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kevinali1

28 karma · joined July 10, 2010

I enjoy Python programming, quantitative finance, good design, reading non-fiction, and practicing golf. I studied at the University of Waterloo (Mathematics).
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kevinali1··on Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars
While I totally agree with this, I think you should still get a drivers license. There's always a very real possibility that you may need to drive a car in some sort of emergency.
kevinali1··on Gary Hunt, the greatest cliff diver
The Messi comment wasn't trying to be snarky. Was trying to foster an actual conversation about what it means to be great and how does context matter. Sorry if it came across as insulting or uninteresting- that was not my intention.
kevinali1··on Gary Hunt, the greatest cliff diver
Messi can be compared to billions of ppl are the world who play or dabble in football. This dude can be compared to what - a couple thousand?
kevinali1··on In 2019, Americans went more to the library than to the movies on average
102
kevinali1··on Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?
Financier: The biography of Andre Meyer by Cary Reich. The book goes into the beginnings and psychology of one of the most important investment bankers of the 20th century. It also goes into great detail of the toxic nature of banking and the Genesis of complexity in modern dealmaking.
kevinali1··on The Liar's Walk: Detecting Deception with Gait and Gesture
Drugs I guess
kevinali1··on An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?
I think quality of the conversation will always trump "privacy, openness and ad-free".

We have to pay for quality. If we're not going to pay with dollar bills, we pay with privacy.

kevinali1··on Buying and Collecting Video Game Art
I've heard both sides of the debate (art should not be treated as commerce vs art has investment value). I think it's a very confusing debate as I see the point of both sides. Art is made to evoke beauty in all sorts of ways that we can appreciate. in an ideal world, we should not attach a sense of bazaar to it. At the same time, we need a better idea of value in art (and the illusion that said value is at least roughly quantifiable) to create an industry where art can flourish. Artists should be paid. Dealers should be paid. Neither of those things can happen without people thinking the value of their art can go up.
kevinali1··on Improving DuckDuckGo
Their selling point is trustworthiness, privacy and usefulness. To be useful, they must have quality software/IP. And in their opinion, that should be protected.
kevinali1··on Study: Almost half of borrowers will default on student loans in coming years
I'd call this shitty, but certainly not politically incorrect.
kevinali1··on It’s better to be born rich than gifted
Many times those colleges are great because of those donations... So maybe it is fair... Perspective
kevinali1··on Face recognition in images and video with Python
Aerial images?
kevinali1··on Exercise 'doesn't slow' progression of dementia if you already have dementia
Like a waterfall. Once you're over the edge, it's an entirely different ball game.
kevinali1··on Exercise 'doesn't slow' progression of dementia if you already have dementia
I find this phenomenon similar to many other diseases. A certain diet or lifestyle works wonders in preventing it. But if you have it, there is little you can do to treat it outside of medical treatment. Eg diabetes, kidney failure, cancer.
kevinali1··on Ask HN: What're the best-designed things you've ever used?
http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/ The still make them
kevinali1··on Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Invest in Crowd-Sourced Quantopian
Perhaps (just perhaps), Quantopian is gathering (or has gathered) the evidence that B > A. If so, this is a great investment.

Regarding institutional money, they have been around for a few years. I'm not sure about how long they've been running the competition, but they certainly have been running an asset management service for some time - and would have impeccable records regarding this.

In other words, there is a lot about Quantopian that we don't know and so it would be difficult to make a judgement call on the quality of AH's investment.

kevinali1··on Confessions of a Necromancer
Can you give some examples of "project management styles" that try to fix this?
kevinali1··on New research shows Europe leads the world in inherited wealth
Agreed. It's like: America: "Kid's here have a better chance of becoming super-rich or super-powerful - maybe even President.. Forget about health care and income equality"

Europe: "Whatever, everyone here is middle class, self-fulfilled and happy... Forget about balanced budgets, unemployment and negative interest rates..."

Rest-Of-World: "Dammit, I just want to survive..."

kevinali1··on Brexit Is a Lehman Moment for European Banks
Again, you can't sell deposits. Chase assumed the business of WaMu, which included liabilities - mostly deposits. Deposits are a liability and it is impossible to sell a liability. So saying "they sold their deposits to Chase for less than the amount of the deposits" is entirely inaccurate. It's somewhat counter-intuitive because deposits "seem" like assets and loans "seem" like liabilities - but it's actually the other way around on the balance sheet.
kevinali1··on Brexit Is a Lehman Moment for European Banks
Aren't deposits a liability? How can you sell a liability? Do you mean they sold their loans?
kevinali1··on Google Fonts Redesigned
I don't think they're reinventing anything. Google Fonts has been offering webfonts for many years. All they did here was change the website.
kevinali1··on Whats your python IDE?
WingIDE from Wingware is really nice
kevinali1··on Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
Officially, yes. But you could still get it to work on your home network outside the US if you wanted to. Just wouldn't get data.
kevinali1··on Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
Correct about the apps. But they were not geographically or operator limited. From the beginning, they were used around the world on any service.
kevinali1··on What are some libraries that exist in R/Matlab that you wish existed in Python?
ggplot2 most definitely