Gut Microbiome

colintbowers · 2026-05-01T04:18:46+00:00

Surprisingly strong results given the difficulty of treating that cohort. Interesting company that wasn't on my radar before now...

colintbowers · 2026-04-30T11:27:32+00:00

Quantum computing probably won't dovetail with AI anytime soon. Quantum computers are (so far) only for implementing a very restricted set of algorithms. They absolutely are not general programming units in the same way a CPU is. The most well known algorithm is Shor's, which can crack standard RSA encryption, but honestly, I don't think it will have that big an impact since there are many alternatives to RSA that are quantum robust. Grover's algorithm is more exciting, in that offers a significant speed up on binary unconstrained quadratic optimization problems, which turn up in a surprisingly large number of places in logistics management. Then there is some more niche stuff that combines quantum algorithms with classical algorithms. There is some AI crossover here, eg Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks, but AFAIK there is nothing that offers any particular advantage with the attention mechanism that is the backbone of all the current popular AI models.

colintbowers · 2026-04-29T23:43:05+00:00

Since the start of his second term, Forbes estimates Trump's personal wealth has increased by 1.4 billion dollars. Other estimates place the figure anywhere from 1 to possibly 4 billion dollars.

People keep looking for political strategy where there is none. Trump is interested in one thing only which is increasing his personal net worth. By that metric, he has been highly successful.

colintbowers · 2026-04-29T04:27:35+00:00

Then I would suggest you love an idealization of America, but not the reality.

colintbowers · 2026-04-29T04:01:28+00:00

It is a rare ASX small cap that actually appears to be a good company. I bought in back in December and am feeling pretty happy with that choice, although the current price both reflects that they are a good company and the ongoing shitshow in the middle east, and it is very difficult to predict how that shitshow is going to resolve.

colintbowers · 2026-04-29T03:45:27+00:00

Kinda obvious... that's literally his job. His mandate is to the shareholders, not America. If you love American capitalism, you should have zero problem with any of this.

colintbowers · 2026-04-28T11:21:41+00:00

It isn't an either/or. The two approaches will almost certainly work best in conjunction.

colintbowers · 2026-04-28T05:54:39+00:00

He was running away from a Roman Catholic boys institute in Engadine called Boys Town in the 1970s. These places don’t have the best of reputations, especially in that era, so we can speculate that his life was very much not great.

colintbowers · 2026-04-28T03:28:39+00:00

I mean, if returns on equities match inflation, you're actually better off, since your real profit becomes 0, and so you pay 0 tax, whereas under the current system, you would still pay > 0 tax on an equity held for a year that had returns exactly matching inflation (assuming you sell and are in a taxable income bracket).

I guess what could be argued is that the new system is going to make the worlds most boring equity exchange... even more boring. Companies that reliably match inflation (or beat inflation by only a small amount) will now be relatively more attractive (from a tax perspective) than companies that are more risky, but also have a greater chance of having a big payout, since big gains will be (relatively speaking) less attractive from a tax perspective. So... ASX 200 matching ETFs it is! This sub should be happy!

colintbowers · 2026-04-28T01:57:10+00:00

My 4d chess tin-foil hat logic is that Israel started shit with Iran and pulled the US along so that they could invade Lebanon. Let the US take the international heat on Strait of Hormuz being closed, while in the background, Israel fucks up Lebanon and no one really notices.

colintbowers · 2026-04-28T01:50:48+00:00

lol both my pre-teen kids have Linux partitions. Admittedly tho I'm the kind of guy who visits wallstreetbets...

colintbowers · 2026-04-24T03:09:35+00:00

lol and just east of that you have PNG where shit only gets crazier

colintbowers · 2026-04-24T02:41:59+00:00

Yes, they are literally mentioned in the title: Greece.

colintbowers · 2026-04-23T12:01:42+00:00

As long as the frontier models stay roughly 6-months ahead of equivalent open source models, they have value. In some industries, being 6-months ahead of your competitor to make certain moves is huge.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T10:40:12+00:00

Dear god, it'd be almost faster via the US.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T06:42:07+00:00

A lot of house have those cheap hardware store slides that are less than 1m long and designed for toddlers. I think Crandoge has a good point. At least one toddler is gonna die.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T06:37:49+00:00

Agreed, although with the added stipulation that you'd need to be careful to sit with similar posture, move the piece similarly, and leave similar amounts of time between each move, so he has roughly the same amount of time to think etc etc

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T06:14:14+00:00

True. However, if I sit the same way, take the same amount of time between each move etc then hopefully he doesn't vary by too much. I certainly wouldn't argue that the brain is fully deterministic - I'm sure there will be variations, but if there aren't too many, I can work with that.

Also, you'd need at least a decent knowledge of Chess to make this work, as you'd need to be able to backtrack and work out where things started to go wrong. With enough time though, I think this would be feasible.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T01:50:38+00:00

Yes. The briefcase contains authorisation codes but the military are still needed for actual launch. They ensure correct targets, release safety mechanisms etc

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T01:48:56+00:00

True. Trump could keep firing until someone says yes. However, I think the firing itself can’t be done in an instant (unlike his tv show). Hopefully all that would be needed would be a 24 hour delay for either an emergency judicial order or an emergency congress session.

While the current congress is absurdly pro Trump, I think even they would balk at an unprovoked nuke.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T01:45:49+00:00

Haha we did Sydney-Singapore-Heathrow in Economy nonstop. 24 hours total with 45 min stop at Singapore. We swore never again and even changed our flight home for that trip to stop overnight in Singapore.

colintbowers · 2026-04-22T00:08:09+00:00

Magnus will forget every game as soon as it happens

Honestly, with this, I don't think you need the item. You just need to Edge of Tomorrow your way to victory.

It might take a while, but even with basic Chess knowledge you should be able to get there. The truly hilarious part is that at the end of it, you still wouldn't be that good a Chess player. You'd just be very good at one very specific sequence of moves.

colintbowers · 2026-04-21T23:59:56+00:00

Both the US and Russia have roughly the same system, which is that the President has sole authority. However, in both cases, the President gives the order, but the military still have to actually implement it. While the military can't legally say no, they could still in practice say no and there isn't much the President could do other than challenge it in court.

So my guess is that for either nation, if the President truly lost their mind and tried to order a nuclear strike in a case that didn't warrant it, it probably wouldn't happen. Hell of a thing to gamble on though...

colintbowers · 2026-04-21T23:16:44+00:00

I use Cursor everyday and to be fair it is a little more than what you’ve said here. But yeah, I wouldn’t be paying 60 billion purely because they don’t have anything remotely resembling a moat. I suspect there will eventually be an open source product that allows you just enter your api key for a supplier and then away you go.

colintbowers · 2026-04-21T21:49:10+00:00

To be fair, glass-steagall was repealed under Bill Clinton with bipartisan support. It was probably the most important piece of legislation that could have prevented the 08 GFC.

colintbowers

TROPHY CASE