Jurgis

OT. I have Nest that I got through MASS Saves. I like it less and less and I'm likely gonna give it away. Do you want it? (Anyone else in MA is also welcome to PM me and I'm likely gonna give it away for free. I can ship too, but that's a bit more of a hassle.) The issues: my wiring does not have the power wire. This is minor issue: most of the time Nest works just fine without power wire. Sometimes battery goes below threshold though and then Nest goes into power saving mode. This is minor inconvenience, since it gets the power back eventually. It's a bit risky if you leave house unattended for long time in winter, since Nest may not recover and then your heating system may go kaput. Bigger issue for me: Nest self-programmed itself correctly for XX temp during the day, YY during the night. But it also has some other logic that's not displayed which makes the temperature go way below XX and YY even though that's what is indicated on its UI. E.g. today's schedule indicates XX through the whole day. I left and then found the temperature 14 degrees F lower when I returned. This might be Nest Auto Away feature ( https://nest.com/blog/2011/11/18/what-is-auto-away/ ), but it's not acceptable to me that I cannot turn it off. Edit: I found a setting that may turn this off - what sucks is that you don't know unless you leave for long time and see how it behaves. This is unrelated to the power wire / power saving mode above. This is not acceptable to me since I have a heating system that does not tolerate low temperatures well. You can force Nest not to go below 45F (called "safety temperature"), but you cannot make this higher than 45F and that's way too low for safety of my heating system. BTW, there was recently MASS Saves sale of collection of LED lamps for really cheap. If interested, PM me and I'll try to dig the URL and see if it's still available. Sorry that I did not notify you about it (although you should have received email about it from your utility - that's how I got info about it).

How so? I live in Canada. I have to heat my house. All electricity (hydro, in my case) used by this is then converted to waste heat, which helps heat my house. This is just a smaller version of baking in the winter (you get food and heat -- cogeneration?) reducing how much the furnace has to run... I think the possible critique is that it's not efficient use of your computer/money. Assuming running programs on computer increases risk of failure (vs computer sleeping - I think this is true), it is likely much more economic to donate $X00 to run this on blades in data center rather than risk a failure of your cooling system/motherboard/CPU/GPU/HDD that would cost more in money and inconvenience to replace. Especially on laptops where piecemeal replacement is hard. The goals are worthwhile so I am not trying to dissuade people from doing it. I've done SETI@home 15 years ago or so. Whether you run these or not: backup often and well. 8)

Happy vegetarian Thanksgiving! Let the turkeys live and procreate without artificial insemination! 8) That too. 8)

I've done my best to keep this struggling company alive. I have no idea how many AAPL computers/laptops I have bought. Probably more than a dozen going back to my first one a MAC/SE. Same with iPhones. I have also bought two original iPads and two iPad Pros. Mother-in-Law had a PC. About 4 months ago gave her one of our original iPads, which is all she uses now. So will probably get her an iPad Pro for Xmas. You guys are myiHeroes! Keep it up!

I really hope that at some point humanity will grow up and stop scamming/killing/exploiting/screwing each other. How much productive would the society be if we did not have to spend time/money/effort/braincells to prevent all this crap. Oh well, it's all communist childish dreams perhaps. ::)

I have no issue with writser's post. 8)

Just when stocks start falling, a bunch of people come out to say that they don't average down. ;D I'm surprised nobody yet said "stop cutting your flowers and watering your weeds". You guys are slacking. Yes, never buy anything cheaper than you paid for it before. This is sucker's game. Only pay up. Especially after 10 years of rising market. Clearly if the stock price fell, it's a crap stock, crap company and it's going to zero. Yeah, even if it's BRK. I mean look what happened to SHLD - this is what happens if you average down. So don't even think to do it. Will Rogers got it right: “Buy good stocks. When they go up, sell them. If they don’t go up, don’t buy them." 8)

LOL. 8)

Todd and Ted would (might?) be great if BRK was 10-100 times smaller. At this size it's going to be tough ... for anyone, even Buffett himself.

No, I get the attractiveness of NYC for young (over)achievers. I also get the attractiveness of it as one of the top world cities. I even get its attractiveness to Bezos and some employees. I still think it's not the best choice for Amazon, but then ./shrug. 8)

Crystal City sounds plausible and possibly good choice. I don't know much about it though. LIC seems to be subpar choice for the costs, the job market competitiveness, and adding to NYC concentration. I would have guessed/voted/supported a lot of other finalist places before NYC. But perhaps it is based on NYC attractiveness to Bezos... and employees.

Source, Jurgis? [ : - ) ] Source: firsthand experience. I'm not gonna post emails or their contents here.

@Guy Spier or whoever is doing Aquamarine marketing: sending unsolicited emails to MIT email addresses is not very cool. ::)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/space-robots-lasers-rise-robot-farmer?CMP=share_btn_tw Robo Farming in UK

A guy comes into shrink's office and says: "Doctor, I think I'm a twin pack of laundry detergent!" Doctor says: "Relax, you're just too tight".

This happens most nights. I don't have a puppy though. ::)

I hear ya, I hear ya.

Slap solar panels on tops of all these railcars and use the electricity to power the locomotive. I know this is a bit SciFi, but maybe Musk can do it. 8)

Yes.

I am not a lawyer, so... I think any defensive moves work in certain cases, don't work in others and result in even worse situation in yet others. Yes, if you make a relative your guardian, this will work unless the court is corrupt/broken like in NewYorker article and moves guardianship to non-relative anyway. Especially if your relative is not resident of the state and only in-state guardians are allowed. Also this puts a risk that your relative could take advantage of you. This might not be an issue for you personally, but for other people it might be (I know situations like that and there are articles about this too). Obviously the state guardian and judge in NewYorker article were evil. But look at it from different perspective: what if a relative is evil and milking old person? Then you'd want the state to appoint different guardian than the evil relative. How do you determine who's evil who's not? Yeah, in ideal world you can. In our world, it's not that easy. Of course the relative will say that they are not evil, the state guardian will say that they are not evil, and the court judge will say that they are not evil either. The best thing is to have trustworthy relatives, trustworthy lawyers/advisors/doctors and live in a location that has trustworthy legal system. It might not be easy to get all of these, but it's worthwhile to try. 8) Those are good points, with lots to think about. I'm more of the age where my elderly relatives are trusting me with stuff. Which works out great for them, because I'm honest and hardworking. :D But it does seem like a good idea to have a plan in place for things like this. I'm going to bring it up with my estate lawyer the next time we do our wills. Yet another side of this - which you may be familiar with since you have elderly relatives: (Some changes were made to protect the innocent): Elderly person: Hi, who are you? Younger person: I'm your kid. You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person leaves the gas turned on: I wanted to make tea Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person falls and cannot get up... Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. Elderly person shits into their pants, bed, etc... Younger person: You should get a nurse, move to retirement home, nursing facility. Elderly person: No, I'm fine, this is where I lived whole life I am not moving anywhere. :-\ (And this is without even touching the money side...)

I am not a lawyer, so... I think any defensive moves work in certain cases, don't work in others and result in even worse situation in yet others. Yes, if you make a relative your guardian, this will work unless the court is corrupt/broken like in NewYorker article and moves guardianship to non-relative anyway. Especially if your relative is not resident of the state and only in-state guardians are allowed. Also this puts a risk that your relative could take advantage of you. This might not be an issue for you personally, but for other people it might be (I know situations like that and there are articles about this too). Obviously the state guardian and judge in NewYorker article were evil. But look at it from different perspective: what if a relative is evil and milking old person? Then you'd want the state to appoint different guardian than the evil relative. How do you determine who's evil who's not? Yeah, in ideal world you can. In our world, it's not that easy. Of course the relative will say that they are not evil, the state guardian will say that they are not evil, and the court judge will say that they are not evil either. The best thing is to have trustworthy relatives, trustworthy lawyers/advisors/doctors and live in a location that has trustworthy legal system. It might not be easy to get all of these, but it's worthwhile to try. 8)

The pie charts only show how down from peak. There is a slice in the pie that says "flat to up 10%"

Great operation, great heroes. I was in Norway this summer, puts some visual context to the story. Peace.

Nice to hear that you have 500B to spare. ;)

No. Jackpot odds are 1:302,575,350 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Millions With current jackpot and even considering that jackpot is nominal value of annual installments, so real jackpot is ~1/2, the expected value of $2 ticket is positive assuming a single winner. (Calcs: 1.6B jackpot ~= 800m cash jackpot, $2x302M to buy all tickets = $604M, btw this can be done for cheaper since there's also "Just the Jackpot" option for $1.5.) However, unless you buy significant percentage of tickets, which is close to impossible, you're likely not gonna realize that positive expected value. And the chance of more than one winner is non-negligible assuming investor group(s) start buying significant number of tickets, so your expected value becomes negative (jackpot split in 2 would result in cost of 1.5$x302 = 450M$ vs payout of 400M$)