Little Big Tomatoes

Maybe it would be time to drop the floppy icon altogether and choose something else.

Disclaimer: I like Windows Phone 7 and I think it will be a great device and a mobile OS.

Popularity: 10% [?]

According to Warren Buffett, "In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you."

Paving with good intentions
Steak n Shake had shown slow profitable growth for years, but it faltered in 2007 and 2008. Biglari began buying shares, eventually building an 8.5% stake in the company. Then, he began a heated campaign, complete with promotional billboards around the company headquarters, to win two seats on the board.

Biglari’s argument was simple — Steak ‘n Shake had underperformed the peer group, and management had destroyed value. In contrast, he would run the company for the shareholders. In a February 2008 letter, Biglari wrote, "Not only will I refuse extra remuneration for the time I intend to commit, but I also will not accept any stock options. The reason is simple: We are one of the largest shareholders; thus, we plan to make money with you, not off you."

About a month later, Biglari won two seats, bumped out the chairman and CEO, and began taking control of the company. Steak n Shake returned to profitability in 2009, and the stock jumped.

Finally, this year, Biglari renamed the company Biglari Holdings, seemingly telegraphing that the company would become his investment vehicle.

What’s yours is mine
However, now it seems like Biglari actually meant to telegraph something else. Biglari Holdings is acquiring Biglari Capital, which acts as general partner of Biglari’s Lion Fund hedge fund, for an amount equal to its assets. In the process, it’s enacting one of the sweetest compensation agreements I’ve ever seen at a public company.

When Biglari Holdings grows, Biglari will take a quarter of the book value growth above the level of 5%, exclusively for himself. If book value declines, Biglari won’t get this extraordinary compensation until the returns exceed a 5% annual growth rate over the highest book value. Roughly half of the after-tax value of the payment must be spent on shares of Biglari Holdings. Essentially, Biglari’s going to use the company’s assets to take the company from the shareholders, piece by piece.

Now, 25% of growth over 5% might not seem like very much, but it will make a huge difference in long-term returns. By my calculations, if Warren Buffett had made the same deal when he took over Berkshire Hathaway, it would have cost shareholders over 80% of their future returns.

Buffett summarizes the investment lesson well: "When you hire someone to run your business, you are entrusting him or her with the piggy bank. If these people are smart and hardworking, they are going to make you a lot of money, but it they aren’t honest, they will find lots of clever ways to make all your money theirs."

Source: Biglari proves Buffet right

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Geneticists at the Johns Hopkins University announced Monday that an estimated seven million people worldwide carry a distinctive genetic marker linking them to a single smooth-talking common ancestor. Gwilym of Many Conquests is believed to have smelled amazing for a ninth-century Welshman. According to the study, which analyzed blood samples from 4,000 participants in 17 countries, the lineage appears to have originated with a highly virile ninth-century Welsh nobleman known as Gwilym of Many Conquests.

According to lore, Gwilym was a persuasive mead-house balladeer known for his "gilded, tunic-dropping verse." Many texts note his total lack of standards concerning the age, weight, and appearance of the women he bedded, claiming that his silk-adorned pallet never lay cold for even a single night after his 17th birthday.

Gwilym, our smooth talking ancestor. I like it.

via Onion.

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Q: I read a lot about the Playstation 3 and its CPU. It seemed at the time that it was a very revolutionary processor. Why?

A: The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell processor, there is a good Wikipedia article on it. There are several reasons the Cell processor is interesting:

Most high-performance CPUs rely on multiple cores and/or high clock speeds to increase performance. The Cell uses a single core and multiple specialized math coprocessors on a single die. It can outperform competing CPUs in certain uses, like 3D graphics, at lower cost and using less power.

The Cell is optimized for inherently parallel uses, tasks that can be broken into separate calculations that do not affect each other. It is more difficult to create compilers and algorithms that can make good use of such a design.

The PlayStation 3 is arguably the cheapest high-performance computer available. The U.S. military and universities have bought hundreds of them to do parallel math calculations.

Source: Why is the processor in Playstation 3 so interesting?

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Very good article, Here is the gist of it:

1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends.
2. Limit your feeds. Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.
3. Limit your communication time.
4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts.
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
7. Become conscious of your distractions. Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.
8. Surround yourself with the positive.

Zenhabits – How to Reclaim Your Attention

Popularity: 10% [?]

Benjamin Graham once said, "An investor’s chief problem, even his worst enemy, is likely to be himself." This is nowhere more true than when it comes to deciding to buy or sell a stock. We have an uncanny ability to buy stocks that are poor investments and sell stocks that are good investments. In essence, we buy high and sell low. In general, investors tend to shoot themselves in the foot—because they follow their instincts.

NOVA

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Long Term investing

Look at a stock as a portion of a business you expect to do a certain amount of business each year and produce a predictable amount of profit. Think about it like buying a farm. Don’t look at day-to-day stock prices which are irrational and emotional. Look at the produce it will create at harvest.

The right way of thinking about stocks.

Predictions

Lowering the expectations is easier than delivering results.

Energy

Charlie says he never misses an opportunity to put solar panels on his roof. Too expensive and he’s gotta think about the long term payoff since he’s 86. He does, however, believe that prices will fall and humans ingenuity will solve the future energy needs of the species through solar energy, enhanced power grids, and things we can’t imagine yet.

Valuehntr.com

Popularity: 5% [?]

A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin. By Charles Munger.

In the early 1700s, Europeans discovered in the Pacific Ocean a large, unpopulated island with a temperate climate, rich in all nature’s bounty except coal, oil, and natural gas. Reflecting its lack of civilization, they named this island "Basicland."

The Europeans rapidly repopulated Basicland, creating a new nation. They installed a system of government like that of the early United States. There was much encouragement of trade, and no internal tariff or other impediment to such trade. Property rights were greatly respected and strongly enforced. The banking system was simple. It adapted to a national ethos that sought to provide a sound currency, efficient trade, and ample loans for credit-worthy businesses while strongly discouraging loans to the incompetent or for ordinary daily purchases.

Moreover, almost no debt was used to purchase or carry securities or other investments, including real estate and tangible personal property. The one exception was the widespread presence of secured, high-down-payment, fully amortizing, fixed-rate loans on sound houses, other real estate, vehicles, and appliances, to be used by industrious persons who lived within their means. Speculation in Basicland’s security and commodity markets was always rigorously discouraged and remained small. There was no trading in options on securities or in derivatives other than "plain vanilla" commodity contracts cleared through responsible exchanges under laws that greatly limited use of financial leverage.

Article on what happened to the US in the recent times by Charles T. Munger,  the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

Read the original article from Slate or discuss the article on BasicallyMoney.com:

What investment strategy would you deduce from the latest article from Charles Munger?

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It might get Loud. Looks like a great movie. Three world famous guitarist Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, U2’s The Edge and the White Stripes’ Jack White. I need to watch this soon…

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The following things that I like about the iPad:

• The leather case reused as a stand.
• The stand with the keyboard.
• I like the price. $499 for the smallest model.
• iBook looks kind of nice. I would like to have it on my iMac.

The following I do not like about the iPad:

• There is no GPS, possibly location is done using WPS (Wi-Fi Positioning System ).
• There is no camera built-in.
• You have to pay extra for the 3G.

I am guessing all these and more will come with the next version of the device.

Popularity: 15% [?]