rlucas

6 ms·

1.
by rlucas 2mo ago
This piece is very much not sourced from payment rails transaction data. It's big demographic and macro data and the sources are all nicely cited
2.
by rlucas 3mo ago
"Licit" in English usage also carries the weight of its connotation in church ("canon") law, wherein it can refer to acts that are considered not only to have occurred spiritually ("valid") according to the law
3.
by rlucas 6mo ago
Sorry, I meant Jesse Livermore's "Confessions of a Stock Market Operator," worth a read to anyone interested in the history of this stuff.
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by rlucas 6mo ago
I don't think that's a true etymology of "bucket shop," which per my recollection of Livermore was just an off-track-betting parlor for ticker symbols, but where nobody actually bought the shares (bundled or otherwise).
5.
by rlucas 3y ago
I think bdcravens is suggesting not that the law itself was intentionally a half-measure, but that the state apparatus is slow-walking the reform measures in a sort of malicious compliance with the law, in order that the governmental machin
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by rlucas 3y ago
A caution on the source; "The College Fix" is a rage-bait blog for one side of the tiresome U.S. culture war. As a result, expect sensational framing.
7.
by rlucas 3y ago
54% of SVB’s loan book was loans “to” VCs and PEs, but they weren’t loans based upon the funds’ portfolio holdings. They were Capital Call lines, based on the power of the VC to demand that its LPs make good on capital commitments. (Yes, t
8.
by rlucas 4y ago
... though it may well be relevant that they might have felt great pressure to /retain/ customer deposits in a world of competitive yields.
9.
by rlucas 4y ago
It's not nearly that simple, though. You are ignoring capital requirements. For things like Treasuries, you don't need any capital % against it. ($100 in deposit -> $100 in Treasuries, if you borrow at 1 and lend at 4 you ma
10.
by rlucas 4y ago
See also, thermohaline circulation. A major factor in the global climate is the flow of water pulled north along the Atlantic's surface due to the sinking of denser, saltier water. Not going to be an issue with your average desalinati
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by rlucas 4y ago
BC has a lot of cred with some of us "been around since web 1.0" folks, to be clear
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by rlucas 4y ago
There is a large set of infrequently encountered (for most) but often highly important and/or time-sensitive things that having a traditional bank you can walk into makes much easier. Consider: medallion signature guarantee, initiati
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by rlucas 4y ago
++ A giant amount of social quandaries melt away when you realize: "Good guys" and "Bad guys" is not a matter of identity, it's a matter of activity. You aren't a "Good guy" because of who you are ,
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by rlucas 4y ago
Effectively, yes. It's a subsidy to individuals of moderate means, particularly those who have spent decades maxing out their holdings. If you think that's regressive and absurd, wait until you hear about the mortgage interest de
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by rlucas 4y ago
This is misleading to those who read "plain English" meanings and not familiar with jargon. Banks call "Capital" or "Equity" the unencumbered safe assets like cash they hold. Banks do have strict Capital requi
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by rlucas 4y ago
++ COLLATE "C" is your friend, particularly if you find yourself using a GUID or other text-y PK field.
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by rlucas 5y ago
I got a similar response when I tried to return an electronics item a couple years back. The guy (totally over his head) walked through an algorithm and 10 minutes into it, basically said "because you're a good customer we'l
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How can I discern my standing as an Amazon customer?
1 points by rlucas 5y ago|3 comments
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by rlucas 5y ago
Weirdly reminiscent of the sci fi plot element in Sawyer, “The Terminal Experiment.”
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by rlucas 5y ago
I also had intermittency on 2021-11-27 between 1-2 PM PT. Would work one minute, not the next, retry and it works. Feels round-robin-y kind of Heisenbug.
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by rlucas 5y ago
Just ask yourself, what productive use of USD reliably yields 8.88% plus a spread for the intermediary? (For regulated boring banks, net interest margin historically is around 3%.) Banks doing C&I lending to modest risk (but still no
22.
by rlucas 6y ago
There are an awful lot of businesses that charge huge margins and use that extra cash flow, plus their scale, to essentially fence out new entrants by a mix of sales/marketing, channel spiffery/bribery, and regulatory capture. It&
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by rlucas 6y ago
A meta-comment here: Beware the advice you might glean here. Often, surveying HN for the consensus provides a signal; more often, skimming the cream of the commentary provides a better signal. Here, a lot will be misleading, particularly
24.
by rlucas 6y ago
Staff please update title — importantly the reported upon study indicates no effect of legislation mandating hi-viz, not the wearing of it. For example, perhaps everyone who would obey such a law is already wearing high viz.
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by rlucas 6y ago
That is orthogonal to the point of the article. The state can demand, using their guns, that you pay them in the coin of their realm. At that point, you need to come up with those coins, or face their guns. You can have your BTC be decentra
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by rlucas 6y ago
> the coronavirus effect on the economy has just demonstrated that economic growth is fundamentally not impacted much by around 1/3 of all jobs. The labor product and consumption activity of that 33.3% just doesn’t matter. If you&#x
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by rlucas 6y ago
Are you suggesting that the Fed was strictly a price-taker and so de minimus that it had no price effect? In which case, why did the Fed get involved?
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by rlucas 6y ago
Clearly. But it's not as if demanding equity rights along side a debt financing is unprecedented. Certainly, it is a damn sight more precedented than the Fed buying corporate bonds!
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by rlucas 6y ago
You have a point here, however: Step 1: Use scale-derived lower WACC and an army of lawyers as cudgels to destroy independent retail and grocery in exurban and rural communities. Step 2: "You can't get rid of us because without an
30.
by rlucas 6y ago
Can grant you that using accounting definitions, jjoonathan is literally correct: the [accounting] profit goes to sociaty (the Fed) here and the debt liability is on the private balance sheet (Walmart). However, GP is making a point I might

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