nonsequ

Well he’s calling for more education and awareness. It’s like Big Food. The entire CPG industry has been stuffing people with sugar, salt, and fat for decades, exploiting human nature. We are finally seeing society resist this as we have become educated about the dangers of sugar and salt consumption. Meantime, putting ethics aside, all the major food and beverage companies made hay for a long time until recently. What is ethical and what is money-making can be at odds for a long time before they converge (if ever).

I run an AHK script with a little over 2000 abbreviations (e.g. typing 'abbn' expands to 'abbreviation'). It helps me type 100+ WPM without too much strain.

I think PG once wrote an essay explaining that most press is agenda-driven and there's somebody with money behind the story.

I wonder if that's the case here. F1 just passed out of Bernie Ecclestone's hands and has a new leadership team as well as shareholder base. They are aiming to revamp the sport and make it more exciting by addressing a lot of the issues brought up in other comments, like the rules stacking the deck in favor of rich teams and the fact that there is no streaming/digital option available to global fans.

Yes, sell-side (i.e. brokers like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, etc.) analysts do share their models with clients. They do this both in 'hardcopy,' pasted into published research reports, as well as 'softcopy,' sending or publishing the Excel file. Not exactly mainstream distribution, but 'public' in the eyes of the SEC and something you can find if you look for it.

What kind of demand do you think there is for a Linux-only mainframe?

My limited understanding is that most mainframe customers are locked-in, e.g. they have legacy COBOL code running their ledger system and the expense to switch off of it is simply prohibitive. That plus the fact that the system is reliable, low-maintenance, etc. preserves the status quo, despite the fact that if you were to write the same applications today, you'd choose a newer platform because it would be more cost-effective.

As such, IBM has historically offered z/Linux and co-processors only to hold onto data and processing that was being pulled off of the mainframe because it was too expensive/too onerous to do on the mainframe using z/OS and the like. So customers, unable to completely shut down their mainframe, could kind of make the best of a bad situation and at least get some cheaper Linux cycles out of their expensive iron.

If the above is true (and correct me if it's not) what is the appeal of a Linux-only mainframe? Or is it only interesting if it is radically cheaper than a z13?

This is interesting and I'd like to hear more opinions on it. My impression is that distributed computing has been eating Power/Sparc/Z processors' lunch for a long time now because software has made up for the deficiencies of coordinating 30 boxes. Do you and do any others believe that we are at an inflection point where the pendulum swings back in the direction of 'high-performance' processors like Power8, or will improvements in 'scale-out' ease-of-use and economies of scale continue to win the day?

Are the rovers too far away to drive there and check up on it? It's amazing to me that it has taken us so long to arrive at such a tentative result on the existence of water on Mars. In a weird way, I find it heartening that there are such unexplained frontiers facing humankind, places where we still grope around blindly.

I'm interested in learning more about this. Does anybody have any thoughts? I think that, by intentionally posting unlikeable things, he guarantees himself 100% spam likes. On something that's actually likeable, these spam likes might be contained to a reasonably small proportion of likes. But what is the size of this shadow population of click farm users on Facebook? For these countries with large click farms to be the largest contingent of likes on big pages like David Beckham suggests they are not small enough to be manageable... I also don't know Facebook's revenue distribution well enough to gauge the business implications. Is it tilted towards small businesses that have serious trouble weeding out spam? Or is it concentrated with the large corporations that can garner large enough real audiences to ignore the spam?

I had the same thought. Unfortunately, the article doesn't make it crystal clear how much information the neural net uses to bet against you. It would be patently unfair if it actually knew your hand. According to the article, this is not the case.

I suspect it does perfectly count cards that it has seen in its hand or community cards. This seems okay as well-trained human players can do the same. I suspect the machine would get even more play if this were obvious, maybe if it played at a table with a real dealer and could read community cards on the table. The technology to do this certainly exists.

What does IBM have to contribute to self-driving cars? Google's work has gotten by far the most attention.

I know HN thinks Google is much cooler than IBM, but is it weird that I like IBM's chances in ML progressing to AI? For one thing, Watson was a very impressive demonstration. For another, it has the old materials science know-how to create neuron-inspired chip architecture. And here's an important one: Fortune 500 companies with lots of valuable data trust IBM to solve their problems. Anybody here with other thoughts, caveats? Other companies with good shots at commercializing ML/AI technology?

Can anyone shed some light on what 'Director of Engineering' might mean at Google? It sounds rather unassuming for a person of his stature.

Would you (or anybody else who's deep in this) mind expanding? Does it have something to do with carrier subsidies?

The weird thing is that Apple is trading for less than 10x PE and Chipotle for about 40x. Chipotle is certainly well-appreciated on Wall Street and, given the implications of the PE, is seen as a steadier and more resilient business that will grow enormously over time.

Ouch. I haven't seen a lot of companies make announcements like these. Usually they build low-quality apps and just leave them to languish on App World. I've heard that it's actually more expensive to develop an app for them than other platforms? Does anybody know the relative manpower needed to develop for each major platform - iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone?

Thanks, appreciate the point. After all, part of the reason we moved away from gold as currency in the first place was its inability to keep up with economic expansion.

I don't think that Buffett is saying that stocks, at any given point in time, will deliver you better returns over a given time period than gold or bonds. He quite clearly notes that there are times when bonds are beaten up and they'll offer a great return. Buffett, being a virtuoso, variously reaps returns from derivative contracts, insuring sweepstakes prizes, and solar farms. He once bought a boatload of silver and tried to corner the market. He won't argue with you that with all of these there's a right time.

That's because all of these asset classes are subject to 'animal spirits.' Stocks went through the tech bubble. At various times bond yields have been too low when judged against the real risk that you do not get your principal back in full. Bond yields are pretty darn low right now. Gold may seem invincible now and it may seem that the world is only going to continue falling apart and Helicopter Ben is only going to keep running the presses, but don't you remember a time when stocks did nothing but go up? Or when people thought that house prices would never go backward?

All of these asset classes are also subject to the 'invisible tax' of inflation. As the money supply increases, all currency is devalued and everything that's denominated purely in currency loses value as well.

To preserve and grow wealth, you must first beat inflation. Stack the assets up against each other on these merits and I think that's where his logic lies. Let's remove 'animal spirits' for now. Look at these asset classes dispassionately for what they represent. Ignore prices, what they've done in the past, where they are now.

Bonds are contracts for loaning currency. You as the lender demand repayment of your principal and interest payments concordant with the risks you take that the money does not come back to you. Most bonds as structured do not protect you from inflation unless your nominal payout is explicitly pegged in the contract (as with TIPS). You pay today's currency for a fixed amount of tomorrow's currency and if that currency is worth less (as it probably will be) you're out of luck.

Gold is a real good. It's a particularly nice real good in that it's malleable and somewhat plentiful but both difficult to destroy and difficult to make more of. Oh and it's shiny. Everybody agrees that gold is an excellent real good in that way. Those factors, particularly that it's difficult to make more of, protect you from inflation. The real value should stay the same so the price of gold increases as inflation brings currency down around it. Gold beats inflation for sure (except maybe for the bit of mining and new discoveries that get done).

Stocks represent ownership in companies. A company is a group of people operating capital assembled to provide a good or service to others in exchange for value commensurate to the good or service tendered. A good company can protect you when inflation attacks by raising the prices of its goods or services so that it receives the same value as it did before. The well-known example is a candy bar that costs a dollar today cost a nickel in the 1950s. A great company can grow over time, providing more goods and services to the world for more value. Ownership in a good company is an opportunity to both protect against and even beat inflation. That is the key and that is why over time it is a better idea to own stocks than gold. Here's something of a common-sense test: name a family fortune and you'll usually find a company behind it. Now name me a gold-hoarder in the Forbes 400.

Warren glosses over the bad here, that you could buy a stock representing ownership in a poorly managed or even fraudulent company. You could buy a chunk of fool's gold, but you wouldn't be a fool for long. People held onto Enron stock for ten years after Fastow started his shenanigans.

Certainly the bad or fraudulent companies detract from stock performance in the aggregate. But a major index does a pretty good job of protecting you against this precisely because of survivorship bias. A company does not become one of the top 500 largest in the US by being poorly run or providing no value to its customers. A few frauds make it but there's so much scrutiny at the top, they don't (or shouldn't) last long. The S&P 500 is a pretty good proxy for the creme de la creme of businesses and that's why it's such a successful measure. Owning it also offers you the opportunity to grow your wealth with the expanding real value of the economy, beyond the level of inflation.

Now if we turn back on the animal spirits, timing matters. Buffet knows this. He's one of the best market-timers out there. Buffett would not have written this article in 1999 even if the precepts were all the same because he knew that it was a bad time to buy stocks and he would get blamed for the people that misunderstood his advice. He wouldn't write this article in 2008 either because he knew then that bonds were actually a great deal (as he points out). He's publishing this article now (even though it's somewhat of a timeless truth) because he thinks stocks are pretty cheap and the alternatives are terrible.

This sounds excellent for Corning. As a company that melts glass by the pound and sells it by the square foot, 20% thinner should result in net cost savings.

What I'm most excited to see in production on a phone are their matte finishes. You never realize the kind of friction coefficient you're working against on today's glossy touchscreens until you've tried one with a smooth matte finish. It's miles better.

Anybody at CES pick anything up on new product adoption? I've only seen the news regarding Acer.

I particularly enjoyed the last infographic on temperature because it makes me appreciate air conditioning all the more. It says music halls reached 150 degrees and theaters 125 degrees. Can you imagine listening to a concert in that kind of heat?

The really funny thing is that the LCD panel business is generally horrible. All profits must be reinvested in expensive new production lines, there's little differentiation among makers, and everybody's been gunning for market share in a growing market. Net net, the panel makers have made next to nothing, even with price-fixing.

The current situation is even more dire. None of the LCD panel makers have turned a profit for almost two years now as rapid LCD TV demand growth has slowed down. I'm not saying their behavior should be condoned, but this is kicking them while they're down.

Roger L. Martin, the author of the book hawked in this article, is also a director at RIM. Maximizing shareholder value indeed!

That said, Roger is correct (incidentally or not) in my book to criticize the short-term casino nature of the public equity market buyers and sellers. Too often they forget that as shareholders of a stock they are part-owners in the enterprise; rather they only desire to see the price tag on their stock certificate go up in the next minute so they can sell for a profit. That kind of thinking can poison a company.

The lesson I draw from this is that it matters who your investors are. Once you've sold part of the company, you must take into account the desires of your new partners, even if they are a teeming mass of the investing public. After all, you make the choice of whom you sell to. Some corporate leaders attempt to 'manage' their way out of this by massaging earnings the way Jack Welch did. I personally think the best way to handle this is by open education. Warren Buffett writes an elegant and informative letter each year and answers questions alongside Charlie Munger for four or five hours straight at the Berkshire meeting. If your business is too volatile, too secretive, or too sensitive to be explained to the public, you probably shouldn't be doing an IPO in the first place.

It occurs to me that Roger's best hope is to change the minds of RIM shareholders declaring open season on the board. It is naive of Roger Martin to think that his book and Denning's sensationalist hawking of it will do anything to soften the ire of RIM's shareholders. By the same token, it was naive of RIM's leaders not to take into account the fact that once they sold shares to the public, it became the public's company.

Having actually played against Watson, it certainly feels unfair when you've got a response you're 100% sure of on the tip of your tongue but you have to wait several long seconds for the question to be read. All the while you're desperately aware that Watson's reaction time is always 100 ms and yours ranges from 50-200 ms.

It is interesting to watch machines encroach on things we once considered exclusively human mental abilities. In the early days processors just multiplied large numbers faster than we could. Then they beat a grandmaster at chess and now a machine is definitely better at Jeopardy.

My bet is that he'd lose. Beyond a certain level of knowledge, successful Jeopardy is all about hitting the buzzer first. Watson has a huge advantage in that respect because it gets the signal to buzz in electrically.