hidenotslide's comments

Good point about pandas dataframes taking up extra space, and the solution of using chunking/generators. 33 GB is what Wes McKinney would call "medium data": https://twitter.com/wesmckinn/status/413159516096585729

The problem is libraries that works fine when everything fits in RAM start breaking down if you aren't careful. Not really python speed issue, but you lose some of the tools you relied on previously.

I don't find this a very compelling argument. The author doesn't mention any attempts to profile or speed up the code.

Specifically with pandas I've found if you aren't careful you can do a lot of unnecessary copying. Not sure if that's what is going on here, but cProfile can help find the bottlenecks.

Capital gains are equivalent to dividends, just with better tax treatment. You are "technically" correct though, which is of course the best kind.

Normally that would be true, but under ACA profits are capped at 25% of premiums. They can increase profits only by increasing premiums, which can be justified by rising costs. Private insurance companies in America have no incentive to lower healthcare costs.

Single payer does not mean non-profit, providers would still be for profit.

What doesn't add up with the numbers you quoted? Being valued at higher than revenue isn't odd, that's a stocks vs. flows issue. Same with the debt, that's not too much relative to market cap.

Initially this sounded like AOL buys TimeWarner, but since it's a cash dividend that doesn't seem to be the explanation. I suspect there is a significant tax benefit as is often the case when a foreign company takes over an American one (known as a tax inversion).

Yes, looks very fake. The parts about if your dog needs to go out, how they target women, whether your chair scrapes or not? Just silly.

I don't know the details. Multiple places seem to imply there is at least some planned mechanism, that's all I was referring to. E.g. from the white paper: "Tethers may be redeemable/exchangeable for the underlying fiat currency pursuant to Tether Limited’s terms of service".

I don't have a position here and no axe to grind, but parting from your auditors is in many cases a significant red flag.

I have no clue, you'd have to ask people who sell below par.

If they are selling because they can't access the normal withdrawal mechanism (e.g. US customers or people in a rush relative to processing delays) then it is the former. If they are speculatively shorting it is more likely the latter.

It could be both: people who can't do normal withdrawal and think there is at least 2% chance of fraud.

Either tether is trading at a discount due to liquidity issues like a closed-end fund or due to real credit issues (fraud).

I think outgoing wires are almost never free, maybe you are thinking of ACH transfers? The rest of the things sound unfortunate though, and potentially illegal in the case of converting to a fee account without notice.

Customer friendliness can vary a lot even within a bank/credit union depending on the customer and personal banker, since a lot of fee waivers are discretionary. E.g. if a banker has a fee waiver limit per month then they can help you at the start but not later in the month.

Part of the issue is that since rates have been so low, the traditional net interest margin of banks has been squeezed so they turn to fees to compensate.

A lot of that trading activity is still leveraged even if self-clearing. Futures/options trades are based on margin for instance, e.g. $4800 ES margin vs. $140,000 (50x2800) notional means 29:1 leverage.

Nothing? That person was also collecting social security and medicare if they were old enough.

Treasuries are liabilities when the government issues them and assets when the Fed holds them. One person's liability is another person's asset.

I don't really want to go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole of who does what at the Fed but it's main decision makers are government appointees, it was established by an act of Congress, and it remits its profits to the Treasury.

Ginnie Mae is part of the government as well (also mortgages). Fannie/Freddie are GSE's but currently under directly government control since the financial crisis.

I'm not sure how the accounting works, but they are somewhat autonomous and have their own balance sheets.

Almost assuredly false. The Federal Reserve balance sheet is US treasuries and mortgages, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac are mortgages as well. Probably not a complete data set.

This person gets paid 1 million dollars per year for twenty days of not-rocking-the-boat. It's not their money and the only way they get fired is by asking questions like that.

Why investors put up with it is a better question. I think the implicit antitrust of index funds has something to do with it, few investors want more competition. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/are-ind...

Nice idea, here's a little WebGL version inspired by your post. I just used a noise function rather than the polygons though. https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lt2BRm

I find it a bit surprising that investors would want it under those terms. Aside from the (negative) signaling value of insider sales, the company is still burning cash and it's a little weird that over half the capital they are raising will be a payout to the founder rather than an investment in the business. Unless they consider getting rid of him an investment like you imply?

It reminds me of the old way Chrome didn't hide saved passwords. It made sense under the threat model they had for the feature, but it wasn't the security model end users expected would be the default.

A simple UI fix would be to explicitly call the sharing mode "unlisted" like some other sites do including Youtube, with a similar warning about linking to the content.