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The Big Little Questions
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What’s with all this nonsense about Game Stop’s share price?
The War with Wall St. The Reddit Rebellion! First of all I have one thing in particular I would like to say about the situation with Game Stops share price and that is, wait until Monday comes... If your up for a laugh you should check out Game Stops stock price come Monday morning, in particular, you should check it out shortly after the New York Stock exchange opens. My guess is that the price of Game Stop Shares will collapse under the weight of its own success. But hey, I’ve been wrong before, so who knows? At close, as of today, the price for one share of GME was $325.00 USD. What’s so interesting about that, I hear you asking. Well, it helps to keep one simple fact in mind. That fact is as follows. Only a month ago the price for one share of GME was around nineteen US dollars a share. So, what’s up? Why did the price suddenly sky rocket to 325 dollars? Well, it wasn’t because of some amazing news released by the company, you can be sure of that. What happened was as follows. One month ago a subreddit was created under the Wall Street Bets page on the sharing site Reddit. The post was created in response to the discovery that 160% of all the money in GME stocks was short sold. Why would someone create a page in response to this discovery? That would be because they want to see the financial world burn! After all, short sellers are not the most popular people in the market. You see short selling means that someone has burrowed stock from a broker. Than they sell the stock quickly and take the money to their money caves. Meanwhile, the broker is still waiting for the stock that was borrowed to be returned, that’s part of the deal. The idea is that, if you short sell, you sell the stock, you stash the cash, you wait patiently for the price to continue to fall, you than re purchase the stock when it’s cheaper and than return the stock back to the broker. If the short sell is completed correctly you should be able to return the stocks to the broker and keep the difference of the trade. You should profit, so should the broker. So, what’s wrong with this trade tactic? Well, for starters, short selling is basically a way to bet against a companies success. The only reason you would ever perform a short sell is because you strongly believed that a companies share price was going down and would continue doing so for some time to come. Short selling is the polar opposite of the normal reason to buy stocks. Hoping that a company is going to fail is good for a laugh but it is evil. There’s no doubt about that. Keep in mind that thousands of jobs may be on the line if a company does fail. With that clarification it’s apparent that wanting a company to fail is plain and simply the wrong attitude to have. But, it’s not illegal and for that reason, neither is short selling. So, in early January it was noted on reddit that an army was being created to go to war with Wall Street. This army was created with one purpose in mind and that was to drive the price of GME through the roof. You see, the more people who can be convinced to buy into a stock results in the demand for said stock to increase which results in the share price increasing, which than again results in the demand for the stock to increase. The whole event has turned into a snake eating it’s own tail. So what’s the goal of this attack? Well, in response, this rising price will put pressure on short sellers to close their positions before they lose too much money. The last thing a short seller wants to do is to buy back a short sold stock for higher than what they paid for it, keep in mind that the stock still needs to be returned to the broker at some point. The sale must be completed no matter what the cost and there are heavy penalties for failing to do so. So, as the price in GME’s stock began to rise, the short sellers have been forced to buy the stock at higher and higher prices and yes they are losing money hand over fist. This demand for buying the stocks at a higher price has resulted in more short sellers buying in at a higher price which has driven the price into the stratosphere. Now the stock stands at a precipice. If people start to sell on Monday the price will collapse. However if people hold onto the stock and more people get on board, which is possible, especially due to all the publicity around the stock, the price may continue to rise higher still. And in response, the potential rising prices will force more short sellers to close their positions which could result in the price continuing to climb. All that is needed to sustain this attack is for more stock holders to hold! It’s that simple. This is one of the first publicly coordinated attacks on Wall St that I have ever heard of and so far it appears to be working. A couple of questions remain. Who is really orchestrating this attack? Is it as simple as it appears to be? And what will happen come Monday? Well, that’s anyone’s guess. But you can sure that it will be an interesting day! It helps to keep in mind that the rest of the stock market is starting to collapse. The Dow Jones has lost over $1000.00 in value over the past week alone. People are going to be looking for some where to put their money to stop the bleeding and for that reason alone Game Stops potential growth is awfully tempting. Check back here for an update after the market opens on Monday!
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The main differences between the DJI mini 1 and the DJI mini 2 are as follows.
The camera resolution on the Mini 1 is 2.7 k while the camera resolution on the DJI mini 2 is 4 k. The improved camera resolution of the DJI mini 2 greatly increases image quality. The other difference is the fact that the DJI mini 2 is lighter than the DJI mini 1. The fact that the new mini 2 is lighter than the mini one is important to drone operators as the flight regulations, in many countries, change once you go over 250 grams. For example, in some countries, it is illegal to fly a drone heavier than 250 grams, for commercial purposes, without a license. The DJI mini 1 and mini 2 both stay below this weight limit but the mini 2 is the lighter of the two. This allows users to add reflective stickers onto the device without risking going over the weight limit. The DJI mini 2’s camera also has a 4 times digital zoom where as the mini 1’s camera has no zoom feature at all. The mini 2 can also shoot photographs in both JPEG and in RAW format, while the mini 1 is only capable of capturing JPEG images. The ability to shoot RAW photographs gives the user the freedom to process and edit their own images at a later point in time. Another substantial difference between the mini 1 and the mini 2 is the fact that the mini 2 operates using DJI’s Ocusync technology where as the mini 1 operates using traditional wifi technology. Ocusync allows the DJI Mini 2 to fly with a transmission range of 10 kms or 6 miles whereas the traditional wifi that is utilised by the mini 1 only allows the mini 1 to operate with a transmission range of 4km or 2.5 miles. Another benefit of the mini 2 is the fact that it has greatly improved wind resistance when compared to the wind resistance capabilities of the mini 1. The mini one is safe to operate in winds up to 28 km and hour or 17 miles an hour while the mini 2 can operate in winds up to 37 kms or 22 miles an hour. Simply put, the DJI mini two is better than the mini one because it has better camera resolution, lower weight, better transmission capabilities, better wind resistance and it also has a digital zoom. Press play below to hear this article in verbal form.
I recently had a customer come into the store who was looking to buy a shortwave radio. I was immediately stumped. Shortwave? Isn’t that the same as AM and FM radio I asked myself.
Nope and no are the answers to this question. The lady continued while my mind congested, a congestion that was a direct result of a lack of self confidence that any new sales person, who has found themselves out of their depths has sure to have had experienced more than once in their careers. The lady continued...“I used to travel to the Phillipines and Japan and I could listen to the BBC in England and I could also listen to radio stations in New York”. I was stumped, either this lady was bonkers or I didn’t know what she was talking about. After all everyone knows that AM and FM radio stations are hard to get at the best of times, there’s simply no way of hearing a live broadcast on the other side rod the world, or so I thought. Turns out it was my lack of knowledge, the lady was correct, shortwave radio used to be a popular format that would allow listeners to hear broadcasts from all over the world? So what happened? Why did this format largely vanish from the earth? Well, the truth is, this format hasn’t vanished. In fact all major international radio broadcasters still broadcast in shortwave radio formats. The only problem being is that you need a special type of receiver to be able to listen to them and for that you will need to know where to buy them from. You see, they are hard to get, but not impossible. I found that if you’re looking to buy in store today, that Jay-car in Australia was one of the better options for acquiring this mysterious device. Radio shack in the United States is another. They are decently valued as well, one set in Australia was selling for $34.95. Now that’s a bargain! The quality of the product is probably something left to be desired but at least they sell them. There are other options as well. Tecsunradios.com has perhaps the best variety of Shortwave radios available as does Amazon and if all else fails there’s always EBay. Taking the time to learn this new information lead me down a rabbit hole into the spooky world of something called number stations. Number stations are short wave broadcasts that sometimes contain a segment of music followed by a series of numbers. These numbers are said to represent something of value to the receiver whom the broadcast was designed for. In other words these broadcasts are for people you would prefer to remain anonymous, who would prefer to transmit encrypted data thousands of miles anonymously. In other words, these are spy broadcasts that anyone can listen to provided you stumble upon the broadcast frequency itself and than they vanish. Just like the spies who sent them in first place. Turns out I may need to get my hands on one to learn more. Shortwave radio is simply fascinating and as a matter of fact, so are number stations. Press play below to hear this article in verbal form!
How good is the Third earth media streamer pack? Answer: Not very good.
I went to the effort of travelling to my local tech shop to buy a video capture card. The purpose of this capture card was so my son and I could capture good quality gaming footage as well has have the ability to have face capture and mic commentary capture included in the footage. After much deliberation we left the store with a 3rd Earth Media streaming pack. The pack itself seemed like good value. It had a mic, a boom arm for the mic, the capture card, one hdmi cable, a USB c to USB a cable as well as a ring light and a stream camera. The gentleman who assisted me was certain I now had everything I needed to video capture with style. I even told the gentleman who served me that I would be happy to be his lab rat. I have since eaten my words. Being the lab rat is a horrible experience. As I started to removed the capture card contents form its box a feeling of dread came over me. It was immediately evident I had made the wrong decision. Everything in the box was cheap to the touch but I thought I would perceiver and continue onwards, after all I was keen to get setup, so was my son. After fighting with the cheap mic boom for a good twenty minutes we finally had the kit together. We were good to go. Except we weren’t, what followed for the next three hours was one drama proceeding the other. We would gain video footage but than lose audio playback in the recording. We would fix and than we would gain audio recordings only to have the video feedback freeze up. We would fix and have both video and audio feedback returned only to lose the mic volume completely. This went on for hours. Every time we thought we had caught a break our hopes were dashed to pieces until it got to the point where I thought an aneurism was almost upon me. Still aneurism free I had finally come to the conclusion that it was time to return this accursed item to the depths from whence it came. It was a peaceful transfer of power. I simply traded the gear in for the Elgato HDs+. Problem solved. Lesson learnt. Don’t be cheap. Buy Elgato. Ditch 3rd Earth. Press play below to hear this article in verbal form!
This is a pesky little question indeed. If you didn’t have your glasses on or if you had a sales person who was not quite up to speed on the drones specs at the time of your purchase of the Zero-X Pulse drone than chances are you missed this small detail! The Zero-X Pulse drone can take an SD card up to 32 Gigabytes in size. An SD card 32 gigabytes and above will not be able to be able to be read by the Zero-X Pulse Drone as the device is not capable of using the exFat file system required.
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SD cards are formatted in a particular fashion and some devices can only read certain SD card formats. For example the Zero X Pulse Drone can only read SD card formats using the fat32 file system. This fat32 file system allows the drones operating system to read SDHC formatted SD cards between 2GB and 32 GB in size. Why would a device favour the use of a fat32 file system over a exFat file system? The answer is patents. It costs more money to use the exFat file system. If a devices maker can save money by using the older file system they will!
The good news, some premium devices will allow you to select which format you wish to use. For example GoPro cameras will allow you to select which format you wish to use depending on your SD card. This formatting process will than format your SD card to suit. The format you choose depends on the size of the SD card you are using. For example if you are using a 32 GB or smaller card than format it to Fat32. If you are using a 64GB card or above select the exFat format. This will format the SD card so it can utilise the appropriate file system making it possible for your GoPro camera to read from and write to the SD card you have chosen to use. So in short, your device will only read from and write to certain SD card formats depending on the file allocation table it uses.. |
Micheal FarmerMicheal attempts to answer the annouying questions so you don't have to! ArchivesCategories |