rlucas

8 ms·

31.
by rlucas 6y ago
Put another way, in an information-theoretic view of markets and money: stopping the yields from going up would make it more difficult for investors reliably to gauge how safe it is to lend money during a time of economic stress. It's
32.
by rlucas 6y ago
True but also not true. In normal times with well-functioning markets and non-distressed players, that's so. But with distressed (or small or less creditworthy) players or at distressed times, it's extremely common for lenders to
33.
by rlucas 6y ago
A bit of a nit. Treasury money is taxpayer money. Fed money is ... not. It's seigniorage. But the point of this subthread remains; corporate loans are expected to be paid back (less some loss reserve, but plus some credit spread), w
34.
by rlucas 6y ago
Look, not to "True Scotsman" this thing too much, but there really is a thing called protesting, and there really is a thing called criminality. If you write a firmly worded letter to your Senator, you are protesting and it would
35.
by rlucas 6y ago
Absolutely. I'm utterly confused if you're not, though I recognize that you may have a different perspective based on your background. Do you live in a metropolitan city in the US? Seattle, USA is my point of reference. I have
36.
by rlucas 6y ago
De-escalation begins at home, my friend. When a group of over a thousand develops, that is something right because they are citizens calling for the righting of some wrongs. A "mob" is something else, and calling a thousand in
37.
by rlucas 6y ago
The fact that you're asking that question is the problem. (Assuming there's some good faith there.) Governments ought not to "control" protest crowds in a democracy. This is literally written down in the foundational-my
38.
by rlucas 6y ago
I disagree. Although I'm not in the business, my understanding from wide reading in the topic is quite the opposite. Casinos make money from "whales," who may or may not end up ruined to a man, but who are certainly losing e
39.
by rlucas 7y ago
You have totally misunderstood how bonds work on a "present value" or "mark to market" basis. (All of the below assumes the bonds actually pay as agreed. Actual default risk is something totally different, and still pre
40.
by rlucas 7y ago
Dear Lord please DO NOT put your entire retirement into bonds right now. Bond yields are at an all time low . That means prices are at an all time high. This is not the time to massively rotate into an asset class at an all-time high pr
41.
by rlucas 7y ago
As a venture capitalist, I am mostly with you on the big picture idea of how to view "everybody else's interest in capitalism functioning" here. But I will quibble with the term "profit." I would say "driving
42.
by rlucas 7y ago
There are moldable bumpers/foam for this application. The foams can also be made from bio materials such as mycelium (which can actually be grown/entrained to shape) or that puffy corn starch that can replace “packing peanuts.” Co
43.
by rlucas 7y ago
A big problem with slapping huge statutory damages / fines onto data breaches is that only the "suckers" will ever pay or even own up to it. Recently in Washington State, a small research group at WSU lost a couple of hard dr
44.
by rlucas 7y ago
The corollary to this that remains unspoken about the OP's thesis is: because of the mass reach of the major platforms, the "toxic" effects now have escaped being an internet-only phenomenon and now are manifesting in meatspa
45.
by rlucas 7y ago
If you're working on this in a for-profit context, I'm a Seattle VC looking to invest in solutions for this particular problem, and my phone/email/etc. are in my profile. My most recent investment was on this thesis: ht
46.
by rlucas 7y ago
Unclear why this was heavily downvoted. Modern encryption is, eventually, either effectively unbreakable, or effectively worthless. Or is there widespread knowledge of exploits that can recover, say, 25% of a plaintext reliably, but no more
47.
by rlucas 7y ago
In the late 1990s "everyone" was doing so -- and then a nonzero percentage of "everyone" went to jail for it. By 2005 people were on notice.
48.
by rlucas 7y ago
That "blindingly obvious loophole" is basically the standard. These compensation deals are very often based on earnings per share or value per share. And you can increase it. The link below is from the Conference Board, which is
49.
by rlucas 7y ago
Fact 4 is largely incorrect. Boards with adversarial relationships with large blocs of shareholders generally adopt provisions like staggered board terms (like the US Senate). Fact 3 is also a fairly fanciful interpretation. Large public
50.
by rlucas 7y ago
"The SEC has now awarded approximately $376 million to 61 individuals since issuing its first award in 2012." There's no way the incentives from something like this SEC program could outweigh the economics of being high up wi
51.
by rlucas 7y ago
Yes, but Sharpe calculated ex post is also subject to survivorship bias. For example, you might make a (successful) bet that works only in a low-volatility environment; if it works, your ex post Sharpe ratio will look ingenious.
52.
by rlucas 7y ago
Except accounting-wise, and tax-wise, that is what profit means. Retaining a surplus into future periods is generally going to be a taxable event. I suppose you could create a reserve against projected liabilities such as warranty returns
53.
by rlucas 7y ago
GP comment is being deadly serious and not at all cynical or sarcastic. HIPAA is a fig leaf. Cardboard covers on clipboards to inconvenience the nurses and receptionists, but a unencumbered infobahn for anyone who touches the money to driv
54.
by rlucas 7y ago
Or, framing it more broadly: mass personalization implies a worse deal on average for everyone on the atomized/consumer/low-power (individual) side, because the high-power participants (companies) will optimize their outcomes at t
55.
by rlucas 7y ago
If you want to see a world governed by a non-human understanding of fairness and one in which a highly technical cohort was entrusted to make these sorts of judgment calls, look no further than the domain industry in the early 2000s. Specif
56.
by rlucas 7y ago
For me and for a number of email "power users" whom I know, Blackberry strictly dominates iPhone email experience. Stipulated, it definitely depends on personal preferences and workflows as to what you personally prefer. But it is
57.
by rlucas 7y ago
"Disruption" gets a lot of abuse. As it was originally proliferated in reference to tech ventures, it referred to a very specific pattern highlighted by Clay Christensen's writings out of HBS. In classical "disruption,&q
58.
by rlucas 7y ago
The moment they stop accepting reservations for new travel outbound is the moment they are commercially dead. Agreed, if you knew there was 0% hope (say, of flying anyone back a week hence) it would be unethical to keep it going. But if yo
59.
by rlucas 7y ago
I call it "weird results require weird behavior." Two problems tend to arise from it: 1. Ex ante, people who don't understand it think that just by being weird, they will have exceptional (weirdly good) results. So they are
60.
by rlucas 7y ago
I'm a huge proponent of this core idea -- that networked technologies have changed the cost structure that underpins our 20th century implicit understandings about privacy, and that one stopgap approach is to rework the economics of su

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