Jurgis

Autopilot is pretty much the only reason I may buy Tesla. 8) Edit: BTW, this might not work for you, since you're in UK, but if you're in US and want Tesla without (latest) Autopilot, you can get a used Model S at close to Model 3 prices. Which gives you all advantages of Model S, immediate availability and mostly just Autopilot loss. Of course YMMV (pun intended 8) )

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-25/can-tesla-make-up-for-autopilot-s-lost-year Watching the Autopilot situation to decide on whether get Model 3 or not.

I think UBTI over $1K is the only issue in general for tax advantaged accounts ( https://www.investingdaily.com/18785/avoiding-taxes-on-your-ira ). So if it's minimal, it should be OK. I am not an expert though. Foreign taxes is a cost if they are charged, but not as much pain as UBTI potentially.

People seriously investing in Softbank should probably understand Vision fund and leverage. http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=31318261

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/25/einstein-note-about-happiness-of-a-modest-life-sells-for-15m Assuming the tip would have been $1, what was the compounded rate of return on the note? Assuming the note would have been sold for expected $8000, what would have been the compounded rate of return? Is Einstein's theory of happiness right? No peeking... 8) ... 16.2% rate in the first case. 9.92% rate in the second case. So, it appears the note was a great tip. 8) And it appears that not that big difference in rate of return yields hugely different results after 95 years. (But all of you already knew that ;)). I'll let others debate if the happiness tip was also great tip. 8)

More fun info on Algorand. Seminar is today, so I removed time/date/location since I doubt that anyone will make it. I'm sure there's more info online. ---------------------------------------------- Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies Seminar Series: CSAIL Security Seminar 2017/2018 Speaker: Yossi Gilad Speaker Affiliation: MIT CSAIL, Boston University Host: CSAIL Security Seminar Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies Abstract Algorand is a new cryptocurrency that confirms transactions with latency on the order of a minute while scaling to many users. Algorand ensures that users never have divergent views of confirmed transactions, even if some of the users are malicious and the network is temporarily partitioned. In contrast, existing cryptocurrencies allow for temporary forks and therefore require a long time, on the order of an hour, to confirm transactions with high confidence. Algorand uses a new Byzantine Agreement (BA) protocol to reach consensus among users on the next set of transactions. To scale the consensus to many users, Algorand uses a novel mechanism based on Verifiable Random Functions that allows users to privately check whether they are selected to participate in the BA to agree on the next set of transactions, and to include a proof of their selection in their network messages. In Algorand’s BA protocol, users do not keep any private state except for their private keys, which allows Algorand to replace participants immediately after they send a message. This mitigates targeted attacks on chosen participants after their identity is revealed. We implement Algorand and evaluate its performance on 1,000 EC2 virtual machines, simulating up to 500,000 users. Experimental results show that Algorand confirms transactions in under a minute, achieves 125× Bitcoin’s throughput, and incurs almost no penalty for scaling to more users. Bio Yossi Gilad is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and Boston University. His research interests include designing, building, and analyzing secure and scalable networked systems. Prior to this position he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a research staff member at IBM Research. He is a recipient of the IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2017), the IBM Research Inventor Recognition Award (2015), and the Check Point Institute Information Security Prize (2013-2014).

Talk about going native... ::) 8)

I guess the only way to hedge this is to own some real assets? 1. Prebuy RE once announced 2. ... 3. Profit? 8)

1995 or so. Peter Lynch stuff + Grahamy + Buffetty On SI since 1997 or so. Excursions into options, semiequips. 401(k) from 1999 or so. Mostly unaffected by 2000-2001 crash: not too much money + my company did not crash + sold a lot to buy a house. Luck is better than smarts (but then I coulda/shoulda hit some tech 10x+baggers from there so...). More money, more serious investing in 200X's. Some windfall cash coming into 2007-2009 GFC, some great picks for huge 2009 (2010?) return. Luck is still better than smarts. In 201Xs tried to cut down on number of positions - did not happen. Tried to move into long term hold (almost never sell), owner operator, Buffetty positions - still work in progress.

Maybe. Though circuit breakers will kick in, the websites of brokers will crash... I think you are right that any flash crash would be faster and more severe. OTOH, a drawn out downturn probably would not differ much from previous ones. Anyway, maybe. 8)

There was never a time (let's talk about last 50 years or so) when a large percentage of people held shares knowing what they hold and behaved as you outlined. People did not hold ETFs, so what, they held mutual funds or whatever their broker sold them. Not sure what "everyone" who you met is, but majority people were in the same boat before. Not with ETFs, with funds or whatever. The same as before. Do you have some research that confirms this or is this your anecdotal guess? Do you have research on what percentage of holders "hold actual shares" and how that has changed over last 50 years? Not different from past crashes.

8) Clayton Homes: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/berkshire-hathaway/very-negative-article-on-clayton/msg217386/#msg217386 CEO salaries/bonuses: I don't have offhand. There were couple through years: He never voted against compensation when he was on boards of companies; he said something that he was never selected for compensation committee because he spoke against excessive comps; he said that he'd pay Jamie Dimon more than his current salary if he came to work for BRK. Not scientifically. ::) Berkshire/MidAmerican seems to be greenish apart from Nevada controversy. BNSF and rails are mostly greenish compared to trucks. Buffett hates firing people, so mostly he does not. But perhaps he just delegates. Mostly there have not been huge employment-related scandals like exploitation of workers. I like Buffett's charitable donations. It's obviously not BRK as company, but it seems like he would be consistent with the attitude both as CEO and as a person. BYD is arguably green investment. Yeah, I try to think about this a bit, but it's tough. I don't invest in cigarettes, guns, arms, mostly not meat production (this is tough if you buy any conglomerates). I invest in booze though. I also have some TDG. I vacillate on pharmas. I invest in banks, but not WFC. I bought some MCO although I think it was complicit in the GFC. I probably would buy KO if it was cheap although I think sugary-drinks is not good (but I'll try not to go into that discussion again). I invest in GOOGL, FB though I think both are partially evil. I invest in cable co crap monopolies. I gave up on not-investing-into-excessive-CEO-compensation-companies, since that leaves just 2-3 companies to invest into. So... shrug. ::) Peace. 8) I reserve the right to disappear from this thread at any time

IBTL ( http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-before-the-lock-ibtl ) - or actually "IBTP" - In before the politics 8) Clayton Homes - was discussed in the past. Coke purchase and Coke defense - was discussed in the past. GenRE - well, that was more of a mistake and overpayment than "evil company". NetJets - probably also more of a mistake than "evil company" (Disclosure: I'd fly private if I could afford it). Wells Fargo's somewhat defense. DVA - not Buffett IBM - support of crappy management? AXP - support of crappy management? Salomon Brothers way back. Overpriced pushy Kirby vacuums way back. Support of huge payouts (salaries/bonuses) to CEOs while calling it a problem. ------------------------------------------ Ultimately though one can accuse any (successful) company of evil deeds. If you invest, you have to accept that as a reality and just live with it. Berkshire is still better in social/environmental/financial aspects than a lot of other companies. So. 8) Edit: sorry if this list is partially OT and LC intended only BRK subs to be discussed in this thread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/health/immunotherapy-cancer-kite.html - this is impressive. Of course, the side effects are an issue, the cost is an issue, the "manual" per-patient production is an issue. But if these are somehow worked out, the production is industrialized/automated and made applicable to multiple diseases, this eventually could be huge. Disclaimer: I am not a pharma/bio/chem expert. I don't imply GILD will/won't benefit on any future developments in this. I just find it interesting and fascinating. I have a small position in GILD.

That's a nice writeup, Dynamic. 8)

Money range to be invested would be helpful. Below $1M? Above? Also like Green King said, what's the percentage they look to invest into business compared to their total savings?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/12/16464142/hyperloop-one-virgin-richard-branson-investment

Possible. Unless you are expert in the field, it's difficult to know how much his complaints are whining and how much they are truthful. And even if you are in the field, it might be not easy to know. Let me give you an example. AI. People who are currently getting multi millions from Google/Facebook/Microsoft/etc./etc. got very little funding or recognition during AI winter. Nobody would continue to fund the exploration of well-tilled AI ground. And none of the top-tier journals wanted to continuously publish articles that were spawned from work done in the 80s ... until the tech caught up with the data and performance needs of the AI work done in the 80s and suddenly they became heroes again with huge funding/publications/prestige/etc. Does this mean that AI researchers were rightly not funded because the field was "studied to death"? Does it mean that they were maliciously not funded by short sighted new stars who moved on? Does it mean that the funding process is broken? I don't think there's a simple answer to this. There are situations where further funding for fruit flies is not productive. There are situations where the new stars are short sighted. There are situations where glory and results come back to being needed/interesting/productive. There are situations where the glory is past and never comes back. Edit: University tenure is somewhat a solution for this issue. Yes, it's not a complete solution: it doesn't mean that you gonna get enough funding for research machines/materials/students. Yes, it has other problems that likely will be raised even on this thread. But it's an attempt to somewhat influence this issue.

Interestingly Tilson was (is) right about a number of issues facing NFLX. And yet they still have not affected NFLX stock price, the stock is 10x from 2010 and is still hitting the highs. ::)

I believe at least in Computer Science more and more conferences do reviews with author's names and identifying information removed. Does not guarantee completely blind results, since sometimes it's possible to guess who did the work and wrote the paper, but still.

Currently in free Prime Reading list - read free if you have Prime.

So when BRK dropped 50% (twice so far) investors should have sold it immediately? You know "weed" and all that... ::)

Thanks for organizing this, bonkers! Great to meet you all. 8)

I agree with this, but with a caveat: In my experience, transparency works best when it's actually transparent in all factors, not just work. Let's say your coworker is missing some deadlines, you notice it for a bit and in the spirit of transparency, you mention it. In the same spirit, he says that he's going thru a breakup, has a new baby, or what have you, and therefore his mind has been elsewhere. A fully transparent relationship is when you already know your coworker is on the rocks with his girlfriend, or his wife is expecting, or whatnot, because you share these things. And so you may preemptively re-allocate resources to avoid the situation entirely. Right. That's why I talked about trust and internal buyin. 8)

I guess I'll just wear the CoBF badge. Not sure when gonna get there due to the traffic. Will aim for a bit after 6pm. I won't have the board access while driving there. See you guys I guess 8)