Liberty

I enjoyed this essay: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/free-solo-and-economic-growth.html

Hear, hear! People (and I) may be concerned of buying a Tesla and company going BK on us. But there's as much concern IMO on traditional automakers giving half assed support (or pretty much none in reality) to their electric models that they produce, sell in hundreds (not hundred Ks), and then discontinue. I might not buy Tesla, but I won't buy a poor cousin EV from traditional automaker either. Yeah, if Tesla didn't exist, the pace of overall progress in the rest of the industry would be even slower... And Tesla has been at it for over 10 years now and the rest have barely made a dent. They'd drag their feet for decades without real competition to light a fire under them and show consumers that it is possible to make great EVs that aren't huge compromises and look and drive like golf carts.

I wish other automakers actually made a bigger effort with volume production. Having good EVs isn't enough... You also have to sell lots of them to make a difference. I understand that they're less profitable than their current ICE lineups, but that's the whole point of making the transition; if you try to do it with a foot on the brake all along, you leave a lot of room to competitors like Tesla who don't have a legacy business to keep iterating much faster than you are, and by the time you finally get there (if ever -- a lot of these just seem to want a halo car that they can brag about but they never really make that many of them or lower prices fast enough over time because they don't reach proper scale), Tesla might have fixed its biggest problems (who knows?) and improved on its strengths. https://insideevs.com/news/348911/april-2019-jaguar-i-pace-sales/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-14/pentagon-contractor-s-9-400-profit-on-half-inch-pin-challenged http://fortune.com/2019/05/15/transdigm-pentagon-gouging/ https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/dod-inspector-general-report-on-excess-profits-by-transdigm-group-inc

New TED talk:

I second what FiveSigma said. I don't think this will lead to any kind of huge step change. It's a tweak to improve coverage on larger deals, and hopefully increase success rate. They didn't give exact numbers, but it sounds like the hurdle was reduced from high 20s to mid or low 20s, so it's not like suddenly they're aiming for 12%.

Good interview with Ken Kocienda, ex-engineer at Apple who joined in 2011 and worked on Safari and then on the iPhone: https://a16z.com/2019/04/20/a16z-podcast-inside-apple-software-design/

Good interview with Ken at a16z: https://a16z.com/2019/04/20/a16z-podcast-inside-apple-software-design/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-advertising/google-to-show-ads-on-homepage-of-mobile-site-app-idUSKCN1SK1YK

Spring 2019 issue: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/valueinvesting/sites/valueinvesting/files/Graham%20%26%20Doddsville_Issue%2036_vF.pdf

New writeup about SIRI and SPOT by Scuttleblurb (subscription required): https://www.scuttleblurb.com/sirius-pandora-siri-spotify-spot-long-term-relevance-long-term-dominance/

New writeup about SIRI and SPOT by Scuttleblurb (subscription required): https://www.scuttleblurb.com/sirius-pandora-siri-spotify-spot-long-term-relevance-long-term-dominance/

Interview/discussion with Duke and Marc Andreessen: https://a16z.com/2019/05/07/thinking-in-bets-innovation-uncertainty/

You guys can save your energy jumping to linealdin's defense, I'm not attacking him. I've questioned some of his assumptions and played devil's advocate a bit in a thread that was quite one-sided up to that point, and I've pointed out that it was interesting that a business with half-a-billion of market cap had more newsflow than a few trillions of market cap. If you feel that's attacking, you need to recalibrate.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/comcast-has-agreed-to-sell-its-stake-in-hulu-in-5-years.html "Comcast agreed to sell its stake in Hulu in five years to Disney and give up its voting rights immediately, according to a press release."

Recording with 4 people who've had their VMS acquired by CSU, talking about their experience of the acquisition and since: https://csiperseus.com/explore/webinar-selling-software-business/ Via

That's funny: https://www.wsj.com/articles/farmers-plow-through-movies-while-plowing-fields-11557508393

20 minute interview with Tom Russo (from 2016):

This is not about Amazon or Google. Let’s get to the bottom line: No one gives a shit about Constellation Software (40% of the posts about Constellation are by Liberty). Investors seem to be more interested in Altius (based upon the views). And that hurts his feelings. Interesting what you've read into my simple observation that there's a lot more newsflow here about a small cap than about a few trillion dollars of market cap. Did I tell you to stop or that it was a bad thing? You can do whatever you want with your time and money, but obviously you're very emotional and defensive about this. You can keep the score with pageviews if you want (on a thread started 4 years earlier than another thread). I'd rather make money.

I've been re-listening to this one yesterday and today. So much great stuff in it, impossible for me to retain it all with just one listen. If you still haven't checked it out, I recommend you give it a try, at least part 1.

I'm re-listening to this one (the three parts) a second time. So many important things, impossible to retain it all after just one listen. I also got my Oura ring since, which helps a lot with tracking how I sleep.

Thanks

Trivia: This thread has more pages than the AMZN, FB and GOOG threads combined.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/why-amazon-bought-pillpack-for-753-million-and-what-happens-next.html

Q1: https://ir.jd.com/static-files/e65cc95b-0650-41f8-aa1a-a44e6ccf58c0 https://ir.jd.com/static-files/7fc991e7-c54a-40e1-ad77-906953751239