jeffem

You sure about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_margin

I don't think I've seen anyone claim that gold is easier to hide or bury than bitcoin. Maybe some people do but that's not the issue most people are talking about when they compare bitcoin to gold. The main distinction that they're pointing out is that gold has historically held value beyond its use as money (electronics, jewelry, etc.)

"One of Ivanov’s losses was in a long game in a closed position (the kind where computers perform poorly)..."

The top computer engines have been strong in closed positions for many years now. If this person did cheat, he most likely was selectively using the engine in this game, or not at all.

There's a reason we don't see computer vs. human matches these days. The computers are too good. You can beat today's elite grandmasters with a free engine running on your laptop.

Are you saying that AirBnb, for example, can't be the regulatory body for its customers? Or is there a reason why it's necessary for the government to step in?

How are those "problems inherent in the peer-to-peer model"? Aren't those problems any business in the industry has to face?

You have a point, but you're taking it too far.

I agree that companies need to take a look at how their industry is regulated and what purpose those regulations serve. But the fact that companies can come into these types of industries, openly skirt the regulations, and still be massively successful shows that the existing laws aren't meeting the needs of the people who use these services.

And how exactly has government solved "the problems inherent in the peer-to-peer model"? I'm not sure what problems you're talking about in the first place.

The most surprising thing to me is that the casino let the betting go on for over 2.5 hours.

1) What actors and activities are you referring to exactly when you say "Wall St"? There are lots of players, and they have different roles. The performance of a given stock/fund is irrelevant to many players (exchanges, market makers, etc.) But yes, there are players that hold positions. You can call that gambling if you want, they definitely have risk, but all investments carry risk (even "risk-free" investments like government bonds). What exactly do you have a problem with? Vegas-style gambling is typically a zero sum game, with most of the money going to the house. Long term stock market investing generally yields a positive return.

2) The financial industry is also heavily regulated. I'm not sure why you're comparing Vegas and Wall St in this respect. You say that in Vegas "odds are clearly known", but this is not true in some common cases and it’s not clear what you’re getting at. What do you propose for Wall St in that respect? Odds can be published for games whose probabilities are known in advance (slots, roulette, etc.) But this is not true for things like sports betting and games of skill (poker, blackjack, etc.) No one knows what the “true” probability is that the Yankees will beat the Giants. What the casino will tell you is how much you need to wager to win a certain amount of money. You can infer an implied probability from that, but the same is true for prices in financial markets. If you look at prices of stocks, options, bonds, interest rates, etc. you can infer all sorts of information such as expected default rates, expected volatility of the price of a commodity, expected profitability of a company, etc.

When you say "casinos don't even need to cheat to be profitable" you seem to be implying that Wall St does. Exchanges charge transaction fees. Market makers earn a spread on their buys/sells. Brokers earn commissions. Banks earn the difference between the interest rates they charge vs. pay out. Can you explain why you think Wall St needs to cheat to be profitable?

What experience do you have in financial markets that you believe you've come up with "the most efficient design for stock market trading possible"?

Mindscape has a Visual Studio extension called "Web Workbench" that makes installing and using SASS really easy (as well as LESS and CoffeeScript). I installed via NuGet and I don't remember ever having to leave Visual Studio. The installer took care of all the dependencies and I was up and running right away.

It's sad to see a comment like this on top of HN in the same way it would be to see a misinformed post about "hacking" rise to the top of a trading forum.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you, and those who upvoted you, have little or no experience in financial markets. Comparing flash orders to front running a trojan is a terrible analogy. For one, the mechanics are not as you described (other commenters have touched on this). But most importantly, where this is still practiced, the market participants have voluntarily decided to do so and the order flow is openly published, unlike a hacked computer where the user is oblivious.

And even if we assume flash orders are evil, I think it's disingenuos to mention all of the SEC drama surrounding them without mentioning that several leading exchanges have voluntarily stopped the practice, and that flash orders make up a tiny percentage of total trading volume.

Those are fair points, although I did qualify my statement with "In the absence of fraud". If the employment agreements forbid the behavior then that would be a clear case of fraud. When it comes to implied expectations, I'm not sure it's so clear. My understanding is that bilateral agreements with no-hire stipulations are not explicitly illegal, although the court may rule a specific agreement is depending on how it affects competition in a market. So how many employees actually assumed no non-hire agreements when they signed on and was that a reasonable assumption? I think that's a difficult question to answer.

Either way, I hate that the focus is on the "letter of the law". If this were a patent troll case, or Hollywood copyright, or if SOPA had passed, how many people here would be demanding damages or jail time from the defendants? They would be guilty of breaking the law just the same, and the plaintiffs could also claim that they need to be compensated for their losses (cost of filing for patent, "lost revenues" from pirated material, etc.)

I have to say, though, that my initial post was poorly worded. As I was writing it, in my mind, I thought I was railing against antitrust laws in general and describing how non-hire agreements in the abstract were victimless crimes. Reading those statements again, it seems more like I'm just talking about this particular case. That's totally my fault, I apologize for that. I tend to get worked up about issues like this and have to do a better job of choosing my words, or even stop myself from ranting in the first place.

The article doesn't mention an important fact: All of the defendants named in the suit are based in California, a state that does not enforce non-compete agreements (with some minor exceptions).

Assuming that these companies agreed not to hire each other's employees, we have a make-shift non-compete agreement, in effect (though not as efficient or encompassing).

The biggest issue I have with this case is that these types of antitrust laws exist in the first place. In the absence of fraud, this is a victimless crime. To pay damages implies that the offender took something away from the victim, that they need to be "made whole" again.

These employees freely agreed to their compensation packages and received those. They weren't hired elsewhere because those employers freely chose not to after balancing the benefits of recruiting them against the risk of losing current employees.

If these companies are really screwing over their employees it seems like a great opportunity for other companies to tell them no thanks to their no-hire agreement and start poaching.

The fact that companies (some of which you're probably a happy customer of) spend millions of dollars on sports advertising and sponsorships is evidence that they find value in them

It's impossible to not have goals and not plan. The author's suggestions: "Get up earlier", "Talk to more strangers", etc. are goals in and of themselves.

Whenever this topic comes up, what people are really talking about is the degree to which you can plan for a particular goal in terms of its time frame and complexity. The author touches on this relationship. That is, the more complex the goal and the more time required to achieve it, the less specific you can get in creating a plan to achieve it. If my goal is to lose 30 pounds by the end of the year, it's unrealistic for me to plan out my exact meals and workouts a year in advance. But it's perfectly realistic to have a more general plan of eating healthier food and doing more exercise, and leaving the "implementation details" for that week or day.

What I don't like about the article is that the author doesn't back up his suggestions with anything but personal experience and opinions. There are scientific studies that claim benefits in explicit goal-setting. If you're going to make a strong case, you need to address those studies and bring in some counter-evidence.

The only guaranteed outcomes of a blackout are:

1) site owners forego potential revenue that day 2) customers cannot do business with them that day 3) users cannot access those sites that day

Depending on which sites participate, the immediate effects on the lives of those owners, customers, and users can range from trivial to very meaningful.

Will this be a worthwhile "investment" in the long run?

I can believe that a blackout will increase media coverage. I can believe that a blackout will result in more calls, emails, etc. to representatives.

What's tough for me to believe is that any of that will do any good if the end goal is to stop this type of legislation. I would genuinely like to see evidence that similar protests have historically been effective.

Until then, I can't help but think this is just the wrong tactic that punishes the wrong people. I hope I'm wrong.

I wonder what the comments here would look like if the ban would have been on a different advertising medium, say, online advertising.

I'd be willing to bet the great majority here would oppose it, and I'd be willing to bet that people would be exploring all of the negative and potential unintended consequences.

Have you considered the immediate losses advertisers will incur from removing/destroying their advertising assets? Will those costs be passed on to customers? What about the "public" cost of implementing and enforcing the ban itself? What effect does this have on companies that sell outdoor ads? Does this concentrate power to companies that sell other types of advertising and reduce competition? Does this lower the value of real estate properties that previously sold ad space? What happens to people who previously discovered or visited businesses via outdoor ads? What about the people who actually enjoy the ads?

On a deeper level, why stop at banning outdoor ads? Should we ban other things we find aesthetically unpleasing or is there something about these outdoor ads that was materially damaging people? Also, how exactly do you determine if this ban was a "success"?

I was just going to ask the same. I've been thinking about moving away from GoDaddy for a while and this would be just another reason among many. I take it on a case by case basis whether I do business with a company, and I'll continue to do so with many that support SOPA (explicitly or implicitly) as much as I'm opposed to the bill.

There's that expression, "Don't hate the player, hate the game". In the same way that I'm not a fan of a basketball player flopping to draw a foul, I'm not a fan of a company supporting this bill. I totally understand why they do it, but it's not in the spirit of the game IMO.

The bigger problem is the way the game itself is set up. Most people think it's a good idea to hand over their power to a small group of people who get to make decisions for everyone. Businesses see this and figure out that they can realize the benefits of the larger group while only incurring the costs of catering to the smaller group.

Developers really need to understand their users and implement these cheats intelligently or they create frustrations of their own.

As an example, I played a football game that obviously had some type of tackling assistance. When I dove to tackle someone, my defenseman wouldn't dive to the spot I was aiming at, but instead try to orient himself to the ball carrier. The developers probably thought that this was helping people with their "misaimed" tackles, but it was actually causing me to miss them. When I dive, I'm aiming for a spot where I think the runner will be, not where he is at the moment I hit the button.

I've seen these types of things enough that I'd approach the idea of implementing a cheat much more cautiously than other features.

You're scratching the surface of a much deeper issue. Yes, a lot of people would be annoyed if they were bombarded with train salesmen. On the other hand, the fact that this man and others like him are able to bring in this kind of money shows that there's demand for their products. So if the laws were actually being effectively enforced, the market would go underserved.

It seems that we're only having this discussion becuase the transit system is government-owned. Private trains, airlines, etc. have all tried to serve this market in an unobtrusive way.

I thought this was a pretty poor article.

For one, there's debate over what actually drove up the price of wheat (http://www.economist.com/node/16432870?subjectid=2512631&...). The author glosses over or fails to acknowledge some of the major counterpoints.

He also seems to have a pretty superficial understanding of futures markets. For example, there's nothing inherently "hysterical" about contango (future prices higher than current prices). It's a perfectly natural state for many commodities (browse some prices on http://www.cmegroup.com). He also paints a pretty rosy picture of the history of futures markets, but people have complained about speculators causing wild price swings since the beginning, long before index funds came on the scene. And there's nothing new about the way index funds maintain their long positions. Speculators have always had the option of rolling their contracts forward.

Index funds have opened up investment opportunities for a lot of people. Imagine if you had to buy and maintain a server for every app you wanted to put on the web (this is like buying a futures contract directly). Now compare that to a VPS/shared server (this is like buying an index fund). Not a perfect analogy but pretty fitting.

Speaking generally, if people are investing foolishly (i.e. mispricing something) well then they're investing foolishly. This can happen in any market. They'll either adapt or get weeded out. What's the alternative? Does Big Brother or anyone else know what the "correct" price of something is at any point in time?

I made something similar using only html:

<img src="http://www.mysite.joke/walkingman.gif>;

They must be accessing prior flight search history in some way or they made a really lucky guess with their default selections.

I've recently searched for flights on Expedia and Southwest (I don't think I've visited anywhere else). Google already had those same dates and cities selected by default.

If you're joking you got me. I can't think of another commodity whose value is affected by the government to the degree of fiat currency. Even if you leave the impact of government borrowing/spending aside, a dollar (or any other fiat currency) is just a piece of paper until the government institutes legal tender laws and demands people make and accept payments denominated in that currency.

If you asked me a few months ago I would've said 60-70 but since I started time tracking I've found it's only 40-50 hours on average. This is with being strict about what's considered work time (meals, "general research", etc. are all off the clock)