IMHO this doesn't make a difference whatsoever. We used to run a cloud gaming company and you burn through your first 100Gb within no time. Applications where data transfer is >50% of your cost is not sustainable and by giving the first 100Gb free they're not really making a dent on cloud costs. They're still charging an insane amount for data and the worst part is the pricing is almost similar across regions where Tier 1 networks might not actually charge AWS that much. it's a total rip off. In our desperate search for cheaper services, we actually checked out Linode (I don't work with them in any way) and found their egress costs a lot more palatable.
Oh and if risk is indeed your jam then look no further than Nassim Taleb's Real World risk institute. I've spoken to some alums of this course and they swear by it! Of course you could read his books too but I think he makes his books stupidly long for no reason.
Haha I had forgotten about this meme! I wonder if they had insurance for merchants back then and if so how did they even figure out the premium on it...
Perhaps we didn't have as much economic activity in the earlier human societies or perhaps those methods have been lost to time (just like those societies). As an ex actuary student what I can tell you is that at least from a mathematical tools perspective, we didn't have those available till around the 17th century.
So they thought they saw a market opportunity and it didn't pan out and now they're panic selling because they have too many houses on their balance sheet. Ain't nothing new about this and in any liquid market you will have people who think they can corner the market and make money. The markets see-saw between greed and fear and there will always be those who want to allocate capital to gain from it. If you're a value investor, you're actually waiting for something like what Zillow has managed to do i.e. over leverage themselves and now will have to rapidly get rid of assets as they're probably hemorrhaging money. They'll sell pennies on the dollar and I'm sure the likes of blackrock will swoop in and get those assets. Nothing new here guys!
As a mac user, I welcome the improvement in battery replacement design. The cost of replacing the battery (and the keyboard) has been one of the worst design decisions by apple.
When you're a contrarian but you get covered in FT (and worse still on hackernews), you stop being the contrarian. You become mainstream. Jokes aside, before you read his book Safe Haven, read the Dao of Capital.