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HamsterHookah

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Posts posted by HamsterHookah

  1. 13 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    Losing "billions", assuming you mean several (less than ten) billion is still a hell of a lot less than $75 billion in stock buybacks on top of record profits. Show your work and actually consider the numbers. I looked up Chevron and Exxon's financial performance over the last few years and they both posted profits - not losses - over FY21 and FY22. FY20 did have losses, but they were FAR shadowed by profits in 21 and 22. This doesn't jibe, ya turkey. 

    Wow lol. When I think of successful American business, I certainly think of "lawful, ethical, and fair", and definitely not regulatory capture, fraud, and briber-i-mean-lobbying. This is impressively wide-eyed, even for you Chrispy lol

    So where were you when Exxon lost an historic $20 billion dollars (article from 8 quarters ago, as I mentioned: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pandemic-pushes-exxon-historic-annual-loss-20-bln-cut-shale-value-2021-02-02/)? 

    Were you offering to pay double for gas to be a good guy and take on some of the loss? Why not if you expect a business to do so for you out of hand (and not because there are advantageous reasons for doing so, like positive customer brand and loyalty, etc.)

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  2. 2 minutes ago, bolverk said:

     

    I just read that.

    I hope there is some investigation going on right now because this seems like a super entertaining and interesting long con plot by a clever group, be it animal rights or anarchists' or animal traffickers.

    Someone needs to write the story and sell it to netflix

  3. 7 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    Why would you not take it if it’s an extremely low percentage that die from vaccine complications?

    why would it be blindly taking it if you do?

    In the case of the covid vaccination:

    1) I did take it. I took it because historically it is an extremely low percentage that die from vax complications. However, these are vaccinations that are created using more traditional and time-honored approaches (thus more understanding of short, medium and long term effects and issues) and that have been around for a while. That said, I still figured I'd rather keep my job and the odds are low that I'd one of the ones drawing the short straw. But I still know someone, somewhere will be drawing a short straw.

    2) Blindly taking it because it was rushed to market and there wasn't a lot of time that lapsed from creation->trials->wide public consumption. The blindly adjective meaning not being able to see with your own eyes a public response over time but trusting what institutions are saying (Government, Pharma companies, etc.).

    edit to add: I don't mean blindly as a necessarily bad thing (though I personally view it as a negative), just a description of how there wasn't visibility.

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Fuck You 6
  4. 1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Until I receive further evidence, I have not seen any "price gouging" per se.  It seems most companies are "passing along" the price increases, thereby maintaining their margins on a percentage basis, but also probably making more money on a gross basis.

    For better or worse, I think most people think "passing along price increases" is not very detestable behavior.  On the other hand, why would companies/businesses feel compelled to pass along price increases?  Especially when pretty much the entire world is going through an inflationary crisis?  Are they raising their employees wages concomitantly?  Why are businesses and their shareholders exempt from feeling this pain?  And, of course, there's no real reason to believe shareholders would actually be harmed if they just raised prices say 80% of the increased COGS.

    In a lot of businesses that are cyclical (and a lot of commodities) it is because these "boom times" make up for the "bust times" when organizations break even or lose money when looking at the longer term business model and timelines. Think of the Oil & Gas industry for example. I find it funny that people begrudge a company like Chevron/Exxon for making record profits and passing on costs instead of being patriots and taking lower profits because they can afford it right now, but were not offering to pay more for gas when it was cheaper and Chevron/Exxon were losing billions just a handful of fiscal quarters ago.

    Human beings are emotional creatures and don't realize or don't like that good business, while being lawful and ethical and fair, is not emotional.

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  5. 13 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    One of my "favorite" mountain bike youtubers is a guy named Kyle Warner.  I'm pretty sure he's pretty apolitical.  But he did get quite sick apparently from the COVID vaccine, specifically myocarditis.  There was no way of knowing for sure whether the vaccine caused or was linked to the vaccine, but he was ill-used by conservatards, possibly with his compliance.

    In any event, he's pretty much back to normal now.  Messed up story.

    Vaccine Injury is a real thing (and the DoJ has a compensation program: https://www.justice.gov/civil/vicp)

    It's baked into the formulas and data models and there is an acceptable % that will be tolerated, as with anything within a law of large numbers. Nothing is 100% safe.

    That is why it's pretty weird when people act hostile to those who don't want to just blindly take new vaccines created in a rush, especially if they are in a low-risk profile (e.g. your risk of being vaccine injured is higher than dying of Covid, in this case if you are a young, active, healthy person). Especially when the companies that created the vaccines waive any legal responsibility to any adverse effects or issues that can happen to you (e.g. you can't sue Pfizer if your loved one draws a short straw and is one of the extremely low percentage of people who die from vaccine complications).

    Edit to add: for clarity, I personally did take the two doses of the vaccination as mandated by my employer, gambling that the probability is in my favor that I would not have complications. That said I have empathy for those who made a different, personal decision. 

    • Fuck You 11
  6. On 1/25/2023 at 11:08 AM, immamac said:

    Betting that you are better at silicon than Intel is a big fucking bet. 

     

    6 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

    In the past that was true.  Intel today is a behemoth in decline.

    TSMC ran right past them on process technology, to the point where I think it is a national security issue.
    Intel continues to see the world through an x86 window, and the world has moved on to ARM and later will move to RISC-V.

    Intel is going to lose the client business (laptops) to ARM and probably eventually the data center too.  They will go down trying to sell x86 version N+1 as long as they can.  Apple did the right thing by moving on.

    Intel is in a free fall man.

    Quote

     

    Intel Corp. is forecasting one of the worst quarters in its history, touching off a broader selloff of chips companies as a slowdown in personal-computer sales ravages the industry. Late Thursday, Intel gave a sales range that missed analysts’ estimates by billions of dollars, warning that revenue could fall to the lowest quarterly level since 2010. Shares plunged 10%, the most since July, in New York. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Applied Materials Inc., Lam Research Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. declined. Semiconductor maker KLA Corp., which issued its own disappointing outlook, also slid.

    Chip companies are reeling over a steep decline in demand for PC processors that has wiped out profits and led to deep cuts across the industry. Intel’s outlook signals more pain to come. The company is eliminating jobs and slowing spending on new plants in an effort to save as much as $10 billion. It’s taking an especially large hit from losing market share to rivals…

    It was a painful admission for a company that has been attempting a multiyear comeback under Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, who took the helm in 2021. A post-pandemic downturn for Intel’s main business, PC chips, has torpedoed efforts to get the company’s financial performance back on course. Instead, it’s only losing more ground. “I’d like to remind everyone that we’re on a multiyear journey,” Gelsinger said during a conference call.

     

    And at the risk of turning Google thread into an Intel thread, but I know @TwiceHorn will appreciate the topic:

    Quote

     

    The biggest driver was exploding usage in the data center; yes, Intel missed out on mobile, but mobile computing is intertwined with cloud computing, and Intel was the chief beneficiary of the parallel growth in the latter.

    The trouble with missing mobile was threefold: first, Intel missed out on the massive volumes that would, in the long run, be important for paying off ever more expensive fabs; instead those volumes went to TSMC. Second, TSMC, fueled by the massive revenue influx that came from delivering those volumes, accelerated its march down the process curve, beating Intel by years to the very expensive and very risky EUV transition that allowed TSMC to leap ahead in performance. Third, mobile was, by necessity, at the forefront of prioritizing efficiency and performance-per-watt given the limitations of mobile devices. Today, though, efficiency and power-per-watt increasingly matter for servers, as well.

    The net result is that today it is AMD, the second supplier IBM insisted on way back at the dawn of the PC era, that makes the best data center chips thanks in part to TSMC’s process advantage, even as data center demand has slowed dramatically in the inevitable-yet-late-to-arrive semiconductor downturn we are currently experiencing, and as data center operators like AWS invest in their own ARM-based chips; Intel, meanwhile, still provides a lot of volume in PCs — thanks in part to very aggressive discounting — but the pandemic pulled forward huge amounts of PC buying: that worked to Intel’s benefit in 2020 and 2021, but now the hangover is hitting and it is a doozy.

    Intel’s Plunging Margin

    This has resulted in a triple-whammy to Intel’s earnings:

    First, volumes were down dramatically thanks to high inventories amongst OEMs (a less charitable interpretation is that Intel stuffed the channel).

    Second, prices are down thanks to Intel needing to increasingly discount to counter AMD’s total-cost-of-ownership advantage.

    Third, the largest cost of goods sold for a chip is fixed costs, the depreciation of which is incurred no matter how many chips are sold; that means that fewer chips sold for lower prices has an outsized impact on gross margins.

    Indeed, Intel’s gross margins were a shocking-for-Intel 39%

     

     

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  7. 7 hours ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

    DQA: Is this honestly any sort of deal? Seems like an attention-grabbing headline but losing a tiny bit in the middle of the desert seems to be not that concerning.

    The route was 870 miles long and the capsule is smaller than a penny.

    But what it lacks in size, the capsule makes up for in radiation. Containing the radioactive isotope cesium-137, the capsule emits the equivalent of 10 X-rays in an hour. Contact could cause burns, radiation sickness, and skin damage, and prolonged exposure could lead to cancer.

    So, what’s it even used for? Mining companies deploy these capsules as sensors to calculate things like the thickness of pipes. The mining company that managed to lose this capsule, industry giant Rio Tinto, apologized and said it was launching an investigation into the perplexing circumstances of how this tiny object fell off a truck.

  8. I know we've talked a lot the last couple of years, mostly laughing at, the iBuyers and how they lost and folded, but I read this today and I think it might put our perennial sourpuss friend Captainant in a good mood to read about the man taking it on the chin here. This is a funny story we can all get behind and enjoy:

    Quote

     

    [Individual home-flipper Raad] Yousif punches in a code and swings open the door to his most lucrative 2022 flip, a two-bedroom town home in this development. He unloaded it last spring, just as the market was starting to sink. Big institutions from Silicon Valley and Wall Street were still on a buying binge, at times making unbelievable offers sight unseen. In this case a company called Opendoor Technologies Inc. in April paid $265,000—$30,000 above the five other bidders, he says.

    Opendoor is now asking $218,000, a $47,000 loss, not including its fees and renovation expenses. But even that asking price is too high, Yousif says. After four price cuts, he smells blood. He’s eager to buy back the home he once owned. “It’s always about the right number,” he says. 

    Yes if you find a market maker who is bad at market making, you should sell to them high and buy back low, like Yousif did. A market maker like that won’t last long, and many iBuyers didn’t, though Opendoor is still in the business. But you have to take advantage while you can. And there’s this:

    Laurie Tayrien, a former schoolteacher, and her husband, Rick, love the new market. They just snapped up the deal of a lifetime for a Phoenix three-bedroom built in the 1980s. Surrounded by golf courses, below a mountain vista, it was quite an upgrade from their previous home, in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

    In November the Tayriens paid $485,000 for what they call “their forever home.” In June the seller, Opendoor, had paid $646,800. That’s a 25% loss in just five months. …

    The couple are busy on a $50,000 renovation of their kitchen, where plywood counters wait to be topped in quartz. The Tayriens have the cash in part because of a bungled bet by a big institution. “They rode a wave, and it’s crashing on them,” Laurie says. “It’s a corporation. I don’t feel bad for them.”

    Of course not! What a feel-good financial story. “Giant corporations swooped into the market for homes and gave everyone cheap houses, because they were dumb.” In general, people tend to be suspicious of financial intermediation, because the intermediaries are making money and it feels like that must be at your expense. But here the intermediaries were losing money, and that had to be good for someone.

     

    Bolded the parts that I think will make captainant smile.

    • Haha 1
  9. 9 minutes ago, GenXer said:

    Nope. Freeware for the introduction, and then I had him demonstrate his capability. I taught him advanced things from there. I gave him an assignment that used those more advanced things. Total cost was $0 and some of my time. Infinite ROI.

    You should have your kids also look at Miro. It’s great for brainstorming and their templates are quite useful. It’s decent for creating workflows. Lucidchart is really good for workflows. If they have any interest in software development, I suggest Axure for building prototypes.

    I meant I hope you weren't paying an arm and a leg for tuition at a clearly inferior and insufficient private school. That would be worse than a bad free education, probably.

    I have just started using Miro boards myself, now that you say that, at work and like it a lot!

    • Like 1
  10. On 1/28/2023 at 9:25 PM, longhornmatt said:

    The highest grossing and most critically acclaimed movie of the last year (few years?) was a sequel to Top Gun which copied its beginning directly from the original Top Gun and copied its ending directly from the ending to Star Wars.   And it was received as a refreshing departure from modern formulaic Hollywood simply because it used practical effects, real locations, and told a story unironically (and it was pretty awesome, to be fair).  

    If anything, I expect the studios to lean even harder into old IP for a while.  The bar for making money with established IP is lower and easier to clear than it’s ever been.  You can just literally copy the old show instead of trying to put a new spin on it, and you’ll probably make the audience happier than anything new would.  If they didn’t already learn that lesson from The Force Awakens vs. other Star Wars sequels, surely they are about to get it now after Top Gun.  

    That’s what makes this show and reinventing Scooby Doo without Scooby Doo so weird.  Read the room.  

    I am fascinated by the economics of the industry and movies and I think we've all read famous case studies of movies that completely bomb (Too many to name) or nearly bankrupt studios (Fantasia) and maybe even have heard of the ones that come out of nowhere and make a ton of money (Blair Witch Project). More recently Cameron was quoted as saying Avatar 2 needed to make $2bn globally to make a profit, which is absurd (and it did).

    I was reading a blurb about this small budget film.

    Quote

     

    Skinamarink (2022) 

    Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

     

    https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt21307994/

    Filmed for $15,000 budget I think I read and it's at a $1.8mm box office. 1200x return. Amazing story. I love to see it. 

    But the reality is that with streaming, studios aren't going to greenlight as many films as they will movies, as Scorsese would say.

  11. 8 minutes ago, GenXer said:

    Stepdad checking in. My stepson attended a private christian elementary school in north Dallas from 1st - 4th grade.

    I went to a parent / teacher night and looked around the room. It was filled with christian mythology and homework was full of who-begat-who. Worthless trivia that doesn’t add value. I asked the woman who was teaching computer literacy about windows explorer. I expected the curriculum to discuss file management. She said “sure, we show them the internet!” I looked at her quizzically and asked if she knew the difference between internet explorer and windows explorer. Blank stare from her.

    I started teaching my stepson one of the windows products each summer. I gave him assignments like “we just went on vacation to hawaii - now pretend you’re a travel agent trying to sell us a vacation - do a presentation in powerpoint. Or catalog my dvd collection - tag each dvd by genre - sort them by X. I told him he should become an expert on excel.

    Soon thereafter, I moved us into the Plano West school district. He took a junior level class on Excel and other software. He was bored by it because I taught him everything through the years. He was in Jr ROTC in high school, Air Force ROTC at Tech, and is now a 1st Lieutenant in the Air Force. He’s a cost analyst on AF projects. He built a 20 worksheet excel spreadsheet full of formulas to analyze his project. He was so proud to describe it to me. There’s a special satisfaction when your kid listens to you and acknowledges the advice you gave them was solid.

    In my experience, public school in a good district is a better route than private schools. Supplement your kid’s education with things that you think will best position them for success.

    Your experience is interesting, but it's just that-- your experience. Specifically, your private school sounds like it sucks bad and you were right to get out and go to a better school. Sounds like it worked out fantastic for your kiddo and you are a proud papa!

    I, too, have had kids in the West Plano (Ohio/Tulane is where we lived) school district and I was pretty disappointed. The private schools we look at go above and beyond what you described you had to do supplementary at home-- I hope you weren't paying an arm and leg for that "privilege" to have to teach your kids basic stuff.

    Beyond office 365 proficiency (creating decks in ppt/google and spreadsheets), my middle school kids were tasked with learning new software like Canva and Figma which I thought were cool because they were teaching me new things. YMMV

  12. 32 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    Dude, you are notorious for not providing links.

    See below: 

    Now, I don't doubt the veracity of your information, but it is common courtesy to provide one. And, before you say something like "This was from a newsletter!" those emails always include links.

    Sorry. Yea it was from an email newsletter and I don't click into them for links usually but here you go, from NYT:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/us/memphis-officer-suspended-tyre-nichols.html

  13. 4 minutes ago, DougO said:

    We seem to be in agreement on the first  paragraph. As far as the second paragraph that "alternative" is absolutely the point I have been making. The elite qbs are extremely rare. It's extremely unlikely that one will drop in your lap. There are ways to win without them. So do that, instead of everybody crying about not having a Burrow or Mahomes and being stuck with only an above average qb.

    Fair enough. LA Rams being 4-12 this year is a miserable experience for fans, but they have the Super Bowl season of last year to keep them warm. I think Cowboys nation would buy 5 years of being 4-12 for one Super Bowl season after 28 years, so I can get on board.

  14. 1 minute ago, Hermanator said:

    To see why the Cowboys are perennial underachievers and why the Eagles are going to their third Super Bowl with their third completely separate coach / quarterback combo you really only have to look at one thing. The Eagles utilize every possible avenue and kick over every possible stone to add talent to their team. They felt they needed a receiver so they made the deal for AJ Brown. During the season they made deals for Robert Quinn and they added Suh off the couch. They've identified free agents that would fit with system.

    The Cowboys don't put any of that work in. They've had good drafts but they don't go out and get a big free agent and they don't work all these trades. They could have made any of these deals or signings the Eagles did but the Eagles just flat out work the Joneses. That's the huge difference. 

    Do you think they could work deals and do things because they have more capital to play with? I ask without having gone to spotrac or sporting news to see the eagles salary cap and money they had available last off season, but assume it goes back to what we've been saying: they have a rookie deal QB so they can flexibly add to a myriad of other positions. We have Dak on a huge contract and so our secondary was swiss cheese.

  15. 9 minutes ago, Goofyboy said:

    Have you guys been following the rumors around this? Lastest is that Tyre was sleeping with one of the cops baby mommas… and apparently cop sent a pic of Tyre after he got beat down to said lady.
    If true, shouldn’t they be charged with first degree murder? Haley is the cop in question.

    Probably not the most responsible thing to spread unsubstantiated rumors, right? At least provide some sort of link or source.

    • Hook 'Em 1
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  16. 4 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

    What was reported at the time he was hired and again reiterated by David Moore on the ticket this morning is Jerry told McCarthy that Moore is being retained as the OC because Dak really lobbied for him and McCarthy, wanting the job, said sure. 

    What is being reported this morning (from the Dallas Morning News, literally reported this morning) is this below. I guess revisionist history for damage control?

    When the offensive coordinator’s job opened up at the end of the 2018 season, Prescott lobbied for Moore to get the job. McCarthy had never worked with Moore when he took over as the Cowboys’ head coach in January 2020. Moore wasn’t part of the same coaching tree, yet McCarthy made the decision to keep him on as offensive coordinator.

    Why? Chris Petersen was Moore’s college coach. McCarthy remembered how highly Petersen thought of Moore as a player and his football mind coming out of Boise State.

    McCarthy also saw how Prescott had developed from his rookie season and quickly recognized the bond the quarterback had forged with Moore. When he sat down and spoke with Moore, he was convinced it was best for the Cowboys for Moore to stay.

    “I thought it was clearly the best thing for Dak, and this is what I’ve been telling Dak when we talk football,’’ McCarthy said after taking over as the Cowboys’ coach. “This is his offense. I want him to have the same offense his whole career.’’

  17. 13 minutes ago, Nivek said:

    Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important and we have issues with these non-objectionable subjects.   My kids attend Oak Forest Elm, and one is slated to attend Frank Black Middle School.   Only to find out they have 1 special ed teacher and 5 aids for ~1300 kids.   My oldest has LDs, how the fuck is thing going to work?  In the intro a week or so ago, the rep from FBMS came in and told us we needed to "let go" and "not to contact the teachers directly - as they won't respond", only the kids should contact them.   This sounds like the same strategy a child sex abuse cult would use.  

    My kids kicked ass at virtual school because we could be involved and keep them on task.   So much of the material we see is behind schedule, making it a challenge for us as parents to stay involved or assist in a timely manner.   

    I did not like how they taught about slavery/racism nor how they wanted to introduce the Holocaust.   

     

     

    This would be concerning for me as well. I know a lot of people are content to outsource and let the public/government raise and develop their kids, but that is too much influence and control.

    My kids are encouraged to email their teachers with questions on assignments or grades or what have you's, but the mandate is that the parent is CC'ed on every email a teacher and student engage with. That should be the norm as children are minors. 

    On the other hand, I can see it from the public school educators POV as well. They are underpaid and overworked with a mixed bag of children on a variety of different personalities and behaviors with a mixed bag of positive/negative parenting and home influence. They can't be 1x1 with every student's parents and even if they wanted they have their hands tied by administration and resource constraints.

    Parents wanting more from a public school is like going to McDonald's and expecting a nice steak and a server who knows the wine list and is there to maximize your experience. At some point you have to be realistic and set your expectations correctly or vote with your feet.

    And at the risk of sounding like someone stumping for private schools-- trust me private schools have their own warts and suck too. There is no such thing as a perfect school unless you have the unlimited resources and the superhuman ability to homeschool.

  18. 6 minutes ago, DougO said:

    You could limit it to top 5, and the success rate is still not that good. But then you still have to get a top 5 draft pick.

    My point is the Cowboys have needed to look at rebuilding differently. Instead of being scared to scar the fan base or lose forecasted revenue which would hurt the valuation of the team and the net worth of the owners, the Cowboys needed to strategically tank. That's the point, because it seems like trying to win it all with an above average team built organically is a fool's errand that has a ceiling of a good regular season and mediocre playoff run, usually one and done. This is what the data says of the Cowboys for the last 3 decades, not just my opinion today.

    It seems like you have to give yourself a chip and a chair to get the top 10 draft pick to even be in the game. The alternative is to have an average/above-average QB like Dak and you have to mortgage the entire future by building via FA and having no draft capital in the future (e.g. LA Rams selling their organization's soul for the Super Bowl last year). And even then it's a razors edge of luck/officiating-- I think LA Rams won 3 playoff games (Divisional, Championship and Super Bowl) by a total of 9 points (3 points each).

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