joncooper

Oh wow, blast from the past! I do too.

I published a sociology paper on this in college that may be of interest! (2000)

The social organization of audio piracy on the Internet (Media, Culture, and Society)

"In this article, we describe and analyze the emerging audio piracy (MP3) subculture on the Internet. As is evident to even the most naïve observer of the contemporary landscape, the explosion of Internet-based communication is radically redefining the nature of social relationships in modern societies, if not creating altogether novel forms of social interaction (Lyotard, 1991; Stone, 1996).

Yet sociologists have yet to take the Internet seriously as a site of ethnographic investigation. Where sociological observation concerning the Internet exists at all, it is through vague generalizations and unqualified assertions about what these new virtual forms of communication portend for “society” (Kellner, 1995), offering little in the way of concrete social research.

We attempt to advance the sociological study of “virtual communities” by embarking on an extremely focused study of one particular Internet subculture that is literally revolutionizing the production and consumption of popular music: audio pirates."

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q3tcst00gjbwr5t02x38f/Social-...

That would be much appreciated - thanks!

I'm an HP-12C guy since working on a trading desk and have 2 of the OG bronze colored ones and 2 of the HP-12C Platinum that are faster and silvery. But since I've been re-learning math with Math Academy I'm drawn to pick this puppy up. Should I be looking at an HP equivalent, though, since I'm an RPN convert?

Location: NYC / Old Greenwich, CT

Remote: In-person or hybrid preferred but would consider remote

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Software, systems, people, finance

Résumé/CV: https://hn-may-2026.jon-cooper.workers.dev/

Email: gazing_recite454@simplelogin.com (forwarded)

******

Interested in FDE, deployment lead, product roles; open to others.

Broad and deep experience and expertise across finance, technology, leadership.

- Arbitrage and discretionary trader/PM at bank and hedge funds

- Co-founded VC-backed virtual gift card company, sold to giftcards.com

- CTO/CISO/partner at a $1.4B peer-to-peer lending fund

- Ran bank-wide analytics and then marketing technology at First Republic

Looking to join a high velocity, passionate, talent dense team who execute relentlessly.

I like to work with others to build software, systems, teams, and businesses and am good at it.

IQ+EQ personality, positive-sum mentality.

An agricultural company hedging the price of soybeans is precisely hedging, not speculation. The insider information they have is their supply/demand/pricing picture. That's different than the colloquial definition of insider information which I've always taken to tie to event occurrence (or not).

This is fascinating and well worth reading the source document. Which, FYI, is the Opus 4 system card: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/4263b940cabb546aa0e3283f35b686...

I'm surprised when people are surprised that Google's interview process is obnoxious. That's pretty well established by this point, both by Google employees and others.

Probably should take the logo off of the image of the safe if the intent is to avoid naming the company.

"It is intuitively obvious that an open access hedge fund will generate more intelligence than a closed system built on a pre-internet, pre-cryptocurrency, pre-AI organizational design."

Really? Because the folks with the magic black box aren't capable of funding an Interactive Brokers account to keep 100% of their upside and 100% of their IP?

(Also: risk management and order handling are harder problems than signal generation.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-backed_security

Among other factors, salespeople have a large variable component to their compensation. They tend to be highly economic animals in a way that most engineers are not. Hence a former boss can easily convince them to join up by making a compelling argument about their prospective earnings.

It also skips the part where the team being hired gets a large signing bonus.

I'd take it a step further and argue that asset appreciation was an intended outcome of ZIRP.

Are you a professional investor?

Agreed. I kind of don't get Trello. Always thought of it as kind of a lightweight "stack of cards" analogue best used for simple high-level planning along the lines of a Kanban board. Is that how people use it?

No, but the prevailing myth is part of what a previous commenter referred to as the area becoming the new Wall Street. All the carpetbagging MBA types I'm acquainted with who would've gone to NYC/London in the go-go mortgage bubble days are here now. It's the logical place for a talented young person with hustle to go and try to get some.

The toolchain isn't the point. That's the difference between someone with business judgment and a plain ol' geek.

Agreed. This kind of thing would definitely get an interview from me as well. Stands out very well against a sea of indistinguishable resumes from big-name schools. There's simply no substitute for actually showing that you can do quality work!

If this interests you, definitely consider taking https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive

Please email if you do.

The term "hedge fund" covers a tremendous range of firms. That said I would look out for the same things you'd look out for in any funding arrangement: price, control, dilution, liquidation preference, unusual rights, etc. If you're just looking for money, it all spends the same as long as it doesn't come with onerous terms. However, you won't get any of the putative benefits of working with a "real" VC: access, guidance, services, follow-on funding, etc. You definitely do not want to end up with a cap table comprised of one line item for founders and one line item for the "hedge fund"'s investment on some weird-ass terms; that will make it nigh-on impossible to secure follow-on funding. I would feel best about taking this kind of money if I had a "real" VC as the lead investor and the hedge fund folks were minority, pari passu, and personally known to me. Also, DO NOT sign any document without legal support. Make the legal relationship, spend the money, understand what you're being asked to agree to, and PUSH BACK if you don't like the terms being offered. A broken structure is not the foundation you want.

Would love to buy you a beer and hear more of your story, should you visit SF.

Love it. I hope they can deliver meaningful throughput.

Colchis Capital Management / San Francisco, CA

Contract, FTE, remote, intern, relocation, visa sponsorship all possible for the right fit.

Competitive compensation.

Three opportunities:

1. Help us build our next-generation automated trading system. We are building in Go, and Python would be useful. There are interesting challenges in profiling/optimization (across layers of the stack), distributed testing strategy, distributed tracing and monitoring, interpreter/compiler design and implementation.

2. Help us build our internal user facing "single pane of glass", which will provide visibility into and control of our systems. Deep front-end juju required: know JavaScript for real, plus a solid grasp of HTML/CSS. Have an opinion on JS tooling (including frameworks such as React or AngularJS) because I don't. :)

3. Own our on-premise infrastructure. Windows Server 2012 / Active Directory experience, plus networking and storage system experience, required. Bonus points for SAS, Tableau Server, or SQL Server administration experience. We're looking for someone that geeks out hard on infrastructure IT.

In each case, interest in or experience with modern *nix DevOps tooling would be a bonus.

Please get in touch if you're interested: my first name @colchiscapital.com

-Jon

What's the collective noun for a party of lawyers?

I did this class. It is quite challenging (and rewarding). If you plan to do it make sure to allocate a significant amount of time per week. My recommendation would be to do the Java version of the assignments over the C++ version, even if you know C++. The codebase provided is pretty crufty.

If you're interested in this, check out MAPS: http://www.maps.org/

They are doing a great deal to push this research forward and have been for decades.

Well, if you're talking about LIBOR, the risk is that the AA bank to whom you have counterparty risk will default within 3mo, so it's very, very, very low risk.

Comparing the LIBOR spread isn't enough to compare senior subprime tranches to senior prime tranches. Among other things, the attachment point matters a very a great deal.

The attachment point is the % of cumulative losses after which a given tranche starts suffering losses of principal. So for example:

L+20 with a 20% attachment point against historical max losses in the asset class over all credit cycles of 1% is a lot better on a risk adjusted basis than L+200 with a 40% attachment point against historical max loss experience of 15%.

Without talking about historical loss experience we can't really guesstimate the margin of safety here nor say that a given tranche is or isn't good value.

Another possibly interesting nitpick: LIBOR isn't risk-free. It's an interbank rate so it is the short-term yields paid by highly rated financial institutions. Risk free means backed by an entity that can print money, like the Fed. That's why the LIBOR-Fed Funds basis exists.

Also, re: "I think it's interesting how high interest rate risky loans can be considered as sleazy while giving opportunities to the less fortunate is considered an admirable goal." check out the book _Scarcity_ by Mullanaithan and Shafir, which has a super interesting take on this question!

Both. And low portfolio concentration.