Jurgis

Sounds like I was a few centuries late. Ah those French. They did everything better. In the past.

LOL. And now we have a nice quote about nice quotes. 8)

Sold the stock. I don't see FCC approval: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/headlines but maybe I missed it. Price moved up. I don't want to hold and see what happens if FCC does not approve by 11/09. I'm probably wrong. 8)

So funny. Can I be "Nothing at Tesla"? Or at least "Nothing at CoBF"? 8)

What did I miss? ::)

Sold. Thanks for idea.

A guy comes into shrink's office and says: "Doctor, I think I'm a twin pack of laundry detergent!" Doctor says: "Relax, you're just too tight".

You're not missing much likely. The narrative is that likely Q3 numbers gonna suck (and politically speaking it would be good for FB to dump a lot of costs into Q3 to show how they are "fixing" democracy their platform), Q4 + 2019 guidance gonna suck, overall tech and FAANGs are overvalued and out of rotation, sell sell sell. And even if you're long term investor, short term trend is down down down, so why not wait and buy lower, etc. There has to be X0%+ crash soon sometime. Plus EU and US regulation will kill FB. Personally, I don't think regulation will do much (although the regulation in EU may bite somewhat). And the bear narrative will turn at some point. I don't know when. So I'm just buying... but I was buying 20% higher too, so WDIK. And I won't be surprised if it drops another X0% ... or if it doesn't. 8)

~10% spread right now. Might be attractive. Does this need China and EU to signoff and will they? And what's the timeframe? I think I'll twiddle my thumbs a bit.

This happens most nights. I don't have a puppy though. ::)

The real CoBF question is: did we get the sperm of Warren and Charlie in time? 8)

It sucks that human improvement through genetics is strongly associated with eugenics and Nazis. IMO we could be (way?) farther ahead if the research was not considered third rail and funding-starved. I wonder what will happen when some country (China? Russia? (see Russian approach towards Olympic athletes...)) decides that they are fine with this and start doing it on its population. But that would precipitate even more cries of racism based eugenics (and Nazis). ::) But when even progressive (?) people object to GMOs and get them essentially banned through large swaths of the globe, this is tough.

I hear ya, I hear ya.

Slap solar panels on tops of all these railcars and use the electricity to power the locomotive. I know this is a bit SciFi, but maybe Musk can do it. 8)

Yes.

I am not a lawyer, so... I think any defensive moves work in certain cases, don't work in others and result in even worse situation in yet others. Yes, if you make a relative your guardian, this will work unless the court is corrupt/broken like in NewYorker article and moves guardianship to non-relative anyway. Especially if your relative is not resident of the state and only in-state guardians are allowed. Also this puts a risk that your relative could take advantage of you. This might not be an issue for you personally, but for other people it might be (I know situations like that and there are articles about this too). Obviously the state guardian and judge in NewYorker article were evil. But look at it from different perspective: what if a relative is evil and milking old person? Then you'd want the state to appoint different guardian than the evil relative. How do you determine who's evil who's not? Yeah, in ideal world you can. In our world, it's not that easy. Of course the relative will say that they are not evil, the state guardian will say that they are not evil, and the court judge will say that they are not evil either. The best thing is to have trustworthy relatives, trustworthy lawyers/advisors/doctors and live in a location that has trustworthy legal system. It might not be easy to get all of these, but it's worthwhile to try. 8) Those are good points, with lots to think about. I'm more of the age where my elderly relatives are trusting me with stuff. Which works out great for them, because I'm honest and hardworking. :D But it does seem like a good idea to have a plan in place for things like this. I'm going to bring it up with my estate lawyer the next time we do our wills. Yet another side of this - which you may be familiar with since you have elderly relatives: (Some changes were made to protect the innocent): Elderly person: Hi, who are you? Younger person: I'm your kid. You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person leaves the gas turned on: I wanted to make tea Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person falls and cannot get up... Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person shits into their pants, bed, etc... Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. :-\ (And this is without even touching the money side...)

I am not a lawyer, so... I think any defensive moves work in certain cases, don't work in others and result in even worse situation in yet others. Yes, if you make a relative your guardian, this will work unless the court is corrupt/broken like in NewYorker article and moves guardianship to non-relative anyway. Especially if your relative is not resident of the state and only in-state guardians are allowed. Also this puts a risk that your relative could take advantage of you. This might not be an issue for you personally, but for other people it might be (I know situations like that and there are articles about this too). Obviously the state guardian and judge in NewYorker article were evil. But look at it from different perspective: what if a relative is evil and milking old person? Then you'd want the state to appoint different guardian than the evil relative. How do you determine who's evil who's not? Yeah, in ideal world you can. In our world, it's not that easy. Of course the relative will say that they are not evil, the state guardian will say that they are not evil, and the court judge will say that they are not evil either. The best thing is to have trustworthy relatives, trustworthy lawyers/advisors/doctors and live in a location that has trustworthy legal system. It might not be easy to get all of these, but it's worthwhile to try. 8)

Possibly this should go to general AV/EV thread, but I did not find one. 8) GJOpen ( https://www.gjopen.com/ ) and Wharton are looking for new set of questions on predicting future of EVs and AVs. I answered their survey and suggested the following questions: AVs: In 2019 Waymo will officially start self-driving taxi service open to the public with no human driver present. In 2019 Tesla will drive using Autopilot coast to coast In 2019 Some auto manufacturer apart from Waymo will start self-driving car service with no human driver present (possibly not open to all public). EVs: Tesla worldwide sales for 2019 will be above 500K cars (US sales above 300K cars) EV worldwide sales for 2019 will be above 2M cars (US sales above 600K cars) EV battery cost falls 15% or more in 2019 I am not predicting the chances of these occurring. I am just suggesting these as questions for predictions. Feel free to go to GJOpen and submit your predictions when these or other questions are posted. 8) They also had these baseline long term predictions: Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) By year-end 2025, fully self-driving passenger cars--in certain geographic areas and conditions (i.e., Level 4)--will make up approximately 8.5% of global annual new passenger car sales. Note, there are currently NO Level 4 capable cars available for consumer purchase. Electric Vehicles (EVs) By year-end 2025, EVs (battery electric vehicles) will account for 11% of new passenger car sales. Note, this is a nearly an 8X jump from 2017 numbers. I marked that these will be exceeded. 8)

The pie charts only show how down from peak. There is a slice in the pie that says "flat to up 10%"

It's accretive to stock price in the short term, but if you think the price of tencent is going to grow at an IRR or 20% a year for the next 10 years (not saying they will), why would you sell the stock now and buy back your shares when in 10 years you have a lot more money to buyback shares (if the discount doesn't close). Buying back shares is a short term boost to the stock. Not saying it is bad, but you should weigh the opportunity of the buyback in terms of IRR to the IRR of the capital investment of the firm (in the case the IRR of owning financial capital (stocks)). I think there still is decent evidence that the IRR of tencent over the long term is still pretty good. Granted I bet there is some empire building mentality (although they are spinning off their African Pay TV), and they are actually selling tencent stock slowly and redeploying capital. In fact even selling 2% of the outstanding shares (out of a total of like 33% total stake) which they did recently, required a transaction outside the public market, suggesting that they have liquidity issues selling that big a stake. That also may be a big reason they aren't selling as they are locked in liquidity-wise. That being said with the shares they have sold, it doesn't look like they are buying back shares which is a negative, but they are looking to deploy it in other VC investments, which I think is not as attractive as buybacks, but they have generated like 25-35% IRR on VC investments not including tencent, so it's not like they don't know what they are doing. Good answer. Also they have been told to sell Tencent for the last 5-10 years. So far their decision not to sell has been the right one. Of course, this may have built false bias, though this year's small sale seems to show that they are open to sell (some) at the right price and situation.

Great operation, great heroes. I was in Norway this summer, puts some visual context to the story. Peace.

Nice to hear that you have 500B to spare. ;)

No. Jackpot odds are 1:302,575,350 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Millions With current jackpot and even considering that jackpot is nominal value of annual installments, so real jackpot is ~1/2, the expected value of $2 ticket is positive assuming a single winner. (Calcs: 1.6B jackpot ~= 800m cash jackpot, $2x302M to buy all tickets = $604M, btw this can be done for cheaper since there's also "Just the Jackpot" option for $1.5.) However, unless you buy significant percentage of tickets, which is close to impossible, you're likely not gonna realize that positive expected value. And the chance of more than one winner is non-negligible assuming investor group(s) start buying significant number of tickets, so your expected value becomes negative (jackpot split in 2 would result in cost of 1.5$x302 = 450M$ vs payout of 400M$)

Yes, IMO they should raise and should have raised already. Might be Elon's blind spot. ::)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/mega-millions-jackpot-rises-to-1-billion.html Back on track? ;D Did anyone do numbers of whether this is now in positive expected value range? (Even with optimistic assumptions of single winner for simplicity.)