Spekulatius

Because I am cheap.

When you grow up in the 70’s like I did, the answer to all those is yes. I even used a punchcard tos save my Fortran 77 program at school. I also learned basic Assembler code on a Z80. I have dabbled in the lost art of doing calculations with a logarithmic ruler too. Ever seen a TV remote with a wire?

Sold HUBS.

Hey, you can cut the tips now in the restaurants by 25% ,since it’s tax free money now. Why don’t they teach this in school?

Retarded:

BZU/ BZZUY and ODET.PA (adding back shares sold previously) and MTX.DE (aircraft engine & components).

I guess you did not read the terms of the deal then. Ira was enriching Uranium beforehand , The deal JCPOA called for a substantial reduction in existing highly enriched stockpiles and for Irs. To limit itself to ~4% enriched Uranium which is used for nuclear power not bombs. There were mechanism for inspection (unannounced). I don’t k wo why people call it the worst deal ever done. There are valid concerns about the deal enforceability as well as Iran funding terror organizations (which is true). However, the latter for example was a separate issue and should have been dealt separately. the US made a nonproliferation deal regarding nuclear weapon with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. THeis deal was a ihr u lese weapons and nothing else. The FCPOA deal was designed the same way. To my knowledge Iran never broke the deal while it was in place. They broke the deal after it was canceled by Trump, which should not have been a surprise. Trump should have let this deal in place and if Iran if had broken the deal, he should have torn it up, but not before, imo. I think it was Trump hubris that killed the deal (only he can make deals) or him believing Nethanyahu when he leaked the Mossad docs about Irans nuclear work. I expect that Trump will eventually make a deal Iran that is similar to FCPOA and call it the greatest deal ever, if we come to a political solution.

He should not have torn up Obama’s deal then and made sure the terms were enforced and surveillance thorough. He could always have cancelled the deal later under his presidency if the Iranians would not play ball. I think the issue with that is they he thinks only he can make deals and he is not bound to any deals made by predecessors.

The way you frame it, it sounds a bit like:

Russia has slaughtered a million of its own and does so at a 50K rate per month and has much more and much better nukes than Iran might ever have, has attacked another country with its army (not just military proxy’s) and yet is not a problem, based on the security strategy paper from 2025 where it barely get any mention. Now one could say that we are chipping away at the axes of evil starting with the weakest links first (Venezuela—> Iran —>NK —> Russia—> China). Maybe there is a grand plan, maybe there is not.

I would not be so sure about that one.

Is the US better? I guess it depends on who is asking.

Well if it’s hardcoded then a new model won’t run on this machine. Maybe they can do something with FPGA’s. Those are expensive however and that defies the purpose.

Lumentum seems ahead in terms of product offerings. Being totally integrated is only better if everything in house is state of the art. I don’t think that’s the case with Coherent.

I don’t think many people from Iran want the Shah back. It‘s mostly a myth with some right wingers on X etc. that the Shah was so great and people in Iran want him back. The regime still has a lot of support in the population - my guess is is that at least 1/3 of the people are staunchly behind it, likely more. A lot of more educated people are against it as we have seen from the demonstration but having quite a bit popular support makes a regime change hard. I guess we will see.

Yes, I ment Revolutionary guard. The Republican guard were the elite units in Iraq’s army under Hussein. My brain must melting. The Revolutionary Guard is the machinery that runs the Iran, and the military industrial and executive complex so to speak. I wonder if the US command is going to disable Kharg Island. 90% of Iran’s oil exports run over this hub. Without it, they can export much and that means no foreign currency income. Yes, it would sent crude prices higher but it would foremost hit China, which gets discounted Iranian crude. That would not be a bad thing either.

FG stock does look like a good value here, but it’s not a straightforward business. Folks I discussed with rightfully mention that outsourcing the investment side is not unique to FG and in a way it makes sense. I just wonder if they outsource the risk management by outsourcing investment as well and that would not be great.

The Republican guard cannot step aside after killing probably ten thousands of people and running the country for decades effectively with the Mullahs as ideological cover. They are too deeply involved in these crimes and ten thousands of them will go on trial or perhaps even hang from poles before right after they cede power, because people will be rightly very angry at them. The likely course of action for the Republican guards is to soldier on and escalate. Best case scenario is that top leadership starts to bail to Russia and the system crumbles from the top.

@whatstheofficerproblem Thx.I had a small position in TTD but bailed before earnings at a ~20% loss, partly because of post from you and others. I have a CTV operating on Google TV and the ad targeting comes from Google and is very good. I log in this as well as YouTube ( which I watch on TV) and the adds are related to Google searches I do on other devices. I was for example looking at a new Subaru car for my wife and the TV was serving me adds from Subaru dealers in the areas including the one I talked to. It’s a bit scary from a privacy perspective but also hugely effective. TTD’s problem is that it’s not connected to an existing ecosystem. I think they need to combine with Roku or a differnt player or risk of getting pushed aside by Amazon and Google.

Yes, apps already have API. Thats how they interact with other applications, at least the modern ones. I think any of the LLM agents will be build by the SaaS companies who build the current apps l it’s their market to lose. Some of these AI maximists think they can just extract all the data over API’s and put the business logic in agents and the SaaS companies would just allow them to do that. First of all, business logic isn’t that simple and second the SaaS companies won’t give up their turf without a fight and taking a first shot at creating and selling the agents themselves.

Cuba will fall by themselves. They stop getting oil from Venezuela and can’t afford to pay retail. They have almost nobody to trade with. Putin is the last one standing and the biggest prize of them all. Taking him off the list would greatly weaken China, more so than anything else. Just nail him when he gets out of this country or flatten his enormous datcha when he is in it.

Another thing that has not been talked enough about is that Iran now attacked civilian infrastructure in neighboring countries that have been more in or less neutral before. I can’t imagine they stay neutral and continue to trade with a country that tried to destroy their cities. Iran is now doing the same thing that Russia does to Ukraine (using the same means -Shahed drones) and Iran/Hezbollah did to Israel on October 7th. If this does not convince them to get off the sidelines, nothing will. At the very lest, they will stop trading with Iran and stop funding several Iran associated groups and organizations. This is the dumbest move that Iran government ever did. So more “successful” they are , the worse the outcome. it should be clear to any of the neighbors that this is a terrorist country. Doesn’t matter if they like Israel or the USA. Iran is cooked, they have only Russia and China left to trade and both of those need to be more and more concerns too that they outed the themelves, as if former action weren’t enough The one head on the pike that is really missing is Putin. He is obviously next after Maduro and Khamenei.

The Shah grandson would be a poor choice. The Shah deserves a lot of blame for the Islamic revolution succeeding in the first place. There have to be people with more legitimacy.

Has any regime fallen though. Killing the leader does not kill the regime. The Venezuela regime is still there. So far, the Iran regime is still there as well. The new Khomenei is already groomed, if you know how Iran works (they do have a succession system j and in any case, it’s not the spiritual leader running the country. The protest that many predicted would cause the regime to fall, were suppressed so far. Regime change requires either total control via occupation or change from within, which is hard to predict.

How do you envision this to happen? LLM can’t do accounting, since they not deterministic, so the application layer will persist. LLM’s can assist users and there is a lot of value that can created by making data easier to extract.