Aside from taking it to chinatown, anyone have any info on jailbreaking an iphone 4? Every google search yields insane amounts of spam and sites that appear to be scams.

it may well be a dumb question, lucky for you i'm a dumb person I'm just starting to seriously think about this so I don't know what my plan would be atm. Could you elaborate on some good options smellmuth?

no one actually thinks minor tax increases will solve the debt problem. the debt issue has been publicized because its good politics and allows for policy under the pretense of controlling debt above other concerns.

the two easiest ways would be to trade on a forex account where you can lever up significantly (risky) or to buy stock of a company that does a significant % of its business in your desired currency (less risky). you can also hedge currency risk by buying forward contracts on currency pairs.

the reason buying a currency straight up is inefficient is you are just letting the money sit there. if you trade forex you could get the same exposure for 1% of the initial outlay and invest the rest somewhere.

That is a good way of putting it.

Hard to resist turning this into a brag listing the best meals in my life, but let's just say there are some meals I will never forget, including some all around experiences and some individual dishes.

I'm all about doing everything, but doing it in moderation. Done a bunch of drugs only once for example. I'm definitely building up some awesome memories by going at life this way.

And yes, the food experiences are very comparable to the drug experiences in terms of value of the memory.

I don't have an iPhone, but I'd definitely start here:

http://forum.iphone-developers.com/

http://iphone-developers.com/jailbreak-wizard

This forum is run by XDA, which is the biggest group of phone hackers (mostly android) on the internet.

makes sense, thanks

I'm not sure why you would discount the best method! I think taking it to cell phone stores and asking the employees will get you pointed in the right direction

its so insane to me when people question the value of fine dining.

look at it this way: food and water are literally the only things you need to survive. you spend all kinds of money on frivolous **** why wouldn't you try to eat the most amazing food possible? its the fuel that keeps you alive its the one actual thing you NEED so WHY NOT have the most fabulous meals you can afford (i'm not saying you need to eat at michelin rated places every day i like some good street food as much as anyone).

also, can you end a sentence with with a parenthesis?

My uninformed opinion is that the chinese currency RMB must be a good buy. It is extremely undervalued and the government is letting its value appreciate slowly towards what the real value should be. So long term it will trend towards fair value.

uninformed currency trading is a really bad idea! these are massive markets with a ton of really sharp people and institutions betting.

from a quick google it seems that it is hard to get chinese currency in large quantities anyway

Arguably Robuchon keeps you alive less well than my grilled chicken and broccoli, though I agree for the most part on food spending. I think your grammar was correct as well with the parenthesis.

would it be true to say that most of these sharp people and institutions are betting on the short-term to maximize their returns, for example buying US dollars with a plan to sell them in the near future because they think they will go up in value this month despite thinking they will go down in value long-term? If this is the case then you could invest for the long-term and expect to make a profit without beating these guys?

are u still talking about currency trades here? There is no 'investing' in currencies.

I assume ur talking about making macro currency trades, which ofc you can do but there are SO many factors going into where the Dollar will be 'long-term' vs other currencies that it becomes super hard if not impossible to be correct constantly. Its even more frustrating because say you make the right pick in terms of what will happen with the variables that do affect currency price; there can still be an unexpected outcome.

Ill just say it again, I think the best plan is a portfolio of diversified index funds for the long term. Forget trying to time any markets. If you want a doomsday hedge, buy some physical gold.

QFT.

You guys who are considering making any kind of trades (currency, commodities, stocks, whatever) should really think twice. Just understand you are basically a mega-fish in that game, no matter how smart you think you are.

i'm fully aware of that, that's why i'd like to know of any good resources or people whose advice is worth taking to learn more about this sort of stuff. Not that I think I'm gonna read some stuff and be able to trade profitably, but maybe then i'll at least have some idea of whose advice to take and what sort of options are open to me with my lack of knowledge. It seems the consensus is that you're not gonna do well by trying to predict long-term trends etc. I'm a bit confused by that though as I would obv only be doing something on advice from someone who is far more knowledgable than myself, I wouldn't be trying to predict stuff myself and then acting on it. Are we saying that if Warren Buffet comes out and says look guys the USD is gonna devalue massively in the next few years then we should just ignore him? There are super smart people out there who have a lot of money which they are doing something with. Surely some of them are sharing their opinion on what is going to happen over the next few years and what they are doing about it.

Cheers for the input btw MatthewRyan, that could well be what i end up doing.

speaking of Warren Buffet, even he advises people to use the index fund strategy fwiw.

Kanu, check out Vanguard for index funds/mutual funds. and I would also recommend browsing the BFI forum on here as there is a lot of good info there and a good starting point.

I recently read somewhere that the stock exchange is proven to be random, not to mention the economy's performance in general... is this true? it seems to be constantly implied that it is possible to make a living from these things which seems to contradict the fact they are random

i dont know a whole lot explicitly about this topic but it seems like this is completely correct. timing the market seems like suicide...

as far as I understand, theres a lot of academics that think this and not too many other people. Personally I dont think the EMH makes much practical sense at all. Would recommend reading Margin Of Safety (sells online for 1k b/c its out of print but you can find free PDF's of it online)

you're talking about the efficient market hypothesis, which no one who does any practical work in finance believes. but just because markets aren't always efficient doesn't mean you can have an edge in them without putting a ton of time and resources into acquiring one. making trades based on some general macro hunches is a really, really bad idea.

I thinkt he problem with trying to time the market, you get some very compelling information that a certain thing is about to happen, and you think you can profit from it. Except outside your argument and reasons why that may be true there might exist other reasons that you dont know off that might ruin your profitability. but because you dont know those reasons and the ones you do know seem very reasonable your mind is massaged into thinking it has an edge. And also because you want to think badly you have an edge if you are invested in it at all.

At least this counts for almost all individual people who try timing stuff in the market.

the book, thinking, fast and slow goes into this. Very interesting read btw if you have some free time.

Also if you read the book 'the big short' (another must read) you will see that alot of big wall street companies are also pretty clueless.

there was a good discussion on the impending Facebook IPO in BFI that talked about this some too. timing entries/exits is important, and you can be wildly -EV even if you are right on the direction the market is heading (in situations when you will lose 5x more when you are wrong).

Happy New Year guys! Here's to some regulation of poker in the USA... AND NO SOPA FFS!