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The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

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Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#41

Post by numlocked »

next_xibalba wrote: post #40
mjreacher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His foundation, the Simons Foundation, funds among a few other things, arXiv. I have wondered why other tech related billionaires do not sponsor more items in the scientific sphere like Simons does, because unlike funding a building at some rich university your money could actually be used for something useful and if something good comes out of it, having your name attached to it could mean a lot more than the name o…

Gates (and Buffet via Gates) invests huge sums in science and tech via his foundation. Elon Musk funded the $100M XPrize for carbon removal. Yuri Milner funds the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics. Sergei Brin and Mark Zuckerberg are also breakthrough prize funders. Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt are also major funders of X Prizes. The list goes on and on. These things just aren’t widely reported because…

Zuckerberg has a very interesting medical imaging research program as well: https://chanzuckerberg.com/science/programs-resources/imagin...

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#42

Post by [deleted] »

mjreacher wrote: post #30
Maro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with paying for academic buildings to be built (and having your name on it)? The point is that students can go to the building and receive lectures, or run labs, or read books in the library. Who cares whose name is on the building... These buildings will stand for a long time anyway, soon nobody will know who that person was anyway (other than by the name of the building).

There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just in my view the money could be better spent. If a university needs a new building it will get built regardless. In contrast, I know graduate students living off ramen and suffering because their stipends are so small. Here the work of Simons Foundation on funding grad students is of great help because it means the students don't have to focus on getting money on top of t…

[deleted]

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#43

Post by yread »

belter wrote: post #35
DantesKite wrote: post #29

Fun fact I love to repeat: Quanta Magazine gets most of their funding from the Simons Foundation which gets some of its proceeds from the Medallion fund, which uses deep, mathematical techniques to perform absurdly successful daytrading, most of which comes from other daytraders losses. So every time someone loses money on Robinhood, they contribute to Quanta Magazine lol. Source at 17:55: https://youtu.be/Q2u0dKRA1c…

It's fascinating how their algorithms only seem to work for insiders. "...Renaissance Technologies’ famed Medallion fund, available only to current and former partners, had one of its best years ever, surging 76 percent, according to one of its investors. But it was a different story for outsiders who are only able to invest in other RenTec funds — two of which had their worst years ever. ..." https://www.institution…

And with 1.9% fees!

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#44

Post by solveit »

dipsplacemat wrote: post #32
Maro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with paying for academic buildings to be built (and having your name on it)? The point is that students can go to the building and receive lectures, or run labs, or read books in the library. Who cares whose name is on the building... These buildings will stand for a long time anyway, soon nobody will know who that person was anyway (other than by the name of the building).

Today's plutocrats should be looking to people like Carnegie for inspiration. He didn't pay to put his name on one or two libraries in influential universities, he paid to set up a national system of libraries which any person could walk into and make use of. Why haven't any of our tycoons stepped up to create a national system of community centers, makerspaces, etc? I'll give you three guesses.

They decided fighting malaria and polio had higher priority?

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#45

Post by gaws »

fortran77 wrote: post #10

And it's free! I'm very grateful for Quanta. It filled a gap in my life after my old favorite for decades, Scientific American, went off the rails and is now unreadable.

> And it's free!

Because the magazine is owned by a billion-dollar hedge fund and doesn't need to worry about turning a profit every quarter.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#46

Post by makeset »

DantesKite wrote: post #29

Fun fact I love to repeat: Quanta Magazine gets most of their funding from the Simons Foundation which gets some of its proceeds from the Medallion fund, which uses deep, mathematical techniques to perform absurdly successful daytrading, most of which comes from other daytraders losses. So every time someone loses money on Robinhood, they contribute to Quanta Magazine lol. Source at 17:55: https://youtu.be/Q2u0dKRA1c…

Nice story, though daytrader orders are very unlikely to be matched with such algorithms in practice. The majority get filled internally by the retail provider, or by order flow aggregators they route to before the orders make it out to an open market exchange.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#49

Post by dipsplacemat »

solveit wrote: post #44
dipsplacemat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's plutocrats should be looking to people like Carnegie for inspiration. He didn't pay to put his name on one or two libraries in influential universities, he paid to set up a national system of libraries which any person could walk into and make use of. Why haven't any of our tycoons stepped up to create a national system of community centers, makerspaces, etc? I'll give you three guesses.

They decided fighting malaria and polio had higher priority?

No post body was provided.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#50

Post by nojito »

caminante wrote: post #31
nojito wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with accounting for that change RenTec’s returns don’t change all too much.

Do you know the denominator? I'm skeptical. RenTec's secret sauce has always been their tax attorneys, not their quants. Prior to this "retirement fund" issue, RenTec was notorious for tax avoidance schemes like claiming LT capital gains on basket options.

The fund is rumored to be around $10B and generates about 44% per year (not compounded).

In any event, their secret sauce has always been teamwork and infrastructure.

People fail to remember that Simons created a world class math department at stony brook from scratch. He knows how to put smart people together and have them work together.

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