>But one guy taking a negative expected value bet and winning big doesn't really help all the other little guys on WSB who got roped in to buying GME at 100+ today
I don't disagree with your post overall, but do want to give some credit to the particular user being discussed. He had a solid bull value thesis that was well thought out and not at all based on memes, with the short squeeze potential being a mere afterthought. He has a great youtube channel where he explains his thesis in-depth. While he posts occasionally on WSB he does not seem to fit the wild gambler image that WSB has.
I don't have enough experience or knowledge to speak intelligently on whether his play was actually negative or positive expected value but it was not a random gamble.
Just felt the need to throw this out there because with all the attention this is getting I've seen him unfairly (in my opinion) being grouped with the admittedly large amount of people who are essentially just gambling.
How would that not be a breach? Their system allowed a malicious entity acting in bad faith to gain large amounts of data under false pretenses. If they got the data by pretending to be an employee and social engineering their way into the data that way facebook would 100% call that a breach. Is this that different?
I used to be a mid level manager at a small regional somewhat-niche retail chain. The last few years they have started to heavily focus on employee knowledge. Hiring full time staff whose only job are to be product experts to help customers, introducing huge amounts of product knowledge courses. They know they can't beat the big boys on price so they are trying to become THE local place you go to talk to someone about this specific niche. It has been working out very well for them.
The niche doesn't even really matter here. It could be car stereos, music, books, alcohol, grocery, whatever. I definitely think the path to survival for small retail shops going forward is going to be expert level knowledge and customer service. The days of people patronizing your store just because its physically nearby are numbered.
edit: Also, and this is totally anecdotal, but I personally shop at several places that aren't quite the cheapest (though none are TOO relatively high priced) but I continue to shop because the staff are far more knowledgeable than I and their assistance is well worth the extra ~10% in price.
>> Third, it's a file storage. This is the most overlooked part, unfortunately.
When gmail first launched I remember it having such relatively high storage space that my friends and I used it extensively as a music sharing/storage system. An mp3 was just small enough to make it a comfortable email attachment and the storage space was great in an age without infinite cloud hosts.
Huge amounts of gmail's early utility to me was simply the file storage. Lots of people would give you a free email address. Google made a big deal out of the massive space they offered.
Which really shows how the game has gotten so much harder. Ten years ago someone playing a fundamentally solid deterministic strategy could print money online. And in many low stakes casino games that is probably still true.
One difference that immediately jumped out at me is with bee you can send a paper check. My landlord for instance will only take a paper check or money order and with simple it isn't possible to easily pay my rent without a fairly significant inconvenience. I'm sure many poor people are in similar situations.