Jurgis

I just read info porn. 8)

So basically owner could sell his business and then start a new one and pretty much go to his former clients while the buyer is left with not much? Not saying this happened to SYTE. Just clarifying.

Yes, right VIEs and contractual rights and all that. I am aware. But Chinese government could kick BYDs ass if they wanted to too. For example if they decided that "Great Wall" or some other car company should be preferred vendor in China or if they decided that BYD CEO is corrupt and should be jailed. And "the same ownership rights as a Chinese citizen" would be worth zilch. But, yeah, VIEs and contractual rights might be more risky.

I think this is a good and relevant question. I have asked this in the past and I continue to have this in mind. The short answer is that this is a risk and I would never put more than couple % of my money into these stocks. The longer answer is that it's likely neither management nor the government will screw you... but if they wanted to, they could, and you'd have no recourse pretty much. I don't know China as well as I know Russia. I think that large-well-known-tech Chinese companies are likely (much) more shareholder friendly than various Russian entities. OTOH I've had bad experiences with Chinese fraudulent reverse mergers. And there are examples (that did not blow up yet) where government told CHL to invest its cash into some crappy bank(s), etc. And there is example of AliPay - although some people would argue that if Jack Ma kept AliPay within BABA, government would have killed it as "foreign-controlled" financial firm. On yet another hand, if I had held when I first bought Tencent ages ago, I'd be way rich(er) - and nothing bad happened in these 10+ years while the stock went up 100x or so. Maybe someone should ask Warren and Charlie how can they be comfortable investing and holding BYD... 8) Good luck 8)

WSJ just posted an article related to this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-better-way-to-make-facebook-pay-1523209483 Techies have an expression for Facebook’s model. It’s “free as in beer”—in the sense of costing no money. You pay in other ways. I propose a simple fix. Let’s flip the whole thing—make it about property rights, 21st-century style. America was built on property rights. Congress can deliberate for 90 seconds and then pass the Make the Internet Great Again Act. The bill would contain five words: “Users own their private data.” Finis. .... What would the world look like under the Make the Internet Great Again Act? If you upload to Facebook photos from your last beach vacation—though please don’t—you still own them. But if I go to your page, zoom in to see whom you’re drinking with, click on a nearby ad, message you about it, or even “Like” it, that information about me should remain private too. I should still own it. Same for whatever I search on Google or buy on Amazon. I control it. Facebook would store this info in a virtual locker, and users would control access. The social network already has this data. It simply needs to corral it into two billion virtual lockers. It’d take an overnight hackathon to implement, really. Each user could then share or not. But if you don’t share, Facebook can’t do its magic and provide a robust News Feed. It will be all cat videos, all the time. Similarly, Google can’t provide pertinent search results, which, like prizes on “The Newlywed Game,” are selected especially for you. You’re going to want to share. Here’s the good news: Facebook is going to pay you to share. Then they’ll turn around and charge you a similar amount to cover the cost of servers, electricity, coders and Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodies. This way they can still show Wall Street the profits it expects. Worth it? Your call. ... This is where it gets fun. Facebook would provide a sliding scale for sharing. The more information you deem shareable, the more you earn. In effect, it becomes a revenue-sharing arrangement with advertisers that want to reach you. If you don’t mind the barrage of ads, share away and a virtual wallet inside your virtual locker grows and grows, probably to be spent on new Facebook services like games, music or videos. Real competition in a real marketplace, rather than the charade of today. I do not think this is easy to implement. Each of the board members would end up owning their comments on the CoBF board, as they would with all consumer reporting firms, etc. Might be easy for the big tech but not for others. Vinod This set of ideas have been talked about for ages in the libre tech circles (MIT, Richard Stallman, etc.). IMO beyond the pure idea, there are numerous issues of how to get there and whether it would work from technical, societal and business points of view. I probably don't want to get into detailed discussion about the possibilities and issues, since ultimately the proof is in the pudding: either someone will figure out a working whole based on the principles described or not. But: - When you post on the forum, even if you "own" your posting, you are still sharing it with certain audience. Attaching rights to every post and controlling how it's shared/not shared/scraped/forwarded/etc. is complicated and costly. Likely more costly than the "revenue" of your rights in the first place. ... Gotta go. Maybe more later. 8)

Ed Thorp seems like a nice guy and I liked his approaches to beat casino and stock market. However, the book is rather boring and IMO pretty basic. Maybe it's just that we've all heard this in other places multiple times. Maybe he was trying to get his writings to book length with filler material. It also is not quite a biography (which I would have liked) and not quite a how-to-invest book (which I am not really interested in). IMO both halves suffer from rather so so treatment. It might be that this is a good book for someone who have not read about Ed Thorp previously and/or have not read about how to invest (and how not to).

It's also possible to look at CoBF Macro threads a year or two later and read what you or others have written there couple years ago. Pretty good source material too. 8) Not that my company-specific writings from past years lack comedy material...

Maybe the building that was sold for 17M was haunted ... by real-estate investors past... ::) Just sayin' 8)

There. Corrected that for you. 8)

You should definitely read "On a Roll". He says directly what he thinks about Harvard. ;) Good luck. 8)

Re: Howard Jonas - anyone investing into one of his companies should read his books. "On a Roll" PDF free link was posted here on CoBF. Here is a link to IDT discussion and "On a Roll" link is there: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/idt-idt-corp/msg106958/#msg106958 IMO, Howard is not a visionary, but he is tough and pretty good at milking cash from (sometimes questionable) products. He is also very broad, so he does a lot of businesses, some of which work and some that don't. As outside shareholder you may or may not figure out which of his current projects will work. He believes that his companies are really his and he will do whatever he likes with them. He may not intentionally screw minority shareholders and minority shareholders might do well if they hold a company that is on Howard's success wave. But he will not care about shareholders explicitly. That's why he has supervoting shares for all his cos (pretty much, there may be some exceptions). And he does mini-secondaries to himself and buddies for under-market prices. And he has his kids as CEOs/leadership of his companies. I don't have an opinion about the skills/capabilities of his kids. IMO Jonas companies are not hold-forever investments. You can make (a lot of?) money if you invest before the wave up and sell when the wave is up. They are not businesses that last (forever), but the wave top is sometimes very high. Anyway, just MHO. I don't have valuation opinion about RFL. I have tiny investments in IDT/ZDGE/RFL/IDWM. I am unlikely to buy more and may sell, but that's just MHO and not implied (dis)endorsement. Good luck. 8)

BOMN 8)

Yeah, I think FPGAs are niche in terms of AI/ML. Maybe less niche for robotics? - but I don't really know. In terms of XLNX is also depends a lot of who drives the company and in which direction. NVDA was just a GPU company at one time... it might be fun to compare its trajectory to ATI/AMD. Was that predictable though? Not sure. Disclaimer: I have not looked at XLNX for quite some time...

I hold LBRDA and GLIBA shares. I don't really have much to say about valuation.

Right. Hence my answer to you and to Og. From what I understand, you can hold PFIC in IRA (and possibly 401(k)) without filling any paperwork. Yes, I've looked at PFIC requirements in the past, but I'm not an expert either and can be wrong. Longer discussion - where we should move if this PFIC discussion persists - is at http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/pfic-classification-for-us-investors/ That thread also has external links to some opinions/resources.

BG2008 might be asking in what percentages do you split your position between CHTR/LBRDA/GLIBA.

This is likely not true if PVF is PFIC and you hold it in taxable account. FWIW.

Not if you find a broker through which you can buy this in IRA/401(k). I don't own any of this. I do own or have owned some PFICs in IRAs. There have been threads about PFICs in IRAs/etc on CoBF. I am not a tax accountant/lawyer/etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them

There is some truth to what SharperDingaan says. There is tension/dichotomy with teaching and research (at least with time allocation - definitely). There hasn't been a great working solution proposed for that though. And, overall it's a spectrum/matrix. Great researchers may be great teachers or very crappy teachers. Crappy researchers may be great teachers or very crappy teachers... Been there, seen/done that, somewhat.

BG2008, great suggestions. I hope tol1 does not mind if I OT a bit. I might be too picky or in wrong circles or whatever, but I don't know a single person "who will pass the first test by a mile". Well, maybe one person and even then I'm not sure. And this includes CoBF crowd - sorry guys... ::) Well, you said "compound" not "outperform", so perhaps I'm being too picky... I guess tol1 has to be an optimist though if they plan to start/join a HF. 8) So good luck! 8)

I doubt that your packet losses and ping spikes are due to neighbors sharing the network and/or inherent cable (vs FIOS) issues. I'm pretty sure it's due to either the infrastructure the company has locally or losses on physical cable or possibly even connection to backbone (I've even had one game where the issue was backbone to another backbone connection that was being crapped by whatever the backbone interconnect politics was playing at the time). IMO and from what I've heard all of these can occur with FIOS too, so it's somewhat a crapshoot what you gonna get in specific location/specific companies/etc. Best bet is to have a house that has multiple providers and test all. And even then the quality may change in couple months (for who-knows-what reasons). However, I can't prove any of the above, so FWIW. 8)

Shows for me. Is that on your browser? Mobile device? Can you try different browser? Maybe you or adblocker blocked that page element...

If John Malone died tomorrow, I'd sell all my Liberties and likely buy some Comcast at least. But then I'm a jockey investor, so ./shrug 8)

I don't have position in NVO and I haven't done any DD, but I'll ask: Wouldn't China have local (knock-off) diabetes drugs? And even if they bought from Western companies, wouldn't they negotiate (strong-arm) single payer very low prices?