pinky1417

Worse than anti-maskers? At least someone wearing a valved mask is reducing the risk that he/she will get COVID in the first place and, thus, become a spreader. Masks that don't filter exhalations can still contribute to reducing R0.

Perhaps Parler wasn’t a true free speech platform, ie one that moderated only the legal bare minimum. But, even if it’s true that it was friendly to only end of the political spectrum, at least it was a competitor to Twitter. The elimination of the sole significant direct competitor to Twitter, even one that represents a subset of views and not all speech, is the problem. It means there’s a tech oligopoly.

I’d love to see a decentralized free speech platform. I’m no blockchain evangelist, but it would seem like such technology could be used to build a real online “public square” as you say.

*this woman

This article does make her sound like* a jerk. I don't mean to suggest Lauren Holliday is* a jerk or an asshole; she might be a perfectible reasonable and respectful person. But her writing here takes reputable evidence and skews it with misinterpretation and appeals to emotion. For example, the NOLO link she uses to support her claim "Filtering candidates by degree is the epitome of wrong and legally, it’s actually discriminatory" merely says that whether it's discriminatory "...depends on its into and its effect." And of course, the NOLO link has nothing to say about the morality of filtering by degree. Similarly, she asserts that "A LOT of rich kids" pay people to take classes/do assignments, which I suppose is true depending on one's definition of "a lot." The implication is that rich people regularly cheat in college.

Her goal seems to be persuading employers to drop their degree requirements. Instead of writing a convincing article, she got distracted by frustration and a dislike of the rich. If she writes a follow-up, a better case would be simply support the point: "Employers are likely missing out on superior job candidates because of degree requirements." I think that, along with the bare minimum of outrage, would get closer to achieving the goal and further from encouraging the mob to grab pitchforks.

In business school, we'd say that, for growth to be value-creating, the return on invested capital has to exceed cost of capital. All that means is that a dollar invested in a company has to turn into something more than a dollar in earnings, by how much more depends on what rate you estimate your cost of capital to be.

With respect to money-consuming, high growth tech companies, we have to figure out if they're cable companies or airlines. Cable companies required lots of capital to grow for a number of years. Once they built out their networks, their capital expenditures went down and they could post major profits. But airlines, probably since deregulation and perhaps even since their invention, have likely been net capital destroyers: they keep having to buy/lease new aircraft to keep up with the competitors. Even prior to COVID, airlines had to buy new planes or risk losing money on each flight due to higher operational costs vs. the competition.

Tech companies that lose gobs of money, if they want to avoid becoming airlines, need to be building some sort of moat. Too often, investors and founders look at 20+% revenue growth and think that's good in itself. Or they think "industry X is going to be huge in the future" and they invest willy-nilly in companies in that industry (often at seemingly any implied valuation). But even if they're right about massive industry growth, they could still lose money if competition is high enough. In 1999, tons of people believed the internet was the future and they were right. But very few people realized which companies would succeed and even fewer people held on long enough to realize the gains of the ultimately successful companies.

I don't even think the SEC would have to characterize the WSB commenters as a group, merely that "alone or with 1 or more persons" they caused trades that increased GME's price and that their goal was to cause others to buy/sell the stock. The real question is why wouldn't the SEC get involved!

15 U.S. Code § 78(i)(a)(2) - Manipulation of security prices

[It shall be unlawful...] ...to effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/78i

Right, hence my 4x margin assumption for my back-of-the-envelope math.

But I still think there's a limit to what any one company can do. The insurance company Allstate could be worth $1T if they end up entering a business producing revolutionary proprietary alternative fuel technology! Obviously, I think Tesla with Musk at the helm has a better chance of creating new markets than GM, Allstate, Exxon, etc., but I realize that there's some limit to what one company can do.

Once your company's market cap gets in the trillion-dollar category, and the total market cap of the US stock market is 50 trillion, you shouldn't expect a 100-bagger.

I have no idea whether Hyundai made a good deal for itself, but I think it's healthy to approach any acquisition or valuation with skepticism.

Corporate M&A seems especially affected by misperception and bad incentives. Executives often want to expand their kingdoms, even at the expense of shareholders. They also suffer from "shiny new object" syndrome - buying whatever's sexy.

Potentially worse, there's the "winner's curse" in auctions. About 7 years ago, Joseph A. Bank tried to buy its larger competitor, Men's Wearhouse. Men's Wearhouse then surprised Bank's execs by making a counter-offer. They got into a bidding war against each other, neither side wanting to "lose," with Men's Wearhouse "winning" by buying its smaller competitor for $1.8B. And we know, even pre-pandemic, how that story turned out!

Point is: don't weigh too heavily what other people will pay for a company today... weigh more what your analysis suggests the company will produce in the future (not what other people will pay in the future).

If I have to answer, I’d say $1.25MM vs $9k is more dissimilar than Tesla vs GM. But unless you believe that both Tesla and GM won’t grow sales, comparing market cap to cars sold in the last year(s) has only limited usefulness.

If we assume Tesla will grow units sold while GM will remain about static AND we assume GM is fairly valued (while assuming unit margins are the same for both companies), then it tells us Tesla needs to sell about 140 times as many cars per year in the future to justify its current stock price. Now, if you assume Tesla’s cars will have a margin 4x as large as GM’s and that GM’s business is undervalued by half, then if my math is correct, Tesla needs to sell only 17 times as many cars per year ($1.25MM/4=$312k, $9k*2=$18k, $312k/$18k=17). That 17x increase doesn’t seem totally unreasonable.

Of course, this also assumes that Tesla will make its money off of cars sold and not some other wild Muskian idea: if he develops world-beating self-driving software selling at 90% gross margins or wisely acquires other companies like Henry Singleton did at Teledyne, we could all be saying a $5 trillion market cap is cheap for Tesla in a few years! That said, as an investor, I wouldn’t buy today’s Tesla at even half its current stock price nor would I bet against Elon Musk (especially by shorting!). A lot of things have to go right for Tesla to justify its stock price; I just don’t have any way of predicting what Musk will do next!

I agree with you that the analysis is shallow. Moreover, even if we assumed Tesla is overvalued (including a future shift to green energy and whatever brilliant ideas Musk comes up with in the future), that wouldn’t mean the whole market is frothy - TSLA is just one company.

At any one moment, there will overvalued, undervalued, and fairly valued stocks. All that changes is the ratio between them.

One of CPI's big limitations is that it only considers consumer goods and services (the "consumer" part of "consumer price index"). But "consumers" themselves spend a good deal of money on other things, namely health, education, and housing. SlateStarCodex had an article about that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

Do I think those who stay wealthy in real terms are able to do so via "what amounts to fraud?" No. Nor do I buy your 15-20% hurdle assertion: if your annual salary of say $100,000 was worth just 10% less each year (as in, real inflation of 15% minus 5% worth of nominal income growth, a generous income growth assumption) $100,000, over just five years, it would be worth the equivalent of ~$60,000 in year 0. It seems like a stretch to suggest that everybody but the rich are seeing their real incomes almost sliced in half every five years. Use the 20% number or a more conservative assumption for income growth and the numbers start to square even less with reality.

Fair point. Didn’t mean to imply that the rotors would meaningfully slow descent. Just meant to say that, parachute or not, the rotors could still be moving while unpowered. It’s more of a technicality since the slow rotation of the tiny blades would probably be towards the bottom of the list of safety concerns, parachute or not.

The drone’s blades would likely still be spinning during a parachute descent... albeit at lower revolutions per minute. I’d imagine drones operate like a helicopter: in the event of an engine failure, the helicopter goes into “autorotation” in which the now unpowered rotor blades move due to the air going through the blades as the helicopter descends, thus braking the fall. However, if drones have locking rotors, then in that case the blades would not be rotating during a parachute descent.

Regardless of whether the blades are locked or spinning at lower RPMs, still better than powered drones falling from the sky!

I appreciate seeing Charlie Munger show up on HN. He may not be a technophile but his business and life principals are applicable everywhere.

I share Munger's opinion, not just on Tesla. I don't short companies because, as John Maynard Keynes said, “the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” And if I were to short companies, I'd be more likely to choose a Kodak anyway because at least Tesla has a crazy genius CEO who could conceivably grow Tesla to a point where everyone says Tesla's August 2020 would seem reasonable.

If you're against a broad market index fund right now (which I think is fair, not so much because of the socio-political climate, but because of the high implied valuations of the companies within it), I'd recommend putting about all of it in Berkshire Hathaway as a set-it-and-forget-it type thing. It's effectively a cheaper index fund with better-than-average companies.

Why in the world would I recommend a single stock? For one, Berkshire is a "financial fortress" with virtually no debt, $100B+ in cash, and about a collection of dozens of wholly owned subsidiaries: GEICO, See's Candy, BH Energy, BNSF Railway, etc. Berkshire's so conservative that, although Buffett and Munger have acknowledged leverage could boost their returns, they refuse to take on obligations that would even create a 1 out of 100 year risk of failure. More importantly, I believe it's cheap at current prices (a little under $200 for each class B share). When you buy Berkshire, which has a market cap of ~$500B, you're getting $175B worth of stock $125B in cash, and the all the subsidiaries for $200B. And I'd bet the intrinsic value of those subsidiaries exceeds $200B by a substantial factor.

Risks: (1) The biggest problem is that Berkshire is already quite big. That makes it difficult to compound capital at large rates. But compared to the S&P 500 or the even-bigger tech companies, I'd rather be buying Berkshire, at least at today's prices. (2) Buffett and Munger's advanced age. This to me is not as huge of a problem as people make it out to be. Todd Combs (GEICO), Ted Weschler (investment manager), Greg Abel (non-insurance ops), and Ajit Jain (insurance ops) are extraordinarily talented... to say nothing about the leadership in the subsidiaries. And Berkshire's built such that it would be a great business even without these top-notch managers. (3) Time. This isn't a problem if you're happy to hold Berkshire for 20+ years. But markets are emotional beasts and stock prices can decline rapidly and unpredictably. Berkshire isn't a bond nor does it pay a dividend. So don't buy Berkshire if there's a risk that, 5 years from now, you'll need to sell or if you're the kind of person who can't deal emotionally with large short-term declines in stock prices.

Disclaimer: NOT investment advice. Just my personal opinion. I've been buying up more and more Berkshire in the past few weeks.

Two nitpicks: an FFP2 should also work pretty well with its 94% filtration capacity. Second, I assume you're in Europe, because USA-spec N95 or N100 masks would also work. Doesn't affect the point you're making.

Reason and recent scientific evidence, however, does affect your point that nothing but the highest-rated respirators prevent contraction. The FFP2/FFP3/N95/N100s of the world prevent contraction much more effectively than lower-rated masks or respirators, but it's wrong to say that other masks don't protect against this coronavirus.

Common sense suggest that homemade masks prevent the contraction of COVID, just to a substantially lower extent than the higher-end respirators. Even before the scientific studies came out showing that homemade masks could reduce contraction, it wouldn't be dumb to wear a mask for purely selfish reasons. A bandana blocks some particles. A Chinese spec KN95 is likely better. Even if the bandana only blocks 25% of particles that could cause COVID, I'd definitely wear it if it was all I had and I had to go to the grocery store.

But you don't need to take my word/logic for it. Here are a few pre-prints I found on the great medRxiv. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20065375v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20093021v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.20093864v...

If I were sampling perceptions of Bill's effect on the company, I'd obviously place a higher value on your experience than my own short time at SRA. Didn't know about the stacked ranking thing; I'm not a fan of it (and I'm glad people have started to believe Jack Welch's implementation of stacked ranking at GE wasn't such a brilliant move that should be copied elsewhere).

But if I were CEO of a big company one day, I'd definitely want to interact with the rank-and-file the same way Bill interacted with me.

I wonder if Blackboard is any better since 2016 when Bill Ballhaus took over as CEO. I met him when I was an intern at SRA International and was beyond impressed in my brief time there. Besides his obviously impressive technical and management credentials, this was a titan of industry who remembered my name and always initiated conversation whenever I ran into him. We also had the same car (a GMC Yukon), although his was older.

I suppose I could just have been subject to his charm and I suppose this could be a ridiculous heuristic, but I definitely have a lot more confidence in a company (and its software) when the CEO drives a practical car and is kind to the interns. Hope Blackboard gets better under him just because it’s so deeply engrained in educational institutions.

Both of your statements are true. However, I feel it would be a misrepresentation or, at least, a misunderstanding to say I suggested that "forecasts have been wrong, forecasting is pointless."

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your reply or I wasn't clear in my original post. The history of failure of expert consensus forecasts is one reason why we should be highly skeptical. That's why I said such a forecast, and you yourself quoted, "...can be wildly inaccurate" and not, as you suggest I said "...is pointless."

Macroeconomic forecasting is indeed pointless, but for a different reason. Some might say it's pointless because the economy is a (1) complex and (2) chaotic system. The economy is indeed complex and chaotic, but so is the weather... and we can forecast the weather with accuracy and precision macroeconomic forecasters drool over. The economy has two additional and overlapping factors making forecasting effectively impossible: (3) two-way causality between the forecast and the economy (the forecast is based on the predicted behavior of individuals and individuals will change behavior depending on the forecast) and (4) the free will of humans.

Agree 100%. The whole reason why market economies - economies based on the decentralized mechanism we call "prices" - work better than any other economic system is because they're decentralized. If one person or group of experts could know the current wants/needs of millions of individuals, we wouldn't need prices and that person/group could predict the direction of the economy.

Similarly, say all you care about is predicting a recession since that's going to risk your job/business/personal finances etc. As far as I know, there's no way to predict a recession until after you're already in one. Sure, a yield curve inversion has preceded every recession in the past ~50 years, but (1) that's only ~5 recessions (2) the inversion has taken place up to 33 months prior to recession and (3) as the Great Recession taught us once again, just because something has been true for many years in the past (housing prices always going up) doesn't mean it'll hold true in the future.

Macroeconomic forecasting is by and large nonsense. The PhD chief (macro)economists from big banks you see on CNBC will, at best, identify some recent trends that could cause the economy to change if said trends continue and, at worst, prognosticate. I wouldn't describe myself as an "economist" since I only hold a bachelor's of science in economics, but the prognosticators do a tremendous disservice to themselves and to the practice of economics.

So should you ignore all economic news and analysis?. No. You might be able to make some vague, general, long-term forecasts, like how I believe that the US economy will remain a major economic power 20 years from now (hence why I'm comfortable squirreling away cash into S&P 500 Vanguard index funds) and that Amazon will probably be a major company for most or all of that period, but I don't pretend to know whether inflation will be below 2% for any fraction of that period, if self-driving cars will replace Uber drivers, or if China's per-capita GDP will exceed that of the US.

You have to be careful to identify what's not knowable even when everyone else believes that something is knowable. When I did debate in high school (circa mid-late 2000s), we had a topic on whether the US government should increase investment in alternative fuels. Many arguments in favor relied on the assumption that oil prices would continue to rise. Some experts debaters cited even suggested the world had already reached "peak oil." Judges were receptive since they were paying $4.00/gallon for gas. Now, of course, if oil is a finite resource and our consumption/drive habits remain the same, oil prices will have to rise eventually without alternative fuels. But few people, including me, (at least few people who got media attention) realized that the then-high oil prices were both (1) inducing previously cost-prohibitive US oil extraction and (2) weakening the incentive of OPEC's members to keep production low. That was a lesson to me: conventional wisdom about the economy, even "wisdom" from "experts" in a segment of the economy, can be wildly inaccurate.

P.S. hot take: while it's clear that humans can and have changed the climate, it's not clear what the tangible effects will be... so while some investment in mitigation may be warranted (especially with respect to obvious pollutants), we should be careful not to incur massive costs today on the assumption that say, Miami will definitely be underwater in 50 years.

I hope the won’t-pay-$100-for-a-painting (or $100 per installment) crowd is large enough to make your business worthwhile. It’d be amazing to simultaneously fund new artists, bring regular Joes/Janes into the art world, and have a sustainable business at the same time.

But that little MBA demon on my shoulder is whispering that targeting low willingness-to-spend consumers will result in, at best, strongly limiting growth and, at worst, a perpetually money losing business. I’m just speculating since I don’t know your financials, so if you’re already in the black, my apologies. If you’re both in the black and don’t care about growth, apologies again.

But assuming you want to grow and/or aspire to be profitable, you’ll either need to grow the size of the art market (hard) or sell to wealthier (or at least, people who spend more of their money on art) consumers (less hard). Social proof is a huge factor for buyers of substantial art, to the point that a handful of people/galleries/etc get to define what constitutes great - and therefore very expensive - art (there was a great Adam Ruins Everything episode on this https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dw5kme5Q_Yo). My mom is very involved with the main art museum in my city, going on trips with other benefactors to buy art for the museum. She also buys art herself - not crazy expensive super known pieces like Damien Hurst’s shark, but still high-end pieces from up-and-coming artists (to put it another way, she buys pieces that aren’t in the $1 million+ range). She uses her own sensibilities primarily, but to find the art itself and ensure the price she’s paying isn’t for a dumpster, she relies on people in the art world.

So, I’m just suggesting you consider two characters of art consumers: (1) social proof drives their decisions and (2) there are often wealthier. Your creative juices might find something really innovative for the social proof component; I don’t have any specific suggestions at the moment. But on (2), consider targeting people in between Steven A Cohen (bought Hurst’s shark for $8-$12 million) and the <$100 art buyer. Given the success (until recently) of Restoration Hardware, I believe you could find people willing to pay $1,000-$10,000 for art. People pay thousands of dollars for a sofa, why not the art that’s on display in their homes? You could imagine quite a few professional, internet savvy DINCs (dual income no children) in their 30s or 40s being interested in having a substantial art piece. They may be intimidated by galleries and not know what to select. Just something to think about to boost your margins.

Same here. If any of y'all want to shoot the shit about Sloan, feel free to send me an email. I'm cooped up at home in South Florida and desperate for social interaction!

I played this game during orientation when I started my MBA at MIT Sloan (the game was originated at Sloan). In my second year, I facilitated the game.

The most eye-opening thing for me was that a good quarter of students were frustrated and surprised by the bullwhip effect. I'd guess the general population would be even less understanding of a bullwhip effect. I think that help explains why it seems so many people don't understand why it's difficult, even for the U.S. federal government, to create more supply of hand sanitizer, respirators, etc.

P.S. To be clear: I'm not suggesting the federal government isn't to blame for a lack of supply - we should have had a larger strategic reserve of pandemic mitigating supplies prior to the crisis, if only due to the risk of biological weapons (those preparations would have been just about as useful in a non-human-caused pandemic like COVID-19). Nor am I saying the government can't do more right now. The Beer Distribution Game merely helps partially demonstrate why manufacturers, suppliers, and the government (especially if they themselves understand the bullwhip effect!) don't instantly will pandemic supplies into existence.

In the back of my mind, I knew that if I got an antibiotic resistant infection in the US - an infection that didn’t respond to a few rounds of different drugs - I’d fly ASAP to Tbilisi, Georgia to go to the Phage Therapy Center.

I’m beyond excited about this. Not only are phages useful as another option in fighting resistant infection, they’re targeted: the phages can be engineering to only kill specific bacteria, unlike traditional antibiotics. Your gut bacteria would be spared!

As a startup founder with wealthy parents, this seems likely. Not only can parental wealth serve as a safety net, but you might also get direct investment from your family, have a safety net if things don’t work out (enabling you to take more risks), not have to exert as much effort taking care of sick, old, etc. family members because you can hire people, get access to powerful family connections, and learn from highly educated parents.

What’s weird to me is that I don’t see more successful founders mentioning that having economically well-off parents being a factor in their success. I’ve long since accepted that any success I’ve had or will have will be, at least partially, a result of my privileged upbringing. I used to be a bit bothered by that, but now I’m happy to give tons of credit for any of my own successes to my parents. And anytime I hear about startup founders achieving success despite coming from poorer families or even hostile environments, I’m super impressed.

Maybe we'll call them something besides "cars" in the future, but motorized air conditioned boxes that take us directly from point to point are not going away anytime soon. I'm all in favor of more transportation options and especially, since I'm a cyclist, segregated bike lanes. Heck, when I lived in Boston, I loved being able to ride just about anywhere in the city. On a bicycle, cars were the bane of my existence. I'd love car free streets!

But I'm also a young human who's in pretty good shape. My dad, who uses a walker and has other mobility issues, can't bike and can't walk distances. Buses and trains are options, but he'd have to use them for any distance travel + a wheelchair if he has to go more than a block... not easy.

When I was in Boston, I had the privilege of living in an expensive apartment in the middle of town. I could walk, bike, take a bus, etc. But if you can't afford to live downtown, you're once again restricted to buses and trains.

Of course, we should build up complementary transportation systems but a car-free future isn't going to happen and we shouldn't want it to happen. For many people and use cases, cars can't be beat.

Having a c-section might not be the underlying cause of the problem. Doctors carry out c-sections when a vaginal birth would create complications for the mother or the child. I.E. the mother or child was already "sicker" prior to the c-section.

I'd love to see a randomized control trial for this. To do it ethically, the trial could be designed like the CRASH trials. In those trials, doctors received patients with head injury and administered a placebo or corticosteroids. Since it was unclear whether corticosteroids helped or hurt, it was ethical for doctors to randomize patients. For births, only situations where it's 50/50 between a c-section and vaginal birth would qualify. Perhaps it's too small a subset to be workable or perhaps it's never 50/50, but that type of trial would provide much stronger evidence for this intriguing idea.

On a personal note, I was a c-section baby and seem OK!

Cal's essay is backed by empirics. I'd add that, for those like me who used to believe that women are better multitaskers, both men and women are equally bad at multitasking. Early studies would sometimes show a female advantage or a male advantage (not sure why the female advantage idea came to be popular), but they were based on humans performing tasks that didn't resemble the real world... or at least tasks from the world of business/office work.

A newer study, based on a real world task of meeting preparation, showed that both men and women were quite bad at multitasking: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00426-018-1045-...

And even with high volumes, you can always pick something retrospectively that beats the market. It's not useful to look back and say, for example, if you put money into X stock at Y time you'd beat the market. You can't go back in time so it's not useful.

What is useful is to figure out what, today, may predict outperformance tomorrow. In choosing fund managers, it's not enough to choose managers who've outperformed in the past - that's not in itself predictive of the future (same is true for home prices as we learned in 2008, individual stocks, etc.). But other characteristics might be predictive, like choosing fund managers who follow a true "value" approach to stock-picking: finding companies with a competitive advantage and buying them below their intrinsic value being one approach to value.

See Warren Buffett's 1984 article "The Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville" for the best example I know of distinguishing chance price rises from predictable rises: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-business/sup...

I'm sure, as the article says, Apple contractors listened "...without Apple users’ knowledge." However, that doesn't necessarily mean Apple didn't ask permission - I would bet there's something in the terms of service or a similar document that states Apple would listen to improve the quality of the service.

Users likely didn't know about it because, like most people, they didn't read the full TOS. Apple would've been smart to include a conspicuous statement about employees/contractors listening to recordings (if only to preempt this kind of PR debacle)... in addition to the legalese.

Humans & Robots | Miami, FL & New York, NY | Operations Manager | Remote

Humans & Robots (humansandrobots.io) is a platform for on-demand, local, in-person business development.

The Ops Manager will be responsible for hiring and managing our growing our global network of Independent Consultants, administrators, and researchers. You will work closely with the CEO and the Chief Development Officer to build a highly efficient hiring and managing machine. We're not looking for a particular prior job title or specific industry experience, but we are looking for someone who can explain how prior experiences prepare them to build a management system.

Contact Charles (at) humansandrobots.io for more information.