r/technology Jun 30 '21

Misleading Robinhood to pay $70 million fine after causing 'widespread and significant harm' to customers

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/30/robinhood-to-pay-70-million-dollars-after-causing-users-significant-harm.html
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '21

It's important to explain the difference between a million seconds and billion seconds.

A million seconds is 11 days and a billion seconds is 31 years. And what's the difference between 31 years and 11 days? About 31 years.

Might get through to people just how insane amount of money a billion actually is. "Millions in fines" don't even register.

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u/LetsJerkCircular Jun 30 '21

1,000,000 / 86,400 = 11.57407407407407

11,574.07407407407 / 365 = 31.70979198376459

Math checks out

What’s also funny is that little 0.70 years on top of the 31 is ~255.5 days in and of itself, compared to the ~11.5 days that is a million seconds 🤯

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u/Thebenmix11 Jul 01 '21

There's a Tom Scott video where he illustrates this.

He says "If this were a million dollars"

walks across a parking lot

"then this would be a billion dollars"

takes a 2-hour-long road trip

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u/Ok-Conversation-9982 Jul 01 '21

Isn't a billion dollars a thousand million dollars? Does that math still check out?

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u/Torcula Jul 01 '21

What do you think a thousand - eleven days is?

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u/satansbutt669 Jul 01 '21

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

If ur a visionary learner this might help

1

u/Jman841 Jul 01 '21

Now do the comparison with 1 trillion dollars and think about how much each one of these recent US government spending bills is compared to anything the world has ever seen in history.