The Diff

The Diff [0] and Capital Gains [1][2] by Byrne Hobert are excellent. If you're interested in in-depth analysis of current events in finance, tech and other related musings. Capital Gains is more focused on ideas in finance and how to think about them. [0] https://www.thediff.co/ [1] (With referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.co/subscribe?ref=zlPGzwicD7 [2] (Without referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.co/subscribe

If you're into finance and tech, you should subscribe to his newsletter: https://www.thediff.co/ Even the free version has good content.

The Diff by Bryne Hobart https://www.thediff.co/ is a finance one I enjoyed in the past

He's now the author of a very successful newsletter: https://www.thediff.co/

Anything from the IETF is going to be educational for the relevant tech topic: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ I like Peter Zeihan's list for geopolitics: https://zeihan.com/newsletter/ The Diff is good for a broad swathe of tech/finance topics: https://www.thediff.co/ I enjoy Bits About Money, from Patio11: https://bam.kalzumeus.com/ (though the essays usually make their way to HN).

I guess you are completely oblivious to how HFT's work and their actual position in the markets. I am a bit biased considering that I work in the industry but actually working in the industry gave me the inner workings of it and how actually they help to close / tighten the bid - ask spread for various securities. I would highly recommend you to read this book ( https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691211381/trading-at-t… ) or if it's too long form, read this article ( https://www.thediff.co/p/jane-street ) I am not saying HFT's are in charitable business but they do serve an important role in the financial markets.

Same author talks about Angel investors getting screwed by later rounds. Here’s an example of a portfolio company that not only converted angel investor ownership to common stock, but also drastically decreased the number of shares. I started asking for pro-rata side letters in 2017. But I recently found out (the hard way) that it’s common for follow-on investors to completely disregard any pro-rata rights of angel investors. https://www.halletecco.com/blog/angel-investing-part-iii#:~:text=In%20… Perhaps also relevant: Founders, like entry-level workers, are closer to an option than a stock. There's a good chance that the payoff will be negative (in the sense that sometimes a company going to zero is a significant time-consuming process to investors). Someone who continuously buys out-of-the-money options will bleed money over time, From: https://capitalgains.thediff.co/p/the-favor-trading-economy

https://www.thediff.co/ like Stratechery meets Money Stuff

“What [schools are] bad at is teaching people to win in adversarial environments. And they're also bad at the meta-game of reminding someone that knowing the basic mechanics of some process does not make them an expert, but does make them a mark. Said differently: if you know which hands win in poker, thinking that this means you know how to play the game makes you a mark, not an expert.” https://capitalgains.thediff.co/p/teachingfinance “And it's hard for a teacher to end a class by telling students that they got an A+ in financial literacy and are now equipped to get ripped off in entirely new ways by an entirely different set of adversaries. But it's also impossible to create a repeatable standardized test that accurately simulates such an adversarial environment, because any time everyone gets the same correct answer, that answer would need to become wrong.”

Not commenting specifically on LI ranking, but Byrne Hobart wrote a terrific rebuttal of the main premise of this book https://www.thediff.co/archive/bullshit-jobs-is-a-terrible-curiosity-k…

Times change. People adapt. Happened before, will happen again. Some adapt willingly, some hesitatingly. Current AI wave is a corporate funded experiment desperate to find something compelling beyond controlled demos to economically recoup the deepening hole in their balance sheet. The novelty has begun to wear off, the innovation has started to stagnate and the money running out. The only money making innovation left to be seen is in creating more spam. Thats where I see this wave headed. OpenAI has proven it's a shit company with rotten fundamentals playing with a shiny new toy. They will crash and burn spectacularly. As many before have done in various fields. My reaction after using any AI tool from the last couple years to do anything meaningful ends with just a big facepalm. Its a grift[1] [1]: https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-theory-of-grift/

URL seems to have changed to: https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem-is-a-… Link on this article took me to: https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/

30-year fixed rate mortgages should not exist. They only exist in the US and Denmark: https://www.thediff.co/p/the-30-year-mortgage-is-an-intrinsically-toxi… And they only exist because of A LOT of government intervention. If interest rates don't continue to only go down - I imagine you'll see them disappear in the US and Denmark. US & EU banks mostly make their mortgage profits from constantly refinancing at ever lower rates.

Apparently Plaid has 40% penetration of US bank account holders[1], and of course their entire business is storing the username and passwords for all those accounts so they can screen scrape. I struggle to think of a more attractive target than that! [1] https://www.thediff.co/p/plaid-data-layer-to-payments-layer

The NYT's main competitors aren't other newspapers. Their competitors are Substack, Candy Crush, and Netflix. As Byrne Hobart points out, > "in their latest quarter almost 30% of their new digital subscriptions were for games, cooking, and Wirecutter, rather than news." And a bit more cheekily: > "When there's a negative New York Times article about a startup, one of the not-uncommon Tech Twitter jokes is that this constitutes bullying from an established, profitable unicorn with over $1bn in annual recurring revenue." https://www.thediff.co/p/the-nyt-dead-trees-and-disruption (paywall)

In "The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization" [0] I found this quote to be very appealing wrt decentralization: > "[A]ny decentralized order requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system." This somewhat counterintuitive notion is often overlooked. In order to facilitate a healthy decentralization effort you need a heck of a collaborative movement to make it a reality and sustain the initiative. [0] https://www.thediff.co/p/the-promise-and-paradox-of-decentralization

>I must admit I am still having a hard time following you. You're not the first. A "sister" project I started in 2020 is hardware focused, and later on, I determined that a lightweight suite for internet would complement the offline stack: https://ei2030.github.io/FemtoTX/#about One could say it's a "solution in search of a problem", but game development also is an incubator: https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/ There are other Jobs inspired R&D groups out there- a notable one is Ink & Switch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s8OA08ggbM They use an aircraft carrier vs. bicycle comparison, as Steve Jobs preferred the bike metaphor as an extension of user capabilities. Someone here mentioned WAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol which I completely forgot about, and AJAX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) These techniques/protocols helped make the Symbian interent experience fast, before other smartphones had many solutions. >Why should a household or office download windows update files more than once? Seems like a great idea. I agree with you on that. I also use it to share files and updates on my own network, often when transferring Steam games from one PC to another. I meant for non private networks (like internet cafes) is where I thought there might be a security issue.…

Related https://capitalgains.thediff.co/p/vendor-financing