pjanoman (u/pjanoman)

pjanoman commented on Tesla directors agree to return $735M following claims they were overpaid engadget.com/tesla-direct... · Posted by u/thunderbong

kneel · 2 years ago

Seems silly, if their equity goes up in value should they have to return everything over 1m?

It's not their fault that people bought the stock and made them rich.

pjanoman · 2 years ago

They're returning the equivalent of 3 million stock options. They gave themselves 11 million stock options between 2017-2020, which means they're still getting around $2 billion for being on the board. They're not returning everything over $1 million at all.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/tesla-directors-settle-lawsuit...

Do you have an opinion on whether the work they've done is worth $2 billion?

pjanoman commented on The Accidental HFT Firm (2018) web.archive.org/web/20210... · Posted by u/Twixes

pjanoman · 3 years ago

While I'm generally pro-HFT and market making, I'm seeing some comments that are equating market making and high frequency trading. They're not the same thing. As an HFT firm, you can have two kinds of strategies: Liquidity providing and liquidity taking. This article calls these two strategies market making and "being an aggressor" in the "Strategy Zero" and "Survival!" sections. The HFT describes their aggressor strategy as follows:

"Mr. F., one of the original hires, coded what we called Strategy Zero. It was simple: have no position, wait for an option edge of a reasonable size, at least a tick. Then, hit it. Wait. Dump it out and take a tick profit."

In this case, the strategy involves 1) seeing that you can buy a security at $10, 2) knowing that the security is actually worth $10.01 and will move to this price in a few seconds, 3) lifting someone's $10 offer, 4) waiting the few seconds for the market to move, and 5) hitting someone's $10.01 bid for a $.01/share profit.

This liquidity taking strategy is not similar to a liquidity providing strategy. Liquidity providing is leaving orders on the order book for anyone to take and gaining money from one person who buys your shares for $10 and from another who sells shares to you at $10.01. This involves more risk to your business.

I think that if you want to debate the merits of whether working at an HFT firm is an actually useful service, you have to look at how often the HFT firm provides liquidity versus takes liquidity. Providing liquidity more obviously tightens spreads and improves prices, as you can't be a successful liquidity provider unless you provide the best prices first. Liquidity taking, however, involves lifting orders from exchanges that you know are incorrectly priced, which seems to me like a more obvious "bad" (or at least less good than liquidity providing).

pjanoman commented on Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter axios.com/salaries-game-d... · Posted by u/elsewhen

sushisource · 5 years ago

What you're saying really boils down to whether or not you think capitalism makes sense, which is a much bigger argument, but ignoring that --

Who defines "should be earning"? You?

Currently, we let the market determine it. It's fine to say you don't like that system, but that's the argument you should make, not "Big game companies are unfair". They're just playing the game the way we set it up.

Alternatively, you could maybe argue "I believe it is possible to make AAA games, pay high salaries, and actually make profits all at the same time", which would be an interesting take, and you could maybe explain how.

But saying "this is worker exploitation" is an uninspired, unproductive argument, IMO.

pjanoman · 5 years ago

I'd argue that hiding behind "we let the market determine it" is much more uninspired and unproductive. Economic research now a days is constantly showing that markets are extremely flawed. One example of that is society pressuring employees to not share their wages, which is exactly what this whole article is about.

pjanoman commented on Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt cloudirregular.substack.c... · Posted by u/forrestbrazeal

eric4smith · 5 years ago

Yup. Got charged over $800 for "experimenting" with a DynamoDB database and forgetting to delete it afterwards.

Sure, I called customer support and they reversed the charges. But something the nice lady on the other end said as she chuckled: "This happens all the time".

DigitalOcean is the worst with the dormant accounts. Just got dinged around $2.40 on my credit card. Going into DO I could not find what was causing that charge. There was nothing there. Wuuuttttt.

pjanoman · 5 years ago

Honestly I get lost inside of AWS. Only recently was I able to figure out why I was getting charged $.82/month which, in the long run, is really nothing. But it's amazing how hard it was to figure out why I was getting charged for something that I originally thought was just going to be free.

pjanoman commented on Apple Reports Second Quarter Results apple.com/newsroom/2021/0... · Posted by u/MaysonL

wolverine876 · 5 years ago

> When Steve Jobs passed in 2011 I was certain that Apple would lose its way and start diluting their products/brand. To the contrary the last 10 years where an absolute tour the force in expansion of the spirit of Apple.

Under Jobs, they would regularly create whole new categories and concepts of technology and revolutionize others. I don't recall it happening since; they capitalize on everything that was created under Jobs (and do it well).

pjanoman · 5 years ago

I think apple watch was post jobs. Additionally, while this is more abstract, I think Apple has continued to revolutionize consumer's privacy.

pjanoman commented on Ethereum: A Store of Value with Cash Flow [pdf] ethereumcashflow.com/... · Posted by u/spir

ur-whale · 5 years ago

>they are determined by supply and demand

You are correct, but only in theory: this requires the precondition that people are rational economic actors.

In practice, people are weird, and the scarcity of supply creates a demand.

There is therefore a weird feedback loop between the supply and the demand, and scarcity alone is enough to create "value".

Examples:

    - Beanie babies

    - Magic the gathering cards

    - Pokemon cards

    - Baseball cards

    - DaVinci paintings (where anyone can have an 8k x 8k exact reproduction, but the original is worth a fortune)

    - etc...

pjanoman · 5 years ago

Scarcity alone is definitely not enough to create value. The one piece of artwork I've made in my life is a scarce resource, but that doesn't mean I have people buying it up like its an NFT.

pjanoman commented on A new database gives a sharper picture of homelessness across California latimes.com/homeless-hous... · Posted by u/infodocket

splithalf · 5 years ago

It’s innumerate I would argue. There are a lot of “ought to be” aspects to life but it’s not a very useful layer of thought. I prefer thinking about “what is” and from there think about changing things for the better. By “what is” I’m referring to empiricism, collecting data and using numbers to facilitate reason. The two modes, what ought to be vs what is, needn’t be incompatible, though acceptance is a difficult first step for many. In any case, if there is solid empirical evidence for the yimby-topian fantasies I hear, about how mixed used shopping plazas will solve the worlds ills, literally, I’ve yet to be convinced by any of it but I’d love to read any studies you might provide.

pjanoman · 5 years ago

Public policy constantly requires leaps of faith to try to make the country better. You can't know that providing housing to the homeless helps them until you actually try it for the first time.

What is: Based on currently available numbers, there are about 59 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.[1]. We do not have a shortage of houses, but instead a shortage of desire to house the homeless.

What makes you think we, as one of the most powerful countries in the world, cannot provide housing to the homeless?

Also, if you want to actually have a conversation about this, I would appreciate if you don't belittle my comments.

[1]: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

pjanoman commented on A new database gives a sharper picture of homelessness across California latimes.com/homeless-hous... · Posted by u/infodocket

splithalf · 5 years ago

Some like to pretend that we can just build infinite new housing, for free or almost no cost, and that will give everyone a nice American level luxury dwelling, all with no environmental costs. I feel like such opinions are built on ignorance or at the very least naïveté about the home building industry. One can invest in the home builders to profit from these misinformed opinions as they increasingly drive policy towards deregulation and corporate welfare for the mega-developers.

pjanoman · 5 years ago

Maybe some people believe that, but overall that seems to be more of a straw-man argument if anything. I believe what is more common is the thought that we, as a country, can provide housing for people who have no place to live without making a large impact on tax payers below the upper class. Or is this naive in your opinion as well?

pjanoman commented on A new database gives a sharper picture of homelessness across California latimes.com/homeless-hous... · Posted by u/infodocket

asiachick · 5 years ago

280k homeless?!?!? Japan claims they are down to ~4k nationwide and AFAIK they don't have nearly as much support for the homeless (could be totally wrong on that). What they do have AFAICT is a culture of self reliance so that someone who is homeless generally feels guilty about asking for help (not saying that's good or bad thing, only saying that's what I believe is the culture)

They aren't often easy to see but if go into a public park, if you see blue vinyl tarps in the bushes those are often a homeless person living there. There's a few in Yoyogi park and some in Shinjuku Central park (next to Tokyo's gov HQ). Otherwise in the winter some people try to sleep in the subway stations close to closing time.

Japan does not have "free" medical support AFAIK. You have to pay into the national health insurance or otherwise pay your own medical bills. On the other hand, prices are regulated.

pjanoman · 5 years ago

Seems like you can also get housing in Japan for $14/day which is much less than you can in LA, to my knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan#Internet...

pjanoman commented on A new database gives a sharper picture of homelessness across California latimes.com/homeless-hous... · Posted by u/infodocket

tonymet · 5 years ago

Let's say those people on the street moved into the luxury apartment. What do you think the outcome would be? would they suddenly get their life together?

pjanoman · 5 years ago

1) Many times, yes. If we want to analyze things logically, oftentimes people just need a safe place to stay so that things are stolen from them/they can avoid drugs/they can tell an employer that they live somewhere in order to have a more stable life.

2) Even if they don't suddenly get their life together, that is looking at things too logically in my opinion. In my opinion, it is the moral thing to help out the needy, and that means providing housing. America's big enough to do it.