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Late last year, I started an apprenticeship at a new company and I was excited to meet someone there with an equally or higher level of IT than myself - all the windows-maniacs excluded (because there is only so much excitement in a Domain Controller or Active Directory, honestly...). That employee explained and told me about all the services and things we use - one of them being Kubernetes, in the form of a cluster running OpenSuse's k3s.
Well, hardly a month later, and they got fired for some reason and I had to learn everything on my own, from scratch, right then, right now and right there. F_ck.
Months later, I have attempted to use k3s for selfhosting - trying to remove the tangled wires that is 30ish Docker Compose deployments running across three nodes. They worked - but getting a good reverse proxy setup involved creating a VPN that spans two instances of Caddy that share TLS and OSCP information through Redis and only use DNS-01 challenges through Cloudflare. Everything was everywhere - and, partially still is. But slowly, migrating into k3s has been quite nice.
But. If you ever intend to look into Kubernetes for selfhosting, here are some of the things that I have run into that had me tear my hair out hardcore. This might not be everyone's experience, but here is a list of things that drove me nuts - so far. I am not done migrating everything yet.

1. Helm can only solve 1/4th of your problems. Whilst the idea of using Helm to do your deployments sounds nice, it is unfortunately not going to always work for you - and in most cases, it is due to ingress setups. Although there is a builtin Ingress thing, there still does not seem to be a fully uniform way of constructing them. Some Helm charts will populate the .spec.tls field, some will not - and then, your respective ingress controller, which is Traefik for k3s, will have to also correctly utilize them. In most cases, if you use k3s, you will end up writing your own ingresses, or just straight up your own deployments.
   
2. Nothing is straight-forward. What I mean by this is something like: You can't just have storage, you need to "make" storage first! If you want to give your container storage, you have to give it a volume - and in return, that volume needs to be created by a storage provisioner. In k3s, this uses the Local Path Provisioner, which gets the basics done quite nicely. However - what about storage on your NAS? Well... I am actually still investigating that. And cloud storage via something like rclone? Well, you will have to allow the FUSE device to be mounted in your container. Oh, were where we? Ah yes, adding storage to your container. As you can see, it's long and deep... and although it is largely documented, it's a PITA to find at times what you are looking for.
   
3. Docker Compose has a nice community, Kubernetes' doesn't...really. So, like, "docker compose people" are much more often selfhosters and hobby homelabbers and are quite eager to share and help. But whenever I end up in a kubernetes-ish community for one reason or another, people are a lot more "stiff" and expect you to know much more than you might already - or, outright ignore your question. This isn't any ill intend or something - but Kubernetes was ment to be a cloud infrastructure defintion system - not a homelabber's cheap way to build a fancy cluster to add compute together and make the most of all the hardware they have. So if you go around asking questions, be patient. Cloud people are a little different. Not difficult or unfriendly - just... a bit built different. o.o
   
4. When trying to find "cool things" to add or do with your cluster, you will run into some of the most bizzare marketing you have seen in your life. Everyone/-thing uses GitOps or DevOps and includes a rat's tail of dependencies or pre-knowledge. So if you have a pillow you frequently scream into in frustration... it'll have quite some "input". o.o;
   

Overall, putting my deployments together has worked quite well so far and although it is MUCH slower than just writing a Docker Compose deployment, there are certain advantages like scaleability, portability (big, fat asterisk) and automation. Something Docker Compose can not do is built-in cronjobs; or using ConfigMaps that you define in the same file and language as your deployment to provide configuration. A full kubernetes deployment might be ugly as heck, but has everything neatly packaged into one file - and you can delete it just as easy with kubectl delete -f deployment.yaml. It is largely autonomous and all you have to worry about is writing your deployments - where they run, what resources are ultimatively utilized and how the backend figures itself out, are largely not of your concern (unless Traefik decides to just not tell you a peep about an error in your configuration...).
As a tiny side-note about Traefik in k3s; if you are in the process of migrating, consider enabling the ExternalNameServices option to turn Traefik into a reverse proxy for your other services that have not yet migrated. Might come in handy. I use this to link my FusionPBX to the rest of my services under the same set of subdomains, although it runs in an Incus container.
What's your experience been? Why did you start using Kubernetes for your selfhosting needs? Im just asking into the blue here, really. Once the migration is done, I hope that the following maintenance with tools like Rennovate won't make me regret everything lmao. ^;

I looked on Poe ninja and found a hexblast build making way more damage than mine at my level. I noticed they had a few items that seemed to be in a few builds, malachai's loop, badge of brotherhood, gravens secret belt and ralakesh boots. I had already worked into the hexblast build with sandstorm Visage, profane proxy and a curse on hit ring.
I found the gear on the market (on console) and have switched over to most of the things, still working on the cluster jewels, the adorned and the regular jewels.
My dps went up so much, and my survivability went way down.
My charges all show they're at maximum, except the absorption charges, that says 1/9. Is that correct? Is there an action I need to do to start some sort of mechanic for the fear I swapped over to?
I haven't been able to find a build guide or video for this version of hexblast mine Sabo with the added gear and having petrified blood in the mix.
When I can make it to the map bosses, they melt so fast.
Did I just switch my character over from something that could sort of run maps to something that is just supposed to show up to kill the map boss?
I don't have access to a PC. So can't get you a POB.
I do have a minified Poe planner link. Some of the stats and resists aren't accurate though.
https://poeplanner.com/b/PMX
Could someone point me towards a build guide or build video so I can try to understand this build now? Thanks!

So after a few years self-hosting a few hobbiest websites on my Family NAS, I noticed I wasn’t properly finishing or publicising them because at the back of my head I was thinking: if this gets popular and I end up with 1000’s of hits, I don’t want some hacker to figure out a way to nuke my Photos/Games/Media/DockerApps etc…
I was always super careful with security, I don’t know how a hacker could find my IP address through a reverse-proxied cloudflare-enabled domain, but maybe?
Seeing people on here get their systems encrypted etc have probably freaked me out a little too much, plus there’s the “NEVER PUBLICLY HOST ANYTHING ON YOUR NAS” crowd, so i’ve decided to just host all my static pages on Cloudflare Pages, and i’m in the process of learning AWS for the more complex bits I have…
Was this a good idea?
It would still be nice to be able to host, say - a 2GB file on my Synology still, and be able to provide a safe public download link on one of my websites - is there a good way of doing this without reopening my ports?

I’ve just realized the 90’s 30min season of Aeon Flux is on Paramount+.
I’m finally watching the whole season in sequence - it was hard to catch them live back in the day and I never heard of the dvd release - and it’s an animation art masterpiece.
A lot of people know about it but very few have watched the season. It’s def worth it.
It’s hard to express how deep the story can go with so little run time. The setting is incredible, the german expressionist megastructures, the misterious soundtrack, the ambiguity of plot and character plus the sheer genius creativity of Peter Chung.
So now I’m wondering if there is anything like it to cure the post-season blues and follow up with?
— Edit —
Collecting the suggestions (no particular order but the ones I already watched recently, are from Peter Chung or had multiple people suggesting on top and less consensus on bottom):

• Aeon Flux shorts (Peter Chung)
• Reign the Conqueror (Peter Chung)
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (Video 2004)
• Various TV Ads by Peter Chung
• The Maxx
• Scavengers Reign
• Cowboy Beepop (animation, not live)
• Primal (aka Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal)
• Lastman (french)
• Love, death and Robots (1st season)
• Animatrix
• Phantom 2040 (same animators)
• Pluto (anime)
• Serial Experiments Lain (anime 1998, different but related interesting) - Ryūtarō Nakamura
• Paranoia Agent (anime 2004, different but related interesting) - Satoshi Kon.
• Castlevania
• Arcane
• Kontroll (movie)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Lola Rent (movie)
• Heavy Metal (movie, 2000 version less so)
• Afro Samurai
• Ghost in the Shell
• Ergo Proxy
• Gantz: O (animated movie)
• Blue Eyed Samurai (not the same feel, but nice)
• Robot Carnival (1987) - Anthology collection of 9 Sci-Fi anime films.
• Akira (1988) - Katsuhiro Otomo.
• Memories (1995) - Anthology collection of 3 Sci-Fi anime films.
• Redline (2009) - Takeshi Koike.
• Pantheon (2022) - Based on a shorty story collection by Ken Liu.
• Metropolis (2001) - Rinataro/Katsuhiro Otomo.
• Dota
• X-Men 97
• Invincible
• Edge runners
• Black Mirror (live action)

People: - Peter Chung (Aeon Flux creator) - John Rafter Lee (voice of Trevor Goodchild). Also voiced the vampire Meier Link in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (English version of VHDB because that’s how it was originally written and filmed), Reign the Conqueror, Jason Wynn in Spawn, also narrated China Mieville’s books, and other audiobooks. - Enki Bilal (comic artist) - Gene Wolf - China Mieville - Genndy Tartakovsky (Primal) - Egon Schiele (painter)

URL : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12028-023-01738-w
doi : 10.1007/s12028-023-01738-w

Alright, so I watched this tutorial on NavLinkProxy, and it seemed rather simple. In my case, i have placed the link, the Left at the bottom, and the right at the top. I made sure the link is Left to Right only and used a NavModifier Volume to make sure there was no NavMesh on the escalator. I expected to just work, but the AI doesn't seem to understand it and goes for another, much further path.

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding (my newsletter Boring Money. If you like what you read, do visit the link and subscribe to receive future posts directly in your inbox)

The standard way for a company to make a profit is to produce a thing at some cost, then sell that thing at a higher cost, and pocket the difference. Another, if slightly frowned upon, way of making a profit is to not worry too much about what your company is producing or selling. Instead, at the end of the quarter, you can pick up your financial statements, take a pen, put some nice numbers under “revenue” and erase the numbers under “expenses”. On paper, the company’s making a profit either way.
The risk, apart from running out of money, is that the company might get caught. This month, Brightcom Group, an ad-tech company, got caught. [1] Here’s a SEBI enforcement order describing the stuff Brightcom did, and one of the many things it did was to show profits which didn’t exist.
Some intangible assets are under development
If your company buys, say, a truck, the standard way to account for this expense in your books is by dividing the cost of the truck by the number of years you expect this truck to last, and then adding this number to your expenses every year. This is slightly weird because you do pay cash upfront for the truck. But still, it’s useful to not have to call it an expense just for the first year because it is an asset that lasts many, many years.
If you buy a truck, account for it the standard way I described above, but then the truck meets with an accident and gets trashed the next day? Then that’s it. You have to now account for the full expense of the truck in one go and can’t split it into chunks every year.
In short, as long as an asset is “alive,” you can split its expense into chunks and account for each chunk every year. If it’s “dead,” you have to account for it right away.
Modern accounting is surprisingly thoughtful and there’s a weird in-between “alive” and “dead” that it allows for. Instead of buying an asset, if you’re building it, your asset is in some sense neither dead nor alive. So you can just, umm, add nothing to your expenses until you figure if your asset is actually dead or alive.
Brightcom was spending a lot on salaries, marketing, and stuff, but it didn’t want to show these expenses. So it decided that it wasn’t “spending” but instead “investing” in building an asset. From SEBI’s order, here’s Brightcom’s CFO:

Brightcom was building software and this software would eventually be an intangible asset. But, until Brightcom could figure whether this asset would eventually be dead or alive, it didn’t count any of its expenses as expenses, instead put it under an “intangible assets under development” category. This way, the company could show a nice profit because all its expenses were apparently assets. In all, the company hid ₹863 crore ($100 million) and showed a profit of ₹440 crore ($50 million) in 2020. If its expenses had actually been counted as expenses, Brightcom would’ve shown a loss of ₹428 crore.
https://preview.redd.it/a2xn3xc5bb1d1.jpg?width=762&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b9bfd5cd84b25807c6025ad9a26980abc57d2da
Asset’s dead but it’s not an expense
One problem with showing your expenses as an “asset under development” is that this asset can’t be under development forever. At some point, depending on if this asset is dead or alive, you have to account for your expenses in some way.
… Or not. If your company makes any money, you put those figures in your profit and loss statement. This is simple and straightforward. But accounting isn’t simple and straightforward. If your company makes money, but it’s not a result of your actual business, then you can’t put it under the P&L. Instead, you have to account for it under a separate subheading called “Other Comprehensive Income”.
The idea behind this new sub-head is that the company's P&L is supposed to reflect its actual ability to make money. If you hold a lot of dollars and the price of the dollar goes up (or down), your company didn’t really do anything to make that profit (or loss) so you’d put it under Other Comprehensive Income and not in your P&L. So stuff like this wouldn’t affect your profit, on paper at least. [2]
Yes, of course, Brightcom recognised the ₹863 crore loss that it had hidden under “intangible assets under development” by categorising it as Other Comprehensive Income. SEBI wasn’t excited about it.
Share this post so that Boring Money can move from “asset under development” to P&L
Sell your stake but keep quiet about it
If a company is doing well, its founders don’t usually sell stock. So if a founder sells some shares, they have to tell everyone about it by regulation, because it could be a sign that things aren’t well.
There are three entities that need to know if a founder sells stock:

1. The company itself, via its registrar and transfer agent (RTA)
2. Depositories that hold stock on behalf of investors
3. Stock exchanges

1 and #2 are important, but they’re obvious. The company has to know if its founders sell stock, and so does the depository that actually moves the stock from one account to another. #3 is how the rest of the rest of the world gets to know. A founder sells some stock, files a disclosure in a stock exchange, the exchange updates its records and screams out that this has happened, and that’s how public investors know.

In March 2014, if you had asked Brightcom’s RTA, a depository, or a stock exchange about how much stake its founders owned, they would’ve all said, “about 40%”. If you asked them again in June 2022, the RTA and the depository would say “about 3.5%”, but the stock exchange would scratch its head and say “18.47%”.
That’s because Brightcom’s founders—primarily CEO Suresh Reddy, his friends and family—sold their stock but didn’t inform the stock exchanges. Here’s what they said when SEBI asked what’s up:

Man, I’m just some dumb guy writing about finance every once in a while, and even I know that if you pledge your shares as collateral to get a loan, you don’t transfer ownership. You just inform your depository and investors about it, and you still own the shares. Reddy & Friends transferred some of their shares to someone else (that is, sold them) and decided not to inform the stock exchanges. Then they used pledging as an excuse and everyone had different answers about how much stock they really owned.
How much money they make tho
When a company’s stock price shoots up in a short period of time, and there’s no concrete reason for it to happen, in all likelihood, it’s a scam. The management of the company may or may not be involved, but it definitely helps if they are.
Last month, I wrote about Sadhna, a company that SEBI charged with running a pump-and-dump. The founders owned a lot of shares, they spread some false news, the share price shot up, then happily sold their stock to naive investors, and made a profit. If you see Brightcom’s share price trajectory without knowing any of the company’s other shenanigans, it might seem a similar story. The stock price was around ₹3 in January 2021. By December, it was at ₹117. 40X in a year is definitely not normal.
In a pump-and-dump, it’s important for those running the fraud to own shares before the price goes up. The fraud that Reddy & Friends are accused of, which I described above, was of selling stock and hiding the fact that they sold it. By early 2021, they had in fact sold 80% of their shares and it’s only later that the share price started going up.
But wait, here’s more from SEBI:

In 2020 and 2021, Brightcom sold a large chunk (almost 15% stake) of shares to a group of investors. [3] Later, Suresh Reddy—who had been selling Brightcom shares all these years—became a partner at these entities that had just bought a large chunk of stock.
It’s all a bit confusing but here’s what I think happened. In late 2020 and early 2021, it had become apparent if you called yourself a tech company, investors would push your price up. The finer details didn’t matter. Brightcom, of course, happened to be an “ad-tech” company. So there was a decent chance that its share price would go up (or it could be made to go up, there are ways). But since Reddy & Friends had already sold nearly all of their shares, they needed to buy more shares so that they could sell them when the price went up. But they couldn’t buy them directly—because how would they justify selling shares so soon?—so they got some proxy investors to do so on their behalf.
As expected, the share price did go up. A lot. Around the same time, SEBI started investigating the company because of all the shady stuff it had done over the years. If the proxy investors were to sell this stock now, SEBI would definitely catch on, it was already investigating them! So instead of selling any shares at crazy high prices, Reddy instead came out with his association with those proxy investors so that the total founder ownership would go back up to the exact amount expected [4] by the public, that is, 18.47%.
It’s possible that Reddy & Friends made some profit but SEBI says it needs more information to be sure about just how much it would be. It would’ve been easier to know had they also run a pump-and-dump for good measure.
Footnotes
[1] Technically, Brightcom got caught earlier when SEBI actually started investigating. But it’s just this month that SEBI put a nice document out with whatever its investigation found.
[2] This “Other Comprehensive Income” should be a small number. If it’s a huge figure more than your actual profit, there’s usually something fishy happening.
[3] Brightcom didn’t directly sell shares to the group of investors. Instead, it issued warrants. What this meant was that the investors had the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares from the company at a fixed price at a later date. This was a good way for these investors (who are now part of the founder group) to not risk too much money buying shares in case the price went down.
[4] Reminder, the reason that the public expected the founder group to own 18.47% was that they hadn’t informed the stock exchanges when they had reduced their stake.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding (my newsletter Boring Money. If you like what you read, do visit the link and subscribe to receive future posts directly in your inbox)

The standard way for a company to make a profit is to produce a thing at some cost, then sell that thing at a higher cost, and pocket the difference. Another, if slightly frowned upon, way of making a profit is to not worry too much about what your company is producing or selling. Instead, at the end of the quarter, you can pick up your financial statements, take a pen, put some nice numbers under “revenue” and erase the numbers under “expenses”. On paper, the company’s making a profit either way.
The risk, apart from running out of money, is that the company might get caught. This month, Brightcom Group, an ad-tech company, got caught. [1] Here’s a SEBI enforcement order describing the stuff Brightcom did, and one of the many things it did was to show profits which didn’t exist.
Some intangible assets are under development
If your company buys, say, a truck, the standard way to account for this expense in your books is by dividing the cost of the truck by the number of years you expect this truck to last, and then adding this number to your expenses every year. This is slightly weird because you do pay cash upfront for the truck. But still, it’s useful to not have to call it an expense just for the first year because it is an asset that lasts many, many years.
If you buy a truck, account for it the standard way I described above, but then the truck meets with an accident and gets trashed the next day? Then that’s it. You have to now account for the full expense of the truck in one go and can’t split it into chunks every year.
In short, as long as an asset is “alive,” you can split its expense into chunks and account for each chunk every year. If it’s “dead,” you have to account for it right away.
Modern accounting is surprisingly thoughtful and there’s a weird in-between “alive” and “dead” that it allows for. Instead of buying an asset, if you’re building it, your asset is in some sense neither dead nor alive. So you can just, umm, add nothing to your expenses until you figure if your asset is actually dead or alive.
Brightcom was spending a lot on salaries, marketing, and stuff, but it didn’t want to show these expenses. So it decided that it wasn’t “spending” but instead “investing” in building an asset. From SEBI’s order, here’s Brightcom’s CFO:

.. if we launch the Content Optimization product in 2014, we keep upgrading it on an annual basis and the relevant expenditure is recognized as addition to Other Current Assets / Intangible Assets Under Development / Other Intangible Assets based on the product development status of each product.

Brightcom was building software and this software would eventually be an intangible asset. But, until Brightcom could figure whether this asset would eventually be dead or alive, it didn’t count any of its expenses as expenses, instead put it under an “intangible assets under development” category. This way, the company could show a nice profit because all its expenses were apparently assets. In all, the company hid ₹863 crore ($100 million) and showed a profit of ₹440 crore ($50 million) in 2020. If its expenses had actually been counted as expenses, Brightcom would’ve shown a loss of ₹428 crore.
https://preview.redd.it/a2xn3xc5bb1d1.jpg?width=762&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b9bfd5cd84b25807c6025ad9a26980abc57d2da
Asset’s dead but it’s not an expense
One problem with showing your expenses as an “asset under development” is that this asset can’t be under development forever. At some point, depending on if this asset is dead or alive, you have to account for your expenses in some way.
… Or not. If your company makes any money, you put those figures in your profit and loss statement. This is simple and straightforward. But accounting isn’t simple and straightforward. If your company makes money, but it’s not a result of your actual business, then you can’t put it under the P&L. Instead, you have to account for it under a separate subheading called “Other Comprehensive Income”.
The idea behind this new sub-head is that the company's P&L is supposed to reflect its actual ability to make money. If you hold a lot of dollars and the price of the dollar goes up (or down), your company didn’t really do anything to make that profit (or loss) so you’d put it under Other Comprehensive Income and not in your P&L. So stuff like this wouldn’t affect your profit, on paper at least. [2]
Yes, of course, Brightcom recognised the ₹863 crore loss that it had hidden under “intangible assets under development” by categorising it as Other Comprehensive Income. SEBI wasn’t excited about it.
Sell your stake but keep quiet about it
If a company is doing well, its founders don’t usually sell stock. So if a founder sells some shares, they have to tell everyone about it by regulation, because it could be a sign that things aren’t well.
There are three entities that need to know if a founder sells stock:

1. The company itself, via its registrar and transfer agent (RTA)
2. Depositories that hold stock on behalf of investors
3. Stock exchanges

1 and #2 are important, but they’re obvious. The company has to know if its founders sell stock, and so does the depository that actually moves the stock from one account to another. #3 is how the rest of the rest of the world gets to know. A founder sells some stock, files a disclosure in a stock exchange, the exchange updates its records and screams out that this has happened, and that’s how public investors know.
In March 2014, if you had asked Brightcom’s RTA, a depository, or a stock exchange about how much stake its founders owned, they would’ve all said, “about 40%”. If you asked them again in June 2022, the RTA and the depository would say “about 3.5%”, but the stock exchange would scratch its head and say “18.47%”.
That’s because Brightcom’s founders—primarily CEO Suresh Reddy, his friends and family—sold their stock but didn’t inform the stock exchanges. Here’s what they said when SEBI asked what’s up:

The difference is due to shares of the promoters being pledged. One of the condition of pledging shares was that the shares would be transferred to the account of pledgor, however, the beneficial ownership and the voting rights of the shares were with the promoters of the Company. Since the promoters were the beneficial owners of the pledged shares, therefore, the same was being shown in the shareholding pattern in the name of the respective promoters.

Man, I’m just some dumb guy writing about finance every once in a while, and even I know that if you pledge your shares as collateral to get a loan, you don’t transfer ownership. You just inform your depository and investors about it, and you still own the shares. Reddy & Friends transferred some of their shares to someone else (that is, sold them) and decided not to inform the stock exchanges. Then they used pledging as an excuse and everyone had different answers about how much stock they really owned.
How much money they make tho
When a company’s stock price shoots up in a short period of time, and there’s no concrete reason for it to happen, in all likelihood, it’s a scam. The management of the company may or may not be involved, but it definitely helps if they are.
Last month, I wrote about Sadhna, a company that SEBI charged with running a pump-and-dump. The founders owned a lot of shares, they spread some false news, the share price shot up, then happily sold their stock to naive investors, and made a profit. If you see Brightcom’s share price trajectory without knowing any of the company’s other shenanigans, it might seem a similar story. The stock price was around ₹3 in January 2021. By December, it was at ₹117. 40X in a year is definitely not normal.
In a pump-and-dump, it’s important for those running the fraud to own shares before the price goes up. The fraud that Reddy & Friends are accused of, which I described above, was of selling stock and hiding the fact that they sold it. By early 2021, they had in fact sold 80% of their shares and it’s only later that the share price started going up.
But wait, here’s more from SEBI:

It is noted that during FY 2021- 22, BGL [Brightcom] had made preferential allotment of equity shares to 79 allottees and raised Rs.836.38 Crores. Such allottees included 4 entities which subsequently became part of Promoter Group. By virtue of the same, the shareholding of the promoters and promoter group of the Company now stands at 18.47%, as on December 31, 2022.

In 2020 and 2021, Brightcom sold a large chunk (almost 15% stake) of shares to a group of investors. [3] Later, Suresh Reddy—who had been selling Brightcom shares all these years—became a partner at these entities that had just bought a large chunk of stock.
It’s all a bit confusing but here’s what I think happened. In late 2020 and early 2021, it had become apparent if you called yourself a tech company, investors would push your price up. The finer details didn’t matter. Brightcom, of course, happened to be an “ad-tech” company. So there was a decent chance that its share price would go up (or it could be made to go up, there are ways). But since Reddy & Friends had already sold nearly all of their shares, they needed to buy more shares so that they could sell them when the price went up. But they couldn’t buy them directly—because how would they justify selling shares so soon?—so they got some proxy investors to do so on their behalf.
As expected, the share price did go up. A lot. Around the same time, SEBI started investigating the company because of all the shady stuff it had done over the years. If the proxy investors were to sell this stock now, SEBI would definitely catch on, it was already investigating them! So instead of selling any shares at crazy high prices, Reddy instead came out with his association with those proxy investors so that the total founder ownership would go back up to the exact amount expected [4] by the public, that is, 18.47%.
It’s possible that Reddy & Friends made some profit but SEBI says it needs more information to be sure about just how much it would be. It would’ve been easier to know had they also run a pump-and-dump for good measure.
Footnotes
[1] Technically, Brightcom got caught earlier when SEBI actually started investigating. But it’s just this month that SEBI put a nice document out with whatever its investigation found.
[2] This “Other Comprehensive Income” should be a small number. If it’s a huge figure more than your actual profit, there’s usually something fishy happening.
[3] Brightcom didn’t directly sell shares to the group of investors. Instead, it issued warrants. What this meant was that the investors had the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares from the company at a fixed price at a later date. This was a good way for these investors (who are now part of the founder group) to not risk too much money buying shares in case the price went down.
[4] Reminder, the reason that the public expected the founder group to own 18.47% was that they hadn’t informed the stock exchanges when they had reduced their stake.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/brightcom-made-a-profit-by-hiding

Discovered this on good ol rin ru.
http://pixeldrain-bypass.cybar.xyz
it’s made by the dude over a gamedrive.org (which is a pretty good site btw)
You put the links you want on it, and it automatically converts them into ones without any limits
I used it for ghost of tsushima, worked pretty well and finished quickly.
the guy that made it said on the cs rin ru thread that the downloads speeds may get locked to a very low speed but it will go back to being fast quickly. (you can find the thread yourself pretty easily btw, by searching up pixeldrain on cs rin ru)
for me, the download on Jdownloader 2 got locked to 1mibs,after 5gb on the download has been reached
to fix it, i just disabled the download and reenabled it, which made it to back to a 40 - 50 mibs download. once it happened again, i did the same thing and yup, it went back to being fast.
this is way less of hassle then having to use proxies, i pretty much recommend it. i wonder if something like this could be made for 1fichier…

Great show. One of my all time favorite series.
I really thought the scene with Emma Stone and the middle aged woman friend proxy was hilarious. Can anyone find that scene online and link it for me to share with someone?

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.

Besides, GDP measures perpetual growth, which is unattainable. Because GDP is an outdated proxy measure of economic growth, wellbeing, which is a multidimensional approach of measuring the most important aspects of people’s life, is gaining popularity.

Perpetual Growth

Stagflation is simultaneous economic stagnation combined with high inflation. In the long run, economic growth is dependent on two drivers; productivity and labor (Dolar). Productivity is affected by multiple factors. Improvements in many facets of productivity growth have decreased or reversed since the global financial crisis. The foremost factor is the demographic crisis of western countries that threatens the growth of GDP. Developed countries have experienced deceleration of working-age population, stabilization of educational attainment, and expansion into various forms of production. Furthermore, labor reallocation from less productive to more productive sectors has decelerated since the global financial crisis. Besides, radical disruptions to education and income losses are likely to affect human capital negatively. The waning demographics of western countries imply that acceleration of productivity growth is needed. The McKinsey Global Institute projected that 80% productivity growth is required to mitigate the effects of changing demographics (49). This projection is unlikely to be achieved given the dwindling working-age population in western countries. On the contrary, productivity growth is likely to continue decreasing because of the significant changes in the demographics unless the working-age population begins to grow again.

Perpetual Growth

GDP as a measurement is very outdated because it does not measure wellbeing. It is a statistical tool used to measure how well the economy is performing. However, it neglects important factors that determine the wellbeing, such as inequality and environmental services (Gallup). GDP as a proxy measure of economic growth ignores certain aspects that do not involve monetary transactions, does not assess changes in human capital, does not discriminate activities that enhance welfare from activities that reduce welfare, does not account for cultural difference, and omits the environmental costs and rates of depletion of resources (Giannetti et al. 14). The Measure of Economic Welfare is one of the alternatives for a gross domestic product as it measures consumption in the economy as a proxy for economic welfare. It adds up the benefits of goods and services consumption and subtracts the costs associated with the consumption, such as environmental pollution, providing a picture of economic welfare. Other economic welfare measures were developed after the Measure of Economic Welfare, such as the Index of the Economic Aspects of Welfare which incorporates environmental costs in estimating economic welfare (Giannetti et al. 15). Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare is an index developed to account for the current environmental issues while addressing the long-term ecosystem and natural resource sustainable use. More indices were developed with recent ones such as the State of Global Well-Being, the Better Life Index, and the Global Well-Being Index measuring a myriad of aspects of wellbeing. The Gallup Global Well-Being measures the behavioral economics of gross domestic product growth. It estimates the percentage “thriving,” “struggling,” and “suffering” of individuals in different countries and regions (Gallup). The indexes focus on the percent thriving in at least elements of wellbeing such as purpose (liking what they do), social (supportive relationships), physical (good health), community (liking the surrounding community), and financial (managing economic life well) aspects.
One in six adults worldwide are considered thriving – or strong and consistent — in at least three of the five elements of well-being, as measured by the Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index. For example residents of the Singapore score quite low at the 19%, while New Zealand leads in Asia – Pacific with 67%.
The Gallup Global Well-Being measures have opened up new opportunities to study issues that affect people in different communities around the world in ways that GDP would not. For example, life satisfaction aspects of the Gallup World Poll data have been exploited to measure inequality in the distribution of subjective wellbeing (Gluzmann & Gasparini 2). Measuring inequality in subjective wellbeing might be complementary to the various approaches aimed at computing unfairness in a society because it may in some way have benefits over the usual income inequality measurements. Some perceived income inequalities may arise due to personal choices if all constraints are observed thus cannot be considered unfair. A case in point is when two individuals facing similar opportunities make different choices. One choice might lead to a better, healthier lifestyle while the other subjects the individual to poverty. Free choices resulting in socially acceptable income inequality should not be regarded as unfair. The assessment of subjective wellbeing is less likely to be susceptible to such differences. Under evaluation of subjective wellbeing, differences in perceived happiness may better estimate social unfairness rather than income unfairness (Gluzmann & Gasparini 4). Gallup World Poll provides data that can be used to compare wellbeing in different countries. It cures one of the most significant problems associated with compering inequality across countries and regions, namely, the generation of homogenous information. The poll poses the same question across all countries in all areas, which significantly reduces spurious differences in estimating comparisons. This reduces sources of measurement error significantly. It is noteworthy that people may not interpret and answer the standardized questions the same in different countries, leading to additional errors. However, the advantages of estimating subjective wellbeing and its rising popularity imply that improvements in the measurements will yield better results.

Technological Revolution

Usually, information and communication technologies are considered a key driver of economic growth and productivity. Different reviews indicate that technological effects tend to be positive at the organizational level (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD 34]). However, it has been reported that productivity tends to drop as economies entrench technologies in every sector. In other words, the rapid digitization of economies has not translated into strong productivity. On the contrary, productivity growth appears to have stunted over the past few decades, with the slowdown more pronounced in developed countries and also in developing countries (UNCTAD 34). This is a productivity paradox because as technological advancement and use have increased, productivity growth has decreased, which is contrary to popular expectations (Remes et al.). The digitization of economies into digital economies has thus far not translated into increased productivity. The paradox in the digital economy is attributed to different reasons. A more pessimistic perspective considers the technological effects on productivity as having fewer impacts on productivity growth than the revolutionary technological advances of the past (UNCTAD 34). A more optimistic view links the slow growth of productivity to the time lags between the time the technologies are introduced and the time actual effects are felt (European CEO). As a result, more visible impacts on productivity will occur when technologies are adopted widely within the economy. An additional contributing factor to the productivity paradox is the difficulties associated with measuring the digital economy. The slow growth in productivity might be explained by the lack of proper recording of technological activities in that in overall GDP estimation. Consequently, the proper measurement would be reflected in increased productivity. In developed countries, demographic factors associated with the aging population are also linked to the slow growth in productivity (UNCTAD 34). Therefore, the productivity paradox related to the technological revolution arises from multiple factors.

Quality of the GDP

Measuring economic growth in purely quantitative categories diminishes the significance of “high-quality growth.” High-quality growth encompasses increased technological self-reliance, significant production and welfare transformation, the establishment of a comprehensive safety net for the citizens, enhancement of quality healthcare, education, and employment, and reduction of inequality across regions and various demographic characteristics (Wärtsilä). It reflects a policy change that focuses on investment areas that guarantee increased productivity, such as production, consumption, healthcare, and education (Pfeffer). The concept of high-quality growth is being advanced by China to reorganize the economy in a way that focus on increased domestic consumption and investing in productive sectors to drive the overall economic growth. For example, after decades of heavy investments in infrastructural projects and the manufacturing sector, the country realizes that roads and bridges are not productive but rather facilitates productivity. Policy change to shift investment into more productive sectors of the economy might bring sustainable economic growth and wellbeing. At the sectorial level, administrative job control is one of the main factors impacting the health of the employees (Pfeffer). The return of line of sight to the work, workplace flexibility, autonomous fusion teams, fluidity in work practices, and organizational health can elevate the personal wellbeing of the employees. The functional organization provides an environment with less stress caused by micromanagement demands from the employees. Therefore, wellbeing is a product of economic policy at the national level and the contribution of the private sector in nurturing the wellbeing of employees.

Conclusion

The failure of GDP as a measurement proxy of economic growth is less effective in contemporary society. It assumes that an economy will experience perpetual growth, which is a difficult achievement. Even where economies have experienced phenomenal growth over the years, the economic expansion failed to transform the lives of millions of citizens. The technological revolution also has been unable to expand the GDP as it was initially believed despite the fact that the significant impacts technology has had on society. It led to the conclusion that GDP has limitations as a measure of economic growth because it does not account for the non-monetary aspects that matter to people. As a result, new indexes such as the Gallup Global Wellbeing have been developed and are experiencing rising popularity due to their ability to compute wellbeing. In particular, the estimation of subjective wellbeing creates opportunities for improved measurement of social inequality. Furthermore, the realization that wellbeing is important to citizens is supporting new ideas of measuring national economic growth. China’s shift to the assessment of the quality of economic growth indicates a paradigm shift where countries focus on national statistics that reflect their economic realities.

References

Dolar, Veronika. “Why stagflation is an economic nightmare – and could become a real headache for Biden and the Fed if it emerges in the US.” The Conversation (2022). https://theconversation.com/why-stagflation-is-an-economic-nightmare-and-could-become-a-real-headache-for-biden-and-the-fed-if-it-emerges-in-the-us-179036. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
European CEO. “Giving a voice to the digital revolution’s silent majority.” (2019). https://www.europeanceo.com/industry-outlook/giving-a-voice-to-the-digital-revolutions-silent-majority/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Gallup. “2014 Country Well-Being Rankings.”
Giannetti, Biagio F., et al. “A review of limitations of GDP and alternative indices to monitor human wellbeing and to manage ecosystem functionality.” Journal of cleaner production 87 (2015): 11-25.
Gluzmann, Pablo, and Leonardo Gasparini. “International inequality in subjective well‐being: An exploration with the Gallup World Poll.” Review of Development Economics 22.2 (2018): 610-631.
McKinsey Global Institute – “Global growth: Can productivity save the day in an aging world?” page 49
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. “The overlooked essentials of employee wellbeing.” McKinsey Global Institute (2018). https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-overlooked-essentials-of-employee-well-being. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Remes, Jaana et al. “Solving the productivity puzzle.” McKinsey Global Institute (2018). https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/regions-in-focus/solving-the-productivity-puzzle. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Wärtsilä. “Going beyond GDP: China targets a new path to growth.” (2021). https://www.wartsila.com/insights/article/going-beyond-gdp-china-targets-a-new-path-to-growth. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Authors

Paul Lalovich

Organizational Effectiveness and Strategy Execution Practice

Tesha Teshanovich

Organizational Effectiveness and Strategy Execution Practice

Anyone who has been highjacking, invading Reddit in efforts to get me to break NO CONTACT and react poorly. ( Which I did at times). Since you still refuse to comment below on my post yesterday to get everything out in the open in public forum. Dox me, expose me , rant, call me names, etc. All welcomed yesterday on the post. Here's your chance again. I am not ever going back. No CONTACT means NO CONTACT. If don't want to expose or be exposed via educational purposes platform simply respect the NO CONTACT. Comment below 👇 Your former relation to me, and your name and what you have been doing. If you don't know me personally and are an unwitting flying monkey please reveal yourself by first name and who you have been defending through your stalking by proxy. Btw my name is Gabrielle Cook. See link for education on family Mobbing : In the comments. I am expecting no one to comment below to actually do as a ask because they seek to due me great harm covertly. Just like I stated in my post yesterday. Come on now. Prove me wrong.

Anyone who has been highjacking, invading Reddit in efforts to get me to break NO CONTACT and react poorly. ( Which I did at times). Since you still refuse to comment below on my post yesterday to get everything out in the open in public forum. Dox me, expose me , rant, call me names, etc. All welcomed yesterday on the post. Here's your chance again. I am not ever going back. No CONTACT means NO CONTACT. If don't want to expose or be exposed via educational purposes platform simply respect the NO CONTACT. Comment below 👇 Your former relation to me, and your name and what you have been doing. If you don't know me personally and are an unwitting flying monkey please reveal yourself by first name and who you have been defending through your stalking by proxy. Btw my name is Gabrielle Cook. See link for education on family Mobbing : In the comments. I am expecting no one to comment below to actually do as a ask because they seek to due me great harm covertly. Just like I stated in my post yesterday. Come on now. Prove me wrong.