I agree that the diagnosis and visual inspection is the most important skill in fixing random items.

In the channels that I suggested, all of them go into the repair not knowing what the fault actually is. They take the viewer through the whole diagnosis, and they (with the exception of Electronics Repair School) are not electronics technicians.

Once a person has seen enough different ways of diagnosing items (by watching videos or hands on trying), then faults in other items become easier to find.

I believe Youtube videos are a great resource for learning this! I picked up electronics and computer/gpu repair as a hobby over the pandemic lockdowns.

A cheap multimeter and a cheap soldering iron/hot air station combo will get you very far in the hobby. I enjoy these channels:

MyMateVince (a guy who fixes many useful household items): https://www.youtube.com/user/mymatevince

StezStixFix: https://www.youtube.com/@StezStixFix

Electronics Repair School (more advanced, he fixes laptops, tvs, and sometimes gpus): https://www.youtube.com/@electronicsrepairschool

I understand that they needed to put the money to work somewhere, but they really chose a bad way to do it. Hence the 'poorly controlled risk' that I mentioned.

Most other banks found ways to survive the environment in 2021. So clearly there are ways to do it without locking money up for 10 years in MBS.

I feel like the 10 year MBS investment might actually have been a case of excess risk. In a world of zero interest rates (which I presume is when they invested in the MBS), 1.5%-2% yield makes SVB quite a bit of extra profit.

Their investment may have been a case of greed and poorly controlled risk.

Do you really think the owners and senior management of SVB ended up with nothing? What about the stock sales they made right before the FDIC took over, or the bonuses given out, or even their compensation during the years in which this high-risk interest rate scheme was going on?

They have orders of magnitude more money than most people, and will get away with no liability.

I would love some kind of game where spoilers on the internet don't affect the feeling of discovery within the game. It seems too easy to just look up game secrets on the internet now, and it's almost necessary to do so in order to 'keep up' with other players (mainly in an MMO type game). I don't know if something like this exists now, or how it might be done.

One idea I've been kicking around is to have some sort of disincentive to posting in-game discoveries online. For example, the usefulness or power of an item is inversely proportional to how many instances of the item have been found. Not sure if this is really feasible in practice though.

My 6 year old son played with SimplyPiano for several months this year, and I tried it out a bit as well. For me, SimplyPiano brings the excitement of being able to play popular music that you recognize and enjoy in a matter of weeks. The app has easy arrangements of everything from Adele to Beethoven that it takes you through as it 'teaches' you. There is also a gamification aspect that gives you more stars for hitting the right notes at the right time.

When I had piano lessons as a child, playing classical music for years became boring and uninteresting to me. I believe apps with a wide range of music help keep interest levels up. The app seems like a great way to dip your toes into playing piano without committing to finding a teacher.

This video is from July of 2020, and at this time I don't doubt that they have a semi-truck chassis with a fuel cell drivetrain in it. However, whether this truck performs even close to the specifications and capabilities of what Nikola claims is never substantiated.

Fuel cell vehicles have been around for a long time, and I presume it's not that difficult to put a basic prototype together with amount of capital available to Nikola.

I agree that it should be fraud, but I'm not sure how the SEC defines fraud.

To me, the whole NKLA situation feels like a giant Kickstarter scam.

I feel like Nikola is an example of why it might be bad for retail investors to have access to early stage companies (pre-IPO or not). A traditional venture capital investment has a better ability to do due diligence than the general public does.

I'm not familiar with IPO listings through SPACs, but do these type of listings go through as much DD as a traditional IPO listing? It seems that every step along the way, NKLA had avoided close inspection of it's actual IP and assets.

Statewide rent control in California wasn't enacted until January 1, 2020 (with a retroactive period of several months I believe).

So, if you rented before Jan 1, and your rental unit was built after 1979, it wasn't covered by any rent control. Landlords could raise rent as much as they wanted on those types of units.

I agree with all of your points. However, the 'company' having $8 million in the bank does not mean that the 'founder' has or will ever have $1 million.

The expectation of funding is that it is spent growing the company (employees, inventory, etc), not immediately paid out to the founders.