Web/Tech

  • Social Media Is Changing Everything: A Reprisal

    I came across a post from 2009 about social media. 10 years later, with the knowledge of how much data we use today, it's quite a read.

    Here it is in its full glory. 

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: October 18th, 2009

    My son won't use e-mail the way I did. So how will people communicate and collaborate in the next wave of communications?

    Here is a peek into the difference that is taking hold.  I was looking at recent phone use.  The numbers you are about to see are from the first 20 days of our current billing cycle.

      • My wife, Jennifer, has used 21 text messages and 38 MB of data.
      • I have used 120 text messages and 29 MB of data.
      • My son, at college, used 420 text messages, and is on a WiFi campus so doesn't use 3G data.
      • My son, in high school, used 5,798 text messages and 472 MB of data.

    How can that be?  That level of emotional sluttiness makes porn seem downright wholesome. 

    But, of course, that isn't how he sees it.  He is holding many conversations at once.  Some are social; some are about the logistics of who, what, when, where and why … some are even about homework.  Yet, most don't use full sentences, let alone paragraphs.  There is near instant gratification.  And, the next generation of business people will consider this normal.

    Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

    Welcome to the World of Socialnomics.  This video has a bunch of interesting statistics … and is fun to watch. 

     

     

    Other Resources:

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: April 20th, 2019 

    Looking at the stats from 2009 is pretty funny

    • My son was using 472 MB of data a month
    • Hulu had grown from to 373 million total streams in April 2009
    • Only 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone

    For some context, I looked up the comparative numbers for 2018. 

    • I picked a random month in 2018 … in August my son used 10.85 GB of data. He doesn't text as often – but has sent/received 282,000 snapchats since downloading it 5 years ago.
    • Hulu has over 20 million subscribers who streamed more than 26 million hours a day in 2018 
    • People spend over five hours a day on their smartphones on average. 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device, and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile (93% of twitter videos). 

    Here's what happens every minute of every day on the internet

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    via Lori Lewis and Chadd Callahan

     

    A little different than 2009 …

  • Reinventing Hedge Funds

    Two months ago, I spoke at IBM's Think 2019 Conference with iOLAP's Chris Jordan. Our talk was Gaining a Financial Edge through Fast Data and Analytics.

     

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    The crux of our presentation was that high-performance computing and advanced technology stacks are fundamental to today's trading strategies.

    Earlier this week, IBM released a commercial we shot together about how IBM's Integrated Analytics System (IAS) is helping us re-invent hedge funds.  Check it out.

     

     

    via IBM Analytics

    Think of it this way: 

    Evolution of TradingEach generation of traders finds new ways to play the game and to generate Alpha (the excess return generated by manager skill, rather than luck or excess risk). As soon as enough people adopt a strategy (or figure out a way to combat it), the edge begins to decay.

    When computerized data became available, simply understanding how to download and use it generated Alpha. The same could be said for each later evolution: the adoption of complex algorithms, access to massive amounts of clean data, and the adoption of AI strategies.

    Each time a new shift happens, traders pivot or fail – it's not that active trading stopped working – it's that the tools and styles necessary to play that game evolved.

    We use a similar concept we call "Active Switching".  Instead of simply trying to pick stocks or markets, we use advanced technology and techniques to choose markets, techniques, risk levels, and allocation strategies. Further, we use Active Switching to make many decisions, great and small, that together allow us to build portfolios that adjust themselves to changing market conditions.

     

    Playing a New Game

     

    Confusion is the catalyst to most trades.  What that means is the ability to parse information … to create a contextual map of meaning and figure out where there's signal and noise … is the new table stakes for playing that game.   ~ Howard Getson

     

    Historically, most active traders don't beat the S&P in any given year … and even less beat it with any semblance of consistency.  But those that do – the ones that have been doing it for long enough that it's not chance … exercise a willingness (and a skill) to adapt quickly. 

    One of Charles Darwin's best-known concepts is: It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

    While computers have made information accessible to everyone, they've also created a massive asymmetric information advantage for those who have both the access and the skill to best use the massive amounts of data now available.  This is more complicated than it seems.  You need the information, the technology, the process, and the people.  There is so much data available now that figuring out what to ignore is probably more important than what to use.  Likewise, the ability to ingest, clean, validate and curate the data is a huge hurdle that most can't clear.

     

    FInding A Needle In A Haystack_PPT Size

     

    Even with those skills, it's harder than ever to take advantage of inefficiencies (edges) than ever before.  The edges are smaller, more fleeting, and surrounded by more volatility and noise.  It's like finding a needle in a haystack.  That being said – finding a needle in a haystack is easy when you have a metal detector. 

    That's where A.I. has come in for us. We use A.I. to develop algorithms, to analyze markets, and to create meaning where humans can't find any. 

     

    Wisdom Comes From Making Finer Distinctions_PPT Size

     

    We live in exciting times.  Onwards!

  • Photographing a Supermassive Black Hole: The Gravity of This Situation is Immeasurable

    The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing. – Frodo seeing Sauron through the Mirror of Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring

    The Event Horizon Telescope just released the first-ever image of a black hole … specifically a supermassive black hole with a mass 6.5 billion times heavier than our sun. This behemoth of a black hole is over 50 million light-years away in a galaxy we call M87. The little blob (in the picture below) is 25 billion miles across, and the bright part is brighter than all of the billions of other stars in that galaxy combined.  To put it in context … the black hole, shown below, is larger than our entire Solar System. 

    Here's a link to the original RAW (183 mb) image. 

     

    A-Consensusvia National Science Foundation

    The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun

    In my opinion, the black hole image is even more amazing when you zoom out and see the entire m87 galaxy. The little black dot inside the orange is the black hole.

     

    190414 black-hole-photo-amazing-zoom-out-1200x630

    via NASA/CXC/VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY/J. NEILSEN 

    To take a step back, a black hole is a celestial object that has a gravitational field so strong that light cannot escape it and that is believed to be created especially in the collapse of a very massive star.  It warps spacetime and superheats all surrounding materials. 

    “In space no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole, no one can see you disappear.” 
    ― Stephen Hawking

    Before today, black holes had only been observed indirectly. We had math that "proved it."  Now, we have direct, observable, and corroborated evidence for everyone to see.

    Do you understand the gravity of that? 

    In my lifetime, Black holes have gone from a fringe theory to a possibility, to a probability, and now, to reality.  

    It is amazing to think about how right Einstein's theory of general relativity was … especially considering that he did the math in 1915, before we had the technology and science to back it up.  The basic idea is that the relative velocity of light doesn't change, therefore it must be a constant in our universe. Using his math, we were able to predict how a black hole would "look", and it was supported by the Event Horizon Telescope's image. 

    Veritasium puts understanding the image into better perspective. Check it out. 

     

    via Veritasium 

    For a side note, the first proposal of black holes actually goes back to John Michell in 1784

    "If there should really exist in nature any bodies, whose density is not less than that of the sun, and whose diameters are more than 500 times the diameter of the sun, since their light could not arrive at us; or if there should exist any other bodies of a somewhat smaller size, which are not naturally luminous; of the existence of bodies under either of these circumstances, we could have no information from sight; yet, if any other luminous bodies should happen to revolve about them we might still perhaps from the motions of these revolving bodies infer the existence of the central ones with some degree of probability, as this might afford a clue to some of the apparent irregularities of the revolving bodies, which would not be easily explicable on any other hypothesis; but as the consequences of such a supposition are very obvious, and the consideration of them somewhat beside my present purpose, I shall not prosecute them any further." 

    It took a massive amount of work to produce the photos of the black hole shown in this post. The ingredients: 200 researchers, 20 years, over 9 petabytes of data, 8 telescopes, and immense vision. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it also took the 104 years of research since Einstein's theory. 

    Powerful stuff. 

    For more:

  • Robocalls and Taxes: These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

    What're everyone's two favorite things? Paying taxes and receiving robocalls, obviously. 

    Phone scammers used to just target the elderly or those with poor English skills, but today, they go after everyone. In fact, Americans received over 30 billion robocalls last year … and it's only getting worse. Around half of those are "legal," but more and more are scams.

    Those scams increase during tax season. 

    Several of my friends have received calls from the "IRS" demanding immediate payment. That is a scam. The IRS has stated repeatedly, they will not call you asking for your credit card numbers over the phone, they will not threaten lawsuits, and they will not call you unless they've already tried reaching you by mail. 

    According to the FTC, robocall complaints in March and April are 20% higher. They're the icing on the tax season cake. 

     

    Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 9.24.44 AMvia allareacodes

     

    If increased robocalls weren't enough, you can expect your refund to be 8% lower than last year. Though the average refund is still several thousand dollars, and my home state of Texas can expect the highest returns. 

     

    Tax-refund-by-state-(1)-1eb6

    via HowMuch

    Texas tops the list (Everything IS bigger in Texas) with $3,206 as the average tax refund. Maine inhabitants bottom out the list with $2,336.

    It's worth mentioning that these refunds represent federal figures, and don't take into account any refunds from your state government – meaning there's likely more money flowing back to taxpayers than this map illustrates. 

    What many people don’t understand is that the size of your tax refund isn’t solely based on tax cuts or raises.

    Getting a refund feels like a win, but it represents an interest-free loan to the government for the last year. In an ideal world, you'd have a refund of $0 – meaning you paid exactly what you were supposed to.

    Don't forget to file your taxes (Monday, April 15th is the deadline to file without an extension) and if you want to protect yourself from robocallers, here are some tips: 

    • Don't answer calls from unknown phone numbers – let them go to voicemail and call back if necessary
    • If you do accidentally answer a spam call, don't press any buttons or speak, as that simply alerts them that they've reached a working phone number
    • Don't call a scammer back, and don't engage with them … it's like talking with cops, Anything you say can and will be used against you 
    • To decrease legal calls sign up for the federal and state do not call lists
    • Check out CTIA's tip sheet on How to Stop Robocalls to see a list of apps available to prevent robocalls on your mobile OS

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – April 7th, 2019

    The IRS

    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

     
     

  • Believe Nothing and Trust No One … April Fools!

    April Fools is a good chance for some much-needed levity, but it's also an opportunity for tone-deaf companies to try and resonate with their younger clientele. You get some fantastic pranks and funny jokes, but you also get some cringe. 

     

     

    via Google

    The Good

    • Google claimed to have a physical screen cleaner feature on their phones that would also create a long-lasting non-stick shield.  
    • Spotify replaced Discover Weekly playlists with Discocover Weekly playlists, including actual disco cover songs from artists you listen to. 

    The Bad

    • Logitech said it was rebranding its wireless mice as "hamsters" since they don't have tails. 
    • U.K. Based Libert Games created a "Trump V Kim Nuclear Foosball Table" which comes with latex masks of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un  so you can truly embody the roleplay. 

    The Ugly 

    • HyperX and Nissin Cup Noodles combined to create a pair of headphones with Cup Noodles as the earpads and a fork instead of a microphone … so you can slurp your noodles while gaming. Efficiency at it's finest. 
    • Elon Musk released an auto-tuned rap song called "RIP Harambe" about the Cincinatti Zoo Gorilla who was unceremoniously killed in 2016

     

    Yet, some of the best April Fools pranks came ages ago: 

     

    The Best of All Time

    • In 1957, the BBC ran a segment on the Swiss growing pasta on trees. The story was on television, and back then, the television wouldn't lie to you … right?!
    • In 1974, a local Sitka, Alaska prankster Oliver Bickar flew 70 old tires into Mt. Edgecumbe – a volcano that had been dormant for 400 years -  and set them on fire. It was such a good prank that the Associated Press ran with it, Alaska Airlines used it in ads, and the admiral of the Coast Gaurd called the prank a "classic."
    • In 1996, Taco Bell announced it had purchased the Liberty Bell and named it the "Taco Liberty Bell" in an effort to help the national debt. 

     

    What's the best prank you've played?  Here's mine.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 31st, 2019

    13chappatte-articleLarge

     

    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

     

    Trading Links:

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 24th, 2019

    Cartoon-ai-march-madnessvia KDNuggets

     

    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

     

    Trading Links:

  • March Madness: The Quest For The Holy Grail

    March Madness is in full swing and will have the world's attention for a few more days. As you could guess – most brackets have already busted. Louisville lost, UC Irvine won, and Duke barely weathered UCF's onslaught. 

     

    190324 Duke

    via FanSided

    Lots of skill, lots of adrenaline and lots of natural talents (including amazing physical talents).  Here is a picture of 7'6 Tacko Fall. Tacko still looks taller than his opponents even when kneeling. 

    190324 Tacko
    via UCF Basketball

    The allure of March Madness is the same as gambling or trading.  These are all fertile grounds for emotion, biases, and statistics. 

    The holy grail is mighty elusive in March Madness (as in most things)  … For example, the odds of getting the perfect bracket is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (2.4 trillion based on a Duke Mathematician's formula that takes into account rank).  It's easier to win back-to-back lotteries than picking a perfect bracket. Nonetheless, I bet you felt pretty good when you filled out your bracket.

    Here's some more crazy March Madness Stats: 

     

    via Duke University

    Feeding the Madness

    "Not only is there more to life than basketball, there's a lot more to basketball than basketball." – Phil Jackson

     

    In 2017, I highlighted 3 people that were (semi) successful at predicting March Madness. A 13-year-old who used a mix of guesswork and preferences, a 47-year-old English woman who used algorithms and data science (despite not knowing the game), and a 70-year-old bookie who had his finger on the pulse of the betting world.  None of them had the same success even a year later.

    Finding an edge is hard – maintaining an edge is even harder.

    That's not to say there aren't edges to be found. 

    Bracket-choosing mimics the way investors pick trades or allocate assets. Some people use gut feel, some base their decisions current and historical performance, and some use predictive models. You've got different inputs, weights, and miscellaneous factors influencing your decision. That makes you feel powerful. But knowing the history, their ranks, etc. can be helpful in making an educated guess and they can also lead you astray. 

    The allure of March Madness is the same as gambling or trading. As sports fans, it's easy to believe we know something the layman doesn't. We want the bragging rights of that sleeper pick, of our alma mater winning, of the big upset. 

    You'd think an NCAA analyst might have a better shot at a perfect bracket than your grandma or your musical loving co-worker.

    In reality, several of the highest-ranked brackets every year are guesses. 

    The commonality in all decisions is that we are biased. Bias is inherent to the process because there isn't a clear cut answer. We don't have the answers to "who will win" and we don't have the answer to "what makes a perfect prediction". 

    Think about it from a market efficiency standpoint. People make decisions on many factors – sometimes irrational ones – and that creates inefficiencies & complexities. It can be hard to find those inefficiencies and capitalize on them – but they're there to be found. 

    In trading, that's where AI and advanced math come in – taking away our biases and identifying inefficiencies humans miss.

    Can machine learning also help in March Madness?

    “The greater the uncertainty, the bigger the gap between what you can measure and what matters, the more you should watch out for overfitting – that is, the more you should prefer simplicity” – Tom Griffiths

    Basketball_5faa91_405080

    The data is there. Over 100,000 NCAA regular season games were played over the last 25+ years, and we generally have plenty of statistics about the teams for each season. There are plenty of questions to be asked on that data that may add an extra edge. 

    That being said, people have tried before with mediocre success. It's hard to overcome the intangibles of sports – hustle, the crowd, momentum – and it's hard to overcome 1 in 9.2 quintillion odds. 

    Two lessons can be learned from this:

    1. People aren't as good at prediction as they predict they are.
    2. Machine Learning isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to all your problems

     

    Something to think about. 

  • Celebrating 30 Years of the Internet [Infographic]

    "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow" – Bill Gates

    We take the internet for granted.  Honestly, we take a lot for granted.

    Do you remember a time before cell phones, before the internet, before all these science fiction realities.  Even when the internet started … do you remember dial-up … or when you needed dial-up for each individual site?

    In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee published “Information Management: A Proposal” which outlined his vision for what would soon become the World Wide Web. March 12th is the official anniversary.

    In celebration of 30 years of the internet, here’s an infographic on the timeline. Click to see the full thing. 

     

    Edit_AppInstitute-30yearsofwww-infographic
     via AppInstitute

    Think of the impact of that one paper has on so many aspects of our life. 

     

    Information Gathering 

    I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.

    I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles). 

    I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).

    Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.

    Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers … Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.

    There is almost too much information now.  It is hard to separate the signal from the noise.  It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything.  The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.

    Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.

     

    Social Interaction

    People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam. 

    While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed – it does seem passé. 

    Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player … many people's key friendships are born and kept online. 

    I remember my son, 13 years old at the time,  sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong. 

    The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships – for better, or often worse. 

     

    Privacy ( … or the lack of it)

    One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety. 

    Remember, if you’re not paying for a product – you are the product.

    Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.

    It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.

    Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.

    The GPDR – while frustrating for many – is a step towards protecting individuals.

    Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool – but it can also be a weapon. 

     

    What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?

    "The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room." — Eric Schmidt

    It has been 30 years since inception, and there's radical growth. 

    We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.

    How do imagine that the internet will evolve?

    What influence do you think the Internet of Things will have?

    It’s hard to foresee how innovation and regulation will change the internet, but it’s clear there will be change.

    We live in exciting times!