Castanza

My wife is paranoid about doing this in the future. I don’t think it’s a big deal. How old were your kids when you put them downstairs?

Two things some friends told us that worked for them. - Get a hot pad warm it up and put it in the crib where she’s going to lay. Then take it outa and lay her on the spot. - Try walks or car rides later in the evening before bedtime.

Haha yeah it’s been awesome so far and wouldn’t trade it for the world sleep or no sleep. I think a mindset of “go with the flow” has been helpful in the early stages. Definitely no schedule or routine, other than “sleep when they sleep” and the responsibility load you share with your significant other. Have to say it’s likely been 1000x better having a wife who is a NICU nurse and knows how to handle babies and what to expect and what to watch out for. So all in all I can’t conplain @Dean Pretty much sums it up lol

I’ve got a 3 week old son. First two weeks were brutal sleep wise. Seems to be getting better. But damn you guys weren’t lying. I hear it gets better at 8-10?

CASH

Valuation looks a little rich near term if the deal falls through. But looking out 5 years I don't think the current price is bad at all. They've been pretty steady eddy growers on almost all metrics looking back 5+ years. Dividend is a nice touch that's been consistently growing as well. Upside you're looking at 5% if it closes. Downside, maybe it trades down to mid 80's to bring it more in line historically with where it trades. But all in all this is something I wouldn't mind owning a chunk of. Plus if it falls through they get the 3b breakup fee and have the COD franchise locked up for now. Near term pipeline doesn't look amazing, but at the end of the day this is a big studio with solid franchises that has been executing well enough for me. I think the deal goes through but I guess you never know.

ATVI

Hard to discuss this topic of “life is better in America” without discussing “at who’s expense.” American wealth is a facade of wealth flown in from cheap labor markets and built on the backs of exploited labor. Everything we have in this country that is tangible comes from markets like that. Consumerism as a metric for judging a country’s success or quality of life is meaningless if that country cannot sustain that same level internally. The consumerism you call “success or quality of life” has given us nothing but the worst mental health conditions in the world. The highest pharmaceutical drug use in the world. Some of the highest suicide rates. Some of the lowest happiness scores. Political division. Worse overall health with no improvements in longevity or quality. Declining birth rates. A crumbling education system withA society addicted to debt. A veteran population thrown under the bus. A hollowed out middle class. The list goes on! But hey, we’ve built a few social networks and developed better ways to get fast food and cheap Chinese made products delivered to our door in hours so we can keep our eyes fixed to screens! What are some big American achievements that have nothing to do with unbridled consumerism in the last 30-40 years? A few drug breakthroughs? YOUR life might be better, but is the COUNTRY better? Is the US better positioned for long term success? Not sure, it does seem like people and politicians are waking up to this fact. The IS is a big shop and it’s slow to steer, so hopefully over the next 20 years we can get some actual leadership instead of these phonies to usher in a new golden era in American innovation and wealth. I’m confident that we will because when the towing gets tough, Americans tend to rise up like no other nation. But looking around at society and the people described by RKbang in the AV thread, it might be a while! There is a reason this song is blowing up with the average person in the US right now.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/china-evergrande-files-chapter-15-bankruptcy-us-court-filing-2023-08-17/

AIV, FRPH

Nah, people in general (at least in the US) have less and less self respect and respect for others. Not to mention all the mental lunatics out there. I’m right there with RK. If you can’t get yourself to take a shower and change out of your smiley face pajamas the. You ain’t riding in my car. Tell you what! If you can use a credit check, background check or something to limit who rides, I’d consider it.

Can’t blame him in this environment tbh. There is so much volatility even among solid companies. The puts are surprising though.

Thanks I’ll check it out

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000624132170 Good discussion from Krugman. Goes over quite a few topics covered in this thread; specifically productivity. Makes me wonder, perhaps I should have forgone the engineering degree and stuck with driving for Big Brown. 170k/yr up to 8 weeks vacation and a pension to top it off doesn’t sound half bad anymore

MANU, ATVI

LMFAO right there with you

Frankly if I have an AV that has the ability to be used as a taxi when I'm not using it, there is a zero percent chance I utilize this feature. I would gladly lose out on some miniscule passive income to prevent having Dirty Mike and The Boys trash my car on their trip back from the local watering hole. Sick people, smelly people, cigarette smoking people in my car? No thanks! I'd wager that about 95%+ of Moms and Dads would agree with me. The only people who would do this are tech bros and youngish single people who are already used to taking public transportation frequently enough. Even then though, you're not responsible for cleaning those amenities like you would be with personal AV lending.

Interesting situation Another one I stumbled upon courtesy of Andrew Walker is the RideQ situation with Foxconn. Shares trading around $3ish and they filed for bankruptcy. Interesting aspect is they have no debt and a lot of cash on hand. To top it off they are suing Foxconn for basically pulling the rug out from under their business and causing permanent damages. Will be interesting. The kicker is there is a 3% cap on share ownership so a lot of the big guys can’t touch this. According to Andrew there is a lot of cash per share that could give quite. A bit of upside pending the suit. Haven’t checked any of the math here and I’m always hesitant of the suit working out, but either way I guess there are some interested parties in the assets of RideQ. MSFT ATVI discount to buyout price looks interesting as well. Seems like free money on the table (knock on wood).

Lol exactly, are these events even rare anymore? Look at all the wild fires and evacuations or the hurricanes, winter storms, heavy rains, etc. If nobody owns vehicles then you better hope these autonomous vehicles can get people out when their hub is 6ft under water or the grid goes down, or a wild fire blocks roads. These things do matter. Individual ownership of vehicles that have the option is way more likely imo. Besides cities where parking is an issue, having hubs of autonomous vehicles simple makes zero sense and have very little value add imo. In fact outside of cities I’d say it’s overall negative for utility and use of time. It’s like the high speed rail people who think everyone in the US should have access. Why? It’s very little value add to a lot of people. It’s similar to Buffetts analogy of upgrading textile equipment with very little benefit vs what you’ve had. The US has a very robust highway and road system (that needs some maintenance) that is easily accessible to everyone. Owning a car is quite cheap in the grand scheme of things and the support infrastructure for owning a vehicle (gas stations, repair shops) is very robust as well. Solving problems that don’t need to be solved. Want to make driving safer? Add more driver assist tech. ABS saved thousands and thousands of lives with very little additional cost.

Have no problem with automated vehicles. Just don’t see the lack of ownership playing out in the US. Europeans seem to forget how big the US is and how systemically different it’s cities, highways, roads and urban sprawl is geographically structured compared to the dense mess of Europe. I very much look forward to being able to hop in MY car and choose to engage auto pilot on say a long commute to the office. Etc. What doesn’t make sense for 80% of the country is building warehouses with some specific number of vehicles and somehow have to account for all the intricacies of demand. The emergency situation was a single example. Grabbing an onion you forgot from the store is another. Sanjeev mentioned “just have it delivered in 30min to and hour!” Why? I can walk out my door, hop in my car and get be to the store and back in 10 minutes. I use grocery delivery and pickup and you have to schedule out usually more than an hour. It takes WAY more effort and seems way less economical to try to build out all this infrastructure just to eliminate vehicle ownership. And the cat beat you’re guessing at demand which will ultimately lead to poor service and disruptions. Better solution is vehicles continue to be self drivable and is able by individuals if they choose, but at the same time have an auto pilot “switch” should you want to take a nap on the way to work. It’s just way more practical, clean and simple. With kids it’s more simple too and you don’t have to deal with the germs and gross stuff of publicly shared things. I don’t really want to deal with whatever mess someone else left in the car before you got it. People often also have extra things stashed in their own cars for their kids or themselves. Anything from diaper bags, back cushions, gum, makeup, clothes, hats, snacks, tablets, car seat bases, etc etc. literally a million different things. Do you really want to have to grab all that stuff every time you need a ride to somewhere? Is there a use case for a fleet of autonomous vehicles owned by XYZ company that can be hailed with the push of a button? YES absolutely! Just not in most of the country. I live in a town of about 40k people about 35 minutes outside of a much larger city. When I pull up my Uber app there is exactly 3 available drivers in the whole area. There simply would be no demand for a fully autonomous fleet of any significant size here. edit: Can’t wait to take my automated Prius to deer camp in upstate New York or Middle of nowhere West Virginia, bag a buck the. Strap it to the hood for the ride back! The company is going to love that when it returns to the hub

Uber is working on autonomous vehicles because they would no longer have to pay humans. I disagree on the emergency aspect. If it’s better why aren’t ambulances and fire trucks the first to get automated? Even planes which can fly themselves require humans. Lots of things sound great on paper!

One thing to think about is contingencies for mid to smaller cities and towns. Where are these centers of autonomous vehicles? Do the economics make sense there? What happens in a power outage? Is their fail over? Is there enough bandwidth in the town? Is there the staff/knowledge to support these sites? Tbh not sure what the requirements are for something like this. But if it’s anything close to data centers then you’re really limiting where these centers or hubs can be placed. I mean in the US you have vast differences between states, and even cities within the same states! Move outside the US and a select few western nations and it’s basically impossible. How do the economics work in such a limited global market?

Melbourne is a big city . I mean you could say that about any futurism ideas. Lyft said in 2016 that half of their vehicles would be autonomous by 2021….now experts are yet again pushing back that timeline to 2035. The promise of autonomous cars was announced in 1939 and the New York Worlds Fair by General Morors. The timeline was 20 years LOL….here we are almost 100 years later and albeit much closer, still a long way to go. I mean GMs Cruze still can’t navigate “unexpected construction zones” and just pulls over in traffic causing jams. There is easily 20 years of regulatory red tape to deal with. Let alone proper connectivity and other key infrastructure. I mean you can go 1 hour outside of a lot of major cities in the US and find areas with dial up internet poor cell service and dirt roads. Same for Canada. Eventually! But just my opinion it will be a bit. Maybe AI accelerates it? Can’t help but think it’s more bark than bite at this point. Innovation usually happens in the areas people don’t discuss in the media.

Outside of North America cities are setup for this. Most cities in the US are not conducive for public transport. Especially true the further you get from the top 10 cities.

People don’t think of the minutiae. Even the emergency room visit….say you have to call an autonomous car. It takes 10minutes to show up. Ok someone is bleeding or your wife is pregnant and going into labor. Could be a major mess in the car. Let’s go further. Say you get stuck behind a slower vehicle on two lane road with double lines. The autonomous vehicle would just ride behind it where a human could make the judgement call to pass in a clear spot. Or say you pull up to the hospital. Where does the autonomous car go? There is ALWAYS something happening in front of the emergency entrance be it ambulance parked, traffic cones, blockage etc. does the autonomous vehicle know how to get you close and avoid those obstacles? Doubtful lol will probably stop 400 ft away and refuse to budge leaving you in a pickle. Now you have to get out of the vehicle, go flag someone down. But do you bring the person with you? Will the car leave with them in it if you get out? People forget how much nuance their is to driving and situations. It’s kind of amazing considering how often people do it. Perhaps this is why these theories mostly come from city centers where people just get in a cab and stare at their phone until they get to their location.