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I wonder what this means for DC Comics and the current crop of DC films. Will Netflix prefer to start with a clean slate?

The use case for AI is spam.


It's the reverse printing press, drowning all purposeful human communication in noise.


Another major use case for it is enabling students to more easily cheat on their homework. Which is why it is probably going to end up putting Chegg out of business.


I am shocked when I talk to college kids about AI these days.

I try to explain stuff to them like regurgitating the training data, context window limits, and confabulation.

They stick their fingers in their ears and say "LA LA LA LA it does my homework for me nothing else matters LA LA LA LA i can't hear you"

They really do not care about the Turing Test. Today's LLMs pass the "snowed my teaching assistant test" and nothing else matters.

Academic fraud really is the killer app for this technology. At least if you're a 19-year-old.


These kids are only in school to get a meal ticket to white-collar job interviews. AI frees them to be honest about their intentions, rather than pretend for long enough to stumble their way into learning something.


Maybe AI will finally skewer the myth that an undergraduate degree means anything.


AI brought “let someone else do it for you” cheating to the middle class, no longer the domain of wealthy flunkies.


British Airways as well. N


The use case for AI is spam.


> I assumed, like President said, that it will be China, not me, who pays the tariffs. I was very much wrong.

How do you run a business that relies on imports and not know how tariffs work?


Because America is rich and they like to buy things.


Or Waltz has been leaking to Goldberg and every other journalist in his contacts and did it by accident.


I have been reading spy thrillers recently and my pet toy theory was that this was an attempt to unmask a mole. Leak information and see who publishes it.

Politicians regularly intentionally leak information they want leaked, and politicians also encounter leaks that they don't want leaked. Perhaps Goldberg did the only thing he could - he identified the trap.


I mean if it was trading at $8/share isn't the market rate $8/share?


Kinda, but it's complicated. The share price is the number that people will buy and sell as many shares are as actually getting traded, but once you get to significant fractions of the whole company, the marginal cost of the next share can diverge wildly — if one party is trying to get all of them, that may drive up the price a bit, and for any given fraction of ownership there's always someone who sees the share price go up and thinks "hey, I can get even more profit if I hold on for a bit longer!"


Liquidity matters


This. The same thing is happening with Tesla stock. Since it's such a bit part of the S&P500, so half of retail investors buy it in their basket of portfolios and 401ks at trades at 10x it's worth on paper by looking at fundamentals.


That reasoning would lead to concluding all the businesses in SP500 are traded at 10x their worth on paper. Or at least all the ones with market caps greater than Tesla.

Edit, since I hit posting limit.

To pooper:

> Since it's such a big part of the S&P500

The conclusion is based on that premise, so any other business that satisfies that premise should also lead to the same conclusion.

To llm:

> I think their point is that businesses at the top of the S&P500 are traded at sentiment and momentum based values that are pretty disconnected from a logical P/E

I have read the same about other businesses many times. There is nothing logical about only using P/E as a factor in determining price (or “worth”). No one knows the future, so even a price derived from an arbitrary standard of P/E is a “sentiment and momentum based” value.


I think their point is that businesses at the top of the S&P500 are traded at sentiment and momentum based values that are pretty disconnected from a logical P/E, which is valid enough. The multiple happens to be 10x in Tesla's case, it's not 10x for all of them (in the case of Saudi Aramco it's probably less than 1x), but it's much less of an informed valuation than the sheer volume of trading would make you think.


Index adda pop and deletes drop in price.

So index membership does change the stock multiple (but not by 10x).

Also, Tesla is an idiosyncratic stock with very high volatility and very high retail participation. Things can be true of Tedla stock which do not have to be true of the median stock.


Can you please elaborate on this? I am unable to follow the logic here.


I'm claiming this based on fundamental analysis of Tesla's sales/net profits/ROIIC and other metrics, which I take from their 13F fillings (AKA quarterly earning reports) compared to other car manufacturers.

Some stocks are overpriced, and others are undervalued. The inclusion in the S&P500 alone is just 1 of the factors.

In my opinion, Apple and NVIDIA are significantly undervalued based on their fundamentals, even though they make up a gigantic % of the SPX.


I understand, and I’m claiming there is no one logical or fundamental way to derive a price.

It could be logical to ascribe some value to a business’s leader having access to a US president known to be “open for business”? And we know a big tax bill is likely to be passed by year’s end.

Perhaps that will lead to good fortunes for Tesla shareholders. Or maybe not.


You can derive the "true price" with a certain probability. Of course, unexpected things can happen, like Musk being assassinated, but the stock market is not completely unpredictable.

And the thing is, I don't have to be right about Tesla because I'm not making a single bet on that company. I'm making hundreds of bets using my methodology, and it's enough that I'm right 50-something% of the time (or even less than 50%, if we're talking Options trading).

That's what the whole stock market game is about. Hence, some investment companies, like Berkshire Hathaway, consistently make more than others over the long term.


haven’t had my coffee yet but I assume you meant “big” rather than “bit”


yup, i haven't had my coffee yet when I was writing it either :)


LOL, serious question. Is coffee to writing really a thing? It sounds a bit weird to me, but maybe it's shorthand? :)


It's that we open Hacker News right after we wake up and post comments before our brains are in full power, hence the mistakes. Coffee is not a necessity, but most people drink it. I believe it's not exactly about caffeine but letting the brain 30 minutes or so to "wake up" to stop making mistakes. At least, that's how it works in my case.


Aha, thanks very much for the detailed explanation. Absolutely makes sense.


It takes some time to complete the process, so the price is usually based on the likely future value. For companies increasing in value, the offer is usually higher than the current price, and for campanies decreasing in value, it's usually lower.

Also, corrections aren't instant, so if the change of value was for something that had already happened, not something currently happening, the offer will reflect the expected price that the shares would settle at.


When the tide goes out you can tell who is skinny dipping.

(apologies for the below crude metaphor.. but...)

I am 1.80. You can kick me in the nuts and I will fold, but I will still be 1.80 a few minutes later.

Let's see after the kick in the nuts if the price will still be $8.

When there is blood in the water the sharks start circling. And some sharks 'short'. And I know little about their operations of 23andMe, but I understand the _value_ of their data!!!!! So they may be sitting on a pile of Latinum and not be able to fully monetize it (sell it to every pharma/insurance/etc.) company on the planet.


I assume the value of the remaining assets are worth more than $8/share and she was trying to get them for a discount.


Shares are only worth what somebody wants to pay for them. Selling a ton of shares also often devalues them. Since the company was losing money, it was clear that the shares would drop.


Bloomberg's Matt Levine on the 23andMe situation:

https://archive.is/zXqnB


Yeah but he mostly analyzes his he relationship between the board and the ceo. Of course 8 usd was not so good at the time, but the stock was falling rapidly and everybody shorted the shit out of the company, even if the ceo would’ve sold its shares under no circumstances would they have gotten over 10 usd besides that the stock was higher


That's not true, shares are a share of the companies assets and future dividends.

There are "scavengers" out there who buy a company if its assets are worth more than the market cap, close down the company or otherwise spin out the assets, and thus earn more than they paid for the shares.


> That's not true, shares are a share of the companies assets and future dividends.

Possibly true 20 or 30 years ago, but now shares are speculative assets, their worth determined by what the market thinks they might be bought for by a greater fool.


Only for companies who are profitable or might be profitable in the future.

If the company has no chance at future profit, it becomes a simple share of assets. There are plenty of companies with assets only and no revenue or employees.


There are tons of examples of unprofitable companies, with no visible prospect of ever becoming profitable, trading at increasingly-higher values. Every tech bubble has their share of these.


yeah but 23andme was already falling when she wanted to buy the shares. It was overvalued and people already lost trust at the site.


Are assets not also worth "what somebody wants to pay for them"?


If that’s the case then the likelihood of the remaining net assets being worth more than $8/share are even lower.


I can’t 100% say you are wrong but I can 99% say you are wrong.


Strict constitutionalists would only apply the 2nd Amendment to barrel loading smooth bore muskets.


Constitution says nothing about barrel loading, smooth bore muskets. It says "arms". It's a fairly timeless umbrella term for "weapons or objects usable as such". The only people who have trouble understanding this are generally those who approve of the Machine gun registry being closed by having the federal expenditure to maintain it set to $0, and don't that as being an example of "infringement" of a Constitutionally granted right.


Love your answer, totally agree! But please don't feed the trolls!


It also says "a well regulated militia" as a context where the amendment applies.


It also says “the right of the people” a phrase understood in every other part of the constitution and its amendments to refer to the individual citizenry. Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.


> Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.

The first amendment says congress can't abridge freedom of speech OR freedom of the press. So obviously you don't need one to exercise the other.

The second amendment has much worse wording.


It has different wording but I feel like it’s only difficult because of the politics and emotions attached to it. If it said instead:

“A thriving community of professional musicians, being essential to the existence of great art, the right of the people to keep and play musical instruments shall not be infringed.”

I really don’t think anyone would be arguing that it restricts the right to keep and play musical instruments only to people who are already professional musicians.


A rule saying you already need to be a professional is unreasonable in this scenario. But I think a rule that you have to engage with the community of musicians if you want to have a musical instrument could probably coexist with that wording.


If we go down that route, the "militia" in the US is divided into the "organized" militia, which is effectively the National Guard forces, and the "unorganized" militia, which is everyone not in the "organized" militia and are:

> able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States

So I'm not sure "a rule the you have to engage with the militia" is going to get any better of a reading on the 2nd amendment from an "individual" vs "some group of people defined by the government that aren't 'the People' of every other part of the constitution" perspective.


Where did you get that definition?

And wouldn't "well-regulated" mean organized?

> "a rule the you have to engage with the militia"

To be clear, I was not implying that wording. You changed the musician version too much to swap out single words like that.


Where did I get the definition of the militia? The US Code: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

As far as I know that’s been the definition at least since the 50s though I’m pretty sure at least the “able-bodied males 18-45” part has been around even longer


> Where did I get the definition of the militia? The US Code

You can't look to the US Code for definitions of terms in the Constitution; the US Code definition applies to the portion of the US Code that that definition is applicable to, but (except where the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to define something) cannot define terms in the Constitution, otherwise, Congress could simply rewrite the Constitution by redefining the language used in it, and would never need to use the more difficult process of Constitutional Amendments.


As a general rule I agree, but in that case we’re limited to what the constitution says explicitly and what is says explicitly is that keeping and bearing arms is a right of “the People” which is a distinct group from “the States” and “the United States”. Further we know that the Militia is not the Army, nor the Navy, and that it too is also considered a separate group from “the people”.

It seems reasonable to conclude then that the right must be conferred to all the people because if they meant for it to be limited to the Militia they would have said “the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”


I guess you're agreeing with me?


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