ashray5's comments

ashray5 | 6 years ago | on: Using Gossips to Spread Information [pdf]

Reminds me of Malcom Gladwell's Tipping Point.

ashray5 | 7 years ago | on: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

Putting aside the accounting/tax rules, why should a corporation be taxed heavily? So the government can decide to squander the tax money? I'd rather have the money go in the pocket of shareholders (pension funds, individuals, index fund holders, etc.) and give people a choice on how to spend those corporate tax savings. Wait, these individuals get taxed at a reasonable rate when they sell the stock or when they pay sales tax on purchases made from the stock winnings.. Hmmm, maybe government is not losing on taxes after all?

ashray5 | 7 years ago | on: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

Financial Times (UK version of Wall Street Journal) is reporting the same. Let's not build a conspiracy theory and ignore the hard evidence.

ashray5 | 7 years ago | on: Twitter shares drop after reporting declining monthly active users

Tremendous pessimism on this thread. It's time for an intelligent investor to buy.

ashray5 | 7 years ago | on: Average annual hours worked per country

The good news: number of working hours decreased from 2000 to 2017 for pretty much all the countries in this report. A sign of overall development in my opinion.

ashray5 | 8 years ago | on: Mathematical games interesting to both you and a five-year-old child

It's amazing that you remember the emotions you experienced at the age of 3 and 4.

ashray5 | 9 years ago | on: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

“All of a sudden you can have the idea that an hour-long commute is actually a big perk because instead of driving and having to sit and focus and lurch through traffic, what if your car is a rolling living room? What if you get to spend that hour playing with your kid or reading the news or watching TV or actually working because you don’t have to worry about driving?”

I suppose one can find these answers from people who commute by company shuttles, trains or subways.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: Facebook shares fall 7% on Oculus deal

I don't think people should attribute today's FB action to the Oculus acquisition or its price/terms. A slight negative chatter (Read: "Amateur CEO wasting money on useless toys") could easily make big momentum reversals, especially in case of a stock that mostly priced by sentiment versus intrinsic cash flows. Disclaimer: I'm by no means disparaging momentum strategies.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

unrelated comment triggered by looking at the link, why are Indian websites at large so crappy and appear to be from 1990s? Just like with the insane lawless vehicle traffic, people have become used to crappy websites in India.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: iPad Air

" I can't imagine the value proposition for a new iPad 2 is at all attractive at that price point.. "

Its interesting how most people here assume that the world at large makes same choices as themselves. Consider iPhone pricing: Apple has been selling previous years models for $100 less than the latest version, yet they sold millions of outdated iPhones even in the US.

Not everyone wants the latest gadget or cares about the greatest tech specs as long as they can extract the desired utility at the least possible price. There are laggards in the adoption curve who are more price sensitive than the early adopters.

I'm a victim of this fallacy myself. I used to wonder who on the earth is clicking on those ads displayed next to Google search, why don't everyone just install AdBlock on their browsers? Yet Google raked in billions of dollars as people clicked on those ads that I considered spam.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

Its interesting how $1000 is a psychological number for a lot of people, $1000 number makes the Google stock join some "prestigious" $1000 club according to CNBC. Some people now think its too expensive because of its $1000 and Facebook is in $50s.

If Google decided to split the stock early on, it wouldn't have seen this day, and all the news that comes with crossing the $1000 mark.

So much for all the financial models that assume investors are rational.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: In iOS 7, the final straw for Newsstand

I fail to understand why the new opaque icon makes it "much worse" compared to the icon in previous iOS versions.

ashray5 | 12 years ago | on: Jewish Nobel Laureates

Very impressive indeed. There is a disproportionate ratio of Jewish people serving as CEOs of large corporations as well. I heard on Freakanomics radio that parenting and nurturing does not contribute much to the later success in life. Its the nature not nurture, they concluded. They used adoption data to come to that conclusion, although one can always find some argument against that study because its only an inductive argument in the end.