"More buyers than sellers." Any two-sided market will have prevailing prices at certain volumes (even if internal to a dealer) that are not perfectly matched before the actual trade. Say, SPY at 180.5 X 1000 bid and 181…
True. Perhaps fundamentally bitcoin really just is cash and not a speculative instrument. And just like cash (as in, like, paper money), there's a huge amount of risk whenever a nontrivial amount of your net worth is…
Interesting (slight?) counterexample is the foreign exchange market 10-20 years ago, just as it was going electronic. Lots of levered investment but lots and lots of fraud as there was almost no regulation. Like this…
Why not go meta? Sure, a company like Google directly does more good than Goldman. (Although, trivially, you could argue a taco stand does something arguably more important than inverse-indexed search) Non-trivially,…
Hey shubb, I've read your posts for a while; like the way you think. Let me buy you a pint next time I'm in London (in US right now, but there often enough). Thoughtful tech people in London good to find. an email that…
I think you're right on this. It's not so much about whether the stance is true or not and whether we should debate that. It's that articles that discredit something as trivially untrue by way of a trivially small…
No matter someone's stance on this, it seems a bit forward to discredit a relatively widely-held theory as something that is weakly argued by providing a few bullet points and then an outright assertion of another…
I think you could compare this to sports or other game-like activities where success is by nature relative. There's no 'need' per se for athletes to practice 40 hours a week, but they do it in order to win. And the…
Is it just me or does "People who don't need money" seem like it should be in the 'winners' list? If you don't need much money, won't you do well come what may?
Technically, sure. But 'arbitrage' today is interpreted broadly--more along the lines of buying basically the same thing and making the difference at some point in the future. Like stat arbitrage. Merger arbitrage.…
Does anyone have any insight into the underlying architecture of these large-scale projects? Like programming languages, project structure, how many software people involved? I imagine it's something along the lines of…
Awesome, although I don't know why you couldn't have it automatically accept the 'honor code.' But then again, perhaps if you're using this instead of just rolling your own solution you might not really need/want that…
I think it comes down to who we think the battle is against. One narrative says that it's murky industrial cooperatives lobbying to stay incumbent that keeps these new startups down. And the resulting laws are/were…
100% to all of these things. But do you see how the conversation we are having is now about simply the regulations and whether they are really protecting people and not about how there are some incumbents trying to…
I read this and kept thinking whether the hotel lobby is really the reason why Airbnb runs into trouble. Or, for that matter, even whether the Taxi Lobby is what is really hitting Uber. Yes, hotel owners and taxi…
This article and a lot of the articles on the San Jose State are all of over the map when it comes to improving MOOCs: more TAs, more focus on the content, etc. They do, however, share one major thing: that half of the…
I have been wondering for a long time why Starbucks and other coffee shops don't simply charge for wifi. 5 USD/3 hours seems like an absolutely great deal. Whenever I do work at Starbucks it's very productive and would…
I think there might be an interesting point underneath this. If everyone who feels like the author actually stayed then SF might not have the high rents/excitement/cultural contact that you get with large amounts of…
I don't know though. RapGenius seems to have broken down crowd sourcing of understanding context/word meaning into very small bits. This could be absolutely huge for a machine learning input that you really cannot get…
I think this misses the point of minimum wage. The whole point of minimum wage is that the work is not very important and very commodity-like. Minimum wage protects the importance of people, not any particular type of…
This is going to sound a bit glib, but the problem sort of fixes itself. Look at China. "Sweatshop" sort of manufacturing has largely left. Now the country has more Rolls Royces and Bentleys sold there vs any other sans…
There is one huge reason why this isn't as scary as it could be: Tabloids. If you read through the Tabloids, there is no doubt that some of the stuff in there is slightly true. But you, as the reader, have really no way…
None of this is advice. I just like talking about this stuff. One of the ways to get familiar with investing is to buy shares in an ETF on the S&P 500. ETFs are like mutual funds traded on exchanges; you probably know…
"I've fallen on tough times and can't continue my education" If this has anything to do with the monetary cost of education I say this: If you are in the States, take out as much Federal Loans as you can and get the…
I think you are hitting this exactly right. I mean, people 'lose' money all the time for things they get pleasure for. And Even when the thing they gained is very abstract. Like vegas. People lose money almost by…
"More buyers than sellers." Any two-sided market will have prevailing prices at certain volumes (even if internal to a dealer) that are not perfectly matched before the actual trade. Say, SPY at 180.5 X 1000 bid and 181…
True. Perhaps fundamentally bitcoin really just is cash and not a speculative instrument. And just like cash (as in, like, paper money), there's a huge amount of risk whenever a nontrivial amount of your net worth is…
Interesting (slight?) counterexample is the foreign exchange market 10-20 years ago, just as it was going electronic. Lots of levered investment but lots and lots of fraud as there was almost no regulation. Like this…
Why not go meta? Sure, a company like Google directly does more good than Goldman. (Although, trivially, you could argue a taco stand does something arguably more important than inverse-indexed search) Non-trivially,…
Hey shubb, I've read your posts for a while; like the way you think. Let me buy you a pint next time I'm in London (in US right now, but there often enough). Thoughtful tech people in London good to find. an email that…
I think you're right on this. It's not so much about whether the stance is true or not and whether we should debate that. It's that articles that discredit something as trivially untrue by way of a trivially small…
No matter someone's stance on this, it seems a bit forward to discredit a relatively widely-held theory as something that is weakly argued by providing a few bullet points and then an outright assertion of another…
I think you could compare this to sports or other game-like activities where success is by nature relative. There's no 'need' per se for athletes to practice 40 hours a week, but they do it in order to win. And the…
Is it just me or does "People who don't need money" seem like it should be in the 'winners' list? If you don't need much money, won't you do well come what may?
Technically, sure. But 'arbitrage' today is interpreted broadly--more along the lines of buying basically the same thing and making the difference at some point in the future. Like stat arbitrage. Merger arbitrage.…
Does anyone have any insight into the underlying architecture of these large-scale projects? Like programming languages, project structure, how many software people involved? I imagine it's something along the lines of…
Awesome, although I don't know why you couldn't have it automatically accept the 'honor code.' But then again, perhaps if you're using this instead of just rolling your own solution you might not really need/want that…
I think it comes down to who we think the battle is against. One narrative says that it's murky industrial cooperatives lobbying to stay incumbent that keeps these new startups down. And the resulting laws are/were…
100% to all of these things. But do you see how the conversation we are having is now about simply the regulations and whether they are really protecting people and not about how there are some incumbents trying to…
I read this and kept thinking whether the hotel lobby is really the reason why Airbnb runs into trouble. Or, for that matter, even whether the Taxi Lobby is what is really hitting Uber. Yes, hotel owners and taxi…
This article and a lot of the articles on the San Jose State are all of over the map when it comes to improving MOOCs: more TAs, more focus on the content, etc. They do, however, share one major thing: that half of the…
I have been wondering for a long time why Starbucks and other coffee shops don't simply charge for wifi. 5 USD/3 hours seems like an absolutely great deal. Whenever I do work at Starbucks it's very productive and would…
I think there might be an interesting point underneath this. If everyone who feels like the author actually stayed then SF might not have the high rents/excitement/cultural contact that you get with large amounts of…
I don't know though. RapGenius seems to have broken down crowd sourcing of understanding context/word meaning into very small bits. This could be absolutely huge for a machine learning input that you really cannot get…
I think this misses the point of minimum wage. The whole point of minimum wage is that the work is not very important and very commodity-like. Minimum wage protects the importance of people, not any particular type of…
This is going to sound a bit glib, but the problem sort of fixes itself. Look at China. "Sweatshop" sort of manufacturing has largely left. Now the country has more Rolls Royces and Bentleys sold there vs any other sans…
There is one huge reason why this isn't as scary as it could be: Tabloids. If you read through the Tabloids, there is no doubt that some of the stuff in there is slightly true. But you, as the reader, have really no way…
None of this is advice. I just like talking about this stuff. One of the ways to get familiar with investing is to buy shares in an ETF on the S&P 500. ETFs are like mutual funds traded on exchanges; you probably know…
"I've fallen on tough times and can't continue my education" If this has anything to do with the monetary cost of education I say this: If you are in the States, take out as much Federal Loans as you can and get the…
I think you are hitting this exactly right. I mean, people 'lose' money all the time for things they get pleasure for. And Even when the thing they gained is very abstract. Like vegas. People lose money almost by…