crazycanuck

I was a passenger on AC549 several years ago when this happened. In our case, the oxygen masks were deployed because the cabin had actually lost pressure. From the standpoint of mechanical safety, I have no doubt that these planes are built to safely withstand these rates of descent, and likely a multiple of them. Having said that, I can also say that when the plane began its (sudden and unannounced, understandably) descent, you could feel your guts up in your throat much like when the roller coaster drops over the top of the first hill. From there on down it was calmer, but nonetheless harrowing. It's hard to describe how exactly, but it sure felt like we were coming down in a hell of a hurry.

Only once we had levelled off were the flight crew able to inform us what had happened. Those intervening 6 or 8 minutes, however, were decidedly Type 3 fun.

https://globalnews.ca/news/2487158/breaking-vancouver-bound-...

How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle?

Poore and Nemecek did a pretty comprehensive survey of the climate impact of different foods https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987 in 2018. Their underlying data suggests that methane accounts for about 38% of the total CO2 equivalent impact of beef herds. So if this is true, beef would still be highly damaging, but materially improved over where it sits now.

Here's a bit more about how we did this https://medium.com/@gpitfield/gitlance-how-we-ranked-9-milli...

In short, it's a graph that uses repo forks, stars, and commits to generate a big graph, and a PageRank-ish algorithm to generate the rankings.

Was this Cobalt?

Should also add that it can be installed directly via https://github.com/gpitfield/postmedia-ad-blocker/blob/maste...

Postmedia owns the leading daily newspapers in most Canadian cities. They required the papers' editorial boards to endorse the Harper government in our current federal election. Given the scope of their ownership and reach, this is a remarkable perversion of the press in favor of a couple of hedge funds who own Postmedia. I built an ad (and paywall script) blocker targeted only at their properties, and plan to submit to Apple later today. Pull requests welcome.

Canary is an anonymous, secure alternative I've been working on. Check it out if you'd like: www.canaryapp.net

You definitely could access app details. Not sure if you could change them - I didn't try - but here's the evidence: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qd0clsmx10h4tpd/Screenshot%202015-...

egads!

Screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/qd0clsmx10h4tpd/Screenshot%202015-...

Definitely true. I was just logged in as Blackberry and had full access to all the BBM apps (!). Seems to have reverted to my proper account now. Will share a screenshot momentarily.

Very good point, I was unaware these were still in effect (haven't been a US tax payer in several years).

I think it's worth clarifying what's meant by the "double taxation of dividends". This refers to the fact that the company (at least in theory) already paid taxes on its profits, which are then taxed again as ordinary income when passed on to shareholders in the form of dividends. Arguably, this second tax occurs even when the profits are returned as capital gains (which is the case with buybacks), but in that case a) the tax rate is much lower, and b) the shareholder can choose to defer the tax payment by simply holding onto the stock until a future date. Long story short, the preference for buybacks over dividends is not about avoiding double taxation per se, but rather minimizing the tax rate of profit distributions. Per OP, one way to fix this would be to tax them the same regardless of the distribution mechanism.

This isn't really the issue. See my comment above, which in your example translates to the tax rate in company one's scenario being ~2x the rate in company two's.

While both are indeed taxed, dividends are taxed as ordinary income, whereas gains from sale of stock are considered and taxed as capital gains. In the US at least, the capital gains rate is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/2 of the ordinary income rate, so it's much more "tax efficient" to do a buyback than to pay dividends.

We just went through the process for the first time and landed right around 50%. Our claim was reviewed (this is typical for first time claimants), and while non-trivial the process was well-managed and clear. We did it ourselves instead of using a consultant, and they were very understanding of a few mistakes we made, helped us rectify them and sent us on our way. I don't know if this is typical, but I really can't complain; it seemed entirely fair given the dollars involved.

Actually, you don't even need profits to apply the credits against. They are refundable, which means that if you didn't owe taxes to offset against, the government actually writes you a check in the amount of the credit.

Further to this and dcaranda, EBITDA is used for valuations because it describes the cash flow the business has available to pay various stakeholders before any financial structures are taken into account. There are three people who have a claim on the cash a company generates after paying operating expenses: debt holders, the government, and shareholders. Their claims on the money go roughly in that order, so in other words the shareholders get what's left (directly via dividends or stock buybacks or indirectly via an increase in the equity value) after the debt holders and the man are paid.

The thing is, however, how much you owe the government is affected by how much debt you have (i.e. your financial structure), because the debt interest is deductible. It's largely because of this that EBITDA is the preferred thing to use, as opposed to say earnings or cash flow, because it enables you to compare companies at a fundamental level unaffected by whatever financial structure they might currently have. One of the things PE guys like to do is fiddle with the financial structure (aka load it up with debt ;-), so it's important to understand the value ex whatever impact the current structure might have. But even if that's not your motive, it's a useful measure for the same underlying reasons.

It's also true that EBITDA is a useful number for PE because it tells you the amount of money available to service debt, as dcaranda points out.

But the E in P/E is earnings not sales, so this estimate is way too high. Better guess: start with 1x sales and adjust up or down based on how fast it's growing and how profitable you think they are. As far as public/private, if you haircut public company multiples by 10-15% you wouldn't be too far off.

You're missing 0. make great products, which at the big table are the only stakes that count.

This is too much me/my/I. It's a nice insight into why folks might think about design at Google, but a sharper insight into why design at Google has a ways to go.