It is a taxable LLC. He doesn't get the tax-benefits of setting up a nonprofit, but he has much more freedom in how to use the money (e.g. including making investments vs donations, and including non-tax-deductible political activism).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Zuckerberg_Initiative#Com...
1,500 miles of high voltage transmission lines would cost a lot ($billions). Much more than the economic benefit of sharing power resources across the distinct markets.
AEMO's National Transmission Network Development Plan [0] describes in great detail how they foresee investments in the (eastern) grid infrastructure. As a frame of reference, just upgrading a couple transformers to increase the transfer capacity between South Australia and Victoria will cost tens of millions.[1]
Agreed. Note the source -- folks who had gone home to die and spoke with a palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware. There are many people who die without access to in-home hospice care.* Overall they tend to be poorer and I would bet they have some other regrets not mentioned here (and I'd be interested to read up on them).
Still, it's hard to argue with this advice...
* I believe Medicare (covers most Americans over 65) provides some in-home hospice benefit, so I'm not saying this is limited to the extremely rich, but it is limited to those with a home and the wherewithal to seek hospice care.
The battery lights display useful information by being visibly off. When you see 7 dots light up, you need to be able to see the 8th dark hole to know it's at 7/8 charge and not 7/7 or 7/10. Similarly for the charging indicator: when it's not charging, you want that to be obvious.
Arguably, knowing that the laptop camera (or the wireless keyboard bluetooth pairing) is not active is not as useful information.
Before you consider buying a company and selling off its assets, you have to realize that when you own a company you also own its debt, and that if you liquidate you have to pay off all that debt (unless you can pocket the cash and file for bankruptcy, not generally legal).
This info is publicly available and quite a bit more accurate that the Register's napkin math.
As of March 31, 2011 (end of BT's last fiscal year), they owned $23bln (that's USD) in "Property Plant & Equipment" (including all the copper in question) and held $35bln in liabilities.
> equivalent would be that you're allowed to take out a fire insurance policy on your neighbors house, and then proceed to smoke cigarettes and flick the lit butts at his house
Yes, hedge funds (and everyone) are allowed to bet on this. If there's an issue here, the question is who is selling fire insurance policies (at non-exorbitant rates) when they know that arsonists are around? If it's European banks that know they'll be bailed out, that's a problem.
In theory, all CDS trades are registered with DTCC since 2009, and my understanding is this works pretty well for contracts as standardized and liquid as Greece. See also the WSJ article linked by ristretto below.