Would you take $10k to stop using their product?

[Parsad]

17 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

I still remember the 13^th March 2013 - clearly! Best day in my life ever!, -and not only in my own life - also to my family and those I hold dear! -Found CofB&F on that day! - Browsing around for about one hour here, then decided to dive in, registering!

 

If I remember correctly, then CAD 30! Frigging best investment I've ever made! - But it is what it is! it's - old fashion WYGIWYG! I spent about three - three! - years reading up the whole friggin' CoiB&F board! - about 100 posts in that period from me, most of them carrying no real value.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Then, when I near Christmas try to express my appreciation towards Sanjeev [ @Parsad ] for keeping us all connected here, by sending absolutely nomimal amounts of money as a token of appreciation <still stingy John and all that>  from both of us [The Lady of the House and I] to Sanjeev [ @Parsad ], I get met by a friendly refusal, not taking the money, to keep running the CofB&F digital outfit, donating, redirecting the nominal funds provided to Canadian food banks in stead!

 

Fair to say, I don't even have a Danish friend, that behaves like this! Tons of stamina, perseverance,  patience with us, combined with beeing a down-to-the-roots good, non-self-serverving person!

 

Just so friggin' seldom to me.

 

That said, I think I have by now figured out by now how to circumvent the 'blockade' - next time!  - Here, we're now out in mob-related measures, desparate measures, desparate means! [somewhat inverted!]

 

Thanks for the nice comments John!  I'm fortunate that I don't need the money, and that's because I was lucky enough to hear about Buffett and Prem a long time ago.

 

So this message board is just a huge thank you from me to them...and I very much enjoy the friendships and banter on here with so many great, like-minded people from around the world!

 

As I'm getting older, I know that this will be one of the few outlets I will have long-term to stimulate my brain and entertain myself with people who share a similar interest.  I don't play Bridge...I don't shop...I don't have a wife and kids...I enjoy work...I enjoy sports...I enjoy this message board.  So it is actually a bit self-serving...but in a good way!

 

Cheers!

[Valuebo]

6 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

If you are in, you are in...no charge!  

 

Although I would like to give up the Politics thread for $10K!    Cheers!

 

Can I pay to give up that thread?

[Malmqky]

@Parsad seriously though, can we introduce a tier of membership with no ads?

[cubsfan]

45 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

I still remember the 13^th March 2013 - clearly! Best day in my life ever!, -and not only in my own life - also to my family and those I hold dear! -Found CofB&F on that day! - Browsing around for about one hour here, then decided to dive in, registering!

 

If I remember correctly, then CAD 30! Frigging best investment I've ever made! - But it is what it is! it's - old fashion WYGIWYG! I spent about three - three! - years reading up the whole friggin' CoiB&F board! - about 100 posts in that period from me, most of them carrying no real value.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Then, when I near Christmas try to express my appreciation towards Sanjeev [ @Parsad ] for keeping us all connected here, by sending absolutely nomimal amounts of money as a token of appreciation <still stingy John and all that>  from both of us [The Lady of the House and I] to Sanjeev [ @Parsad ], I get met by a friendly refusal, not taking the money, to keep running the CofB&F digital outfit, donating, redirecting the nominal funds provided to Canadian food banks in stead!

 

Fair to say, I don't even have a Danish friend, that behaves like this! Tons of stamina, perseverance,  patience with us, combined with beeing a down-to-the-roots good, non-self-serverving person!

 

Just so friggin' seldom to me.

 

That said, I think I have by now figured out by now how to circumvent the 'blockade' - next time!  - Here, we're now out in mob-related measures, desparate measures, desparate means! [somewhat inverted!]

 

Great story about our dear leader!

[Libs]

6 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

Very few would pay anything close to that.  Good investors generally are very frugal investors! 

 

Our membership would drop from 5,000 to 500!  The resultant income would be the same...but we would lose a lot of content. 

 

Again, that being said...losing the Politics content might be worth it!    Cheers!

 

Wow. There's frugality, and then there's stupidity. Sorry to insult anyone here, but if you're not clearing substantially more than $100 a year (above market returns) from the insights posted on this site, than I don't know what to say.

[Martian]

On 3/6/2026 at 3:45 AM, John Hjorth said:

Then, when I near Christmas try to express my appreciation towards Sanjeev [  ] for keeping us all connected here, by sending absolutely nomimal amounts of money as a token of appreciation <still stingy John and all that>  from both of us [The Lady of the House and I] to Sanjeev [  ], I get met by a friendly refusal, not taking the money, to keep running the CofB&F digital outfit, donating, redirecting the nominal funds provided to Canadian food banks in stead!

If I remember correctly, we all used to donate to Parsad during Christmas. He did not use that money for himself or to run this site but donated everything to a foundation (I think it was related to Crohn's, not sure).

 

But after that, when he made truck load of money with his market timing calls "Value based leveraged enhanced opportunistic buying and selling", that tradition kind of went away. 

[Parsad]

4 hours ago, Martian said:

If I remember correctly, we all used to donate to Parsad during Christmas. He did not use that money for himself or to run this site but donated everything to a foundation (I think it was related to Crohn's, not sure).

 

But after that, when he made truck load of money with his market timing calls "Value based leveraged enhanced opportunistic buying and selling", that tradition kind of went away. 

 

Yup.  I donate every year personally to 8 organizations at Christmas...that's why I always mention remembering to give at Christmas time on TCOBF...especially Food Banks around the world are really struggling. 

 

Here in North America, there are 50%+ increases in demand at pretty much every food bank in every major city in the last 2 years!  Many are on the brink of survival if they do not get more government/corporate support or donations returning to normal post-Pandemic. 

 

A recent study showed that 25% of the population in Canada faces some form of food insecurity presently with inflation, stagnant wages, too much debt, large mortgages, etc.  Cheers!

[Marco Van Basten]

1 hour ago, Parsad said:

 

Yup.  I donate every year personally to 8 organizations at Christmas...that's why I always mention remembering to give at Christmas time on TCOBF...especially Food Banks around the world are really struggling. 

 

Here in North America, there are 50%+ increases in demand at pretty much every food bank in every major city in the last 2 years!  Many are on the brink of survival if they do not get more government/corporate support or donations returning to normal post-Pandemic. 

 

A recent study showed that 25% of the population in Canada faces some form of food insecurity presently with inflation, stagnant wages, too much debt, large mortgages, etc.  Cheers!

Parsad, I don't know what is going in Canada or many parts of the United States.  I do know however that in NYC today, you can get an unskilled job that will pay $21.50-$25 per hour with a 401(k), annual bonus, medical insurance, dental insurance, and paid vacation and sick days.  With this kind of employment market, how can 20%+ of NYC be on food stamps is beyond me.   

[cubsfan]

1 minute ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Parsad, I don't know what is going in Canada or many parts of the United States.  I do know however that in NYC today, you can get an unskilled job that will pay $21.50-$25 per hour with a 401(k), annual bonus, medical insurance, dental insurance, and paid vacation and sick days.  With this kind of employment market, how can 20%+ of NYC be on food stamps is beyond me.   

 

That's what bothers me.  I drive by a local food bank on my way to my gym. I see way more new or late model cars than I thought I would. It's also obvious that Minnesota has revealed huge abuses in welfare/food programs.  

[Parsad]

9 minutes ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Parsad, I don't know what is going in Canada or many parts of the United States.  I do know however that in NYC today, you can get an unskilled job that will pay $21.50-$25 per hour with a 401(k), annual bonus, medical insurance, dental insurance, and paid vacation and sick days.  With this kind of employment market, how can 20%+ of NYC be on food stamps is beyond me.   

 

6 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

 

That's what bothers me.  I drive by a local food bank on my way to my gym. I see way more new or late model cars than I thought I would. It's also obvious that Minnesota has revealed huge abuses in welfare/food programs.  

 

Cost of living when you include rent/mortgage costs eat up a good chunk of income compared to the past in most major cities in NA.  Combine that with debt loads on auto, credit cards, HELOCs, etc post-Pandemic, a lot of people have gotten themselves into problems. 

 

I'm less concerned about the able-bodied, irresponsible adults as I am the vulnerable children, seniors, disabled, etc.  And a lot of them are having to use food banks/soup kitchens in the last few years compared to the last couple of decades. 

 

I can't imagine my niece and nephew going to school hungry, but about 10% of school children do not eat a proper breakfast or lunch in Vancouver.   Some of these children are probably their friends.  Cheers!

[gfp]

46 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

 

That's what bothers me.  I drive by a local food bank on my way to my gym. I see way more new or late model cars than I thought I would. It's also obvious that Minnesota has revealed huge abuses in welfare/food programs.  

 

It's crazy in New Orleans - you drive through the projects (or whatever their official name is now) and almost every vehicle parked there is way nicer and newer (and cleaner) than mine.  We have other vehicles, but I often choose to drive a 1998 tacoma with a manual transmission and a faded clear coat and I think the folks on the dole in the projects actually feel bad for me at the stop lights.  

[Marco Van Basten]

22 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

 

Cost of living when you include rent/mortgage costs eat up a good chunk of income compared to the past in most major cities in NA.  Combine that with debt loads on auto, credit cards, HELOCs, etc post-Pandemic, a lot of people have gotten themselves into problems. 

 

I'm less concerned about the able-bodied, irresponsible adults as I am the vulnerable children, seniors, disabled, etc.  And a lot of them are having to use food banks/soup kitchens in the last few years compared to the last couple of decades. 

 

I can't imagine my niece and nephew going to school hungry, but about 10% of school children do not eat a proper breakfast or lunch in Vancouver.   Some of these children are probably their friends.  Cheers!

Parsad, with all due respect, this wage is more than adequate to live well in NYC.  Yes, you cannot live in Manhattan, but you can live in Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island or Queens.  You will not be able to afford an apple phone, but you will be able to afford a cheap cell phone.  Can one person support a family of four on this?  No, but two people working that job and saving from 18-30 can indeed get married, and have one spouse stay home and the other work.  Now if people choose to spend freely, hardly save anything and then expect one person working an unskilled job to support a family of four, then that does not work.  

[Parsad]

11 minutes ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Parsad, with all due respect, this wage is more than adequate to live well in NYC.  Yes, you cannot live in Manhattan, but you can live in Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island or Queens.  You will not be able to afford an apple phone, but you will be able to afford a cheap cell phone.  Can one person support a family of four on this?  No, but two people working that job and saving from 18-30 can indeed get married, and have one spouse stay home and the other work.  Now if people choose to spend freely, hardly save anything and then expect one person working an unskilled job to support a family of four, then that does not work.  

 

I don't disagree with you.  The common user is a single parent with children, street youth, small families with single/low dual incomes, refugees, immigrants, single seniors, disabled with low disability income, etc.  But food banks are seeing more people with decent incomes as well. 

 

Now if that is due to irresponsibility or circumstance, you can decide if you want to donate or not...I'm not asking people to donate only to food banks...I'm just mentioning that there is a greater need at the moment.  Cheers!

[crs223]

youtube — too much entertainment and knowledge to give up for life.  would need actuary tables for a proper analysis though…

 

 

Edited March 9 by crs223

[bargainman]

On 3/4/2026 at 10:29 PM, Parsad said:

 

Kerry Gold Irish Butter...have not been able to find a suitable replacement anywhere in Canada or the U.S....bye-bye $10K!

 

Visa or Mastercard...if I had to shun both and go to Amex...probably turn the $10K away.  Just not enough places take Amex.

 

Cheers!

 

The costco kirkland brand grassfed butter is pretty good, but not sure if that's available in Canada due to the trade dairy restrictions.

 

Visa or MC is tricky, I guess you could do interac for those not accepting Amex?

[bargainman]

On 3/5/2026 at 7:08 AM, bizaro86 said:

 

That's a good one. Westjet has dominant market share at my home airport, I make at least 5 trips a year direct where I'd otherwise have to connect. That easily saves me $10k worth of time so I wouldn't take $10k to stop using them.

 

Interesting how they have a local moat.  I do my best to avoid westjet when I can, they totally screwed us over a few years ago when their mechanics went on strike right at the worst time ("it was not planned that way..." sure....).  Cancelled our flight at 2:30 am for a morning flight and left us  scrambling after not having travelled for years due to covid.  Not impressed...

[bargainman]

On 3/5/2026 at 12:29 PM, RichardGibbons said:

Funny that Google's on all these lists. I own shares of Google, but actually switched away from Google search to DuckDuckGo about a year ago after this.

 

My reasoning is that my model of reality is based, to a significant degree, on the Internet. With those image generation results, it's pretty clear that Google was deliberately inserting ideological bias into its results. Essentially, it wanted to feed me a distorted view of reality to suit its own biases. That they were doing that was quite obvious with those pictures, but they could quite easily do it in an effectively undetectable way throughout their business. So, to attempt to maintain an accurate model of reality, I switched.

 

I'd guess, for me, duckduckgo is sufficient for about 98% of searches. It fails me frequently on images and constantly on maps (which is Apple maps).

 

For me, I think the $10K answer would be Windows--I could switch, but the effort isn't worth $10K, ditching both Visa/MC, and that's probably about it. (That said, Windows itself could actually make me switch away, if future versions of the OS destroy it to an extent that barriers to switching fall, and they've certainly been trending in that direction.)

 

Hmm, I suspect you'd be fine with linux if you really wanted to switch, unless it's because of gaming?

 

Yeah, every product and now LLM has its view of the world, sometimes driven by the people at the company and sometimes by other pressures on that company.  It's good to have different perspectives.  When LLMs are trained there's a lot that goes into trying to get 'diverse' data, and yes that's a loaded term, but a lot of it is just making sure the data is in different places in an embedding space, and if there are data points under represented they might need to be amplified to help the descent gradient.  Then of course there's inference time stuff that happens, and that's probably what you're referring to.  But everyone does it, it's a matter of what degree.

 

I'm curious what duckduckgo does.  I wonder if there's a 'political/sosiologiac' heatmap rating for LLMs, I wouldn't be surprised if there was one.

[bargainman]

On 3/5/2026 at 7:56 AM, Parsad said:

 

If you are in, you are in...no charge!  

 

Although I would like to give up the Politics thread for $10K!    Cheers!

 

oof.  everytime I get a notification from one of the people I follow that they posted in that thread I can't help but look, and boy it goes south quickly.  I have no idea how you all hang out in there.  Talk about the best way to make reasonable smart nice people into polarized irrational nuts... get them to talk about politics and only politics!  LOL.  sorry, not you Parsad  

[bargainman]

On 3/5/2026 at 3:31 AM, Sweet said:

 

Whats the incentive for a company to do only Visa or Mastercard and not both?

 

That's how Costco rolls with just about everything.  THey tell the supplier, "hey, you want all our customer's business?  We'll give it to one supplier, make us an offer!".  They had amex exclusively for years, then switched to Visa which gave some better benefits (higher percentage refund for gas, costco purchases and some others.  Although seeme like everyone's dropped the extended warranty )

[bizaro86]

1 hour ago, bargainman said:

 

Interesting how they have a local moat.  I do my best to avoid westjet when I can, they totally screwed us over a few years ago when their mechanics went on strike right at the worst time ("it was not planned that way..." sure....).  Cancelled our flight at 2:30 am for a morning flight and left us  scrambling after not having travelled for years due to covid.  Not impressed...

 

Westjet is definitely not perfect customer service wise, but I was various flavours of Air Canada elite for years, and they are also not perfect. Basically when things go badly the airlines will look out for the airlines and there isn't much to pick between them on that front, imo. But the time savings I get on not connecting is real and most of the time things are fine. Also by consolidating flying on one carrier you end up with status which helps.

 

I was thinking about my picks above, and I think most of them are based on time savings from geography.

 

I could switch back to AC/United but I'd have to make at least 10 connections/year. At 3 hours/connection (extra flying time plus connection time) that's 30 hours per year. Even if you only use $50/hour that's $1500/year which npv's over $10k.

 

Same thing with my Cob's bread example. It isn't because it's the best bread in the whole world (although it is good) it's because its close. I save probably 5-10 minutes per trip, 2-3 times per week, which is somewhere between 8-26 hours per year. The npv of that time savings plus something for quality difference gets me over $10k.

 

 

[bargainman]

Apparently I'm not the only one westjet screws over

 

 

I guess this is 'common' in the industry. 

 

[flesh]

Second on YouTube. I I had to, I’d pay 10k for a lifetime membership w no ads. 
 

Id also pay an extra 10k for an electric dirt bike with a solid state battery, so 20k for a dirt bike. Hopefully we’ll have them within a few years. Make it a dual sport. No maintenance, 100k recharges. Double the power and half the weight on the engine/battery weight. No clutch needed. Left hand rear brake standard. Instant torque. Last forever. 80% percent charge in 10 minutes. Roughly twice the total miles per charge bs a tank of gas in most dirt bikes. Perfect traction control. Programmable horsepower curve. Much quieter. 
 

When this hits cars it’s all over from a performance but not cost perspective. 

Edited March 30 by flesh