He is shareholders of chess.com since they bought out Play Magnus. He is not losing it. He has competing economic interests to FIDE and very little interest into being cooperative with them more than is strictly necessary.
> He's not a regular participant, Magnus is almost an institution of his own.
He is also very much no in agreement with FIDE (a tradition for chess champions - see Fischer, Kasparov). And to be honest FIDE is on FIFA level when it comes to being dodgy as an organisation so it’s hardly surprising.
The stained glasses these are supposed to replace are from 1850. They are also approved by the French Catholic Church.
The actual discussion in France is about the legitimacy of replacing intact windows even if pretty much everyone agree that the Viollet-le-Duc ones are completely uninteresting. No one is actually against the new glasses per se if it would have been a non story if they were put in place in place of destroyed glasses.
SWIFT is not a payment system. It’s only a messaging system. It’s generally used to send initiating orders between financial institutions but they then have to be cleared or directly settled through something else.
IBAN isn't a payment system either, but I'm talking about the end user experience: insert account number, insert amount, click send. Sometimes you also need the SWIFT code which specifies the receiving bank.
For context, this comes in reply to the cohost complaining that a lot of talented young players quit chess to pursue a college education. Caruana is basically replying that it’s a bit strange to regret people choosing to stop playing a board game to go do things with potentially broader impact instead.
> This is a problem where historians look at what they're saying more as being a part of a continuing debate, where they can say revisionist stuff to sound more original in their field
This is not how history works. Forgive me for asking but when is the last time you actually read an academic paper in history?
> I don't where the author frequents but my experience on the internet about the Dark Ages is much opposite. People who have strong opinion about them tend to go past "nuance" straight into denialism
It’s not denialism. The expression "the Dark Ages" is both extremely connoted and inaccurate. It’s like putting a giant billboard on you saying "I’m going to say things I have little idea about". That rarely leads to genuinely interesting discussion.
It’s sad to see your comment this far in the thread after having had go be coxed to make it and after all the usual defensive arguments from the Rust crowd. It’s a real issue that it’s so hard to make the Rust community admits that obvious flaws actually exist.
As someone who spent a significant time working on static analysers and provers, it annoys me to no end how most of the Rust community will happily take what the borrow checker imposes on them as some form of gospel and never questions the tool. It’s bordering on Stockholm syndrome sometimes.
I think a lot of pushback is because people are talking past each other.
The reality:
- the borrow checker has limitations that doesn't accept some constructs that could be be proved safe, given Rust's own rules
- the borrow checker is a net positive as it does push you towards better constructs, and the (rare) times it forbids you from doing something that could be safe, you have safe (sometimes not zero-cost) and unsafe escape hatches
But these are then understood by the intransigent as:
- the borrow checker is always detrimental
- the borrow checker can do nothing wrong
At that point, no one can understand why the other person is being obtuse, and you end up with... well, the comment section under every Rust article.
The key tenant of value investing is that there exist companies which based on their financial metrics are fundamentally under valued by the market (in opposition to what market price efficiency predicts).
From there, an insane market should provide you with even more opportunities to value invest.
> an insane market should provide you with even more opportunities to value invest
This seems like a uniquely bad time to make this sort of argument.
There are many old tools for insane markets to perpetuate themselves that are recently stronger (revolving doors between industry/government and other garden variety corruption; all the monopolies we have to tolerate out of fear, convenience or greed; "too big to fail" and trends towards globalism in general). There are also several relatively new tools (algorithmic price-fixing so that industry "competitors" can now collude forever with impunity; total masks-off no-holds-barred corruption where the unelected/unqualified are simply appointed to positions of power regardless of clear conflicts of interest). Add to this what others have observed re: meme-stocks, huge moves based on tweets or concerted disinformation. Or there's the cooked books on a massive scale with Theranos or SBF or the out of control corporate fraud with VW's dieselgate or Boeing's 737 Max, or .. or .. pick your own recent scandal.
Value investing seems to need reliable information from somewhere to make informed decisions, but where is that going to come from? Investment in individual companies rather than in diversified aggregates seems nuts if the financial markets are going to be as "post truth" as the political world.
> Value investing seems to need reliable information from somewhere to make informed decisions, but where is that going to come from?
Value investment is entirely based on financial fundamentals. You don’t need magic information. That’s the whole point. For something that old, people like to use the world but seem blissfully unaware of what it actually is. Graham’s books are available pretty much everywhere.
The whole point of the thing is that fundamentals actually matter and markets misprice because they rely on other less sound things. That’s why it seems even more relevant in a post truth market.
None of the companies you listed would have qualified as sound for value investing by the way.
Nitpick: a tenet is a foundational principle or belief; a tenant is someone who pays rent. (Which I suppose could be used as a metaphor for a dividend-paying stock, but.)
That’s not a nitpick. That’s you needlessly correcting something you understood perfectly well to cheaply feel superior while failing to engage in the actual discussion.
Sorry for commenting from my phone and not always proofreading my comments. Why assume I don’t speak English properly? That’s so insulting. Please never do that again. Thank you.
I thought I was going out of my way to not be insulting. It has absolutely nothing to do with feeling superior. It has everything to do with the fact that I frequently encounter people who surprisingly don't seem to know things like this, and I wish for them to learn so they can avoid the mistake in the future.
I did not engage in the discussion because I had nothing further to contribute to it. I recognized that, and contributed what I could entirely orthogonal to that.
It’s brand new and they have put in place modern technologies everywhere. So it works very well.
Amusingly, China uses pieces of technology which were developed in Europe for its train system. Signalling is a good exemple (CTCS is basically ETCS). Europe is as usual deploying at a snail pace while China put it everywhere.
It was obvious from the start it would end up this way. China is an actual country while Europe is a loose collection of countries which don’t really like each other supposedly spearheaded by Germany which actually only cares about pushing policies in its own interest and actively hinder anything else, and France which remains stuck thirty years in the past and is actively being sabotaged by most of the things the EU forces it to do regarding infrastructure (more true in energy than in rail that being said).
The New York Central 999 broke 160km/hr in the 19th century. The US had commercial express train service running at similar speeds in the early 1900s. Outside the TGV Europe isn’t a few years behind they are like a century behind.
I guess it is a century behind because Europe hasn't scrapped their commuter rail for roads. I took a train from Manhattan today and its theoretical max speed is 110 mile/h, so the US has fallen behind Europe by your logic.
That’s non sense. TGV speed record is 320km/h by the way and 160km/h is a pedestrian daily occurrence on the French rail system. Meanwhile the US has somehow decided trains are for freight and as no decent rail system in place for travellers.
The discussion makes sense with China which is pushing forward quickly using new tech. The US is not even part of it.
It doesn't have much to do with "China being an actual country".
Germany alone is also an actual country and the trains inside it's borders are super slow.
In China and Japan, many long distance trains get 320 km/h average speed!
The German ICE "machine" could theoretically also do that speed but there are barely any tracks where this is possible, so the average speed is around 3x slower.
In France and Italy it is much better. TGV and Frecciarossa trains usually operate much closer to their specced speeds.
germany is making the big mistake of mixed use tracks. in china high speed tracks are dedicated to high speed trains, and a high speed connection means dedicated high speed tracks for the whole trip. germany is creating a patchwork of high speed routes thinking that this is enough to make high speed trains work.
The slowness regarding rolling out things like ETCS, ATS and standardised European infrastructure as everything to do with Europe not being an actual united political entity. As you rightfully pointed, some EU members rail strategy is very dubious.
I pay more than that to go back to my hometown by TGV which is less than 200km away from Paris and that’s with a subscription giving access to preferential prices.
There is no way Paris-Berlin is going to be this cheap. From experience I expect the train to be at least twice more expensive than flying.
Having worked a few years with SNCF, it can’t be otherwise. It’s the most mismanaged company I have ever worked for, gangrened by unions which fight tooth and nails to preserve advantages which reasons to exist disappeared decades ago. Unions review the full trains planning with management before it’s validated and veto any optimisations which would cut overtime or might impact compensations without any regards for customers. It’s revolting.
Before leaving France I often travelled by train and felt exactly the same way: a total ripoff for the service they offer...In Spain you'll also get trains that arrive late but they're usually cleaner and the price is much more affordable, and they don't go on strike as often as in strike land.
I've read about that, and it definitely seems like a shit show. It's about time these things change. Since I got here I mostly travel by train and I know that it's a privilege, it should be the norm in these developed countries. Anyway, hang in there and good luck.
> gangrened by unions which fight tooth and nails to preserve advantages which reasons to exist disappeared decades ago. Unions review the full trains planning with management before it’s validated and veto any optimisations which would cut overtime or might impact compensations without any regards for customers. It’s revolting
I've heard that before, but usually from the crowd that wants to privatise the whole country anyway. I understand that you're claiming to have witnessed it, but do you have some sources?
Surely, the amount of money they pour onto Cap Gemini and many other consulting firms to rebuild existing systems instead of having teams in-house who could maintain them must have an impact on ticket costs...
> I understand that you're claiming to have witnessed it, but do you have some sources?
I have witnessed that and more like optimisation software being disabled to avoid cutting into overtime. Just go take a look at how drivers are paid and where their comp comes from. It’s all public knowledge. Take a look at the recurring reports from the court of auditors or talk with anyone working there.
We are talking about a company in which the two main unions are openly Trotskyist and which has a permanent strike warning by rotating between union to open one in defiance of French law.
This is not drum beating for privatisation by the way (even if all the formerly public French companies I had the misfortune to work for are fairly mismanaged but nothing as bad as SNCF thankfully). I am sure with enough reforms it could work while being public. I mean Singapore manages so it’s not impossible.
It’s just impossible to wonder why France is in such a sorry state after having working for anything publicly managed in France. The French state carves exception for itself in all the labour laws because they know their administration is so poor they can’t respect them.
As an American reading this I feel like there's some nuance being lost in translation. Taken to their logical extremes we've seen what things like optimization software (East Palestine), banning strikes (PATCO and current ATC staffing woes), privatization (ATC again — see any video on youtube about the KSQL controller), and weak labor laws (pretty much every fatigue related crash e.g. Colgan Air) bring about. And it's not pretty.
Certainly privatization can work. JR seems to have a decent reputation (obviously not without fault). But gaming things like overtime rules is a cultural problem, one that you're not going to solve with mandates or privatization. For quite a while the drivers at San Francisco's public transit agency were forbidden to strike. Instead you'd get sickouts and work slowdowns.
The working conditions at SNCF are not even imaginable for an American.
We are taking unlimited sick days, between 28 and 38 days off a year excluding sick days, 10 bank holidays, retirement between 50 and 60 with pensions calculated on the last few years of work, subvention on train tickets for family members. That’s while working less than 40 hours a week and despite that they still manage to strike at least a week a year generally when it’s the most annoying for people actually working.
> between 28 and 38 days off a year excluding sick days, 10 bank holidays
25 days is the legal minimum, more is common in many industries, including most engineering fields. Of course we all have the same bank holidays in the country.
> retirement between 50 and 60 with pensions calculated on the last few years of work
Yep, that's a good one. A relic from when their life expectancy was much shorter due to coal. Indeed that's hard to justify.
> subvention on train tickets for family members
Annoying too... but I'm not sure it's significant.
> That’s while working less than 40 hours a week
The legal working time in France is 35h/week, if you do more than that your employer must compensate in a way or another. That SNCF abides by that law isn't shocking, what is shocking is that our NHS doesn't.
> they still manage to strike at least a week a year generally when it’s the most annoying for people actually working.
The latest strike was about the freight branch that is being sold to competitors to please the EU commission... Not exactly a request for more champagne next to the coffee machine of the drivers. [0]
I, too, dislike the SNCF because my trains are unreliable and expensive, and their customer support is absolute rubbish, but you clearly are arguing in bad faith and repeating whatever is in our current wave of reactionary media, all without having provided a single source yet.
You do realise that I’m not arguing in bad faith but pointing things which are not obvious to our American friends who often have 10 days of leaves including sick days. I know that the working conditions in France are insane for everyone. Still they are even better for cheminots. Even you have to acknowledge it reading my comment (and no advantages for family members are not negligible).
I have given sources: I told you to go read the reports for the national court of auditors.
Nothing of what I wrote is reactionary by the way. I have actually worked for the damn company which is a lot more than you can say.
> The latest strike was about the freight branch that is being sold to competitors to please the EU commission
The heart of the issue is that the drivers are not going to be cheminots anymore. It’s entirely about champagne and coffee machines. They are worried that it’s going to end like Geodis, which is profitable while being owned by SNCF, because it’s out of the circus and operated like an actual private company, which, Sud and CGT being good communists, is the worst thing imaginable.
The price really depends how much in advance you are booking, DB price are outrages on the same day but unbelivable cheap three weeks before, i really dont get the business logic behind that, the spread is like 19.99 to 240
That's not my experience at all. I live in France with no car and I don't fly domestic (obviously).
I'll do Paris to Lyon (400 km) during peak holidays in next few days. That's €192 back and forth, for 2 persons. And I don't have any preferential prices.
I'll go further than Lyon, right to a ski station actually. That's another €100 for 2 persons, back and forth.
So that's about 1300 km at €150 /pax at one of the most expensive time of the year.
