yadayada

This book is a good intro in computer science, on how the logic gates work. But very basic obviously, no advanced stuff http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435859521&sr=8-1&keywords=code+the+hidden+language

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/#b06g24t20w15

What % of cline do they own? I cannot find that anywhere. It seems if they now own part the equity and debt, that is worth at least another 20-30c or so.

The last part o f 12% convertible comes after the second last and the unsecured. So you can exclude 50M$ right there. So unsecured and pari passu notes are 265m including interest. And the first two are 215 for the first and 54 for second? So that is only 270m$ for the first two including interest? And 265m for second two. But the unsecured weighs much heavier in that 265m$, since they are 165m$ of that 265m$. So they get about 62% of what remains. So if you assume 40m$ in costs, 270m$ for first two, there is about 130m$ left over for the unsecured and the 12% pari passu. Which is 80m$ or 48%. So 48% of 30m$ (including interest here), is 15m$.

Seems likely they get much more? 440m$ available. First and second lien is 263m$. Then 155m$ for unsecured and convertible before interest. So it seems they will likely get 20m$ or so? that would mean almost a double. Any value for that mining company? They are held at 72c. So First and second + interest is about 15m$. Or 40c. This is almost guaranteed. Then let's say 15m$ for unsecured, and you get 80c. So anywhere between 40c and 160c. I supose we will see.

Briggs myers, astrology for introverted nerds.

Buying companies at 20-30x earnings can be risky at the tail end of a supercycle, with mountains of debt. If goverment spending is drastically reduced (because they run out of willing borrowers and can no longer run huge deficits as a % of GDP), GDP will shrink significantly (multiplier effect), especially if they cannot spend themselves out of a recession. So then shit can really hit the fan, and earnings from just about every company around (moat or not) will contract. Same with valuations. This only happens about once a century. So that is probably why few are prepared for it. Im looking more and more for protection by book value as well. There is a reason why graham was so scared to invest in anything other then net nets... Also interesting that buffett started his buy and hold great companies at somewhat expensive valuations right around the time that debt and productivity started to shoot up a huge amount over 20-30 years. He basically rode that massive bullmarket from the bottom to right at the top.

I like how you selectively ignore my arguments lol. I have a feeling this is an emotional thing, and not really based on reason. You honestly sound the same as those extreme lefties with their 'capitalism is evil'. Except you are all the way at the other end. Basically: Extreme lefties: those evil corporations, let's give the government lot's of power! Libertarians: Those evil governments, let's give corporations lot's of power by removing government's power! And they both make the argument that one thing to become too powerful is bad. But their solution is then to make the other thing too powerful. Without a government that has some kind of serious power, it would just mean some other entity would just gain a lot more power instead. The solution is in the middle, both entities should have some power. It is like physics, the law of conservation of power. Look at the US in the 19th century. This incident specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike The US was basically a libertarian dream in the 19th century. But it did not work out and caused a lot of friction because large corporations were getting more and more powerful, and abusing that power. And there was not really an organized entity to counter that power. So as a reaction to that, a more powerful government was erected. So basically the government you hate so much, is a consequence of a libertarian system of actors acting in their best interest! Because the Carnegie steel mills were basically abusing workers, working them to death for next to nothing. And when they did not like that and occupied the factory they hired mercenaries to shoot them down and hire new workers. Yay freedom. And remember those bank robbers in the 1930's - 50's? With John dillinger etc. He had better equipment then local police forces, and that was abused to the limit by various psychopaths. They had faster cars, better weapons etc. So as a response to that, the FBI was set up. And the people pay some money to this central entity to prevent things like that happen. Now the problem is that J edgar Hoover of the FBI started abusing this power later on (with Jimmy carter I think, afraid of firing him). So no FBI is bad, but FBI with too much power is bad too. So the solution is not 'no government', but some government that is transparant and controlled and kept in check by the people. In a lot of countries this system works quite well (mostly smaller countries though). The main weakness here is apathy of regular people. If enough people don't care, or are too stupid to care, then this does not work. Because then what happens, either the government loses power, or gains too much power. But that does not mean 'no government' is the solution. It means the problem of government becoming too powerful is solved by enough people actually caring and making sure that power is kept in check, which is not really happening in the US at the moment.

Thanks for posting, it seems he debunks death tolls by war going down? But murder rate claim seems in tact? I dont understand all the math in that thing. I still think most of my point stands though. Weaker government = higher murder rate and lower wealth. No governments generally = complete chaos.

Therein is the answer you seek. Elected positions in the USA aren't mostly unaccountable, they just seem that way sometimes. Good one! I almost forgot about the yearly calls from the IRS fund raisers detailing what the government plans on doing with my money in the next year (what companies they plan to subsidize, what weapons they plan to build, who they plan to send drones to murder, etc) and asking me if I'd still wish to contribute. "Can we count on the same generous donation as last year?"... Silly me, I'm acting as if I don't pay they'd send armed men to kidnap me and put me in a cage like an animal, or kill me if I resist. If you remove government you get anarchy. This has been proven time and time again. You get a power vacuum, and you get the same situation in Somalia, or a new government. People want to be led. Just study history. Also just because you guys in the US really suck at running a normal government does not mean a government is all bad. A lot of countries do it right. And incidently, most countries with a strong government (but not overly dominating like in North korea) have done extremely well economically. Just look at Singapore, strong government keeping it all together. All the surrounding countries had weak governments resulting in a dysfunctional rule of law and crappy economies and corruption. Imo, read Better angels of our nature, and you will be a lot less libertarian. Incidently, in a lot of dysfunctional poor countries a lot of rational actors all act in their own best interest, and that is not always the best interest of the group as a whole. Pure libertarian systems are flawed for the same exact reason communism is flawed, it all works great in some theoretical fairytail world, but not in the real world. If the entire population of a country would consist of well natured engineers that had complete information, it would work great. But that is not the reality. Additionally, your assumptions of 'people acting rational and everything will be alright' is majorily flawed for another reason: incomplete information. Went into that in my last post. Also if the US government wasn't there, you honestly think no other group will come and ask some form of tax? Again look at poor countries with next to no government. Maybe in some future utopia this is possible. Where we are all genetically engineered to have iq's of 180 and high empathy levels where robots do all the work for us. Maybe some libtertarian system is possible there, but we are not there yet.

Rkabang read 'better angels of our nature' There the author explains quite well why violence is at all time lows (per 100k people) throughout the world. Basically you need a reasonably strong government, because of game theory. If you have two groups, and no third (mostly) independent group that has power over these two groups, those two groups will start to worry about each other. They will think, can the other group be trusted? Will they use violence? Now let's say one person in one group (group 1) steals something from the other group (group 2). Now since there is no punishing authority, group two has to take measures in their own hands. Otherwhise they look weak to group one, and more stuff might be stolen, or worse. So they resort with violence, or they just simply think, well now we need to steal something back! There is a strong sense of fairness built in most humans. Or group one might worry that group two will do something bad to them, so they preventively attack group two to make them weaker. If you look at societies without a strong authority to keep the peace, there was often LOT's of violence. More then the most violent parts in the world today. This is also the reason why England became so powerful. They were the first proper leviathan in a ocean of anarchistic societies without a strong rule of law. This is also why it is 'the people vs' in the US. It has to be a powerful third party to dole out justice. But now let's say the same thing happens again between group one and two, but now with a government. Group two will go to the police, and it will get resolved. And they will not be forced (by laws of game theory) to take measures in their own hands. Because it does not make sense to do so. This is also why there is more violence with poor people and in ghetto's. Often the police does not come there, and they have to rely on themselves. And you cannot look weak in such a situation, so you have to strike back. And that often results in spirals of violence. So this magical libertarian self interest, will actually hurt a almost anarchistic society more then it helps (just look at ancient history). Now as for regulations, I have my own theory on this, and that is: regulate on transparancy. Regulate everything the same way we regulate cigarettes, and set up boards of randomly chose intellectuals to judge this! You want to put some shady pink slime thing in your burgers? Put a big warning label up where people can see it (just like cigarettes). A bank wants to make risky investments? They will send all their customers a letter where in clear language without small print and legal speak (here is where the randomly chosen judgement of intellectuals comes in) the bank explains exactly the risks. Now you can do away with most of these complicated rules, just regulate in transparancy instead. So that the only thing that is not allowed (and harshly punished) is fooling or misleading your customers. Cuts a lot of regulatory costs and i think it will work better then having millions of rules that can bend in place. And groups of randomly chosen intellectuals will judge wether this went right, and not dusty old bureacrats that can be bribed easily. And if this get's violated, proper punishments need to be given out ofcourse. Not just some fine.

There are two ways of learning (probably more though :P ), just putting information in your head in case it might be useful someday, or gettting solutions for either real or perceived obstacles (so learning it when you need to). Usually I dont just start reading, I always have an idea what I want to get out of it before reading it. You basically learn with your emotions (psychopaths usually have bad memory). So if you encounter an obstacle, you then want to find a solution for it. And that is an emotional thing. But just reading without really have any obstacles is not emotional, just a lot of loose pieces of information that don't seem relevant to your animal brain at the time. So let's say you start to worry about detecting frauds. Then you start to think about how to detect them first, and then I start looking on amazon for books on how to detect frauds. So now it is a whole thing in my head already. I might have some idea's of my own, and it is an emotion, that I then connect with the information in the book. And then before I read the book I look through the contents and start reading the chapters that look interesting first. And honestly a lot of books have a lot of filler (that fooled on randomness book especially). Sometimes you can just read extensive amazon reviews and get like 80% of what you would have gotten reading the book. That whole antifragility idea by nassim taleb is really interesting. But you could summarize that in two pages (and you can find those summaries), and that would be more then enough. Generally the idea's of a book are important, not the 20 examples they give. Actually thinking about this idea and trying to apply it is time better spent then reading the book. And then summarizing it back to myself in my head. And thinking of situations where it would apply. Also important not to read boring books. Often there are several books written on one subject. Always read the reviews. Also people like Munger are pretty emotional about the whole model learning thing. He collects them like post stamps. So he gets excited when he finds a new one, which is an emotion! It can then get sort of anchored in your head. So y eah, the right dose of emotion is important with learning.

I think most failures of democracy come from the bad state of our education system (in almost every western country). The way things are taught is completely wrong. The way economics is taught is dry and way too boring. For some reason when it comes to education, everything has to be boring and dry. Luckily the internet is slowly changing that, but our education system is lagging way behind because of all the bureacrats and unions, and the fact that it is basically a government monopoly. If most people were taught to think effectively in high school, most of these problems would not exist today. That is why democracies completely fail if most of the population consists of illiterate peasants (to give some extreme example). Just look at various Asian and South American countries. I like how Asimov explains it (that guy is quickly becoming one of my favourite people):

http://bitcalc.beepboopbitcoin.com/

In an Bose einstein condensate , atoms can kind of merge together right? becoming one large piece of matter, or one wave function instead of a lot of interacting wave functions. So when that happens,Can't you squeeze this type of matter closer and closer together with magnets while guiding away heat (or motion) with lasers. And when density is very high, you suddenly heat it up again, and possibly some individual atoms will now fuse together releasing energy due to different matter make up as before the condensate was created? Kind of like 'blindfolding' the atoms by cooling them down. But this probably violates a lot of principles and laws im nto aware of. From googling around it seems this was already tried? But im still to much of a newbie to understand why it didn't work. Either way it seems bose einstein condensate is extremely fascinating stuff. :)

For people interested in physics, but who want relatively simple explanations, I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Physics-Magnetism-Electricity-Electron/dp/0880292512/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1432345734&sr=8-2&keywords=asimov+on+physics Very interesting too if you already know physics. A real page turner. Explains how all the discoveries were made (even the wrong ones) and kind of describes the process philosofers and physicists (and some chemists) went through to get to where we are today. Written by the great Asimov! This is another great book by him on physics: http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Journey-Across-Subatomic-Cosmos/dp/0452268346/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1432346954&sr=8-6&keywords=asimov+physics For the phycistists here, why can't they cool down Hydrogen to a einstein bose condensate? From what I understand that sort of mergers together right? In a really weird macro quantum mechanical way. Then at the right time you bombard it with electrons or high energy photons, and boom fusion! But what do i know lol.

as for sci-fi, im reading all arthur c clark's books now (guy who wrote 2001 space odyssey story). They are quick and fun reads.

http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future-ebook/dp/B00KVI76ZS/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me= For the people who did not see this yet. Starting to read it now, hope it contains more then is already said in interviews.

Except Denmark and Germany have highest electricity prices in the world. Several times higher then the US. This hurts the poor. So it is much more expensive, while not being that much greener. Just imagine a very sunny and windy day. 80% of germany gets their power from solar, isnt that great! But then all of a sudden it becomes very cloudy, and now only 40% gets their power from solar. So where do they get the missing 40%? You cannot insta turn on and off a gas or coal plant. I think a gas plant takes about an hour at the very least? and a coal plant several hours. So you need constant coal and gas plants running in the back grounds while everyone is getting their power from solar while feeling pounding themselves on the chest sniffing their own farts and feeling all green. So even on good days when germany gets almost all their power from green sources, there is still a lot of non green power running in the back ground, wasting a lot of energy, polluting the enviroment. So is that worth it? Jack up prices a lot, the poor are more hurt by this, while not reducing carbon emission by all that much. It seems only worth it if solar panels are dirt and dirt cheap, or if batteries come in the picture. That will happen soon enough anyway, without governments forcing expensive solar on everyone.

I read a study in the netherlands that if more then 20% of population would have solar and sell back electricity, costs for traditional grid will skyrocket, and it would hurt, not help. And it would not be greener. Wish I could find it. So battery power really is crucial if solar wants to get out of the niche (allthough 20% might not be a niche anymore. You can imagine, that if most people use solar during the day, and the weather suddenly changes, you have a massive spike in demand. Same at night. So you would always need spare coal and gas plants running that let their electricity go to nowhere, just to make sure you dont have constant power cuts. Nuclear power would become completely useless in this situation, as it takes more then one day to start up a nuke plant. So with massive volatility in demand, they would just end up running a lot when not needed. And coal is also less useful as it takes longer to fire up a coal plant. Gas plants have the lowest start up time. A recent discovery of perovskite crystals could make good solar panels, improving efficiency. So far they are cheaper, could be used to upgrade current silicon panels and have already passed the 2000 hour test at 85% humidity and constant very high temperatures (85 degrees as well i think).

I think this article lacks perspective. The babyboomers were incredibly lucky, and also kind of shitty because -went through the most amazing bull market, from 1980 to 2000, 13% after inflation for the S&P. -Built up enourmous debt from 150% to 400% gdp (entitled much?). Not to speak of the enourmous off balance sheet entitlements. -Despite that, infrastructure (the one that government is responsible for) is left in worse shape as they found it because of underinvestment. -Just in time to catch their pensions and retire by 65, current generation, almost no pension, and retire by 70+ -apparantly did a shit job raising narcisistic children -Yet despite that, crime rates are much lower among youth today, IQ is higher and the current generation is much more tolerant vs gays etc -Did not have to deal with crazy cheap competition from Asia -Also did not have to deal with exploding house prices and cost of education -fullfills the cliche of 'those young'uns today good for nothing!'. So basically what happened, the current generation expected a decent job + house + car if they just went to college for a couple years working full time (you know like that last generation?). And now they find out the world is a lot shittier then expected. They have to go to school much longer then last generation, spend more money on it, and get less back in return. Overwork while not getting paid much more for those extra hours. Deal with the enourmous debt load the boomers left us. Also the past generation really did a shit job of educating us. The public education system is practically in shambles (costing more today!), and a lot of young people do not get a lot of useful advice from their parents. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself. I would say it is a lot harder to succeed then for the baby boomers. So the author should not begin with 'unicorn better then everyone else' crap. Also id say the average 20 something year old today is much more educated then the average 60 year old today. We are way better at using the internet to educate ourselfs. I do agree with the fact that facebook is basically a timewasting misery machine that offers little upside. Article could be summed up in one sentence 'happiness = reality - expectation , hit the gym, work hard and delete facebook!'

I dont like the book much. He claims that fiscal spending gets a country out of the mess. That is exactly what Japan has been doing (allthough with some lag), and it has failed quite horribly. Also he, like many other economists ignores the micro aspect and only looks at abstract things like investment and debt, because it is easier (but doesn't make it any less incorrect and incomplete). It is like analyzing a car what makes a car move, and then ignoring it's engine because it is too complicated. He also get some things wrong about the money multiplier and investments and savings. Personally think that Dalio's paper explains it much better, and is much completer (and is written by someone who succesfully puts a lot of money where his mouth is). And it is free and easier to understand then the vast majority of macro economic texts out there: http://bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/research/how-the-economic-machine-works/ray_dalio__how_the_economic_machine_works__leveragings_and_deleveragings.pdf#page=2 And this guy actually predicted several disasters and made money on them. Not some dried up dusty old government worker who never had to back up his claims for 2 decades (and has been wrong about a lot of them). Just FYI :)

thank you for your invaluable contribution to this discussion.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf For the people who missed it, if you dont read them on a regular basis, this one is probably worth reading more then the others. Also their flaot is about 80 billion, yet valued as 15 billion. If you think their float is worth 65 billion, their earnings are valued 15x, total value per share would be: 150$ + 140$ + 30$ (extra value of their float) = 320k$ per share. Or about 45% more then current value. But probably less because of holding comp discount?

You cant tell me what to do, in fact I will go to the store now and buy 2 packs of cigarattes!