When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home • Hacker News Board

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#111

Post by btilly » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #103

Animats wrote: post #45

Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate". As far as I know, Stanford does not. Doesn't Google had the leaders in auction theory now? Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.

What’s the value in making HFT not work? What harm is it causing?

It is hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent for an activity that is a tax on investors. The fact that it is better than what existed before doesn't change the fact that we can do better yet.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#112

Post by rtpg » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #19

dekhn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens. It happens at a specific time, in Sweden, and they attempt to contact the winners at that time with a personal call ( https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/ ). My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/scien…

I put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of people do that? What are they thinking?

Apparently people who are likely to win the prize tend to hear rumors beforehand and are mentally prepared for this (especially if they care)

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#113

Post by ugh123 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #13

eindiran wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15 AM and can't wait until the next morning?

Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens. It happens at a specific time, in Sweden, and they attempt to contact the winners at that time with a personal call ( https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/ ). My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/scien…

I think also due to their preference on making personal contact: the news will hit the PR landscape in short time afterwards and no soon-to-be-Nobel-laureate wants to find out in some news article

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#114

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #106

saagarjha wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some (quite misguided) people on Hacker News think the site shouldn't accept humor in any form.

We should allow rare exceptions, such as this instance.

Oh, we totally do. Usually these people are just killjoys or accustomed to humor not doing well on the site because it ends up in the bucket of being low-quality and is penalized as such.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#115

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #101

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is not that serene as you may think. I get plenty of spam calls from entities I'm in a relationship with - like my mobile operator or my bank[0]. It's one of the reasons my phone is on silent during the day[1]. The problem with those is the usual fake "market choice": every mobile operator and bank is pulling this crap, so I don't abandon mine, because alternatives are no better. Then there are occasional rand…

> mobile operator or my bank Yeah no, these companies should NEVER be calling people, period. It's way to easy to phish people for information by calling them and claiming to be their bank. Too many people will fall for it: "Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Before we go further I would just like to confirm your identity. Could you please provide your…

Yeah no

Which is it?

Banks should adopt a policy of only interacting with customers physically, via their web interface with a login, official mobile app, or by the user calling the bank's official, publicized number. Never by calling the user.

You either don't travel, don't travel for very long, or don't travel anywhere interesting.

I've had several experiences over the years where using a credit card in a country I didn't expect to be in got a call from the bank to verify it was me.

You may tell your bank you're traveling in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland for a week, but on night three of your trip, when you get invited to a party in the Czech Republic by your friend's pretty sister, you get on the train and keep talking. You don't say, "Hold your hormones for a sec, I need to tell my bank I'm going out of bounds."

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#116

Post by netsharc » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #74

walrus01 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this reminds me somewhat of the camera software on low-end android phones sold in the developing world which watermarks every photo with "shot on... (blah blah trademark name)", because they trust that 90% of users won't know to look in the settings to toggle off the option. Or don't care. But hey, free advertising right? https://www.google.com/search?q=android+phone+shot+on+redmi+...

You call it a low end phone, but to some of the users it is very much a high end phone compared to their peers. They want the watermark on in the same way people had "Sent from my iPhone" as an email footer for far too many years after the iPhone came out...

I should make my signature "Sent from my Lappy 486"...

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#117

Post by btilly » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #45

Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate". As far as I know, Stanford does not. Doesn't Google had the leaders in auction theory now? Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.

Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.

Sure. The cost is that trades are slower, and people selling a large block of shares will have to settle with many others. Oh, and also trading will stop when there is excessive market volatility.

Still interested? Here is the mechanism. There is a priority queue for open buys and one for open sells. The sizes of the buys and sells is 1 share. Both are ordered by time the order was received, with oldest first. And the market has a price.

Whenever both queues have entries that can match at that price, they do. At the end of every X time, if one queue is empty and the other is not, the price moves 1 cent.

If a large order is received, trading effectively stops and it can only move the price slowly. Because the price only moves slowly, there are no sudden price shifts for HFT to take advantage of.

Interestingly even if this market has low volume, it can still take large orders successfully. Because even though HFT traders can't make money by playing this market, they can make money off of arbitrage between this market and others. Therefore until a large order finishes settling on this market it serves as a ceiling or floor of what gets traded on other markets. Which means that the HFT traders do the hard work of trading this on other markets.

But for anyone who wishes to trade with each other on this market, HFT can't make money from them.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#118

Post by alisonkisk » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #89

munificent wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional to the effort.

On the other hand, we can afford to give a nice parking space each to Watson & Crick, even if they take it easy down the road. Celebrate the heroes of your field.

Maybe not the best example.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#119

Post by awad » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #24

dheera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of people do that? What are they thinking?

A lot of phone behavior has changed since this tradition got started. When it did, people typically had a landline in their bedroom, which seldom rang at night.

This is a big part of the answer IMO. While cultural norms may have shifted past unscheduled phone calls for nearly any reason at all, some things are still best delivered over the phone and I think it's actually quite nice.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#120

Post by waterhouse » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #101

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is not that serene as you may think. I get plenty of spam calls from entities I'm in a relationship with - like my mobile operator or my bank[0]. It's one of the reasons my phone is on silent during the day[1]. The problem with those is the usual fake "market choice": every mobile operator and bank is pulling this crap, so I don't abandon mine, because alternatives are no better. Then there are occasional rand…

> mobile operator or my bank Yeah no, these companies should NEVER be calling people, period. It's way to easy to phish people for information by calling them and claiming to be their bank. Too many people will fall for it: "Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Before we go further I would just like to confirm your identity. Could you please provide your…

It is possible to make it secure. "Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Please go to the Bank of America website and find the number labeled 'Customer callback number' and call us there. That way, you can confirm you're talking to us, at which point we will confirm your identity, and then work with you on the issue."

I've seen this proposed. I don't know if anyone is actually doing it.