfelder — who are sneerable in their own right for writing multiple anti-science books each — he is choosing anti-maths allies, which is not going to work for a subfield of maths like computer science or cryptography. In particular, p28 lies to the reader with a doubly-bogus analogy, claiming that both string theory and quantum computing are non-falsifiable and draw money away from other research. This sort of closing argument makes me doubt the entire premise.
Thanks for adding the extra context! As I said, I don’t have the necessary level of knowledge in physics (and also in cryptography) to have an informed opinion on these matters, so this is helpful. (I’ve wanted to get deeper in both topics for a long time, but life and everything has so far not allowed for it.)
About your last paragraph, do you by chance have any interesting links on “criticism of the criticism of string theory”? I wonder, because I have heard the argument “string theory is non-falsifiable and weird, but it’s pushed over competing theories by entrenched people” several times already over the years. Now I wonder, is that actually a serious position or just conspiracy/crank stuff?
The sibling comment gives a wider perspective. I’m going to only respond narrowly on that final paragraph’s original point.
String theories arise naturally from thinking about objects vibrating in spacetime. As such, they’ve generally been included in tests of particle physics whenever feasible. The LHC tested and (statistically) falsified some string theories. String theorists also have a sort of self-regulating ratchet which excludes unphysical theories, most recently excluding swampland theories. Most money in particle physics is going towards nuclear power, colliders like LHC or Fermilab’s loops, or specialized detectors like SK (a giant tank of water) or LIGO (artfully-arranged laser beams) which mostly have to sit still and not be disturbed; in all cases, that money is going towards verification and operationalization of the Standard Model, and any non-standard theories are only coincidentally funded.
So just by double-checking the history, we see that some string theories have been falsified and that the Standard Model, not any string theory, is where most funding goes. Hossenfelder and Woit both know better, but knowing better doesn’t sell books. Gutmann doesn’t realize, I think.
All attempts to make a theory of quantum gravity are unfalsifiable, because the relevant experiments are far beyond our means, much further so than building a practical quantum computer. String theory benefited from multiple rounds of unexpectedly interesting mathematical discoveries, which fired up people’s hopes and kept the fires burning. None of the other assorted proposals (loop quantum gravity, asymptotic safety, …) got lucky like that. Moreover, there’s a case to be made that if you’re an orthodox quantum field theory researcher, any attempt you make to quantize gravity will end up a string theory. Roughly speaking, there’s no regime in which gravity is the only force that you need to consider, so to make any predictive statements about some quantum gravity effect, you need to understand all the physics that happens at energy levels in between “warm summer day” and “immediate aftermath of the Big Bang”. String theory was the only possibility that suggested there could be a way out.
You could say that this just goes to show that orthodox QFT specialists lack imagination. The pioneers of quantum theory devised it in order to explain hot gases in glass tubes. Why should their same notions about what it means to “quantize” also apply to space and time themselves? And maybe they don’t! But proposing an alternative to quantum mechanics, or a modification of quantum mechanics that works in all the circumstances where we have already confirmed quantum mechanics, is no easy task.
“Fundamental” physics had a period of great advances, from the 1890s with the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity through the early 1970s with the establishment of the Standard Model. From then, we’ve been in “the stall”, as barbecue folks say. The big accelerators have filled in the edges of the picture and confirmed some predictions from that era, like finding the top quark and the Higgs. But they have yet to deliver a sign of beyond-Standard-Model physics that holds up under scrutiny.
Oh wow, thank you for taking the time! :)
Just one question:
None of the other assorted proposals (loop quantum gravity, asymptotic safety, …) got lucky like that.
Is this because the alternate proposals appeared unpromising, or have they simply not been explored enough yet?
Comparing quantum computing to time machines or faster-than-light travel is unfair. In order for the latter to exist, our understanding of physics would have to be wrong in a major way. Quantum computing presumes that our understanding of physics is correct. Making it work is “only” an engineering problem, in the sense that Newton’s laws say that a rocket can reach the Moon, so the Apollo program was “only” a engineering project. But breaking any ciphers with it is a long way off.
Comparing quantum computing to time machines or faster-than-light travel is unfair.
I didn’t interpret the slides as an attack on quantum computing per se, but rather an attack on over-enthusiastic assertions of its near-future implications. If the likelihood of near-future QC breaking real-world cryptography is so extremely low, it’s IMO okay to make a point by comparing it to things which are (probably) impossible. It’s an exaggeration of course, and as you point out the analogy isn’t correct in that way, but I still think it makes a good point.
What I find insightful about the comparison is that it puts the finger on a particular brain worm of the tech world: the unshakeable belief that every technical development will grow exponentially in its capabilities. So as soon as the most basic version of something is possible, it is believed that the most advanced forms of it will follow soon after. I think this belief was created because it’s what actually happened with semiconductors, and of course the bold (in its day) prediction that was Moore’s law, and then later again, the growth of the internet.
And now this thinking is applied to everything all the time, including quantum computers (and, as I pointed to in my earlier post, AI), driven by hype, by FOMO, by the fear of “this time I don’t want to be among those who didn’t recognize it early”. But there is no inherent reason why a development should necessarily follow such a trajectory. That doesn’t mean of course that it’s impossible or won’t get there eventually, just that it may take much more time.
So in that line of thought, I think it’s ok to say “hey look everyone, we have very real actual problems in cryptography that need solving right now, and on the other hand here’s the actual state and development of QC which you’re all worrying about, but that stuff is so far away you might just as well worry about time machines, so please let’s focus more on the actual problems of today.” (that’s at least how I interpret the presentation).
heh yup. I think the most recent one (somewhere in the last year) was something like 12-bit rsa? stupendously far off from being a meaningful thing
I’ll readily admit to being a cryptography mutt and a qc know-barely-anything, and even from my limited understanding the assessment of where people are at (with how many qubits they’ve managed to achieve in practical systems) everything is hilariously woefully far off ito attacks
that doesn’t entirely invalidate pqc and such (since the notion there is not merely defending against today/soon but also a significant timeline)
one thing I am curious about (and which you might’ve seen or be able to talk about, blake): is there any kind of known correlation between qubits and viable attacks? I realize part of this quite strongly depends on the attack method as well, but off the cuff I have a guess (“intuition” is probably the wrong word) that it probably scales some weird way (as opposed to linear/log/exp)
I’ve been listening to faster and worse (see https://awful.systems/comment/6216748 ) and I like it so I wanted to give it ups.
(I think this and the memory palace are the only micro podcasts I’ve listened to. idk why it isn’t a more common format)
thanks! It might be uncommon because it’s a real pain in the ass to keep it short. Every time I make one I stress about how easily my point can be misunderstood because there are so few details. Good way to practice the art of moving on
if it’s any reassurance, i’ve understood all your points perfectly! you’re basically making an argument for all UI to be more apple-like
holy shit, I really don’t know if this is real or a joke
:)
EDIT: ok it was a joke
really, thanks for listening! It’s fun making them and nice to know they are being listened to
this is also why pivot to AI is mostly 200-250 words, not 1200 or 2000 or 8000
It’s probably more sensible for me to try writing short bits too, instead of faffing around with videos
apparently video is just huuuuge
ran into this earlier (via techmeme, I think?), and I just want to vent
“The biggest challenge the industry is facing is actually talent shortage. There is a gap. There is an aging workforce, where all of the experts are going to retire in the next five or six years. At the same time, the next generation is not coming in, because no one wants to work in manufacturing.”
“whole industries have fucked up on actually training people for a run going on decades, but no the magic sparkles will solve the problem!!!11~”
But when these new people do enter the space, he added, they will know less than the generation that came before, because they will be more interchangeable and responsible for more (due to there being fewer of them).
I forget where I read/saw it, but sometime in the last year I encountered someone talking about “the collapse of …” wrt things like “travel agent”, which is a thing that’s mostly disappeared (on account of various kinds of services enabling previously-impossible things, e.g. direct flights search, etc etc) but not been fully replaced. so now instead of popping a travel agent a loose set of plans and wants then getting back options, everyone just has to carry that burden themselves, badly
and that last paragraph reminds me of exactly that nonsense. and the weird “oh don’t worry, skilled repair engineers can readily multiclass” collapse equivalence really, really, really grates
sometimes I think these motherfuckers should be made to use only machines maintained under their bullshit processes, etc. after a very small handful of years they’ll come around. but as it stands now it’ll probably be a very “for me not for thee” setup
what pisses me off even more is that parts of the idea behind this are actually quite cool and worthwhile! just… the entire goddamn pitch. ew.
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@lritter/114001505488538547
master: welcome to my Smart Home
student: wow. how is the light controlled?
master: with this on-off switch
student: i don’t see a motor to close the blinds
master: there is none
student: where is the server located?
master: it is not needed
student: excuse me but what is “Smart” about all of this?
master: everything.
in this moment, the student was enlightened
https://www.theverge.com/news/614883/humane-ai-hp-acquisition-pin-shutdown
lol, lmao
edit: I’ve ragged on John Gruber in the past, but he’s really lighting them up 🔥
116 million
There’s no way that what they’re buying is worth that much.
