Tether is definitely shady, but everything you stated is wrong.
You can redeem tether for a dollar anytime on their website [1].
Bitcoin has multiple markets on multiple exchanges. Some markets are between BTC and USD, some are between BTC and USDT, some are between BTC and BUSD (Binance's coin that is pegged to USD etc.). The reported price is a weighted average of these markets. It is never just USDT.
There are 7 exchanges on the first page of CoinMarketCap where you can buy Bitcoin with dollars directly [2]. Look for BTC/USD pair.
Their premise is that they are not doing fractional reserves and actually have all user funds available at all times. SAFU is just an additional safeguard and was primarily created to compensate for hacks (it was used one time when Binance was hacked for $50M).
IMO Binance has billions of their own cash reserves (not user funds), based on their activity in the last year (acquision of coinmarketcap for 0.4B, commiting $1B to boost crypto projects and companies etc.. this must be a fraction of their overall worth and in that case, $6B should also not be a huge issue, especially since they can get a lot of goodwill and millions of FTX users).
Binance collects billions of dollars from fees every year and also get money from their external investments (e.g. Binance invested in FTX and sold their shares last year for $2B ($1.5B and $0.5B FTT)).
I got the same quote two years ago when my Macbook Pro 2015 got staingate display issue. It was a few weeks after the "4 years repair period" and they wouldnt replace it for free, even though its a known problem and their fault. I also didnt receive any email notification about 4 year repair period regarding staingate issue. If anyone is sueing in Europe about staingate issue let me know. It was sad to throw away 3000€ machine after 4 years.
How do you search for places once you are at the location? Booking usually doesn't give you the contact before you book. Do you arrange a meeting with AirBnb owners before booking?
The biggest performance eye opener for me was when I opened outlook.office.com. On M1 its almost instantaneous where on my old mac (maxed MBP 2015 & Mojave OS) or Ubuntu Desktop machine (32GB RAM & i7 6700) it took 10 seconds or more (all done on the same network).
I noticed I fell out of the "flow" a lot less on M1, because actions that took a few seconds on other machines are now instantaneous.
Regarding the Intellij Idea and Docker, my old 16GB MBP 2015 Mojave was struggling hard and getting very hot with 100K LoC project. I would definitely use the Gateway on old machine aswell.
I have been working with a few Russian and Belarusian software engineers on Upwork and I now pay them in cryptocurrencies, because Upwork (and other websites) banned their profiles and they can't receive my payments.
Do you have any hands on experience with 13" MBA vs 14" or 16" MBP? I will be working from AirBnbs and coffee shops for the most part this year (digital nomad) and I am deciding which Macbook to take for fullstack web development.
I am afraid 13" or 14" won't be big enough. I'm currently on 2015 15" MBP which is mostly fine and theoretically I am prepared to sacrificate some screen size for better mobility (smaller and lighter laptop).
People tried to gain influence over the Bitcoin network in the past and they never succeded. Its much like the power of the Queen in United Kingdom. Theoretically she could overthrown the government, but in practice that will never happen.
Several Bitcoin mining pools tried to attack the network in the past, but the majority of their hashpower vanished and new hashpower appeared to protect the network.
The fact that Bitcoin was able to sustain security for 12 years makes it so valuable (especially because the incentive to take over is worth so much (market cap of $0.7T).
Ethereum's new PoS might be better in the future, however we are still many years away from properly verifing that. However I don't think it is possible to theoretically design a system that is secure and cheap to sustain at the same time. I believe security comes from expensivness (miners energy waste and slow transactions).
Can you elaborate? I am doing the opposite, because I am almost all the time in the office or gym. I force myself to get as much sun as possible for the Vitamin D and articles associated with it here on Hacker News[1].