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LiamMcCalloway

160 karma · joined June 19, 2012

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LiamMcCalloway··on Breaking transatlantic sailing record by more than a day (2016)
you can add the sailing frenchman -- great mix of caribean sailing, singlehanded racing, pretty down to earth:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheSailingFrenchman

LiamMcCalloway··on My thoughts on Python in Excel
I suppose it's time to share my dream excel functionality: Turbo F2.

F2 should enable the user to trace calculations back to the original data, not only the current calculation step.

In basis spreadsheet, this would yield a jumble of steps that are undocumented and hard to parse. But that's where the python, lambdas and custome functions come in: They enable legibility of turboF2.

LiamMcCalloway··on If You're So Successful, Why Are You Still Working 70 Hours a Week?
The meritocracy trap, David markovits.
LiamMcCalloway··on Show HN: I made a tool to compare time zones
Super nice. A feature request: for each time zone, show the offset to sun time. Helps with the question: will 8am be like I expect it to be ?

Useful for outdoors activities.

LiamMcCalloway··on Whisper: Nvidia RTX 4090 vs. M1 Pro with MLX
I'll take this opportunity to ask for help: What's a good open source transcription and diarization app or work flow?

I looked at https://github.com/thomasmol/cog-whisper-diarization and https://about.transcribee.net/ (from the people behind Audapolis) but neither work that well -- crashes, etc.

Thank you!

LiamMcCalloway··on Windy.com: global weather website with live filters
Step 1 for all sailing outings. Super well integrated with most forecast providers… and for everyone else, better radar than the Weather app on IOS.
LiamMcCalloway··on Rising ill-health and economic inactivity from long-term sickness: 2019 to 2023
But the typical choice is between disability and unemployment benefits, not disability and work. How do they compare ?

The UK has an order of magnitude more people it considers disable than neighboring France, last I checked (15years ago).

LiamMcCalloway··on Rising ill-health and economic inactivity from long-term sickness: 2019 to 2023
When reading these stats, two useful things to do:

- ask yourself how people in similar situations would be categorized in other countries

- whether there are benefits to self selecting as economically disabled in the UK

LiamMcCalloway··on Europe needs energy. Moroccan solar may be a clean solution
92£/MWh in 2012 £, and indexed in inflation - on mobile and can’t adjust but we’re talking 120-130 now.
LiamMcCalloway··on Childhoods of Exceptional People
Looks like sampling on the dependent variable.
LiamMcCalloway··on Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power
Aka the screwdriver’s turn policy.
LiamMcCalloway··on Excel never dies (2021)
I'm a glass half full kinda of kind, but for excel, the glass is Feb 1st. Please, types would really help. Maybe as a property of named ranges ?
LiamMcCalloway··on Zrepl on Rsync.net
I just set up zrepl yesterday and this was going to be my next task. Super glad to find this here. I already have a borg-enabled account with you: Is it possible for a single account to do both borg and zfs send?
LiamMcCalloway··on Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)
Concurring with Tailscale's ease of use, though for mobile clients I found it was more reliable to have a wireguard accessible tailscale peer rather than rely on Tailscale's app.
LiamMcCalloway··on Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
How about adding a 'most favored nation' clause in all options contracts?
LiamMcCalloway··on Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget
No new decisions to build nuclear 10 years prior to three mile island.
LiamMcCalloway··on Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget
EDF's latest non-EPR design in France took over 10 years to build, in the 1990's. The safety requirements to protect against nuclear releases and the inherent complexity are the key factors.
LiamMcCalloway··on Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget
In the 70s.
LiamMcCalloway··on Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget
92.50 GBP in 2012 pounds -- it's higher now.
LiamMcCalloway··on I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
An interesting read and resource going forward, thank you.
LiamMcCalloway··on I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Can you point us to official U.S. policy that leads to differentiated outcomes of immigration processing speed between nationalities?
LiamMcCalloway··on GPT-2: 6-Month Follow-Up
> are there any real use case?

Writing Bloomberg's "market wrap" articles.

LiamMcCalloway··on How Discount Brokerages Make Money
I don't know enough - merely rephrasing a blog post here - but it sounds fair to say that this reduces the primary benefit of network effects of market activity, higher liquidity/lower spread, at the expense of the rest of the market.

Could we construct a reasonable scenario where the liquidity from segregated order flow would have displaced the core business of liquidity providers, because the volume is so large?

LiamMcCalloway··on How Discount Brokerages Make Money
Let me see if I can rephrase.

Robinhood solves a collective action problem for its users. Unbeknownst to some people, they are unsophisticated and cheap to provide liquidity to: market makers can trade with them and reliably offload their positions, reducing the risk premium necessary to make market making profitable. Robinhood advertises in a fashion that enables self-selection of unsophisticated buyers. Once the platform is sufficiently large, they can auction off the liquidity business. By regulation, the users can never be worse off than they would have otherwise been, because liquidity providers must run their bid-ask spread within the larger market's spread.

So Robinhood earns the difference in risk premium between the larger market and that of its user base, minus operating costs and profits of the liquidity provider.

I suppose the question is: what is the mechanism by which that profit margin can be transferred to users?

LiamMcCalloway··on How Discount Brokerages Make Money
"tighter spread" is a description of the benefit for the retail buyer/seller. Can you elaborate on the benefits to the buyer of order flows?
LiamMcCalloway··on Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
Are we so brainwashed that we barely can feel outrage at a title like this? How about privacy as a basic human right?
LiamMcCalloway··on Stepping into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun
Jia Tolentino's pieces often resonate, in that particular way of things that are at the right distance to what they are talking about: close enough to understand them but far enough to show their place in time and space, culturally.
LiamMcCalloway··on Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor
Should we talk about JFK being under water as well? see NY map.
LiamMcCalloway··on Saildrone: autonomous sailing craft with instruments for collecting data
How do we avoid them while sailing? Does it have AIS? Standard port/stardboard lights? Aft lights? the mast looks low for reliable light or radio signal.
LiamMcCalloway··on Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook
Countries can unilaterally have taxes based on the share of total company profit generated in the country, rather than just profit in the country.
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