BC TECH
Saved by @Jacobtldr

Torn between "I think losing $100 million when someone beats you at security research is pretty much exactly what you signed up for doing yield farming" and "Maaaaaaaybe not the future of finance you were expecting, huh."

 How to put this in regular finance terms...

Suppose hypothetically you have an account at a brokerage with some valuable asset in it. You take a margin loan against that asset to fund your normal spending, or pay a tax bill, or maybe buy something at another brokerage.
For reasons known only to the brokerage, they don't denominate your loan in dollars. They denominate it in shares of a money market fund, which are worth $1 +/- epsilon and basically never deviate from that.

And you think "Hmm, I have a large equity cushion against this loan."
One day, a computer system at the brokerage reports, sorta-kinda erroneously, that the value of the money market fund is actually $1.30 per share. The equity cushion is gone. Your valuable asset is sold, at timing you didn't choose, at wrong price, to pay an inflated phantom debt
And your recourse is... probably tweeting at patio11 saying he finds too much joy in this.

Which I don't; I just feel like this is why you don't trust a CPU built out of redstone to build reliable financial infrastructure on top of.
"Hey patio11 could this happen in traditional finance?"

Ill-timed liquidations can and do, but attacking someone doing something not-risky to force a liquidation is harder, because of many built in safeguards.
One, you can actually borrow in your unit of account (e.g. dollars), and $1 = $1, so you can't convince a brokerage that a $100k debt is actually $130k.

Two, if you regulated financial institution has a goof in your data feeds causes you to mechanically disadvantage retail...
... your most likely outcome is having an internal meeting and saying "Which do we dislike more, covering their losses out of our equity OR getting our knuckles rapped by the regulators, paying a fine, then covering the losses with our own equity?" and choose door #1.
Three, it is enormously hard to pervert the most popular real markets in the world and that is a game you actually don't want to win, because the first prize is frequently go-directly-to-jail.

This is not the consensus viewpoint among engineers, who do not have good calibration.
Like if you somehow did security research against e.g. the monthly Treasury auction and somehow caused it to invert expectations around reality, that would plausibly have $X0 billion in consequences and you could make out like a bandit.
And also literally everyone you had talked to for the last several years would be taken out for tea by friendly serious federal agents.
("Do you really think that would happen?"

For the treasury auction? Oh heck yes I do. Expect a turf war between the money people and the terrorism people over who gets to lead the investigation.)
Crypto enthusiasts would probably suggest me to disagree with them on this, and I actually do not at all:

The financial system is in part of broader systems of state control. Seriously attacking it at scale would be treated indistinguishably from "kinetic" war.
"So is the state going to seriously come after crypto people then?"

While they flatter themselves into thinking they materially challenge the government, following their own logic pretty closely, if this were actually true their conferences would attract precision munitions.

More from Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.
ALL
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
If an employer is willing to be abusive to you prior to hiring you, when you have maximum leverage and they are maximally incentivized to play nice, I think that gives you *extremely actionable* signal as to how they'll treat you when you're working there and dependent on them.

For candidates: evaluate prospective employers accordingly.

For startups employing e.g. engineers: given that your candidates should evaluate you accordingly, be *extra special* careful to operate like professionals with regards to e.g. interviewing, offers, and negotiation.

"Can you be more explicit about 'abusive' here?"

Not without violating a confidence, but as someone who has been on hiring side of table and is a capitalist, there are *clearly* things you could do which would be "sharp operating, but we're all sharp operators" in some contexts.

Hiring employees is often not one of those contexts. The nature of the relationship, the asymmetry in power, and the social contract strongly counsel you to be a lot better there than you are minimally required by law / contract.

A thing which aesthetically frustrates me is that a lot of the things I've heard companies do here serve *no legitimate business purpose.* In some cases it's getting tens of dollars of advantage. TENS! On an engineering candidate!
ALL
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Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
FAQ: “How do I get better at writing?”
Me: Write a million words.
Follow up: “Hah but seriously.”
Me: Start with 20,000 words. Everyone gets to that 50 times in their first million.
Follow up: “No seriously.”
Me: Nobody expects 10 Quick Tips To Play Violin At Carnegie Hall.

The Internet is so much better at teaching writing than the traditional educational system principally because it removes an artificial and limiting constraint on output imposed by ability of gatekeepers’ limited time to evaluate output.

(Interestingly in fields where we actually care about performance we’re good at encouraging students to practice when no one is watching but for writing we basically assume all the value is created by the teacher-minute of attention. Teacher-minutes are scarce and rationed.)

If you ever want to be deeply, deeply disillusioned about the state of the world, compare what we do where we care about output quality and what we do where we don’t, and which domains sort into which column by revealed preference.
WRITING
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
I like this heuristic, and have a few which are similar in intent to it:


Hiring efficiency:

How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?

What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?

How long does it take, as a developer newly hired at the company:

* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work

How long does it take, from first idea floated to "It's on the Internet", to create a piece of marketing collateral.

(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)

How many people have to say yes to do something which is clearly worth doing which costs $5,000 / $15,000 / $250,000 and has never been done before.
ALL
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
My friends @robwalling and @einarvollset just launched TinySeed, an accelerator for software companies where a successful outcome is a healthy, sustainable business rather than attempting to ride the rocketship trajectory. https://t.co/LSHqZNcVid

I have some thoughts:

As somebody who bootstrapped ~4 companies, I feel like I had to make some clearly suboptimal decisions early in them for lack of what is, in hindsight, not all that much money. But there's a huge gap in the product space for investment options.

It's weird: you can get $25k from Amex trivially, and angels are very willing to write a check for that much, but you have to make representations about your goals/ambitions/market/etc which don't really apply to everyone.

And so you see the traditional angel/VC ecosystem fund companies where honestly the returns are probably not there, and this is knowable pretty early, but the chase of them will wreck what could have been a perfectly happy business.

(To make the math work for traditional VCs the company has to at least have a market-appropriate shot of $100 million a year. There are a lot more $10 million a year companies than $100 million a year companies. That is *not* a bad terminal outcome for founders/employees.)
ALL

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Loren Brichter
Loren Brichter
@lorenb
So it turns out that Google Chrome was making everything on my computer slow *even when it wasn’t running*, because it installs something called Keystone which is basically malware.

I made a website because this shouldn’t

Wired first reported on how bad Keystone was 11 years ago when they put it into Google Earth (they seem to put it in all their popular

The fact that Keystone hides itself in Activity Monitor is bizarre. (The only sign of it was excessive CPU usage of WindowServer which is a system process).

I don’t know if Google was doing something nefarious with Keystone, or a third party figured out how to (which Wired warned about). But either way, I’m not inclined to give Google-the-organization the benefit of the doubt (despite the many good people who work on Chrome)...

...since it's been a decade+ and this still hasn't been "fixed".

There is no reason for auto-update software to need to do what Chrome/Keystone was doing. It also has a long history of crashing Macs.
TECH
Jared Spool
Jared Spool
@jmspool
A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.

Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.

It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective


Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.
TECH
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Ferruccio Balestreri \U0001f308
Ferruccio Balestreri 🌈...
@0xferruccio
🕵️‍♂️ How Google's PageRank algorithm works

The PageRank algorithm gives each page a rating of its
importance, which is a recursively defined measure of importance, based on if important pages link to it.
It's recursive because the importance of a page refers back to the importance of other pages that link to it

Here's how it works in practice:
1⃣ We start with some pages and crawl them for links


2⃣ Each page has 1/N points (where N as the total number of pages)


3⃣ Add points to each page for the amount of links to it, divided by the number
of links emanating from the sources of these links
TECH
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last up in Privacy Tech for #enigma2021, @xchatty speaking about "IMPLEMENTING DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY FOR THE 2020

Differential privacy was invented in 2006. Seems like a long time but it's not a long time since a fundamental scientific invention. It took longer than that between the invention of public key cryptography and even the first version of SSL.


But even in 2020, we still can't meet user expectations.
* Data users expect consistent data releases
* Some people call synthetic data "fake data" like
"fake news"
* It's not clear what "quality assurance" and "data exploration" means in a DP framework


We just did the 2020 US census
* required to collect it by the constitution
* but required to maintain privacy by law

But that's hard! What if there were 10 people on the block and all the same sex and age? If you posted something like that, then you would know what everyone's sex and age was on the block.
TECH , TEACH
Aviral Bhatnagar
Aviral Bhatnagar
@aviralbhat
I spent 1.4 lakhs on Zomato alone this year

Once these platforms build a habit, it's hard to leave

Lifetime value of customers is immense, which recover marketing costs and more

These very "loss-making" companies eventually become money-making machines

I love the assumptions people are making here to try to work out how this is possible, but I'll not share the math to just keep this fun.

Few hints: I have excellent cardiovascular fitness, love fine + healthy dining and order with my wife and brother

Guess AOV and order freq
TECH

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Emperor\U0001f451
Emperor👑
@EmperorBTC
Technical Analysis Masterclass- Part 2

'Entering the trade'

Entering a trade without ascertaining a certain things is gambling.

In this masterclass we will learn the pre-requisites to enter a trade.

DON'T ENTER A TRADE WITHOUT DETERMINNG THE FOLLOWING.

Please share.

We understand what reward to risk (popularly called risk to reward) is.
It will be denoted by R:R.

We will also try to bust a few myths about R:R and how to avoid losing trades.

Before entering a trade, you need to determine 3 things.

1. Entry trigger
2. Stop loss
3. Target

1. Entry trigger = Reasons for entering a trade. There could be multiple reasons or a single reason for entry.

Generally a set of reasons AKA confluence is a higher probability trade and a generally a safer entry.

Example of an entry trigger.


2. Stop Loss.

The price in the opposite direction of the trade where the trade is exited, at a loss.

At this level, the reason for the entry becomes invalidated according to TA and the price can then move in the opposite direction, probabilistically.


3. Target is the possible price level that the asset might touch based on previous trends or confluence AND where a possible reversal could occur.

Target is the next path of least resistance from where the price might reverse.

We will always ONLY use TA to determine all 3.
TRADING
DTBhat
DTBhat
@dtbhat
The thread explains my momentum scanner and how to build it in #TradePoint software.
@Definedge
Conditions :
1)EMA 8 above EMA 34 and rising
2)Candle close above previous 5 candle high
3) RSI above 60
4) Volume above previous 5 candles
5) ADX above 30
1/n

Select Double Moving Average 8 and 34
2/n


Under Patterns select Close Above Prev Bars
3/n


Qualify the candle close
4/n


RSI above 60
5/n
SCREENERS , SCREENER , A SCANNER
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RadioChinar
RadioChinar
@RadioChinar
Demystifying Ghazwa-e-Hind. A #thread.

A recent video of Shoaid Akhter surfaced in social media creating a lot of controversy where the #Pakistani Cricketer can be seen suggesting invasion of India by using the term Ghazwa-e-Hind.
Radicalization of sportsmen seen off late
(1/10)


Some radical Islamic preachers believes that Ghazwa-e-Hind means a “Holy War against India”. As per this irrational & profane concept, there will be a fierce battle to secure victory over #India.
#Kashmir
(2/10)


#Pakistan-based terror groups, like JeM have been using Ghazwa-e-Hind as a Hadith to recruit, fund and justify its terror strikes as a religious holy war against #India.
#Kashmir
(3/10)


Some machiavellian people claim it is a prophecy that Muslim warriors will wage war against the #India.
Jaish & others falsely propagate that Jihad against India is considered holy in Islam & that those participating in it will be granted an easy entry into paradise.
(4/10)


However prolific scholars says that this is a made-up interpretation of some verse in The Holy Quran to mislead the gullible youth of #Pakistan into picking up arms and fighting its Army's personal battle against #India.
#Kashmir
(5/10)
SOCIETY
\u09a8\u09bf\u09ac\u09c7\u09a6\u09bf\u09a4\u09be
নিবেদিতা...
@NiveditaNarayan
Remembering the Bengali scientist Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay- the Pioneer of IVF in India, the creator of India's first and world's second child using IVF on his birth anniversary. The Father of IVF in India who was rewarded with suicide was born on 16.01.1931in Hazaribagh.
#Thread


Dr. Subhash was the son of a doctor and studied at the National Medical College in Kolkata after completing his schooling. Fascinated by innovations in gynaecological surgery from his early days as a medical student, he completed his PhD in reproductive physiology +


from the University of Calcutta before going to the Edinburgh University in UK for a PhD in reproductive endocrinology. On his return to India in 1978, he started researching ovulation and spermatogenesis. Soon after, he teamed up with Sunit Mukherji, a cryobiologist +


and Saroj Kanti Bhattacharya, a gynaecologist, to work on a method of in-vitro fertilization for a patient (Bela Agarwal) with damaged fallopian tubes. +


Mukhopadhyay with a double PhDstarted work on IVF techniques in the mid 60s and created history by becoming the first physician in India and second in the world after British physicians Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe) to perform the In-vitro fertilisation. +
INDIA
George Mack
George Mack
@george__mack
THREAD: 15 of the most useful razors and rules I've found.

Rules of thumb that simplify decisions.

Bezos' Razors:

• If unsure what action to take, let your 80-year-old self make it.

• If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.

Skinner's Law:

• If procrastinating on an item, you only have 2 options:

1. Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it.

2. Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

Luck Razor:

• If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line.

I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix.

In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

Bragging Razor:

• If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim.

• If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.

The map is not the terrain.
ALL , BUSINESS , PRINCIPLES