LC

A way to scale images would be useful. I always end up with huge images hosted somewhere else that I wish I could resize quickly, and I don't always have the time to resize locally and re-upload somewhere else. You can do it manually per below: {img}url{/img} {img width=XXX}url{/img}

Yes, if I highlight a sentence and click "quote", the text box should only have the highlighted sentence featured as the quote. Another one is auto-scaling of images (prevents posting an image and having it blow up the viewing screen).

Not a fan of SD’s take but I think some way for the community to provide feedback to each other is valuable. Perhaps simply an upvote button, but no downvote? And unlike Reddit where comments are re-arranged based on votes, perhaps we can maintain the timeline of posts (ie no rearranging). But at least this way you can go into a topic and see what the community thinks the “best” posts on that topic are. And you can make it searchable.

Congrats on the new development! Some comments -Removal of politics is for the best :D And I say this as someone who believes silence is best left "for the dead", but it is distracting here - I can see that point. -Some items to consider would be "saving" posts/threads; upvoting/downvoting comments a la reddit -I would urge you to reconsider how much segregation between members vs. subscribers. Usually the more you fragment a community, the worse it gets. -I know you have tried some of these subscriber items before (events, job postings) with I presume little success (maybe I am wrong here). I do not think having members pay more to access those items will improve their success rate. I would suggest reconsidering how these items are delivered to forum viewers. -One more point: there have been a few threads about the decline in COBF quality. One event which is left out of these threads is the reduction in your (Sanjeev) direct forum participation - naturally due to your duties and legal limitations. In my opinion, you were the best, "natural" moderator of behavior. This site needs a behavioral role model, which you previously were. Just something to think on! Good luck with the UAT and new launch!

How do you think about the threat from competitors like Fastly? Akamai is industry leader particularly for large multinationals, governments, etc. I liken this business to security services, and prefer Akamai for a few reasons: 1) They are the oldest CDN and have the largest customers - for these customers, Akamai's price is a drop in the bucket so to speak. Cloudflare and other smaller players cater to small/med size customers for whom these prices are a higher % of their total costs. 2) This is a business where the longer you are ingrained, the less likely you are to switch. Particularly for the larger clients who have more to lose. It is the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 3) Akamai has never had an outage, has I believe the most servers worldwide, and is consistently a top performer: https://www.cdnperf.com/ If you google things like "akamai vs. cloudflare, fastly vs. cloudflare, akamai vs. fastly, etc." you will find a lot of good discussion from techies (once u sort past the marketing websites)

I dont have anything sophisticated. Its a great, irreplaceable business, definition of moaty, that Ive always looked at but put off buying. Its recession proof, and has a solid balance sheet. Seems to be managed well. Its a very unsexy stock, but one I have a hard time consistently looking at and thinking I know better than to not own it. I take your comment as you no longer own it? What are your thoughts? Agree on all your points - addition of relatively slow growth (at least in terms of pricing - in the very long term, volume I think it will never stop growing as we are a trash-producing species) . Bill Larson's 13F is what got me interested at first, years ago. I sold it back in Mar/Apr (around $92/sh IIRC) on relative valuation, was buying other stocks (as I'm sure you were too) which dropped in price more significantly and had/have higher growth prospects. I agree it does look interesting now that the market has run up again, and WM price has not recovered (as much). Thanks for the reminder & sharing.

I owned WM for a while - Greg, can you share your short thesis?

Sold 75% of Cloudflare and reallocated this into Akamai.

Bingo. I joined this board in 2012/13 when the financial system had recovered; yet market prices were still under 2007 highs. What a great time for investment discussion! Systematic risk had largely been removed but prices were still depressed. Over the following 6-7 years, we have seen prices rise, and even outpace earnings. Market price was driven less and less by individual company earnings and more by macro policies. Therefore (to me) it is no surprise that the conversation has shifted to those macro factors (including politics, which impacts these policies). Additionally there is some nostalgia you may be experiencing. When I went back and read some posts from 2012-2014, the quality was not as good as "I remembered". Usually we just remember the good stuff, and ignore the mediocre.

His fear is USD losing its reserve status, he says we are pushing that status to its limits. And he says there are 3 factors: -Monetary policy cycle -Wealth gap cycle -China (he says factors underlying this competitive dynamic are things like national education and a fragmented populace) One proxy you can use to evaluate some aspects Dalio mentions is your assessment of how attractive a country is to the marginal and geographically neutral immigrant. Is US the #1 destination for this hypothetical immigrant?

Follow up. Half a bottle was fine. After 2 glasses I remember why I do not really enjoy bubbles.

Man, I hear ya.

Splitting a bottle of Gussbourne as we speak. Surprisingly good!

Excess mortality usually exhibits lag in recent periods due to reporting and processing delays. European monitors statistically adjust for this delay. CDC does not (AFAIK): In general this is best viewed by state not at the national level, as each state exhibits different inherent characteristics (geography, density, etc.) and is responding with different policies to the virus.

Bought some livenation and wells.

I have never found play accounts useful, except to learn the mechanics of a particular platform or trading a particular product. Better advice would be learning to manage your emotions and tame this "itch". Otherwise just buy SPY.

Welcome back! I look forward to reading stories of your adventure. ;D

Hear hear!

Pre-civilized humanity was pretty interesting in terms of life expectancy. It was essentially a tri-modal distribution: lots of deaths around birth/infancy, around 25-30 (usually dying of tooth infections), and the remainder actually living into their late years (50s, 60s, 70s).

Some interesting news: Women Now Hold More Jobs Than Men In The U.S. Workforce https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/01/13/women-now-hold-more-jobs-than-men/#7220fd2c8f8a

Amen!

Right. And I think you can get there looking at the cash + earnings/valuations of the wholly owned subs + the equity portfolio.

Kindness does not pay the bills. Neither does being an asshole - the point is to distinguish between personality and value.

In that case, a CPA is probably not ideal at least in my opinion. Accounting rules can be learned independently as you mention.

Do you want to pursue a career in audit/accounting?