Jurgis

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-pol-ca-motor-voter-law-20151016-html-htmlstory.html It seems the only difference is that for citizens the default is registration while in other states the default is non-registration. The whole eligibility check is likely the same (how do all other states check eligibility of someone who wants to register to vote? isn't it the same as above?) It's not even clear whether this will be set up before 2016 election. Right now, I did not find any official documents confirming when it will be up.

@Picasso: contrarianism by itself doesn't work. But it might be a place where to start looking. AXP. ;) It got everything: brand, moat (?), growth (??), Buffett, value, temporary (?) issues, tailwinds, headwinds, some hate.

OT? The author makes linear extrapolation mistake which he of all people shouldn't make. He assumes machine learning will stay the same in the future as it has been now. The problem with this assumption is that if you looked at ML 10-15 years ago and made linear prediction, you would not have predicted pretty much anything that happened in last couple of years. Sure, the "dealing with new situation in novel way" is tough for machines. But there are tons of assumptions in this phrase. I.e. that the situation is really "new" and there is nothing in it that can be extracted into features that already exist the machine's training space. Also that it has to be dealt in "novel" way. IMO, the biggest obstacle for machines taking most of human jobs is the large bandwidth interaction with real world needed for a lot of jobs. I.e. the issue is not the machine analyzing med results or legal case, but rather interacting with the patients, nurses, staff, analog medical devices, bureaucratic apparatus, etc. And it's not even that seeing a patient is "new situation", but rather that seeing a patient is multidimensional problem in ways that machines are not ready for. Though machines have pieces of dealing with that, they are still pieces and not integrated solutions. Self driving cars are probably the area where machines are now coming really close to dealing with the multitudinous real world parts/inputs/situations/etc. But overall that will be the biggest issue to overcome. Once (if) we get to machines that can tackle the real world as input/output, human jobs are gone. Period. Returning back to investing, IMO most of people who invest shouldn't (myself included 8) ). I've talked about this in past, but investing is interesting area. On one hand, the baseline (index) is so good as to beat 9X% of investors. On the other hand, because businesses (and market) in general have positive return and humans are not good in dealing with variability and statistics, a lot of people can make money in investing even if they underperform baseline and even though their clients would be better taking money elsewhere. So (Value/whatever) investing is alive, though most of the people who do it are just deluding themselves (or having good time in rather unproductive way ;)).

I should learn to do that. 8)

At current market valuations, there are few things that are cheap for Buffett to bag. He could buy something like PSX or Deere on assumption that they are cheap here. Or DVA on assumption that its future is better than market expects even at high valuation. In the past usually the buys at high market prices took longer to work out. I guess that's what some people were saying when PCP was bought.

Ah personal attacks now. What are you exactly accusing me of? Do tell.

Oh look. Rightwing demagogues talking about logic. And calling others Nazis. And claiming that someone silenced them on the Internet forum while continuing to bloviate nonstop. Yeah, that makes sense. Probably someone used logic. Poor guys. Maybe you need a better platform? More threads? More ideas on how to defend your insane candidate? Maybe we should pat you on the back every time you start bogus attacks and insults? You need love? Tenderness? Hey, come on over, I'll give you a hug. We love you. Truly. We want you to talk more. We appreciate your dedication and non-sequitur thread changes. You da guys. Just amazing. There.

Amen. If I could be born today instead of 19XX when I was born, I'd choose to be born today. Even if I had to be born in Lithuania again. Even if I had to be born in Russia - perhaps. And well, I truly believe that today's kids who live to be 50+ are likely to live forever (as in "not die unless killed") - if we don't blow up ourselves in the next 50 years.

Oh look, somebody's trying to whitewash Trump screwups and some conservative morons are eating it with a spoon. Clearly, the Republican party "establishment" who are not comfortable with insane demagogue were bought by Liberals. Communist infiltration! Bring back McCarthy!

Isn't GS a bank now? Isn't there some rules or issues with BRK owning a bank? Isn't that's the reason they got rid of banks in the past and never fully owned a bank or increased AXP position since? Although rules have changed a lot in last couple decades, so I don't know what's the last on this.

+1. Trump himself might be just a middling racist and xenophobe on the par of water-cooler brogrammers and jocks who just don't think it racist or misogynist to call someone n word or ho, bitch, etc. The problem is that he's running a campaign based on raising and supporting that hatred.

Hyperbole much? ;) Tough crowd here. Lots of Monday morning quarterbacking, recency bias, simplistic solutions that likely don't work. Politics and war are even harder than business. You don't have full control, you do X expecting Y, Z comes out. And you can't do W because of a number of reasons even if you wanted. We sometimes say that investing and business is unmeasurable. Talk about measuring politics and war. Might be good idea... Drop billions of US$ on Iran, not bombs (oops, was just done ;) ). No, but seriously - can this be measured objectively? And yeah we can talk about how military is mismatched from the tasks they are trying to accomplish: not just shoot and destroy the enemy army, but police, counter-terrorist, rebuild, indoctrinate, train and teach, etc. And yeah we can possibly agree that recent conflicts in Middle East were disasters because there was no long-term commitment to be there after initial shootout. But nobody really knows how to do that. Rebuilding takes a generation likely. Who has commitment to stay in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Egypt (?), etc. for generations not only policing but also pouring money to rebuild - what? it's not even clear what to rebuild. So sure, I could agree with non-interventionists and say: "Don't intervene". But then you have dictators and broken countries. It's not really true that leaving Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Egypt, Iran alone is good either. Maybe it's fine for a bit. But then these guys go and nuke it out between themselves or possibly their neighbors too. Is that a good future? Is it better or worse than the interventionist scenario? Not trying to defend Obama or Bush.

So, when does the next payment tranche go out 8) It would seem this is actually Iran's money being given back to them which has been held in trust since an arms deal with the Shah in which we never delivered the weapons in question. The timing of the hostage release to coincide with the payment is hard to see as anything other than a ransom, even if it's with their own money. We should have shipped them 35 year old weapons systems instead of returning the cash. I was trying to be humorous. I relearned my lesson not to participate in these topics. I'll stick to telling the occasional joke on the "I need a Laugh. Tell me a joke..." thread so it will be obvious. We should ship them some nukes. Oh wait. I'll switch threads. ;D ;D

Who was damned because they didn't? That hasn't been tried in generations. I'll answer this, but I'll try to not get drawn into the discussion further. Do you really believe that if some party withdrew US bases from Middle East and suspended support for Israel, they would not be damned? What about Iran? What is the "you don't" with Iran? Maintaining sanctions? Removing sanctions and doing nothing? Look how well that worked for Democrats. I don't have an opinion about the Iran deal and I don't know if you consider it "you don't", but it's not a bad example IMO for being damned if you don't. What about Iraq's Kuwait invasion in 1990? You really think that USA would have not been damned if they didn't? Edit: Also in something like Arab spring, there is no "you don't" option. You implicitly support either status quo or the rebels and different groups will definitely damn you for either stance.

You know that in a number of states prisoners or former prisoners cannot vote? http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/florida-no-1-in-barring-ex-prisoners-from-voting/nXwZH/

Middle East is a mess where you are dammed if you do and dammed if you don't. It's easy to blame both Republicans and Democrats and pretty much every single administration since what 1970's? for issues there. There are no solutions there pretty much - well maybe there are, but nobody so far found them. There is only thrashing and temporary lulls in issues which then-governing party uses to say "Mission Accomplished" or claim success. I'll admit that I'm guilty too blaming various administrations for Middle East. I should be more careful and not do this anymore. But anyone blaming a single party for Middle East problems is decidedly biased. You know who you are.

YOLO, man! ;D Aren't you supposed to be more careful if you can only live once? ::) I was thinking the same when I wrote it. ;D We should change it to YOLT. 8)

YOLO, man! ;D

What rb said. Edit: BTW, I considered voting "Yes" on the poll just to troll OP and other Trump supporters. But then decided not to, since they might think the poll is in some way "real". ;)

Ah, sorry for confusion. I got confused between Canadian pref threads and Canadian debenture threads. :) I see that Fido also has some Canadian prefs available for international trading. Some that have been mentioned here are not available. So it is a mix for Canadian prefs (and non-retirement accounts only for international trading). I don't see debentures mentioned available likely for the reason valcont specified.

George W. tried to do it, but papa dragged him to election by his ears. Bill Clinton tried to do it, but Hillary dragged him to election by his pen..

Disclaimer: I have not attended previous MicroCap conferences. I have some loose connections to some of the organizers and presenters. On the positive side, I think this is a good opportunity to meet some people from CoBF and blogosphere. I guess oddballstocks will be attending and others mentioned by Fred. Also on positive side, if you are getting into micro(nano)cap stock investing, it might be an easy opportunity to listen/talk to managements and start growing the 5th sense of whether they are bulshitting or if they are straight shooters. ;) On the negative side, some of the companies will be not interesting, over promotional, not-really-value investments, etc. Don't expect every company to be a great management, great capital allocation, great business or at least cigar butt at great valuation. I'm not sure if the list of companies from previous conferences is still available. If it is, you might look through it and see if there's at least couple companies that interest you. I think there were couple that interested me a bit, though I never followed up. :-\ All the best to organizer and attendees. I think I won't attend and instead buy couple shares of nanocap XXXXX from the money saved on flights and hotel. Sorry. ;) Have a great conference. ;)

Of course there is zero guarantee that Trump will appoint die-hard conservatives into Supreme Court. Once he's POTUS, he may appoint whoever he wants. But if judges are the killer issue, then, yes, republicans have no choice but to vote for Trump and hope that he does more "good" for republicans than damage. And expect continued temper-tantrums and blackmail on any policy issue where Trump clashes with Republican held (??) congress and (?? ?? ??) senate. I fully expect that if Trump wins (looking unlikelier every day, but who knows), he will say "F**K you GOP, you did not support my campaign, now I hit you basterds. Putin for Supreme Court haha". If it wasn't for racist, nationalist and misogynist rhetoric + risk of unstable narcissistic guy at the helm of US, I'd like to see Trump as a president just to see republicans squirm when he does things that are completely Trumpian and not the GOP-party-line. Oh wait, they are already squirming. Perhaps that's enough of the show and we can skip the part where they squirm even more.

Haha! Ok, that last post made it too obvious. ;D Shit Scott, I believe you had a few doubting your sanity for a second. Good job. 8) The problem is that there are people who will watch Scott's video and become even more convinced to vote for Trump. :-\

It's a troll question. I voted "No" though. If Trump is certifiably unfit, this should be resolved via legal measures (impeachment? or other ways to remove certifiably insane president) and not by imposing martial law. Edit: Chance Gardener for President! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078841/ Let America grow! You heard it here first.