rkbabang

Its a 600 km long near vacuum. There is absolutely no cheap way to make that work and the issues are obvious. Destruction of the vacuum at any point makes the whole thing fail and when vacuums fail you get explosions and/or implosions. If I were a terrorist...bash an SUV into the tunnel a little before a train is passing through at 700km/hr, the vacuum tube implodes or explodes. The pod in the tube comes out at 700km/hr and hits a building. Just too easy. The power needed to maintain the vacuum would be tremendous. The explosive energy of the vacuum itself would be incredible. And then of course there are the ridiculous cost estimates which are 1/10th what you would expect. The utterly ridiculous design which is completely insufficient to deal with the forces produced by vacuums. Its a 2 inch thick steel tube. Any real world situation which produces vacuums of the kind you will get would typically have all sorts of structural reinforcements and redundancies like multiple layers of containment which would hugely increase costs. This becomes an even bigger issue when you consider safety and terrorism which almost no typical large vacuum application has to deal with because they aren't using the vacuums to do mass transport. This of course mean you are dealing with costs that aren't 1/10 of normal public transportation costs but more like 100 times traditional transport costs. The operational problems which all center around the huge vacuum and the incredibly high speed of the pods are tremendous. Probably every single day you would have catastrophic failures. I would say the operational problems are essentially equivalent to space shuttle launch every single time a pod runs through. This article lays out the problems: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/26/scientist-lays-out-5-huge-problems-with-elon-musks-hyperloop-video/ There is no way Musk is stupid enough not to understand this. All the problems of space and electric cars involve the type of physics and mechanics that would easily enable him to grasp this. Logically Musk must already know this isn't going to work. So then the question is what is his real agenda. Railways must have seemed just as absurd when they first came out. Strips of steel track, any one of which could have snapped or come loose at any time? Big fire-breathing tanks of boiling water that would drag you across country at unimaginable speeds? No thanks, I'll stick to my horse. And yet... You're going to get on the back of a large muscular animal, hope you don't fall off while you ride at unimaginable speeds? No thanks, I'll walk.

It's really more of a problem with the energy of the pods. Just letting air into a vacuum chamber isn't that big a deal - as long as the walls are thick/strong enough. Back in my student days, we machined vacuum chambers out of aluminum with very thick walls. We had one beast (made of steel) that you could basically walk/climb into. The easiest way to stop small leaks was to put some epoxy on the offending hole. I can't see how the project makes sense cost-wise and it does seem to be overly risky for passengers, but I've not looked into it carefully. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7 pounds per square inche. Assuming a pure vacuum, a meter square area of steel needs to resist a force of 14.7*(10000cm^2/m^2)*(in^2/ 5.6 cm^2) = 26000 pounds. Or about 10 or 11 toyota corollas. That is the force on every single square meter of the structure. To give you some idea of what that force can do: And then you compound this with an object travelling 700km/hr on the inside of the structure. The Hyperloop as Musk has proposed it isn't even close to pure vacuum. As I said before, Musk's version is really moderate and doable. A pure vacuum version won't be feasible until materials science progresses to the point where we can make the tubes to contain it safely and affordably. The full vacuum tube transportation system is in the same category as the space elevator. We could build it easily if we had a material which could handle the requirements.

I can't fathom why you think it is stupid. I first read a similar idea some time in the early 90s in a Sci-if book by L. Neil Smith called "The Probability Broach" (the book itself was written in 1979). It described a network both within cities and between cities all over North America of completely evacuated underground tubes where you just get into a pod and travel at thousands of miles per hour to your destination (it might have been tens of thousands of miles per hour, I don't remember). I remember thinking duh, that is genius. Atmospheric resistance is the real limiting factor to terrestrial high speed travel. Of course back then the reason this was unrealistic was the lack of computing power to control/navigate the pods. A collision at those speeds would be catastrophic. Now we have the computing resources to implement this. Especially the more modest partially evacuated slower speed multi-passenger Hyperloop that Musk is suggesting. After reading that book I didn't really think about it again until I heard Musk talk about the Hyperloop. It sounds even better today, than it did back then because it is now feasible.

schwab offers a checking account that will refund international atm fees when paired with a brokerage account. Fidelity does as well. I use a Fidelity cash management account as my checking account and all of my atm fees are refunded to me.

I use Fidelity, but have never used Schwab. Making foreign trades in Fidelity is as easy as making domestic trades. Also I use my Fidelity VISA card as my main credit card. 2% cash back on everything with no categories and no limit, deposited into any one of your Fidelity accounts automatically every month. I just got an email from the VISA card today that if I use it at Amazon.com 3 times over the next few months for at least $25 each time, I'll get a $25 cash back bonus. It said no exceptions even gift cards apply. So I just bought 3 $25 gift cards emailed to myself in 3 different transactions. I usually use my Amazon card at Amazon.com.

My longest and best investment by far is MIDD. I bought it in April of 2005 at around a split adjusted $2.50/share. I sold most of it around $85 or so, but I still own some today it is about $136. I should have never sold any of it.

Q: "Elon Musk...human?" A: Not for long.

Very few people prepare for the worst, I certainly don't. To be thus prepared you would need an escape plan to get to a remote area, where you have a well stocked bunker to ride out a few years worth of chaos and a bunch of gold and ammo to trade with after the worst blows over. Any paper wealth you have is gone in any worst case scenario. I'm not prepared, because I don't think it will ever come to that. I'm more of an optimist. There will be ups and downs, but we'll be fine. I'm sure whatever healthplan Trump ends up signing won't be all that great, but will fix some things and cause other problems. My biggest concern is that it is destracting him from tax cuts and deregulation.

Exactly. I can picture themselves asking "Holy hell! What if everyone only paid taxes on what their property was worth?"

Basically it comes down to this. Most of us know it, Buffett and Munger keep repeating that but we just fail. My problem is in the "rarely sold" and I don't seem to learn... My turnover is becoming crazy high (I've sold 128% of the value of my current portfolio in the last 2,5 months)... Does anyone know the cure? edit: the value would be 164% of current portfolio if I increase the time range to 4,5 months I agree. While I don't trade nearly as much as you, I have very few "bought the wrong stock" mistakes. Almost all of my mistakes were of the "sold way too early" variety. With the market so high right now I am itching to sell a lot of my positions to raise cash and I am afraid I'll regret it, as I always have before.

Monero is private. With Bitcoin if I know an account is associated with you then I can see what is in it and every transaction you have ever made. This is not the case with Monero.

I bought some about a year ago, along with Dash and Monero, I'm pretty happy that I did. I own the top 4 cryptocurrencies by market cap. I like ETH, it has the most functionality and is being actively developed. If they add some privacy features, I think it has the potential to be the cryptocurrency and dethrone Bitcoin.

To their credit, they didn't say "Dow Plummets" I've become desensitized to the whole "breaking news" "plummeting" "catastrophic" media/politician/dewshnozzle BS... "Breaking News" used to mean something exciting or extraordinary just happened, but now it is just whatever is happening at the moment even if it isn't much of anything.

Good point. It makes a better sales tactic than investment strategy. Have you asked any of the people who believe the stock market is rigged "Rigged by who?". If someone was rigging the stock market they would be the richest people on Earth, otherwise they are doing a piss poor job of rigging it. So that means it must be people like Buffett, Gates, and Bezos. EDIT: People tend to not understand things that demonstrate emergent behavior, such as network effects, prices in markets, nature, etc. This is why they postulate/support socialism, conspiracies, religious intelligent design, etc. This is just how people explain things which they don't understand to themselves. "Someone must have created it." or "Someone must be in control of it."

Which is why government always grows like a cancer taking over the host society until it kills it, and it never shrinks. Not without a scalpel and a lot of blood anyway.

I understand being a macro nut where when the market is high, you are bearish, and when the market is low you are bullish. But what I don't understand is these pera-bears who are always bearish. This guy can't even bring himself to be positive after a crash (i.e. 2000, 2007). If the market crashes this year, he will make money this year, then lose money again for the next decade.

I haven't had the time to look into it, but I know Rand Paul is calling it 'Obamacare Lite'. That doesn't make me very optimistic that it is much of an improvement.

Today's Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-03-03

Yeah, no lol It may be worth considering more than five seconds. We are very, very bad at accurately representing history and our elders with nuance. In the case of Munger he has hints of many controversial views which you sometimes see outrage about (some cultures work better than others is an example which sets the "bigot alarms" blinking). A strange stance to take when you lap up every word he says in all other areas as if was the epitome of intellectualism. Suddenly his views are all down to age and senility, it couldn't possibly be because he read and reasoned his way to them just like in every other area. Only ideology can shut down an otherwise open mind so completely. "some cultures work better than others" is so obviously true that it is insane that it has to be said. Also the sky is blue; Some women say no when they mean maybe; And SJWs need to get a life and a sense of humor.

I just logged on to my account and sure enough: "Trades are now just $4.95". Not that I trade enough for a $3/transaction savings to add up to anything.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Gun+sales+by+caliber Revolvers will be more reliable & easier to maintain when the Zombie apocalypse comes... Interesting link I found with your assisted google search. http://www.gunbroker.com/Content/Top5/2015-GunBroker-Best-Selling-Firearms-of-the-Year.html Also if this is correct http://knowledgeglue.com/what-are-the-most-popular-calibers-in-the-us/ then 9 of the top 10 calibers sold are semi-auto or rifle calibers. Number 10 and 11 are revolver (.357Mag & .38Spc). Also in other gun related news, my state of NH just got rid of its concealed carry license requirement. The governor signed the bill today and it goes into effect immediately. There are a few other states with similar bills pending now as well. https://freestateproject.org/blogs/constitutional-carry-signed-law

I'm a Glock guy myself, if Glock was public I would already own it, there is no question that they are the best semi-auto handguns on Earth. But Ruger is a quality company which makes a quality product. No one makes a better revolver, no one. And as far as semi-auto goes, as I said above, I just purchased a Ruger LCP II. Yes if Glock made a .380 of a similar size I would have went with the Glock, but they don't. My main carry gun is a Glock 26 in 9mm, but depending on what you are wearing, it isn't always easy to conceal. Glock has a single stack .380, but it is huge compared to the Ruger, certainly not a gun you can throw in your front pants pocket. For pocket carry .380s there is Ruger LCP & LCP II, Beretta Pico, and a bunch of lower quality guns from other brands. For revolvers there is really no option better than Ruger. Ruger makes a quality rifles as well, although there is a lot of competition in that space. I just don't think it is accurate to say Ruger makes garbage.

Pretty sure I was making this point (at least regarding gun ownership)...not sure why u are disagreeing with me. Although I mixed 2 words up so maybe it confused you. ;D Finally, just because it is illogical to own a gun does not mean I can't. Nowhere in the article is this even mentioned. Apparently, illogical choices must be the result of some psychological or emotional influence. Is it** unthinkable to say "yes, owning a gun statistically increases the chance I will be involved in some violent gun crime, but I am going to purchase one anyway". Is it wrong to choose protectionist trade or immigration policies, despite knowing the potential economic, social, political costs? I'm not willing to make that claim. Vaccines on the other hand should be mandatory. You're exposing your both your child and others to serious illness or death by not vaccinating your kids. The difference with a gun is that, you exert a level of control over having a gun. You choose not to pull the trigger, essentially. With communicable illness, you can't choose not to infect someone with measles, for instance. I was more disagreeing that it "is illogical to own a gun". That really depends on what you think your own odds are of experiencing the potential negative consequences. This calculation will be different for every individual. My point was that most who are killed by their own gun are suicides which you may feel does not apply to you; many who have children hurt or killed by their guns have them improperly stored, which you may feel does not apply to you; and many people accidentally killed by their guns were under-trained or did something incredibly stupid, which you may feel doesn't apply to you. There are many logical reasons that you wouldn't take the raw statistics and apply them directly to your own odds. Owning a gun is not necessarily "illogical". On the flip side, of course, looking at crime statistics and thinking that you need a gun for protection is equally troubling, because different states/cities/towns/neighborhoods/streets have very different crime rates, you would have to look at the places that you spend your time in order to calculate your risk of becoming a victim not the crime statistics as a whole. I'd venture to say that most gun owners who are safety conscious already avoid high crime areas. So most responsible gun owners probably have a very low probability of negative consequences from their gun ownership, but also a much lower risk of being the victim of a crime requiring self defense then they think. Vaccines is a difficult issue for me. On the one hand I don't like being told that you have to inject your children with X, Y, and Z. Yet on the other hand you are a complete idiot if you don't vaccinate your children.

Did it ever occur to you that optimizing for safety might not be everyone's priority wrt the gun issue? If you wanted to optimize for safety entirely you could advocate building jail cells for everyone and having the government bring you food (not too hot so you don't burn yourself) and never let you see any other human being (who could decide to hurt you at any moment. Those other humans are just completely unpredictable). Some people, myself included, would rather deal with too much freedom than too little. I have no desire to be 100% perfectly safe. I don't want to live in a world where someone tells me what I can't own, what I can't eat, what I can't inject into my veins, what I can't drive, what I can't sell, what I can't buy, what I can't manufacture, what I can't carry on my person. I find it funny that someone will say owning a gun is dangerous, yet will go out jogging or bicycling every day. I can tell you that in US today, you are far more likely to get hit by a car while jogging then you are to die by your own firearm. Or people are concerned that their children will become safe crackers and get to their guns and hurt themselves, yet they have a swimming pool in the back yard. If your guns are properly stored you children are far more likely to die in your swimming pool then they are to get hurt by your firearms. Actually your children are far more likely to die in your car then by your firearms. People optimize for safety when it suits their political agenda and they are reckless and do far more dangerous activities when it doesn't. Also many studies which come to the conclusion that guns are a danger to the people who own them rely on suicide statistics to make the case. Many gun owners do rationally ignore such statistics because they do not apply to them. I can tell you that I have a zero percent chance of committing suicide with my firearms. Someone who has struggled with depression their whole lives might want to evaluate things differently.

We have a Rat Terrier/ Chihuahua mix rescue dog. She looks like a big Chihuahua, but has the Rat Terrier temperament. An excellent dog.