Liberty

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/samsungs-marketing-splurge-doesnt-always-210653378.html "Samsung is expected to spend more on ads and marketing this year than the price paid by Google for Motorola."

I don't have a WSJ sub anymore, but this seems to be similar: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-27/charter-said-to-raise-25-billion-to-acquire-time-warner-cable.html No idea if there's any truth to this, but if there is, that's quite a lot of debt. Quite different from the all-stock merger of equals that many are expecting. Maybe Malone figures that debt won't ever be this cheap again, and that after operation improvements from Charter's management team and content discounts from scale, this is the cheapest way to do it. He certainly doesn't like issuing new shares if he doesn't have to.

Happy thanksgiving to those of you in the US! :)

I have no opinion on bitcoin other than it's very cool math and crypto. The miners validate the bitcoin operation chain, afaik. Their CPUs are necessary to keep the system running. As for the value they received vs what they provide, I don't know, but in that system they're probably closer to the federal reserve than to an average joe working a job.

More iOS integration with carmakers: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-honda-acura-apple-siri-eyes-free-20131126,0,1467892.story#axzz2lsbMVRs6 That's just Siri hands-free integration. iOS in the car should be a lot more interesting, with an iOS interface showing on the car's LCD screen.

This might be what has been lifting the stock lately. The market is getting more confident that there will be enough supply for xmas.

Doesn't that kinda worry you? I feel stupider for having watched that. +1 Yeah, it's totally ridiculous, but if the village idiot says the sky is blue, that doesn't make the sky not blue...

Of course. It's like Buffett's comment that maybe he should fund EMT chairs at universities, or something of the sort :D

These two. So crazy how so many businesses are managed to hit analyst estimates rather than what is best for the business in the long-term... Our civilization would allocate capital much more effectively if these 'targets' didn't exist.

http://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/aig-tarp-warrants/ Writeup on the TARP warrants.

Yeah, that would be a problem if cable was at the end of its runway. Malone says that speeds could be brought to gigabit levels pretty easily. That seems believable; I don't live somewhere known for fast internet speeds, and the local cable company has a 200mbit/s package. If you're going to handicap it, I'd say that's a negative for wireless. The cable roadmap is pretty known and low-risk, while wireless' roadmap is less clear and they're still working on getting LTE everywhere.

What reassures me about cablecos is that mobile computing (phones, tablets) isn't nearly as mobile as people seem to think it is. People usually end up somewhere like home, the office, a restaurant, whatever. While you're in transit, sure you'll go cellular, but it's still way more efficient to run a wire to a building and have a wifi router there than to have a bunch of people do high-speed transfers over shared, expensive and limited spectrum, with reception always varying based on the terrain and other factors that are hard to control. When cablecos go all-digital (which Charter is doing), that'll free up a ton of bandwidth on their lines (analog signal uses a surprising amount of capacity), allowing them to crank up internet speeds at almost no extra cost. I think wireless will be a bigger challenger in developing countries that aren't already blanketed with cable. But in North-America, cablecos can just keep using most of the same wires and upgrade modems, switches, routers, or run fiber to a neighborhood but keep the last mile copper, etc. It's not as if that's a huge disadvantage since wireless companies need to upgrade their cell towers and run fiber to them too (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if in some places, cell towers are connected to cableco infrastructure, though I don't know that for sure). In short: If you're sitting on your sofa at home, streaming 1080p Netflix, you get no benefit from being connected to a cell tower rather than to cable + wifi, while the wireless company would get all the disadvantages of having people take up lots of scarce spectrum, thus reducing the number of paying subscribers they can serve per cell tower. That's my understanding of the situation, for what it's worth, but I'm not nearly as smart as Packer so take it with a grain of salt.

I'm guessing this is a question about VRX :)

Google's work with fiber and wifi and such is mostly to catalyze others to improve their service (that's my understanding, anyway). I seriously doubt that they want to be in the business of becoming the world's ISP and deal with all the headaches this brings (you actually need customer service, at some point...). They'd rather keep the pressure on so the internet stays fast and relatively open so they can sell ads without having to do all that.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/once-cables-king-malone-aims-to-regain-his-crown/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-24/apple-agrees-to-350-million-deal-for-israel-s-primesense.html

+1 :)

Sirius isnt just music, though, which helps. That's very promising too.

Thanks. Link: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904253404579210270735806960.html?mod=BOL_twm_ls#articleTabs_article%3D1

It's not a value blog. It's not a blog at all, in fact. It's a forum! :D

Thanks. Einhorn is always interesting.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-22/comcast-charter-said-to-weigh-joint-bid-for-time-warner-cable.html

I don't know. These cable companies are already not competing with each other. If they merge, it doesn't really reduce competition. edit: Also, as mentioned in the CNBC video linked by bmichaud, there are no more official caps on ownership of cable systems. Doesn't mean regulators couldn't cause trouble, but it seems like it would be worse for Comcast, who owns big content producers, than for charter.

What are you referring to here wrt comcast? Not sure if I missed some news.

The good old kosher pickle story. It never fails. ;D