What are /r/business' favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

1. "Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down" by J.E. Gordon

2. "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson

3. "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson

4. "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom

5. "Merchants of Doubt" by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes

6. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

7. "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future" by Peter Thiel

8. The "Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov

Why is Apple manipulating the Robinshood reviews? How can RH have a 4.1 on Apple app store?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185

Versus on the Google Play store it has a 1.1.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.robinhood.android&hl=en_US&gl=US

Why is Apple censoring?

I have a car with navigation and would rather use Android auto because Google maps is superior in every way. Voice commands for navigation, real time traffic updates and most times I get in the car and launch android auto it already knows where I'm headed based on my calendar/schedule.

The only reason I would see using the built in nav is sometimes they show the speed limit, which Google doesn't do yet.

edit: okay I get it, people like waze. When waze is a supported android auto app and i can use it on my built in car media system i'll give it another shot. I'm not going to use my phone in a cradle just for waze, when i can use my steering wheel buttons to control google maps right on the screen of my car stereo via android auto. Apple has a similar setup called Apple Play, see play store for Android auto: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.projection.gearhead if you do not know what i'm talking about.

The use of "public domain" here confused me. My understanding was that by committing something to the public domain you give up your claim to its copyright, which would be something of a barrier to suing over anything but the one fraudulent letter.

However, while writing a comment to that effect I read the actual complaint:

> 36. At no time did Ms. Highsmith intend to abandon her rights in her photographs, including any rights of attribution or rights to control the terms of use for her photographs, nor was it ever her intent to enable third parties to purport to sell licenses for her photographs, or send threating letters to people who used her photos.

> 38. The agreement that Ms. Highsmith signed with the Library in November 1991 specifically addressed attribution issues.

So who knows. That sounds more like a Creative Commons license (a decade before they were called that, which might explain the confusing use of public domain to describe it). Any actual lawyers in the house?

That was just the automated filter. You can see they are there and why Robinhood has a 1.1 on Google Play Store.

Here

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.robinhood.android&hl=en_US&gl=US

The problem is Apple. Robinhood has a 4.1 on the App store. I do not agree with this. They are actual people giving the 1 star so do not think Apple should be removing, IMO.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185

This study by consumer reports shows that Camry in 7th place.

However, as someone who works for an OEM in the automotive industry, I don't think either study is right. Modern cars are so complex and so global it's exceedingly difficult to truly measure anything being "more American" than anything else.

If someone really wants to purchase a car from an "American" OEM, the only real argument left is that they're supporting all of the indirect jobs associated with the car: Engineering and development, business, marketing, etc. Simply put, the Big three employ more people in the US than other OEMs if that's your measure of "American".

That being said, as a consumer you should do your research and buy the car you like. Don't buy a big three vehicle because you feel you have to buy American, just like you shouldn't buy a car just because it's Japanese or German. If the big three, or anyone else, don't make a car you like that's their fault.

I listened to that just this week myself - here's a link to the NPR Planet Money podcast in question.

It's all about their "we're a sports team, not a family" culture, how it arose, and interviews with employees there, including the hiring manager who implemented it.

I think this soundbite puts a bit too much of a positive spin on it, though - most employers don't treat employees like members of their family, but neither does Netflix. Netflix emphasise that they expect the best of their employees, and that every employee is expendable. So it's questionable how much better Netflix are treating their employees - they're just being honest about it.

I'm not sure what a normal percentage is for R&D, but 45% of their expenses were from R&D. http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials

To your point, it's not just the cars; It's the battery tech.

IBM are so hardcore patent trolls, that they event tried to patent patent-trolling.

https://slashdot.org/story/11/01/02/1534223/ibm-files-the-patent-troll-patent

Lists like this are total nonsense. Zero to One, for example, was published after musk had established himself and is more of a favor for his friend Peter Thiel than him actually admitting he is where he is today because of it.

Also, we are talking about a guy that started SpaceX after reading a book about rockets. The guy is a genius with the drive to apply his intelligence to create change in the world.

I can assure you that Lord of The Flies did not help him reach success.

This is simple.

If it turns out to be true and widespread, the money I was reserving for a new Series 9 is going elsewhere.

There was a whole book written about the subject: The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. It's an excellent book, well-researched and fascinating to read.

In short, incumbents (large successful companies) often focus on incremental change, but don't react fast enough when change is disruptive. Initially the new market that the disruptive change creates is too small to be interesting, and their focus on existing customers may focus their priorities away from this new opportunity. When they finally realize the threat, it is often too late for them to acquire the new customer base, experience and technology to catch up.

Edit: fixed a sentence.

Way to plagiarize by blatantly copy and pasting someone else's words.

http://gizmodo.com/5806227/did-you-know-microsoft-makes-five-times-more-money-from-android-than-from-windows-phone?comment=39561988#comments

At least provide the source. ಠ_ಠ

Kleargear will probably go bankrupt before too long. They've already locked down their social media. Anyone who googles this company before buying will see nothing but stories like this one, but I guess they can survive for a while on existing customers.

Right so did McDonald's, and so did Caterpillar and Arby's parent company, and Harley Davidson.

I don't think people realize that we were hours away from a hundred millions Americans missing payroll and an entire collapse of our society.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/business/economy/02fed.html

The financiers put in $17m--they probably want to do more than break even :) I wonder how much liquid wealth the founders got out of the deal.

What's more, QPSA's market cap is just $150M. I don't know much about M&A but this deal looks strange. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=QPSA

Bullshit. The thing got media attention, people try it, and they don't come back.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tsu.co

Wanna see another social network in the process of failing? Check out Ello

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ello.co

This is for professional/corporate use. Big studios that require lots of graphic rendering. The article is clickbate. 1.5TB of RAM is $12k on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/24x64GB-DDR4-2133-PC4-17000-Upgrade-Poweredge/dp/B01N5M3GAK.

So a $15k upgrade for an Apple Studio machine is not crazy.

He is not "absolutely right". Consumer Reports 2015 car maker reliability survey ranks VW as about average. source

While the multiple driver protests are indicative of employee dissent at Uber, I don't think it's fair for these articles to criticize Uber's policies without a context. For example, the data suggest UberX drivers make more money than taxi drivers in both New York City and San Francisco.

Why isn't anyone writing any articles on the plight of of the average overworked and undercompensated taxi driver?

>Uber’s attitude is that drivers are free to stop working if they are dissatisfied, but for drivers like Arman who’ve invested serious money in their cars, quitting isn’t an option.

Why can't he quit? This is only true if the alternative to working for Uber is being unemployed or working in a job with worse pay and conditions. And I'm confused why drivers can't work for Lyft or Sidecar instead?

No company should be exempt from valid criticism about their employment policies but these articles feel too much like rabble-rousing to me.

i don't believe for a second that wall street is livid. i think they're just embarrassed these guys got outed. Wall street is best characterized by the film The Big Short =:-(

Not exactly. Walmart as a physical store is limited by the shelf space. Amazon is not. Amazon can offer everything from a $2000 Waterman fountain pen to a $4 pack of Bics.

Here's one.

It's actually pretty common. They start off selling consoles at a loss, then make it up with licensing for the games. Then as parts get cheaper, they can start making some profit. Hell, a few places -- including the air force --were buying PS3s to use as computing clusters because they were way cheaper than similarly-powerful hardware designed for it (not anymore, of course, since they removed the Other OS option). The Wii was an anomaly in that Nintendo was never not making a profit on them, but they kind of cheated by using last-gen parts; it's just a Gamecube with a wagglestick, which is great for production costs.

I just read an article in a Norwegian newspaper saying the number of employees who spontaneously walked out was 1,500

The people who walked out were mostly MeeGo and Symbian developers. In addition, they are announcing massive cuts in R&D. These people aren't after using a bloody operating system. They want to create them, and Nokia is no longer a viable place to do so.

Whoa, this is a perfect case study of what the research shows are the effects of employer brand: working for lower pay at a strong brand (Uber) instead of a weaker brand for higher pay (Zenefits) as an investment into your future higher earnings at a different company (Google/Apple). I love it when that happens!

I wrote a blog post on the research showing the negative correlation between working at a strong employer brand currently and your salary and the positive correlation between working at a strong employer brand in the past and your salary.

You can check out the HN thread for greater discussion of the affair and state of online journalism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175119

The insights seem to focus on the lack of revenue from advertisements, as we're seeing increasing number of sites close altogether due to a lack of revenue from ads. One insight from that thread:

> The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad. For certain consumer sites, that's a survivable problem. For example, Budweiser's ads aren't intended to make a sale, but rather to remind people of the brand. However, for many tech companies they don't have the funds to do brand-oriented ads. Their ads need to result in clicks and purchases. And that's just not happening on pure websites.

Another:

> Oddly enough, the reason these folks are failing is that Google's CPC (the money they get for an advertising "click") has gone down Year over Year for the last 13 quarters. What that means is that if your web site depended on advertising from Google (and most do), and your traffic remained constant, you have seen a 33% drop in gross revenue over that same period.

Another anecdote:

> Absolutely. I run a rather large (non-tech) site that doubled in traffic from Feb 2015 vs. Feb 2014 and AdSense revenues were actually down about 6% year over year. Uniques and pageviews were way up, click-through rate was near constant, but CPC got clobbered. It's incredibly frustrating and I can only imagine we'll see a great thinning of the herd across verticals very soon.

Also, suspend might hint of a temporary hiatus till it gets resolved, but reading the founder's blog, it's pretty clear it ain't coming back: "Gigaom is winding down and its assets are now controlled by the company’s lenders." - http://om.co/2015/03/09/a-statement-about-gigaom/

Are you suggesting that a CEO is not vital to a corporation's mechanics? This rock analogy is a terrible misuse of an analogy (as most are). The rock does not affect your health in any way whereas it can be argued very easily that the performance of a CEO affects the health of the company in many ways.

While I agree that measuring a CEO's performance is very subjective to the person doing the measuring and their existing bias, but that does not mean said CEO's performance is a fabrication in its entirety.

The bottom line is that the market for medical products is experiencing an increase in demand like magnumix said. The only way to evaluate the CEO's performance is holistically along with the company's because a CEO doesn't produce statistics that he can claim to be he is own. Does that mean he has no added value to the company? No. I suggest we evaluate the CEO's performance relative to the competitor's like real analysts.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=MCK+Competitors

I'd venture to say that he is doing a relatively "good" job. Does he deserve all of the money he made? Well, according to his contract, yes. Bit_inquisition stated that he was taking a risk by accepting this contract since he wind up making peanuts for a CEO's pay-grade. Is his pay excessive? Yes, we can all see he doesn't make what an average CEO does, or anywhere near it. But did he earn it? Absolutely. And people deserve what they are given if they truly earned it.

Currently reading Peter Thiel's Zero to One, and he discusses just that. He knew the bubble was about to burst so he got as much investment as quickly as he could for Pay Pal. $100 million dollars raised the month before the bubble burst, according to him.

Rubin: "We have this strategy where we have this Nexus program and lead device strategy. We select, around Christmas-time each year, a manufacturer to release a phone. That includes all the components to build a device. Teams from the Android team and the manufacturer huddle together in a building and create these. We don’t expect that to change. After the acquisition Motorola will be part of that bidding process and lead dev. process. Android remains open to other partners." citation

Wow, did the OP even read the article? They hired him during a dive and he turned a $29 billion loss into a $13 billion profit in two years. This article is praising the amazing job he did.

In fact, if you look at the Citigroup data, you'll see that their stock volume has increased twenty times over since he took charge. Source Citigroup did a series of splits, they didn't crash.

That is a tremendous amount of growth, a net value increase of almost two times since 2007.

>Trump hotels rank at the top.

US Weekly ranks the Chicago and NY hotel 71 and 82 respectfully. And Tripadvisor doesn't even have any Trump hotel in the top 25.

That's bullshit

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TSLA+Interactive#symbol=tsla;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

It made little to no impact and volume didn't spike outside it's usual range.

Indicating it's just natural churn.

I call total complete shout-it-from-the-mountain bullshit on the CEO. When their profit margins grew faster than industry average how could you not know. Most reputable companies have their own inspectors and employees in China just for this. They also test their products in their own countries to keep everyone honest.

Wait for the class actions to start against them and see what the cost to replace existing flooring and labor will do to that company.

For those that care. Have a look at the original research about this back from 2013 which was the basis for the 60 minutes piece. Xuhua Zhou from Seeking Alpha. Registration required.

Part 1: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1513142-illegal-products-could-spell-big-trouble-at-lumber-liquidators

Part II: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1517322-lumber-liquidators-managements-silence-and-brokers-rebuttal-may-validate-the-worst-fear

How to find: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20048963-12.html

Samsung R580 here and no sign of it.

http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/consumer/computer-peripherals/notebook/r-series/NP-R580-JS01HK/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

There was a "tour" in 1974 in which a Congressman "held" a single gold bullion brick and claims to have "seen" stacks (but beyond a worthless "hand heft" of that brick, no verification was done regarding even that "brick").

Prior to that, the only (purported) "audit" was back in 1953, and from my understanding even that was more of a visual "brick count" than it was anything that could be called a true audit (which would require much more extensive testing of randomly selected bullion).

I doubt we well EVER know the truth either way, but I can say that I would not be at all shocked to find that most (or even all) of it is no longer there. (Otherwise, quite seriously, why would you NOT have periodic independent physical inspection and testing audits done?)

Not only that, they bought a license of Splunk to manage their internal servers. Their IT manager then pointed the Senior management to Splunk and used it as their sole focal point of their business model improvements.

This is how you know who is making your pizza, how long it took, who is delivering it and how much time until they ring your door bell.

For a few years they did that to improve practically every process involved. Now they are using it for supply chain management.

https://www.splunk.com/en_us/resources/video.B2cGVpbzpJSydRuv7roNb7HJsmwa0WZz.html

For investing: Start with "The Wealthy Barber". Get your affairs in line. Figure out how to live within your means.

After that: "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. Most people, however, will find it dry and hard to understand because, well, it is. "Security Analysis" is another of Graham's books that is well worth the read (full disclosure: I haven't fully read Security Analysis, except a few passages. It is on my list and is sitting on my book shelf right now...)

If you can get through that: "Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies" by McKinsey & Company Inc. This book is used by universities to teach people how to value businesses.

Overall: The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is a classic. Although, these days, I stick to economics, business and investing books as my time is not what it used to be.

https://medium.com/@spencerlee/this-story-could-be-told-in-a-much-more-concise-way-that-leaves-the-band-looking-much-less-like-a-ce267daf11b7

I mostly agree with Spencer on this article. I really wish he weren't quite as venomous as he was, though, because seeing this kind of transparency from a band that doesn't owe the world anything but music is really remarkable. Sharing financial details, especially failures, is incredibly difficult. And this is kind of information you absolutely never see about small business, unless you're actually in charge of the books.

They could have managed their expenses a lot better, but they'd also have to take a downgrade in their standard of living, and it's tough spending a month living out of a van/motel 6. They're cheap options for a reason.

"Instagram" was bought by facebook for more than 1 <em>billion</em> dollars.

And that was just a couple months ago. That should make you sick.

Rand Fiskin has a tremendous post about the layoffs, state of the company, revenue expectations and more of backstory of the situation.

https://moz.com/rand/moz-returns-to-seo/

Part of which is also that they appear to actually be doing everything they can to find those laid off jobs, etc. I'm still 100% sure it sucks and I wouldn't want to be in that spot, but from the outside at least it looks like it was handled about as well as it could possibly be.

The intelligence services still have your metadata which can be even more valuable than the mail body itself.

Don't trust centralized services for messaging. Try Bitmessage.

" In the end, the best work schedule is a highly individual decision-- some people work best putting in long hours (or at least feel like they do), others need to recharge more regularly. Sometimes circumstances will force you to work long hours even when that's not your usual practice, because you need to get a particular set of data, and there's no other way to do it. Ernest Rutherford famously enforced a 6pm curfew on the researchers at the Cavendish lab when he was its director, but when they found themselves in a race to split the atom, even he relaxed that rule, and Cockcroft and Walton worked late into the night. (They won their race, as told in Brian Cathcart's <em>The Fly in the Cathedral</em>.) "

- Chad Orzel, Forbes contributor

This whole snippet is mainly for the point on Rutherford. His lab won something like 6-7 nobel prizes when he was running it, yet he enacted strict curfews to guarantee his researchers had down time and relaxation. You don't have to work yourself to the bone to be successful, yet that's not something most places recognize anymore. Feeling like you have to put in 60,70,80 hours a week at a job site to succeed is just stupid (most of the time).

There will be times when you have to put in marathons, but running marathons everyday will hinder you in the long term.

This article doesn't mention what to me is the most interesting thing: younger workers were in favor of this deal while older workers were opposed to it. From the Reuters article:

>Younger machinists had voiced strong concern that failing to vote for the contract would cost them their jobs as Boeing moves the work elsewhere. The 777X is the last major development on Boeing's books for the next 15 years. If the plane was built elsewhere, it would have slowly eroded aerospace jobs in Washington. The average wage is $29 an hour.

>Many older workers, however, had said the pension was sacred and was worth risking job loss. (emphasis added)

If younger workers reject that thinking, there may yet be hope for labor unions in the future.

Oldest dude sounds pretty bitter to me. I agree with the younger old dude. One of the biggest things you learn in college is responsibility and doing those things you don't have a passion for, and doing them well. If LW only does things he has a passion for, then either he's the president of his own company and can do whatever the hell he wants, or he's out of work. Finding the Csikszentmihalyi &quot;Flow&quot; in everything certainly is a noble goal, but not always achievable and in those instances you still need to knock it out.

According to the terms and conditions

https://www.google.com/adsense/new/localized-terms

"... you may accurately disclose the amount of Google's gross payments resulting from your use of the Services.  .."

Okay, I know this will get lost in the sea of "LOL BEST BUY SUXXXX" and "I once went in a Best Buy and stuff cost money! WTF!" comments but here it goes:

Brian Dunn resigned during an investigation into his personal behavior within the company. The techcrunch article fails to mention this. This one does.

I work at a Best Buy and this wasn't even news worthy enough for me to hear it from my general manager or any other sources. Not a big deal, move along.

Your company is doing mobile because they can charge more for it. Just like you can charge more for being a mobile dev. Take a look at these, likely imperfect, numbers from indeed.com

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Php&amp;l1=&amp;q2=Android&amp;l2=&amp;q3=Ios&amp;l3=&amp;tm=1

This negotiation is not about what you deserve it is about your best alternative action, what they need, and what you want. Write those things down, after careful thought, and be ready to discuss respectfully.

If they say they do not negotiate, I assure you they do. Just stay calm and tell them what you think is fair. If you do not get it, just smile and say that is dissapointing. Let the meeting end nicely and start looking for a new gig very privately.

They will either counteroffer in a few days or you will get a new gig, or you will quickly realize you are asking for to much when you do not get any offers.

Unless you have been working professionally for less than 3 years then sit down and shut up, you are fine.

Have anything to back that claim up? Because it's completely false. They were the number one domestic company in terms of reliability in 2014. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/10/reality-check-on-new-car-reliability/index.htm they have come very far in the last decade and driving one of their new cars or seeing that Buick alone has topped all other domestic companies since 2013 in realiabilty will prove you are wrong. Or that this year 2 GM cars were in the top 10 highest rating in consumer reports. Chrysler has also ranked in the last couple spots the last 3 years running. I get that gm made less than great cars for awhile but one needs to be able to form a new opinion given new information. Or you know, even spend just 2 minutes on Google checking it out before you bash them. I don't mean to attack you personally but so many people don't realize this and it drives me nuts. Edit: needed to finish my thoughts.

This is what I do. I have an Armory Wallet and paper backup that I can restore from. I don't electronically back up my wallet, just the blockchain, so I can recover faster if there's a crash. It's about as safe as I can get without doing the whole sign-transactions-with-an-unnetworked-laptop thing.

I'm a decade older than you (so listen to the OLDER guy).

You're absolutely right kid -- the "boring assignments" are just as you indicated, not only boring, but pointless and a really shitty way to teach.

They are NOT the equivalent of "squats" -- the brain is not composed of muscle tissue, it does not benefit from mere repetitive, redundant exercise. (And especially not from dry, textbook centered "training" -- which actually leads to a "pretense" of knowledge, and a lot of ignorance, rather than real functional -- useful -- knowledge.)

As a matter of fact, the human memory is BEST "exercised" by REAL WORLD problem solving -- much as you suggested.

Jonathan Drori gave an excellent TED talk on this.

Look up former Lotus Notes CEO "Jeff Papows" aka "Jeffrey Papows". Not only was he fired for claiming he had a doctorate degree from Pepperdine, he was also accused of greatly exaggerating his claims of military service in order to help land lucrative defense software contracts. He boosted his rank (1LT to CPT) along with claims that he flew F-4 Phantoms ... and even at previous firms would hang a flight suit on the back of his office door, leaving early at times claiming that he had Reserve duty. A whole catalog of other made-up stories including one that sounded like it was ripped right out the movie Top Gun .. with his #2 killed in an accident, and him making sure his widow was taken care of...

• http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB925274057828698316

• http://www.zdnet.com/news/background-of-lotus-chief-under-fire/95847

I've actually met another former USN guy who pulled a similar trick falsely claiming or insinuating he had been a Navy pilot. A flight helmet with his name on it plus a photo of him in the cockpit were his two mainstay props for his office. Visitors were then encouraged to understand that he had flown numerous missions during the Gulf War ... rather than the papers from his desk.

As mentioned elsewhere, if you want a GoPro buy one before Apple takes it over. Guaranteed it'll become 'cloud-~~enabled~~ required', the cool stuff will be locked away behind proprietary walls, and the new 'thin' version "won't have room" for a pesky micro-SD card.

For clarity, I was referencing Metcalfe's law about the network comment.

I think we could argue about this all night, but check out ebay stock, and look at the max range: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EBAY+Interactive#symbol=EBAY;range=my

In the spring of 1999, it already reached 23 or so dollars and it's been fluctuating in that basic area since. It's at 30 or so now. Whitman stayed until 2008 iirc.

I look at that, and it just confirms to me that it was rocketing up and up the first few years, and Whitman didn't add much. I read that as the market having priced the first mover status already and then just languishing there more or less. I realize many different interpretations are possible, but I'll just see if HP turns around. I predict it won't.

TL;DR: To get $10B valuation, AirBnB would need growth >200% per year in years 2013-2015. It's not implausible, though it's extremely high.

It's all guesswork until we see AirBnB financials, but let's do a quick back of the envelope sanity check. Let's assume AirBnB trades at forward P/E of 100 (typical for growing tech companies). To earn the valuation, it would need projected net income of

$10B / 100 = $100 M

Say it has 20% profit margin. Then it would need $500M /year revenue. Since AirBnB collects 3% of booking fees, the total bookings would need to be

$500M / 3% = $17B per year

If average room costs $70 per night, then AirBnB will need

$17B / ($70 / room*night) = 238 million room*nights per year

That's not just in US, that's anywhere in the world.

For comparison, AirBnB says that 3 million people used it in entire 2012, and that at the end of 2013 they had 300,000 open postings.

So yeah, that's a pretty high growth requirement for 2014-2015. To achieve that, the total bookings would need to sustain growth of >200% in years 2013, 2014, 2015.

9 Capital in The Twenty First Century by Thomas Piketty
8 The Art of Strategy by Dixitt and Nalebuff
7 Against the God's by Peter Bernstein
6 The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
5 The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
4 Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins
3 Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
2 The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
1 The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

... Kind of meh choices really.

This may sound harsh but your priorities are horrendous. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're in the construction field? Yet you have a $365 truck payment? Why are you driving a nice truck in a job that inherently destroys a truck? You should be driving the shittiest truck you can find that will get you from point A to point B. Second, why do you have a motorcycle you can't afford? There's $75 a month that you would save (presuming you changed your ways) plus the one time shot of income you'd get from selling it. Third, do you need a home phone? Most people I know simply have a cell phone. That brings me to point 4. Why are you paying $82 a month for phone + data? Can't you get a cheaper plan to get you out of this mess? Every little bit adds up. Finally, you're spending $50 a month more on drinking and smoking than you are on what you eat? I can't imagine how unhealthy you are with those sorts of priorities.

You have some of the worst priorities I've seen in quite some time. Despite that, I'm going to encourage you to spend $15 this month and buy Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover book. If you force yourself to read through it and heed his advice, you'll be well on your way to recovery. As it stands, you've set yourself up for failure so you need to grab the bull by the horns and get yourself out of the mess you've put yourself in.

*Edit: Just saw that you're a cable contractor. My advice still holds true.

>In the school of my dreams, teaching would work as follows: > >1. Introduce practical problem. >2. Allow each student to attempt a solution. >3. Students now have many questions. >4. Introduce theory to answer the questions. >5. Allow students to complete the problem.

You mean something like this.

> As disclosed in the Form 8-K filed on August 6, 2015, we lost $39.1 million in connection with a business e-mail compromise ("BEC") fraud involving employee impersonation

Source

Sure - Microsoft's general counsel

Additionally, according to Brad Smith, the general counsel of Microsoft, Google refused to join the group bidding on the Novell patents, instead bidding separately for the collection of patents in hopes that it could win them all for itself, just as had earlier done on a portfolio of around 1,000 patents from IBM.

And a public tweet from Microsoft's General Counsel.

I think Microsoft also released an email that further demonstrates that the Rockstar consortium wanted to work with Google. The consortium included Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony. The Google bid was just Google on their own. They wanted those patents for themselves.

P.S. I made an error above, it was the Nortell patents, not Novell of course.

I am not sure if Reddit ever used PHP. I thought it was originally written in Lisp and currently uses Python.

Facebook still uses PHP, just a special flavor of it along with some other languages.

Here's a relevant article about the ad-bots for those like me who hadn't heard about this until your comment. Doesn't look good...

> Groupon's revenue model has been revealed as unrealistic

I'm assuming you're talking about the heavy losses they have been taking? $10mm of that was in the US last year, the other $170mm was overseas where they are just ramping up. They were making money, decided to expand rapidly at the cost of losing a bunch of money, and now their losses are headed back towards zero and into profit territory.

In fact, the CEO of Groupon is in China today trying to right that ship and get it headed back in the same direction as the US business.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/10/you-spent-how-much-groupon-restructures-international-operations-as-mason-goes-to-china

Well, ok, I guess. Here is a link to what I was talking about. I find your blind disbelief in the mathematics of projecting trends into the future a bit weird, but to each their own I suppose.

Do I get the pleasure of knowing that you will eat a hat or something if Android Market does have more apps by the end of the year?

They should have applied for a software patent if they came up with a brand new idea by themselves. Except they didn't. Here's an article on the same feature in software released well before the App Store existed:

http://incopysecrets.com/fun-with-text-macros.php

In fact this kind of thing has been around since 1989 at least:

http://www.ettoresoftware.com/products/typeit4me/

>Available since 1989, TypeIt4Me is the original text expander for Mac OS.

Google 'text macros' and you'll find dozens if not hundreds of ways this feature has been implemented into different applications and operating systems. Hardly 'concrete evidence'. Why on earth should Apple be prevented from implementing it just because some guy already made it for their OS in a less effective form? Why should they pay him a penny if he didn't come up with a single original idea?

Or, you know, ignore all that cause I'm obviously just an Apple fanboy.

Every Cassandra jumps the gun on these reports just so they can get their digs in. Meanwhile: ADP reports 173,000 private-sector jobs added in May.

This chart is a little old, but it shows just how incredibly overvalued YELP is right now (for anyone thinking of buying the stock, be warned)

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2767185-yelp-large-premium-for-elusive-profits

If you're in the business of decorating, why not try using Amazon and eBay for sales? For a long time, I was unable to attract customers to my website. Despite all my spendings on advertising on social networks, clients were in no hurry to make orders. And after a while, I despaired and decided to place all my goods on eBay to get my money back. Fortunately, I had a good reputation on their platform. In about a month, I managed to sell half of my merchandise. And I directed all my efforts up to Amazon and eBay. Six months later, I had to buy a subscription at https://www.3dsellers.com/ecommerce-multichannel-customer-service to manage sales and communication with customers effectively. Thanks to automatic emails, I succeeded in creating an extensive list of regular customers. The site also began to make a profit, but Amazon and eBay are still in the lead.

I do not think the end products of our education system are improving due to the presence of unions nor do I think our unionized automakers are competitive. Ford, for example can build a factory in Brazil with several suppliers, assembly and shipping in Brazil. source

The UAW has blocked this in the united states as it would reduce their workforce. Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundia are all building plants in the southern united states (alabama, tennessee texas) even though there is an abundance of capacity and a trained workforce in Michigan.

Some of my best friends are teachers and are incredibly passionate about teaching, they teach at private montessori schools and earn less than other teachers. However they want to be effective educators and they feel like they can do a better job outside of public schools and away from teachers unions.

That data is for 2009. Their revenue last year (2010) approached $2 billion and their net income was around $500 million. That gives them a P/E ratio of about 100 (50B/500M). Given that their revenue streams are still in their infancy, it's hard to argue 100 is THAT over-valued (especially for an internet stock --Amazon has a P/E of 76).

Except that US bonds are not plummeting in value. In fact, the last 5 months while commodities have been booming, the price of treasury bonds has stayed pretty constant.
Here's a one year chart of the 10 year treasury bond (it's graphing yield, which will rise on a drop in price and vice versa) http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^TNX+Interactive#symbol=%5Etnx;range=1y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=; It's been a bit volatile, but really not all that severe, and it's been flat during that time. If you go out to a 2, 5, or 10 year view, bonds have been a great holding.

I would not buy bonds at these levels, but I wouldn't buy commodities either. Both are overbought, and will decline in a rising interest rate environment, which will be happening in the very near future.

Look into Stripe. You can handle credit cards without paying a monthly fee, just the 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee when you do receive a payment. They work with many countries and currencies now.

I did a quick search and checked a few dates and BA always was cheaper for non-stop. https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LCY,LGW,LHR,LTN,STN;t=KUL;d=2015-06-19;r=2015-06-21;so=c;q=london+to+kuala+lumpur+direct+non-stop

> That is irrelevant, and if you work in HR you should know that.

The EEOC thinks it's plenty relevent. If you think preventing discrimination and EEOC cases is not an HR priority, you are out of touch with HR issues.

> It has not been my experience that people with minor convictions are turned down very often. Not too long ago a customer of ours that is in construction told me, "if we turned down everyone with a criminal record, we'd be out of business."

Again, I agree with you. But you were discussing DUI's being blanket policy, and I completely disagree. Look at the link I provided, you need to consider the time it happened, if the crime is job related and consistent with business necessity, and if they completed all fines, convictions, and punishment. You'd have a hard time convincing me that a DUI is proof of someone's capability to be an accountant. Assuming the decision making behind that crime would lead them to be a poor employee at face value is silly. According to this, 1 in every 144 licensed drivers in the U.S. has a DUI conviction. That's a lot of talent that you could be passing up on for jobs that aren't driving related. You even mentioned yourself that you can't simply exclude people for a criminal record, but I argue that not every crime is necessarily relevant to exclude someone from certain positions. There are a few (mainly violent crimes), but not all.

Read Small Giants by Bo Burlington for more companies that treat their employees and other stakeholders with respect. Ones that don't focus on growth for the sake of growth.

Then I'll cite it as the last paragraph of step 3 in getting started. He says everything is insider trading and that's bullshit; if he had any interest in giving real advice he would define insider trading as trading with material, non-public information as it says in all the statutes.

It's the same meaningless nonsense as the paragraph before that, where he says good investors don't time the market but know when to get in and get out. Those are the same things at the level he has described them; it would take a book with actual investing advice like Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor or A Random Walk Down Wall Street for an actual view into investment.

>My point was that the industrial base of skilled workers, parts suppliers, distributors etc is shrinking

Its actually increasing. Manufacturing in the US has been actually increasing of late.

Did you happen to read Asimov's point? Because that pretty much addresses your point about asbestos. True, the politics distort the discussion, but have you read the scientific studies? They're pretty conclusive on the safety. Example

It is the same story with the activists

If Monsanto is doing good they complain that it is taking over the world

If Monsanto is doing bad, they cheer, imagining that their activism actually did something.

However, back in reality, MON is doing just fine and analysts are thinking it is a buy and hold stock.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/mon

Here is one link on HN, linking to a blog, which copy/pasted the same craigslist post. There are a few others, they are all based on the same CL post.

According to the rio517 school of research:

0. It's up to the people doubting the accuracy of a claim to check the source. They can't be expected to dig up the link, you have to do it.

1. If enough blogs copy/paste a craigslist post it becomes true.

Well, he's a software developer, who earn on average $80,000 in Vermont (link). He's sharing costs with his partner and together they live on $2,200 per month. So, anyone want to calculate his taxes and how much he is saving per year?

Edit: From the other article (link), it seems that he reckons that if he saves $300,000 by age 32 he'll only need to cover half his expenses for the rest of his days....

Typical BI story. No original content- just commenting on an actual piece of journalism which they found elsewhere on the internet. In short- it's blogspam.

Here's the original ZDNet article they're using as the sole basis for their article.

All my loans are local credit Unions, they are fucking awesome happy bankers. I must admit I have one "real bank" checking account with Charles Schwabb. Main reasons for that is refunded ATM charges at all ATM's worldwide... tested at ridiculously expensive casino ATMs but not yet tested at the $20 a pop Spearmint Rhino(NSFW?) ATMs. Plus they declined to rape me when the government forcefully exposed my rectum to all of Wall Street. For this I thanked them... and my congressman who also tried to save my innocence.

TL;DR - Credit Unions, FUCK YEAH!

Previous submissions to Reddit about MERS

Google news articles about MERS

Umm, I'm sorry, but this post is meaningless. You want to compare US corporates with Japanese corporates? Look at shareholder returns in the two coutries (using log scales, from 1984, because Yahoo Finance's Nikkei 225 didn't go back further. It also doesn't include dividends, but that isn't going to make up the difference especially considering neither country's corps are fantastic about them).

Nikkei: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^N225+Interactive#symbol=%5En225;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=; S&P: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^GSPC+Interactive#symbol=%5Egspc;range=19830817,20110829;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=;

CEOs are hired by boards of directors, who are basically proxies for the shareholders (ideally). They are not hired by a country, so things like trade deficits are meaningless as a gauge of CEO performance.

Fact is, American companies have vastly outperformed Japanese companies in this increasingly globalized economy, and the CEO pay is a partial reflection of that. Are there abuses? Certainly. I cannot fathom why shareholders tolerate the management that exists at some of these companies (Chesapeake Energy's Aubrey McClendon as an absolutely heinous example). The net wages of the totality of CEOs is higher than performance would imply. But, that needs to be taken on a case by case basis in determining excess, because there are many highly paid CEOs that are probably underpaid relative to the value that they return to their shareholders.

Per your comment history, you live in Oklahoma, and are employed. I don't know your income, but let's say it's half the median OK income (43,000 / 2 = 21,500), and that you're the only member of your household.

Oklahoma doesn't run its own exchange, so you'd buy insurance through the federal exchange at healthcare.gov. Open enrollment starts on 11/15/14, but you might be able to buy insurance there sooner if you're in a special circumstance (such as aging out of dependent status, moving, getting divorced, etc.).

With that income, you'd qualify for both lower costs for lower premiums and lower out of pocket costs. https://www.healthcare.gov/qualifying-for-lower-costs-chart/

Assuming you're male, don't smoke, just turned 26, earn $21,500, and are the only member of your household, you'd qualify for a subsidy of of $78 / month, or $936 / year. A blue cross bronze plan, after that subsidy, is $43/mo, or $516/year. That's less than 3% of your income, mostly subsidized by other taxpayers. (You can play with the numbers at the exchange--get quotes now by saying yes to a special condition on the website--then go back when open enrollment starts if none of them actually applies.)

You're right that the fine--about 1% of your income--is cheaper, assuming you use no health care whatsoever.

But as unanticipated health expenses are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and your own health will likely benefit from a physical and access to non-emergency healthcare, the insurance is worth strongly considering.

Price controls were put in by more than one administration which made raising wages illegal. At that time, since there was a general lack of workers, companies needed incentives to get and keep good employees since they could not raise wages. Those benefits were mainly pensions and medical benefits. Any decent actuary could have seen the problems coming, as life expectancy was already going up in the 60's. However, times were good and the companies and unions were being short sighted and looking at the immediate needs rather than the long term.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Wage_and_Price_Controls.aspx

Quality is just a tiny part of the equation for a clothing brand. Style and perceived image are orders of magnitude more important. For a simple cotton T shirt, there's always going to be a bottom barrel version that fits weird and will fall apart after a few wash cycles, but go just slightly above that quality level, and you'll find fabric that'll fit great and last for years. Still, price varies a ton from brand to brand despite no difference in quality. This three pack of white Hanes T shirts sells for $9 on Amazon. This identical three pack of white Hanes T shirts sells for $95. The only difference? A tiny red "Supreme" logo is added to the second set. That small logo brings the price from $9 to $95.

• "The Intelligent Investor" and "Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham (recommended by Warren Buffet). The latter could be hard if you’re not good with analysis.

• “The Innovator's Dilemma” by Clayton M. Christensen. And “The Most Important Thing Illuminated” by Howard Marks and Paul Johnson.

• Or you could start with some articles like entrepreneur.com. Here to get the very important basics of Marketing in a Feildbloom’s article.

The Lean Startup is awesome for startups, could probably teach you something about how to evaluate new companies and their strategies.

Buffett's two main investing influences were Phillip Fisher and Benjamin Graham (and their respective Bibles: Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and The Intelligent Investor [Security Analysis is a bit dated because it does not include proper discussion of the cash flow statement]). So, in essence, he buys a company priced at a value less than its intrinsic value and then holds on to that company forever (value and growth).

Compounding interest over long periods of time is key. You can avoid a lot of capital gains taxes by holding securities over a year (provided that you are making a profit within that year). Day trading, in my opinion, is no way to make money, and doing so will most certainly guarantee that you lag major indices in the long term, no matter how well you play arbitrage (because brokerage costs, taxes, etc will really eat away at your returns). I also would recommend a index mutual fund over ETFs or any other comparable security (for the lazy investor).

I have a gigantic reading list of books that I would highly recommend if you would like to begin to think like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Seth Klarman, Li Lu, Peter Lynch, or any of the other great investing minds of our age (Fidelity Magellan is of the most successfully managed mutual funds in history.) If anyone wants it, PM me and I'll send it your way.

I would go into more depth, but it is almost four AM, and I'm tired.

Invest in what you know; develop mental latticeworks

I'm not familiar with an official method but I use signal check pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blueline.signalcheck . The problem is with the signal. You may be in a band 12 area but band 2 or 4 is preferred due to typical speeds. Band 12 is to fill in the cracks and to penetrate objects like walls. So you may not easily see band 12/700mhz until you're in specific areas.

I knew I had it before the app due to actually getting service in the back of a grocery store or in my office conference room. Where others have no or poor service I have full LTE in many places. YMMV of course but over the past 16 months or so it's been a huge change.

How do I opt out of EDDM spam? I've tried contacting PennySaver, various catalogs, etc... but it just keeps coming.

edit: I'm going to try PaperKarma app.

The IPO is being pushed by the UAW, and the shares being offered will come from their stake. The UAW didn't like Fiat's bid of $5B and is using this to push the price higher.
> the UAW trust exercised a right enshrined in Chrysler's 2009 government-financed bankruptcy to go forward with an initial public offering, stepping up pressure on Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of both automakers, to reach a deal.

Story here.

Here's another.

"Statistically, a majority of accidents are survivable, but hesitation can kill or result in injury. "

oh yeah, the airplane industry would like you to believe that.

so what's the statistic? deaths per accidents? well, if you call farting in public an accident, then the survival rate is pretty much 100% no? gimme a break

You mean the financial statements? Ryanair is a publicly traded company so you could find annual reports, quarterly reports off their website easily.

If you want easy, condensed info, I like to use yahoo finance.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=RYAAY+Income+Statement&amp;annual

What makes you think they're all like that?

Dunno. According to this : http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-ubers-1-safe-rides-fee-an-insult-to-passengers-2014-12-09

> This Safe Rides Fee supports continued efforts to ensure the safest possible platform for Uber riders and drivers, including a federal, state, and local background check process, regular motor vehicle checks, driver safety education, development of safety features in the app, and more

In terms of supporting HTML5 features it's quite a bit behind Firefox and Chrome. This means it's somewhat holding back the advancement of the web.

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

http://caniuse.com/#compare=firefox+49,chrome+53,safari+10

For conservative

• don't mention or admit that you go on Reddit, Facebook or Twitter
• get familiar with The Drudge Report and the links they cover
• do what you can to bone up on the Constitution and the recent attacks on its laws

Their model is wholly unsustainable. If their costs for customer acquisition were offset against a customer who would loyally stick around for 3 years, then sure...it might stack up. But the subscribers are fickle and will often subscribe to other discount sites simultaneously. In other words, it's almost as though they continually have to re-acquire their customers for each and every deal. Techcrunch have been shouting this from the rooftops for months - have a look at http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/why-groupon-is-poised-for-collapse/