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Julie Rubicon

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Re: Julie Rubicon

#92
post #34

Fiction or not, this is similar to an actual story of (ex)-fraud researchers at Capital One[1], who (ab)used their access to credit card transaction data in order to infer whether target companies' quarterly earnings would be below/above expectations, and then traded on that knowledge. However, in the actual story, there was no "black box" to query, the ex-employees wrote all the complicated queries themselves. EDIT:…

It sounds like a retelling of this story from a decade ago. But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too. For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people ar…

There is a spike just after the Paris 20151113 attacks. I wonder if there will be a spike in the 20160322-23 data. For some odd reason the data just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks 8-9 January 2015 is gone. There are more gaps. https://www.heartmath.org/research/global-coherence/gcms-liv...

Re: Julie Rubicon

#94
post #85

Usually I read comments on HN before the article, but there were no comments when I saw the link, so I went straight to reading it. What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? For me, I did not realize until the very end -- and even then I still wasn't sure. It could just as well have been written by some delusional non-technical employee at Facebook.

The first tip-off for me was that it was hosted on Facebook. If this were somehow real, there's no way it would stay up on Facebook's own servers for more than 15 minutes. I'll also eat my shoe if there's a single person with the legal name "Julie Rubicon" in the world.

> I'll also eat my shoe if there's a single person with the legal name "Julie Rubicon" in the world.

It doesn't seem impossible. I mean I'm not having a ton of luck but there are references to some people that may legally have the name[1].

[1] http://instaliga.com/lil_jeep_babe_

Re: Julie Rubicon

#95
post #85

Usually I read comments on HN before the article, but there were no comments when I saw the link, so I went straight to reading it. What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? For me, I did not realize until the very end -- and even then I still wasn't sure. It could just as well have been written by some delusional non-technical employee at Facebook.

The first tip-off for me was that it was hosted on Facebook. If this were somehow real, there's no way it would stay up on Facebook's own servers for more than 15 minutes. I'll also eat my shoe if there's a single person with the legal name "Julie Rubicon" in the world.

Startup idea: delicious steak and bacon sandals.

Have a big mouth? Put steak where your mouth is!

Re: Julie Rubicon

#96

Post is fiction. Spoilers follow. . . When I started reading this, I didn't realize it was fiction. When I got to the point where the protagonist left the end-date off a query and saw a spike, I thought it was going to be explained by falsified data and lead into a (real) accusation of providing fraudulent metrics to advertisers. It wouldn't be the first such accusation. But it turned out to be a science-fiction stor…

You're supposed to put the spoilers after the spoiler warning.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#97

Fiction or not, this is similar to an actual story of (ex)-fraud researchers at Capital One[1], who (ab)used their access to credit card transaction data in order to infer whether target companies' quarterly earnings would be below/above expectations, and then traded on that knowledge. However, in the actual story, there was no "black box" to query, the ex-employees wrote all the complicated queries themselves. EDIT:…

Can someone explain why this is illegal (besides any data/privacy breach within Capital One)?

The employees involved here broke the law by obtaining the information. However, if they had simply gone to a hedge fund without telling them where they worked, and said, "here are our predictions of these stocks, if you like the results, pay us and we'll give you more predictions," the hedge fund could have traded on it and that would not have been illegal for them to do because they had no knowledge of the actual source of the information.

The employees stealing the information would have still been liable. But had they simply accepted payment from the hedge fund in Bitcoin and not revealed their true identities to the hedge fund, they would have been much harder to find and prosecute.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#99

Post is fiction. Spoilers follow. . . When I started reading this, I didn't realize it was fiction. When I got to the point where the protagonist left the end-date off a query and saw a spike, I thought it was going to be explained by falsified data and lead into a (real) accusation of providing fraudulent metrics to advertisers. It wouldn't be the first such accusation. But it turned out to be a science-fiction stor…

You're supposed to put the spoilers after the spoiler warning.

Sure but if you saw a "Spoiler Warning" on something, you would know that it's fiction.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#100
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For once I'm glad I didn't read the comments before reading the story. jimrandomh comment would have spoiled it.

Edited to add a spoiler warning. My apologies to anyone I spoiled the ending for.

Not effective. Your spoiler is telling us that it's fiction. The delight would have been in that surprise realization, not the nitty-gritty details of the story.
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