shaqbert

Oh, that makes me quite sentimental. All the time I wasted on Google Earth exploring lonely islands, Antarctica, and Kamchatka volcanoes... Panoramio, you will be missed.

Settlements are there to reduce the workload of an underfunded legal system that is incapable of coming to terms with the byzantine amount of federal and state regulation.

I wish the judge would prevent a settlement here and have the case tried. And put some evil bankers behind bars. And put the DoJ into its place in coming up with these outrageous amounts instead of a list of names of folks who did bad stuff! And their bosses as well for failing to control their thundering herds.

Yes, you are right, Apple does not use the Caribbean tax shell company shenanigans most other tech giants using the double Irish do. But why bother, when Ireland gives you the sweetheart deal even BETTER than what the Caribbean tax cheats have on offer...

So replace my BVI sub with that "fairy tale green island of tax cheat's dreams... "

You got this wrong. My point is to not allow to sell IP from the US Inc to the British Virgin Island subsidiary Ltd for a handful of dollars, and deprive the US taxman of billions of earnings. That "ground breaking product" was developed in the US, thus the profits and taxes should be made there.

I love US companies making boatloads of cash. I just hate them to get around paying normal taxes here.

"those already engaging in the scheme have a five year window to wind down."

The correct way of saying this is by 2020 the loophole will be gone for real. Happy tax saving in the interim...

"A company’s profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created."

"In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States."

And yet the value creation seems to be happening mostly in tax havens... and NOT in the US. Nice try, Timmy.

Be a sport and put your money where your mouth is, and repatriate all that foreign stash cash to the US, and I am happy to side with you. Yet somehow, I believe this won't be on the menu anytime soon...

The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.

How to counter this:

Just regulated the transfer of IP rights. If you sell say a patent portfolio for $50m to your British Virgin Island subsidiary, and then make $20bn in profits in the decade thereafter on that BVI sub, it appears the IP transfer was waaaaay below market value. And should retroactively be taxed in the US where we engineers had developed that stuff in the first place.

Problem solved. US tax base restored. Government deficit fixed.

What Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and most other big US company do is the so called "double Irish"[1]. Essentially is a clever way of using two quirks of some EU countries loopholes in tax laws, from treating IP licensing fees (of course the brand and intellectual IP is owned by a British virgin island tax haven, where else could this stuff be created/invented), and the net result is that Apple et al end up paying single digit cents on the dollar in EU profits.

And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds.

How to pay dividends/fund buybacks, without repatriating those funds? Easy: Just issue debt (which your own subsidiary in the British Virgin islands making a killing on IP licensing might want to buy) or have your BVI IP trust fund buy those shares.

Now why would other EU countries let Ireland and the Netherlands get away with these accepted loopholes is a mystery to me, especially since Ireland had to ask for a bailout lifeline, and was in no position to negotiate firmly.

Why the US would allow their truffle pigs to not pay taxes on oversea earnings is clearly the result of expert lobbying.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

How can Squarespace even exist in a world that Wordpress supposedly had won? The answer is by winning over the average Joe, who is not a developer or webmaster.

I don't get how wordpress.com never became something more attuned to the needs of average Joe...

What asset does Jet have that it is worth anything close to $3bn?

Loyal users? Nope. Their version of "prime" is the proverbial pig in a poke, as you need to buy that one before you can actually figure out if you like to become a longstanding customer (experience, logistics, price/value, positive surprises). Most users are just the coupon cutters who will switch to whatever next crazy person is offering loss leaders.

A strong brand? Plastering NYC subways without having launched does not mean a viable brand. Also they nowadays focus pretty much only on performance marketing. So nope.

Strong technology? Meeeh...

The rationalization at Walmart HQ probably is that with Walmart's purchasing muscle they might improve the unit economics a lot. But why buy a flash in the pan in the first place...

23andMe biz model in a nutshell:

- you give us your DNA (spit) and consent to do whatever we goddamn like with your DNA - we give you some dozen of mostly uninteresting genetic marker worth of analysis (wet earwax anyone?)

With genetic filtered pharma studies in the vicinity, 23andMe sits on a goldmine.

With heavy regulation in Germany preventing a true Uber like model, MyTaxi has become nothing but a more convenient cab hotline that is powered by an app. Not much going on in terms of innovation or user acquisition.

Seems reasonable to reduce mgmt complexity by putting two similar things into one, now that the growth dynamics have petered out...

In a nutshell: "You artist are not famous enough, so we, big co, are okay to blatantly rip your designs off"...

The thing with the dream of fusion power is how truly far out it still is, and how thousands of engineering challenges will have to be tackled.

The neutron challenge: Fusion creates A LOT of neutrons bombarding the vessel - that is also why modern nuclear bombs use fission to ignite fusion so that those neutrons in turn boost fission even further. Bombarding any material with lots of neutrons puts a lot of stress on the kit, so it needs to be replaced on a fairly regular basis. Given how difficult it is to assemble the Stellarator design, an industrial replacement process driven by robots (because of the radiation induced by the free roaming neutrons) is decades out.

The impurity/inadvertent cooling challenge: The fusion process is extremely sensitive to any impurities in the fuel, and the slightest inaccuracies in the magnetic field. Once the plasma touches something, it cools of at once, and fusion is over.

There are countless other challenges. I for one am all for still pumping billions into fusion research, cause the next time a meteor hits earth and darkens our atmosphere, our fancy photovoltaic power future will look ... cloudy. What are billions for the world economy as an insurance contract on long term clean energy security.

No, King was trading at super low multiples. Like steel mills that are about to go bust. My point is that King is a MUCH better business that a steal mill about to go bust, so financial markets were dead wrong.

In the meantime, some smart scientist notice that the exhaust from fracking is pretty poisonous and sometimes even radioactive... (lots of fracking wells release more radioactivity than highly regulated nuclear power plants).

Thank god the big oil lobby massages congress to enact legislation that naturally bound pollution released through fracking/digging/drilling does not count.

1- GM, Ford, Chrysler lobby congress to enact the strictest NOX limits in the world. While at the same time having lenient limits on other exhaust fumes killing thousands of people every year, so that we can continue our gas guzzling SUV and Pickup truck craze.

2- VW faced wtih dilemma. Stop selling diesels altogether, or go rogue and yolo your way through emission tests.

3- Get caught and fined.

Well played, GM, Ford, and Chrysler. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were behind in Diesel tech, so this as a great defensive move to thwart Japanase and European automotive competition.

Moral of the story is: You need good lobbyists if you wanna be successful here.

Typical case for botched leadership transition.

Arora held executive positions at Google, Deutsche Telecom, and in a fund mgmt group, is the poster boy of a leader Softbank could wish for. Don't think he would have come over without a clearly defined date for taking over the helm.

Interesting to see which self-respecting exec would be willing to follow into Arora's footsteps. I guess we see a B-player puppet so Masayoshi can continue to hold on.

Tencent benefits from insane price-earnings multiple inflation in China.

By buying a profit-rich gaming company, they can play the multiple game, and lower their P/E multiple in China, thus looking "cheap".

In general, gaming companies have been trading at fairly low multiples (King was trading for a while at multiples known for steel mills shortly before their bankruptcy), based on the assumption that the business is hit driven and the life cycle of a hit game is rather short. Yet Supercell has been defying the odds for quite some times now...

So who knows... playing the multiple game might turn out a much better deal long term.

And what the author handily omits: Since the Thorium fuel cycle is based around transmuting Thorium into U-233, which is fissionable, Thorium reactors can be a less complicated that Uranium enrichment pathway to the bomb.

True, not the one the military likes because of U-232 impurities, but good enough for rogue states and other malicious actors to blow up a couple of blocks of a city.

And that is why Thorium is actually tightly controlled. And why there won't be a Thorium revival.

Parents always worry. Big surprise...

- 11.8x 2015 sales - Company was growing around 50%/ year - With -18% opinc margin - Customer base mostly mid tier and less savy ecommerce customers, read: future Amazon victims

=> Extremely steep price

Hydrogen fuel is indeed really difficult to manage. The Hindenburg accident come to mind, or the weight problems of fuel cell cars...

Any mechanism to capture CO2 emissions is a huge win for the environment.

What is missing is an assessment of cost. If this is economically feasible at some point in time in the future, then goodbye oil and coal.

Open question is how to ensure these bio-engineered organisms don't seep into the environment and trigger some unintended consequences. There needs to be some kill switch in there as well.

I remember my first install. It was glorious, started posting like a madman. At some time - when gaming Google was the thing, say 2008 - had thousands of sites based on WP.

Then I had my first major vuln and spend my week-end fighting fires. Then I had my first encounter with encoding mess ups... an add-on going wild...

Fond memories...

Interesting that they are "selling" base revenues. After all total revenues in 2015 were $167m, and base revenues only $137m.

The definition of the $30m "missing" revenues seems to indicate that this piece of the business might churn at any moment, or is just a brief "burst" of revenues w/o the transactional nature of SaaS.

Depending on the lumpiness of these bursts, that is a smart decision to "ring-fence" in the reporting of an otherwise sound recurring business. Guess this is a good CFO here...

Net loss: Don't think that is a biggie. They expanded their cost base both in R&D, sales & marketing, and general and admin. With a little bit of cost discipline for one year, they are going to be profitable.

Voting rights: that is indeed yucky.

Competitive threat: Not really. The inertia for existing customers is high, especially since the average revenue per active account is about $580/month. For a big company, that is not worth optimizing. And switching to another (unproven) API from a running system... not likely.

Amount of radioactive waste: A couple of tons every year per power plant is realistic.

Space dumping is a terrible idea. Expensive and risky.

Best storage solution so far found is what we've mostly been doing so far. Just having a sealed of area and store it for 20 or so years in a special low population and high security area that is protected from rain, frost, and temperature swings and have a good containment in case of container leaks. And then repackage in 20 years time for another 20 years. And so on. I.e. "actively managing" nuclear waste until the end of time.

Fun fact: The inner core of earth is not cooling mostly because of naturally occurring nuclear fission... so in a way our very own planet is full of radioactive waste already :)

No, its not a subset of fusion problems. Very different problems:

Molten salt fission problem = dealing with vast quantities of a highly chemically active salt touching our plumbing directly over 40 to 60 years.

Fusion problem = containment of a small quantity by a magnetic field.