vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Agreed.  Also, I think something missing here is the perception that companies are profiting enough to warrant these salary increases.  The current competitive landscape in America is tough.  Aside from a premier selection of companies, most are getting by and do not have the means to raise wages in the ways suggested.  These companies could raise their prices, and that's been happening and will probably continue, but it's mostly going to affect the same people that it's serving to increase wages for.  The real issue as I see it is that there isn't enough capital in circulation.  Americans aren't spending and massive capital reserves sit with the 1% that are gun shy on investing, understandably so.
That's not what is happening here. The companies are focusing on retained earnings, which are on their books on a global basis.   Robbing Peter to pay Paul would be true if the money was funneled from one company to another, to the complete exclusion of shareholders. That kind of behavior has been seen too and that too is unethical and deemed illegal in most jurisdictions. In those maneuvers, management transfers money from shareholders to their own pockets. Stock options issued by tech companies is a good example, though the behavior was far more rampant before they had to declare diluted earnings.  The solution is to have a populace much more involved in its country's politics, far lower taxes and a strong streak of independence, libertarians like Ron Paul or Gary Johnson ;)   In the current structure of apathy and ignorance, it is the cunning and the sociopaths who rise to the top.
Reddit is not doing anything like that. &gt;No, it's about growing the user base. There's arguably more value in that these days for tech companies. Reddit isn't a tech company, it's a social media company it's 'technology' is neat but doesn't produce a profit mostly because Reddit users are savvy enough to run Ad-Block and we don't buy Reddit Gold enough to care. Notice the privacy policy changes and the Do Not Track abandonment? Selling our data is the next attempt to make money, and better targeted marketing. But for that to work we need Facebook and Twitter users, meaning we need to be dumbed down to be more like them.
"I love the subtitle on this article - ""Silicon Valley deals are not based on factors that bankers can model"" and another quote ""a DCF projection would not be able to help Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, work out whether Snapchat was worth $1bn or $10bn""  What a crock of BS.  A DCF is exactly the methodology you should be using in order to value an acquisition (along with comparable company/transaction methods).    Is it incredibly difficult to use the right variables and forecast the value of these companies?  Yes.  Is the inherent value of a company derived from the expected cash flows generated from that company once you acquire it?  Yes.  Just because it is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.    ""Big tech companies have never had more cash than they have today, and they are finding it just as hard to put their money to work as everybody else is.""  Well damn then maybe you should return that money back to the shareholders **who own the company** instead of blowing it on dot-bombs at stupid valuation levels."
First of all make the finance guy/gal show you the the difference in total cost they can do do this using the federal truth in lending disclosures on a finance contract. Secondly how long will you keep the vehicle? If you come out ahead by say $1500 by taking the lower rate but you usually trade out every three years this is not going to work. Also and this is important if you are involved in a situation with a total loss like a stolen car or even worse a bad wreck before the breakeven point you lose that price break. Finally on judging what is right for you, just know that future value of the vehicle on for resell or trade-in will take into effect all of these past rebates and value the car accordingly. So if a vehicle depreciates 20% a year for the first 3 years the starting point will essentially be $7000.00 less than you actually paid, using rough numbers. How does this help the dealers and car companies? Well while a dealer struggles to make money on new cars the factory makes all of their money on the new cars and the new car financing. While your individual loan might lose money that money is offset by the loss of rebate and I think Ford does actually pay Ford Motor Credit Company the difference in the rate. The most important thing is what happens later FMCC now has 2500 loans with people with perfect credit. They can now use those loans to budle with people with not so perfect credit that they financed at 12%-18% and buy that money with interest rates in the 2%-3% range. Well that is a hell of a lot of profit. 'How does it help the dealership, well the more super prime credit they have in their portfolio the more subprime credit the banks will buy for them. This means they have more loans originated that are more profitable for them. Say you come in for the 0% but have 590 credit score, they get FMCC to buy the deal because they have a good portfolio and you win because the dealer gets to buy the money at say 9% and sell it to you at say 12% making the spread.
&gt; make reddit more ~~accessible~~ profitable. Seriously, come on. Reddit is plenty accessible to the nerdy weirdo base that loves it, me included. Making it more like Facebook and Twitter will only drive existing users (unprofitable users) away and bring in or try to bring in more profitable users. It's like Kitchen Nightmares, we're the old-school customers, we love our microwaved lamb shank and stewed potatoes, but that isn't making money for the restaurant. Now we only come here for those things, it's familiar, comforting we're not your typical customer. BUT, for the restaurant to stay open they need to be more accessible to the average customer, have new and exciting things. So the menu needs to be changed. They'll get new customers, one's who like the new menu, but at the expense of loosing us. Which is fine, because we don't pay the bills. We don't matter. That's what you don't get. We're not paying for Reddit, and that IS a problem. That's why there's been more rounds of funding, diluting the already existing shares, because without this influx Reddit would sink. They're trying to stay open with the old menu, but at some point they need to make a buck and a new menu is what IS going to happen. Being in denial isn't going to stop that. &gt;Do you think companies like Uber who absolutely haemorrhage money are thinking that profit is their top priority? Uber is forcing traditional Taxi companies out of their own market. They can ride on losses for a very long time because they are clearly the future, much like Amazon. Reddit is not doing anything like that. &gt;No, it's about growing the user base. There's arguably more value in that these days for tech companies. Reddit isn't a tech company, it's a social media company it's 'technology' is neat but doesn't produce a profit mostly because Reddit users are savvy enough to run Ad-Block and we don't buy Reddit Gold enough to care.
Are you sure you're not just looking at prices that are adjusted for the split, e.g. Yahoo? For example, Gilead Sciences (GILD) split a few months ago, but if you look at a price chart, there isn't an interruption even though the split is clearly marked. (Look in the past six months; it split in January). However, you could also simply be watching companies that happen to not split, for a variety of reasons. This isn't a criticism, but rather just a consequence of whatever stocks you happen to be watching. However, a quick search for information on stock splits yields a few articles (mainly from the Motley Fool) that argue that fewer companies are performing stock splits in recent years; the articles mainly talk about tech companies, and they make the argument that even though the shares in Google and Apple have a high stock price: Google and Apple aren't all that expensive by traditional valuation metrics. Google trades at just 15 times next year's projected profitability. Apple fetches a mere 13 times fiscal 2012's bottom-line estimates. These articles are a bit dated in terms of the stock prices, but the rationale is probably still good. Similar logic could apply for other companies; for example, since May 2009, Panera's stock price has climbed by almost a factor of 4 without splitting. The articles also make the point that stock splits were traditionally seen as bullish signs because: Companies splitting to bring their share prices back down to more accessible levels were optimistic in building those sand castles back up. One could make a fair argument that the overall economic climate isn't as bullish as it used to be, although I would only be convinced that this was affecting stock splits if data could be gathered and tested. A stock split can also raise the price of a stock because if small investors feel the stock is suddenly more accessible to them, they purchase more of it and might therefore drive up the price. (See the Investopedia article on stock splits for more information). Companies might not see the necessity in doing this because their stock price isn't high enough to warrant a split or because the price isn't high enough to outprice smaller investors.
You may feel like your not learning anything but the amount of doors that remain closed to you without a degree is very large. You can go directly into the work force but your potential to grow in salary will be a lot less than with a degree in addition to starting at a lower wage. This also depends a bit on the field you go into.   I would recommend either staying in school or going to a trade school. Shorter amount of time, less money, and you'll be working quicker with room for growth.   If you want to stay in school take it upon yourself to learn more. Study up applicable things. Joint career focused organization. Your additional skills will show on your resume and soon after joining the workforce.
http://www.catalyst.org/publication/271/women-ceos-of-the-fortune-1000  There are only 40 women CEO's out of the top 1000 companies.  Looks like Virginia Rometty is viewed as a star at IBM.   And you have Ursula Burns of Xerox.    (Those are considered tech right?)  Ursula Burns is kind of completely amazing actually.  But there aren't a lot of high profile female CEO's because there aren't a lot of female CEO's period.    You can look over the list for the tech ones.    Also high profile is usually linked with something sexy and interesting to the public.   I don't know many male CEOs.  Apple, Amazon.  That's about it.   I don't even know who's in charge of google.
200 is not normal. 140-160 including signing bonus, stock compensation, and base is doable if you go to the big tech companies. That said, it’s like getting into an Ivy League... most wont. I’d say 100-110 is common in the Bay Area.   To clarify, this is new grad. For experienced folks 200k total comp is common.
This whole article sounds like it was paid off by cable and internet providers. Don’t get me wrong these web companies definitely need to be hammered down on specially after what happened this past election.  However this article is trying to make a point that getting rid of net neutrality is the right thing to do. Net neutrality is the rule that prevents cable/internet companies to charge you more for access to certain websites than others, in a similar way they do with television today. The same cable/internet companies that lobbied and won the right to sell your browsing history the same way these web companies do.  And if we talk about monopolies we should also be looking at AT&amp;T, Comcast, Verizon and various other companies that have a strong hold on today’s consumers.
Lots of companies are behind the times because their management is usually older people who don't know about this tech or how to lock it down. Our company is in the same boat and our security guys put out some new tough policy yet they have not enforced it or put any teeth to it and we keep seeing violations all over the place and one person is being sued because he spent years selling off our info.
I think what actually happens is that at the very high end, people with high SAT scores don't go into Science or Math, not that they fail to graduate (I am pretty sure there is a positive correlation with graduation and SAT scores). If you look at graduation surveys at Harvard, half of the students go into finance and consulting. Tech has increased in the last few years because of increased salaries and increasing popularity of programmers/engineers in popular culture.  Basically, the statistic says nothing about the competence of the student. If you randomly select a Harvard student, you will probably get someone whose specialty will be finance or consulting. Graduation rates at Harvard are higher than the average state or community college. But you are right that this is completely irrelevant anyways because an employer will only look at students who have a degree from the right major(s).
Why is the regulatory environment now more uncertain than any time in the past?  It isn't.  Companies are keeping large cash reserves because there is no DEMAND for their products.  If people wanted to buy, the companies would be making and selling.
Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product.  So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration.  Meaning that they are diversifying along their supply chain so that they control more of it.  This is in contrast with horizontal integration, where they move into new products that either compete with the existing products or which are entirely separate.   In general, the upside of vertical integration is that a company is less reliant on suppliers (and intermediate consumers) and has more control over its supply chain.  The downside is that they have less opportunity to partner with other companies in the same supply chain, as they compete with them.  Some companies are better at managing to do both.  For example, Amazon.com has integrated fulfillment and sales.  But partners can still do their own fulfillment and/or sales, choosing how much to send out to Amazon.   If you are investing in individual stocks, integrated companies can be problematic in that they cut across diversification areas.  So they can be harder to balance with other stocks.  You can either buy plantations, transport, and manufacturing together or not buy at all.  If your investment strategy says to increase plantations and reduce manufacturing, this can be difficult to implement with an integrated company.  Of course, everyone else has the same problem, which can lead to integrated companies being undervalued.  So they may be an opportunity as a value stock.
&gt; Apple ... Tesla and Switch ... billion dollar investments in Virginia City, Nevada.....The tech population has begun moving into cheaper areas already  Um, all of those tech company investments are for server farms, which provide very few jobs. So long as power and connectivity is available, it doesn't matter where a server farm is located and of course companies try to put them in places where it's cheapest. What this does *not* represent is tech moving out of Silicon Valley and into Nevada. Just how many jobs do you think were relocated from Silicon Valley for these investments? I would guess few, if any at all. Though lower cost is certainly attractive to corporations, a Nevada lifestyle is apparently still not attractive for tech workers.
The short answer is that the people who know aren't saying. [Lisa Pollack](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/author/lspollack/) at FT has made a heroic effort at figuring it out, but working from what is publicly known and making some reasonable assumptions she can't even find $1 billion of losses, much less 9.   All we know for sure is that JPM sold massive amounts of protection on a particular CDS index. Roughly, that means that they sold insurance on a group of 125 companies, and they would lose money if one of those companies went bankrupt or looked like it might go bankrupt, and make money if those companies look less likely to go bankrupt.   However! They were certainly combining that position with other offsetting positions. Since their banking business loses money when companies go bankrupt, it would make sense if they protected themselves with an even more massive position that *made* money when companies went bankrupt.   A common strategy is to bet that the price of 1 thing will go up, and the price of a very similar thing will go down, so you are protected and can make money if both prices go up or if both go down. However, if the 2 things are not as similar as you thought, you can lose money from both bets. That's what seems to have happened to JPM.  Dimon has basically said that JPM screwed up their calculations, and positions that they thought were offsetting were not.    What also seems likely is that other companies figured out that JP Morgan had massive amounts of certain things that they needed to sell, so JPM was forced to sell at bad prices. You never want to play poker against someone who can see your hole cards.  So my speculative theory is that the main point of the trading was to protect JPM if other companies went bankrupt, but they did it with a complicated strategy that included selling protection. They got the calculations wrong, and then they were forced to sell at bad prices to other companies who knew they had to sell.
He was referring to tech companies. I am referring to old-school companies that haven't missed a dividend payment for 30 years. Anyway Facebook is probably a good bet – they have an even trying to monetize it other than to cover costs. Let someone else bet on that. it turns out that a lot of people open accounts and are active for about the first 30 days and that's it. But the accounts remain on the books. Linkedin – talk about worst in breed. Anyway, I still don't know what Facebook has that MySpace didn't.
An Initial Public Offering (IPO), is the perfect first marketing of shares by the secretly purchased company to the public. The companies going public hick finance through IPO's for working capital, debt repayment, acquisitions, and a manager of other uses. If you want to learn the fundamental of the IPO best site is W3Teachers.com. For more INFO. visit :-http://www.w3teachers.com/IPO/IPO-DASHBOARD
"&gt;Just came across this Economist article, they make it sound quite straight forward and I don't think they can be called totalitarian leftists by any stretch.  Yes they point out that the US corporate tax is horribly punitive and forces companies to spend insane amounts of money to lower their tax rates to globally competitive levels; that the tax rate is ridiculously and punitively high (though SOME companies have been able to lower their taxes far below the statutory rate) and that the global taxation of income is an insanely punitive totalitarian practice, that no other G-7 country would dare try to put in place.  &gt;It seems clear that the 35% rate is not the driving reason for these huge companies doing inversions.  Then what is causing them? Are they spending billions of dollars on overseas inversion driven acquisitions just to throw the money away?   No the reason, as is simply laid out in your quote is the extremely high tax rate and the global taxation of income. The companies that pay closest to the statutory rate are the ones most desperate to leave.  Summary: some companies pay less than the average rate, some pay more. The ones paying at the highest level on earth on all their global income, are desperate to leave this greedy corrupt government behind. If the US government wants to treat them so poorly, I commend these executives for saying fuck off back to the politicians. Hopefully, one day politicians will see this and put in a fair and competitive corporate tax system, or zero out the corporate tax and recover the lost revenue from rich capital owners as they should.  &gt;but I just don't want to hear the silly argument of ""oh our poor mega corporations are having to pay the highest taxes in the world!"" when the tax environment in the US is clearly rigged in their favor.   Many large US companies do pay the highest tax rates in the world while some pay very little. Guess who is doing everything they can to leave behind our wretched greedy government: the ones with the high tax rates. The companies desperate for inversion deals aren't the ones paying zero taxes.  &gt;Small and mid sized companies that can't afford their own Congressman sure are getting fucked though, and that makes me sad.  Most small companies don't pay any corporate taxes as they aren't organized as C corps."
"I'm not so sure, most of these ""savings"" from the report is from the construction industry, they're struggling as it is and the fact they are adding jobs is a good sign even if the wages are less than before. We just saw a bubble  burst in real estate, of course any company that is benefiting from a growing bubble is going to be able to pay their employee's a lot more than they could after the bubble burst, assuming the companies are even around still."
"We're not in Bubble #2, There is another land rush in the web due to how easy it is to get in and how everywhere else is terrible to work at this moment.  Groupon is the big outlier b/c it's a sales company and not a tech company.  Facebook (which I personally hate but am forced to use it) is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, all companies with stock are the same way.  Will it have a market cap of $100B, you bet!  There are a few once in a decade companies that will do something uniqure very very well.   Think Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco.    Facebook IMO is a walled garden, where your information is free to enter but forbidden to leave.  Your data is their data, your web habits are known to them and are tracked by them.  They know more about your like's dislikes, web habits than you yourself do.  Damn! That's some powerful shit that people who want to peddle anything and everything to you will want.  You are actively being tracked by each ""like"" button you come across on the web.  Now for this whole Facebook IPO, Google has shown the power of the tech IPO post Bubble #1 in 2004.  Well guess what Wall Street/Private Equity/Hedge Funds/Global Captial wants in!  That's easy money to them, it doesn't want to be left out in another bubble, another hit, whatever you want to call it.  That drives up the initial offering price, more media, more exposure, more demand, etc.  So now Facebook has this hugely valuable database of individuals that it owns and doesn't share to anyone else and a huge demand for it."
I think the control freak stems from the fact he was kicked out of Tribe.net, a social networking site he founded in 2003, by the VC investors. He initially bootstrapped Zynga (with money from the 3 previous companies he founded) so he could maintain control after taking VC money.   A special class of stock for the founder(s) in the tech world is not without precedent. Google is structured the same way.
Dow will not exist in 100 years. AI computer trading will remove all faith in the current system and companies will find new ways to raise equity capital that won't necessarily involve traditional exchanges. Even if exchanges are still strong the concept of the DOW is flimsy even today.  I love Warren but he is not tech sophisticated enough to understand the shitstorm that AI will bring to financial markets.