igor67

It tends to be noticeable right away, so I don't think overheating is an issue. OS is definitely up to date. My Network strength is high as well. I tested it the other night I could stream Disney+ just fine through my Xfinity box, but not without buffering on the firestick.

John's Pizza Cafe is a pretty good thicker crust style, Mamma's Pizza is probably our family favorite, they do a thin crust and an embarrassing amount of toppings. I rank both ahead of Pizza Luce

I just got a Firestick, and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on why it might be doing noticeably worse on a Speed Test than my laptop? I'm using it primarily to stream Sling and my over the air channels via an AirTV anywhere device. It definitely appears to be Firestick specific because I have an Xfinity box and it doesn't give me the buffering issues I first noticed. I'd just use that for Sling, but it's not compatible with the Over the Air parts. I tried restart it and clearing the cache, and It doesn't quite seem to make a difference. It's only 3-4 ft from my router.

I have unfortunately also encountered the HR attitude that CheezWhiz describes. I have helped do enough hiring that I do appreciate the amount of time it takes, but the way that evolves in certain HR circles toward being terrified of meritless employment lawsuits. I suspect the practical differences in how companies act are also heavily influenced by the average education level of their employees.

So I can't say that I've observed a whole lot of evidence that proactive hiring is all that common. I'm thrilled someone still bothers to do it because it is very old school, but my son couldn't sniff an interview in the Twin Cities as an entry level programmer a couple of years ago. At best companies seem to run way too much through temp services, and this was true even after he gave up on programming and switched to other entry level work. I got more sympathetic to his plight when I tried my own hand at a mid-career switch. A lot of the same type of run around frankly. Corporate trainer positions with oddly specific needs being one example where a posting is so specific I don't look qualified (given the age range and diversity of subjects I've taught it's crazy). I looked at other entry level type office jobs, acknowledging my skill gap and managed 2 phone interviews in about 20 applications. The kicker though for me having no sympathy and just believing that most companies hiring practices are ridiculous was my sons recent experience. He transitioned to manufacturing, has a couple of years experience, and applying to jobs in central WI he only heard back from 1 in 5. At least the once company actually acted like they were desperate for workers and called him back less than 24 hours after applying. Maybe if you'd call people back you wouldn't need to offer signing bonuses. So yep ghost away!

TDS was the only option I had for my cabin. I won't try and recount the entire process, but yes in general the customer service experience was not good. The actual local service guys were OK and cared but things were set-up in a very weird multitiered way. So it ended up taking 3 different appointments to actually get the service set-up. Since then it has been good generally the speed has been as advertised too. They were advertising a 3 year price guarantee and with some legwork I avoided getting stuck with one of their modems.

You should be including tax implications in thinking about your break even point. With the changes a couple of years ago most people no longer have a big enough mortgage to get any tax benefits from the mortgage payment, but your savings on paying off early are completely tax free. The tax situation on your investment is hard to say without more details. You also increase your closing costs on the refinance (in most cases) by taking more money out as the origination fee is usually a flat percentage of the total loan. I would guesstimate that your true break even point is probably closer to 4%, still pretty doable

To a certain extent I would say it is fairly encouraging that a number of the places where there have been price spikes have caused people to reconsider projects. If it seemed like there were no adjustments to the price hikes then we could be in some real trouble.

I like to recommend quantum computing for those who are really trying to be forward looking. The programming and coding is going to be just different enough I suspect there will be good opportunities for those who get into it early.

I would actually be really interested if homer wanted to expand on what a smart contract was. A link outlining a hack related to crypto Chu, Dennis. “BROKER-DEALERS FOR VIRTUAL CURRENCY: REGULATING CRYPTOCURRENCY WALLETS AND EXCHANGES.” Columbia Law Review, vol. 118, no. 8, 2018, pp. 2323–2360. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26542511 p.(16) and another "One of the main flaws with cryptocurrencies can be attributed to the “blockchains” that they are built on. Whenever a new coin is “mined” or sold, it is subject to a review by the community of miners. In other words, whenever a transaction occurs, the other people involved with mining the currency are notified and decide whether the transaction was legitimate or not. This sort of community verification requires 51% of the community to approve a transaction for it to occur" quoted from "51% Attack Explained." Mycryptopedia. January 08, 2019. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://www.mycryptopedia.com/51-percent-attack-explained/. and a 3rd one for good measure "Bitcoin Gold Hacked for $18 Million." Bitcoin News. May 24, 2018. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-gold-hacked-for-18-million/ For some additional background I have both a low tolerance for risk, and a high threshold (generally) of evidence. On the investing side this usually means sticking to traditional investing principles (low fees and index funds go back to at least the mid 90's). I recognize that this particular combination has certain downsides, but given I don't have stacks of capital to be an angel investor I can live with that. My sentiments against cryptocurrencies though were rooted in the clear pattern of mid 2010's articles hyping in a very standard 'it will revolutionize', but not following through with a clear explanation of what was going to be solved. For some reference this was overlapping with the era when we were being told that Silicon Valley was also going to revolutionize education with MOOCs. We've all seen how well people actually like online education. At least those articles though were clear what was being proposed and sold. As a science generalist I read a wide diversity of secondary and primary sources across many disciplines (math, physics, chem, biology, and economics mostly), and I do not recall any of my range of sources ever jumping in and walking through how the blockchain was an important technology. That isn't 'proof' but it is enough for me to not want to waste time fully researching the topic myself. Particularly after one of my students (who was a huge crypto believer) did his thesis project a couple of years ago (those are his references above). From his abstract "Then the history of cryptocurrencies’ rise from 2008-2018 is analyzed. This analysis explains why the cryptocurrency market came into being, rose, and fell in such short succession. It describes how the market was exploited through fraudulent practices such as “pump and dump schemes”, hacks, and faulty brokers. These problems with the market are then compared to problems that the U.S. stock market experienced in the 1970’s." If the blockchain itself is going to be a significant technology going forward that would be interesting and as far as I can tell at the moment it would end up being a rather unique path for a legitimate technology to rise to utility. Last thought the economics side of crypto are somewhat analogous to gold, which I also loathe as an investment. It is way too useful as a material to use purely as a trade device.

I loathe crypto because it tried to argue it was the next great thing in tech without any actual use, and has now backtracked at best to accepting that its a pure electronic creation to be traded for the sake of trading. The pattern of moving goalposts around its existence is unsettling at best and when you uncover the older hacks to manipulate the blockchain part itself? So far hiding assets is the only understandable problem I've seen it solve, and if that's your problem well I'm not terribly sympathetic.

It's probably safer to eat with a mask on though

I'll shamelessly promote The North End and Como neighborhoods in St. Paul. When I moved in 20 years ago about the only thing I could say was that they were safer than North Minneapolis, but they got dramatically better in the early 2000's. Given the access with the light rail coming and the price dip during the housing crisis my area could have easily gentrified and become trendy, but it hasn't yet though there have been nice newer amenities. You won't get suburban size lots of course, but we eventually leveraged the housing savings into a great rural property while enjoying being close to everything.

If you have to wait a month or two for all the paper work and send someone else money first that is not really liquid. While it isn't as crazy as how quick in the last housing run-up people were to not pay attention to how much money they spent on realty fees while rapidly turning over houses, paying closing costs again just 2 years into a loan eats into that appreciation. And the amount of closing costs does different rather noticeably based on location. They are definitely higher in MN than WI for example. To say nothing of the dangers of increasing ones own personal leverage especially if you are thinking you 'need' the liquidity your payments are going to go up, assuming you can invest that added liquid income to make-up the difference... Well that works great when your incorporated and can walk away when the bankruptcy happens. For a house of course there are other risks like the danger of ending upside down when you want or need to change jobs and move.

My experience would suggest the answer can't possibly be that simple, but perhaps an easy place to start on the regulatory side is preventing anyone/thing from betting more shares than what actually exist.

I'm not sure how long the price needs to stay inflated to cost the hedge fund folks their money, but at some point the price will come down and some fraction of these retail investors are going to lose some serious money as well.

Normal inflation would account for most of that price shift, without resorting to a formula car prices in the Depression were 1-2000 dollars and my grandfather purchased his house for $1000, in a small town of no particular economic value that sold for $40K years ago. That gives a range of 20-40 times an increase due to inflation. Those are crude comparisons of course, but inflation clearly explains most of that price change. I can sort of see where some of those historical details support a notion of something lost, I do not know the precise amount of gold back currency my grandfather had in 1933, but I do know that because of the WPA he had a job and was able to keep making the payments on that house and turn that into a solid blue collar life, so I'd have a hard time claiming he came out behind. Somewhat more generally I think it is worth asking in general how far back in time one is willing to hold onto that type of grievance. I said generally because there are other types of calls for settling old disputes that I don't think we (collective) do ourselves any favors in demanding direct compensation for. In this case my grandfather has been dead for 29+ years, which means a pretty good portion of this board wasn't even alive to have any kind of connection to that. So while understanding the history is always super relevant, any policy needs to be firmly grounded in the needs of the present and future.

Gold has a few other uses, but it's real world value is it's incredibly high electrical conductivity and great resistance to corrosion. So I find it very unfortunate that this rare substance is mostly wasted on a medium for trade because our ancestors thought it looked pretty and gave it value based purely on the power of belief, especially since we have found other items to use purely as convenient methods of trade.

While I am not a Bitcoin fan (or gold) for somewhat distinct reasons I would be far more worried about a return to the gold standard for general economic reasons, not investing reasons. If you are talking about just creating a permanently fixed asset for trade that is a very different discussion, it is basically the same as investing in something like ultra rare cars.

That also means if you are say a ditch digger paid in Bitcoin you would need to be paid less wage in the future than you are now. Which maybe in theory sound workable, but what happens when someone invents something like say a vaccine that most people desperately want, but actually costs very little to produce? Since we'd have to pay some amount of Bitcoin for this new thing, everyone else has less Bitcoin to spend and the car dealer has to immediately lower his price to compensate (or sell fewer cars), but the cost of car was already set by the higher prices he paid for wages and materials! You need the amount of currency to be changeable since people generate so many less than tangible products and are also both resources (more labor) and costs (more food and cars). Hyper inflation and deflation are both signs that whatever currency you are using is completely out of touch with with people need for survival and prosperity.

Thank you I was unaware of that particular detail. That does leave me wondering why you would want to make it so as we have more people (about 2 billion more by 2050) you would guarantee there to be exactly the same amount of money available as that just makes everyone poorer (on average)

I'm sorry nate but I don't follow your reasoning at all. Bitcoin is practically the embodiment of innovation making something that never existed before and turning it into a commodity. You literally just run computers to mine more. Whereas gold is completely limited, at best you can create more wealth by digging more out of the ground but it is still highly limited.

Back when I would go fishing growing up, I could fish, listen to Ueck on the radio and read a book. Multitasking and doing nothing all at the same time it was great.

There are any number of examples for the link between numbers of investors and risk and efficiency (which are 2 somewhat distinct things). One of the more defining monopoly behaviors is to suppress competition by buying out the competitors and just letting their idea die. The entire math behind free markets assumes infinite individuals (large numbers generally behave similar enough to infinite for this to work). What's true for supply and demand is also true for investing the wisdom of the crowd works better in the long run than any individual. So the smaller number of people you have making the decisions the more the individuals deviations from the best choice will accumulate as inefficiencies. Scientists have expressed concern about analogous behavior with grant agencies for years with them often favoring funding safer experiments and not risky ones. DARPA is rather famous for running counter to this trend. On the private side the tendency for various investment firms or management styles to favor sales departments (and the shiny immediate returns) vs. long term R&D is another one.

I certainly understand how an individual level investing makes sense, but when one looks at wealth accumulation as a pure Darwinian steel cage match the game seems rather less impressive. Let's take my current yearly pension contribution of $4200. Now let's assume for the moment that I'm a crazy active investor who researches everything and manages to get a 10% return and no fees. I've made for the year an impressive $420 dollars. On the other hand I could make more than that with a 1% raise on my actual salary. When the question comes what is the best thing to do with that extra income specifically of course the answer is to invest it (hence the individual benefit), but when you start applying that same analysis on the high side of the equation you also realize that the working class, I saved my way to 1-2 million net worth, individual is still losing ground over time to someone sitting on a few billion. This also leads to significant inefficiency over time in the usefulness of investment capital. Instead of lots of investors placing bets on which ideas are good ones it becomes more and more concentrated with fewer people making meaningful decisions on which business ideas to invest in, which to anyone familiar with the math understands leads to more missed opportunities, aka less innovation.