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There's also buybacks, which has mostly been tech companies' weapon of choice when it comes to capital return.


I don't want to split hairs because you are correct, and this isn't really directed at you.

I'd just like to point out that if you believe in roughly efficient markets, if your enterprise maintains its value, if you amass a pile of cash, that will be reflected in your share price.

The dividends come directly out of that share price whenever issued. You can theoretically amass a pile of money that would make Smaug blush, and this will increase your share price to reflect. But that cash isn't being reinvested, it's only going to increase linearly with respect to that cash position. Which is why in many circumstances investors frown upon it.


I don't follow, Sigma hasn't stopped using Foveon sensors, they still use the Foveon Quattro stuff afaik. Now they use a 1:1:4 ratio for R/G/B layer resolution, where the blue layer also records luminance.

They decided they wanted to confuse people more when they tried to compare it to a Bayer sensor.


Actually I didn't realise they still made them... Nice to know. I remembered the Foveon sensors from when they were first introduced, but didn't see any reference to them still being made when I did a quick search to refresh my memory, so they may have a bit of a marketing issue ;)


Maybe a bit tangential, but from an economic it's interesting to see Intel's market cap vs TSMC, given that TSMC is purely a foundry. Nowadays what 10nm or 14nm actually means is a lot fuzzier than previous nodes, but the general consensus seems to be Intel's fab tech lead is either pretty precarious or already gone, so I'm just gonna assume even (which is admittedly a poor, oversimplified assumption).

Then TSMC and Intel are pretty even, which is slightly interesting to extrapolate all manner of conclusions.

Intel has slowly opened it's fabs to outsiders, however the first one was Altera, who Intel now owns, so... Main point is in 20, 30 years, is Intel's main business going to be fabbing their own chips, or someone else's? I dunno, I just enjoy following the industry.


If TSMC's fab is as good as or better than Intel's, then fabless companies like AMD and Apple will reap competitive benefits over Intel, which now has to have IP for CPUs it sells as well as IP for its fab business.


TI and Cypress through Ramtron has done quite a bit of work incorporating ferroelectric materials into CMOS processes and such for FeRAMs mostly. Obviously RAMs are not transistors but the work is certainly relevant. Like the article says, the large feature size for ferroelectrics has mostly been the limitation for ferroelectric applications.


>he actually seemed like a nice person. I also enjoyed his trollish sense of humor.

I see where you're coming from and don't want to get pedantic, but isn't as trollish sense of humor by definition at least a little mean-spirited?


The funniest comedy routines I have ever seen by the most prominent comedians are almost always disparaging of a person, group, or idea held dear by many people. Simmer on that and ask yourself if mean-spiritedness really matters in this context.


> seemed like a nice person

> ask yourself if mean-spiritedness really matters in this context

Yes?


> The funniest comedy routines I have ever seen by the most prominent comedians are almost always disparaging of a person, group, or idea held dear by many people.

I suggest that says more about you than about anything else.


The "Late Shore Limited" I've taken has on-time performance of ~50% and train interference as 50% of delays. That sounds about right.


That's not really an honest interpretation.

The part you're ignoring is future earnings. Assuming a company maintains its earnings, you have a bigger slice of the pie next quarter. If the company trades at the same EPS multiple, your stake definitely has gained value. You're totally ignoring enterprise value.

In a vacuum, nothing has changed about a company's future earnings when they repurchase shares.

The kind of bizarre roundabout way to consider it is if Apple bought 25% of itself with its money mountain (they can't, beside the point), your stake in the company goes up because you own shares in Apple, which in turn owns 25% of itself.

You effectively have more equity in Apple when it buys its own shares.


Buybacks make sense only if you have more cash than you know what to do with.

What the previous poster is trying to get at is that a big-ticket buyback signals an inability to invest that sum in a way that will improve growth or profitability. The best move to increase EPS is invest in capital improvements to increase earnings. If you can deploy money effectively, that means you're also growing in the long-term. Reducing the number of shares via a buyback also increases EPS, but it doesn't improve the top line.

In other words, a buyback is a way to increase your (and the CEO's) earnings per share even in the midst of stalling growth. So what I'm getting out of the previous comment is: don't confuse a buyback with continued growth; it's actually a "cashing out" moment.


I think a rational CEO/CFO looks across intrinsic/organic investments in their own company, possible mergers and acquisitions, and share buybacks and "horse races" each of those possible uses for excess cash.

Whichever combination of those items provides the best risk-adjusted return is the one (or several) that they should choose. The risk of share buybacks is quite low. You more or less know what the outcome will be, so even if the reward of a successful M&A or an organic expansion project is higher, it may still be smarter to buyback shares once you discount the former possibilities for the uncertainty. This is even more true if you believe the stock market is undervaluing your firm's shares, which of course then becomes a very common storyline when buyback programs are announced or expanded.


Absolutely. It's a low-risk move that reduces the number of shares rather than increasing earnings. But it follows (if the leadership of company you bought is rational) that they've decided there aren't enough organic investments or good M&A prospects to make a full deployment of their cash worthwhile. They are effectively giving the money back.

If you invested because you believe in the long-term growth prospects of the company, then you expect them to plow their cash into increasing the top line, and a buyback can be a disappointing signal. If you invested because you believe it's a good income stock, a buyback is exactly what you want.


i don't know how truly random a crc function is, but they're really cheap to implement in an fpga. especially if you're just pulling the bit off the end for a bitstream, and you can just feed the output or some polynomial into the input instead of an input stream. but that's where my thoughts end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computation_of_cyclic_redundan...


spotify premium is $10. it used to be if you subscribed to spotify premium through the app store it cost $13 because Apple literally wants 30% of any money that changes hands through the app store. otherwise you give spotify $10 directly and go on your way.


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