Douglas McGregor, the creator of these theories, had an interesting biography.
> He chose instead to pursue a psychology degree at what is now Wayne State University in Detroit. After two years, he married, dropped out of college, and worked as a gas station attendant in Buffalo, New York. By 1930 he had risen to the rank of regional gas station manager.
> McGregor decided to resume his studies while also working part-time. He completed a B.A. in 1932 from Wayne State University.
> Soon after graduation, he entered Harvard University where he studied for three years, earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology.
> To Doug's point the junk tokens are likely at book value on their balance sheet
The linked article in turn links to coin desk which writes
>> Also, token values may be low. In a footnote, Alameda says “locked tokens conservatively treated at 50% of fair value marked to FTX/USD order book.”
That suggests to me the unlocked coins are on the balance sheet at market value and the locked at a 50% haircut.
Why would programmable money be useful for anything beyond financial engineering. It’s literally engineering + finance.
Why is financial engineering inherently universally without qualification bad?
I have a mortgage, an index fund, and an ATM card. I :heart: financial engineering.
I cited three examples of financial engineering.
Just to be clear you oppose mortgages, index funds, and ATM machines?
I agree all of these or at least mortgages and index funds probably increase inequality especially given uneven access. As far as tangible goods — home ownership, retirement savings, and less time spent waiting at the bank.
The first Master of Financial Engineering degree programs were set up in the early 1990s. The earliest financial engineers (under a different name) might have started around in the late 1970s. [Wikipedia - Financial engineering]
Mortgages were invented way earlier. ATMs are an earlier invention. If you use todays categories they would have been invented by automation engineers.
While index funds are a financial product they were invented before financial engineering became a thing. Financial engineers are not needed to run index funds. They are employed to out perform them.
"Financial engineering plays a key role in the customer-driven derivatives business — delivering bespoke OTC-contracts and "exotics", and implementing various structured products — which encompasses quantitative modelling, quantitative programming and risk managing financial products in compliance with the regulations and Basel capital/liquidity requirements."
And i am not alone with my distain.
"The financial innovation often associated with financial engineers was mocked by former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker in 2009 when he said it was a code word for risky securities, that brought no benefits to society. For most people, he said, the advent of the ATM was more crucial than any asset-backed bond."
The term financial engineering is also used insofar as it is about the use of innovative financing and risk hedging instruments. In this sense, financial securities are first broken down into their basic elements, e.g. interest, repayment, currency, maturity, security, additional rights (»stripping«) in order to be able to evaluate them (individually) better. Based on this, new, optimal financial titles are created during »Replicating«, in which the modules are optimally combined according to the respective financing case.
The concept of financial engineering can be seen in summary as the design, development and implementation of innovative financial instruments and processes as well as the realization of creative, tailor-made solutions for investors and buyers
Super interesting and over my head but to oversimplif: automation and old financial “tools” (mortgages, index funds) good but (excessively?) “innovative financial instruments” is a bridge too far.
Still hard for people not deep in it — me — to see clearly that crypto doesn’t contain the seeds of a better index fund or a cheaper mortgage.
My definition: Financial engineering is the quantitative isolation and amplification of financial risk/reward, usually through leveraged/synthetic derivative products. There's no perfect source, but you can see similar definitions here [0] [1] [2]
To give you a crypto example of this, Aave is financial engineering, because it allows users to make a bet that they can execute high-volume short-duration trades that yield more than Aave lending fees.
In terms of what is financial services, my definition is: Any action taken that allows capital holders to better deploy their capital into the real (read: goods and services) economy. Again, no prefect source, but [3] [4] [5]
Again the key nuance here is financial services primarily focus on supporting the real economy, while financial engineering is primarily focused on risk/reward
And to be frank, I would absolutely love it if cryptocurrencies supported the real economy in literally any way shape or form. I would get "BTC4Life" tattooed on my forehead, I would dedicate my life to working for the innovators in the space, but unless you've got some secret, I don't think you can give me an example of literally anything cryptocurrency does to support the real economy that a centralized solution couldn't also do.
Strong parallels between your definition with “isolation” and that offered by freemint in terms of decomposition into elements.
The nuance makes sense on its face. Although I don’t trust my own judgement of what impacts the real economy and what is just shuffling of decomposed elements of risk and reward.
What part of the paper gives you the impression they imply voice assistants are listening to everything? I don’t get that.
The discussion in the paper is nuanced on that point and does not make that claim as far as I read it. Section 2.2 (page 2):
> The content of users’ speech can reveal sensitive information (e.g., private conversations) and the voice signals can be processed to infer potentially sensitive information about the user (e.g., age, gender, health [82]). Amazon aims to limit some of these privacy issues through its platform design choices [4]. Specifically, to avoid snooping on sensitive conversations, *voice input is only recorded when a user utters the wake word*, e.g., Alexa. Further, only processed transcriptions of voice input (not the audio data) is shared with third party skills, instead of the raw audio [32]. However, despite these design choices, prior research has also shown that smart speakers often misactivate and unintentionally record con- versations [59]. In fact, there have been several real-world instances where smart speakers recorded user conversations, without users ever uttering the wake word [63].
> What part of the paper gives you the impression they imply voice assistants are listening to everything?
For me, it's this: "Your Echos are Heard"
So, the opening salvo. That's what gives me the impression they imply voice assistances are listening to everything.
I don't refer to voice commands or normal interaction as "echos" so the user of the word "echos" here implies something nefarious. Sure, it's the name of the product, but for me, it reads like something more.
That was a hostile response for what seemed like a reasonable position.
Tell me samhw: If I told you I had a bunch of echos in my garage. Would you be wondering why I just said "I have a bunch of voice commands issued to my echo in my garage"? No. You would not.
Sorry, I don't mean to be overly harsh, but your comment amounts to
> I personally don't use the word 'echo' in connection to vocal communication, which (for some incomprehensible reason) means that, when someone else uses the word 'echo' thusly, they are implying something nefarious.
> Oh, and not just something nefarious, but specifically that they are eavesdropping on every word you say (also: every breath you take, every move you make, &c). Somehow.
> In summation: they are spying on everything you say, because they used the word 'echo' in their marketing material about a voice assistant. QED.
I mean, this is barely even intelligible as a line of reasoning. I assumed it was dashed off quickly and without really thinking. If it represents your considered opinion, then perhaps I'm missing something very obvious, I don't know.
> this is barely even intelligible as a line of reasoning.
You are literally engaging in a straw-man argument. Nobody said any of those things verbatim, no matter how much you wish they had. This is bad-faith commenting and you should consider taking a break to de-escalate.
> perhaps I'm missing something very obvious
The title "Your Echos are Heard" is a pun. One meaning of "Echos" is the Amazon product, and the other is a vocalization reflected back. It's stretch, to the point where it's technically spelled wrong for one of the meanings of the word. But it's a pun re-enforced with the word "heard" and thats enough for people to make the connection.
The complaint is that the article title heavily _implies_ the study finds devices are listening to your conversations unprompted, without actually doing any such science. The clickbait title is bad enough, but when there's already a partisan comment brigade ready to claim that "science is on their side" it's definitely worse.
> Nobody said any of those things verbatim, no matter how much you wish they had.
No, of course I'm paraphrasing. I hoped I had made it sufficiently comically obvious that no non-brain-damaged reader would ever believe I was representing that as a quotation, or even an unembellished paraphrase.
> The complaint is that the article title heavily _implies_ the study finds devices are listening to your conversations unprompted
I don't think anything implies 'unprompted' rather than 'prompted', and many people in this thread appear equally confused by that inference. I am in complete incomprehension of how "Your Echos Are Heard" suggests that the smart speaker is specifically listening to your unprompted speech.
> I don't think anything implies 'unprompted' rather than 'prompted'
> I am in complete incomprehension of how "Your Echos Are Heard" suggests that the smart speaker is specifically listening to your unprompted speech.
1. Wake word systems are by design, always on, always listening. At one level, the speaker _is_ listening to unprompted speech.
2. Those systems are imperfect. Pretty much everyone I know can describe at least one occasion on which a voice assistant accidentally triggered, and I have personally witnessed Siri transcribe the words said _before_ "Hey Siri."
3. There's an urban legend that FB or Amazon are, without any prompting, listening in on conversations, and using that to improve user profiles. Moreover we've seen several stories on HN lately about Zoom still sending data when the user has clicked mute, so people are more likely to make that connection.
4. Even the abstract uses the phrase "egregious privacy breaches" and doesn't provide sufficient clarity to distinguish between prompted and unprompted listening.
The title is ambiguous in a way that requires you to read the article to know whether this applies to unprompted or not -- both are equally supported conclusions IMO. And that same ambiguity lets anyone project their biases onto the article, retweet / repost / share, and demand. People are jumping to conclusions, certainly, but ambiguity interacts with "fast" social media in the form of people reading only the headlines before commenting.
Yes, I would agree with this. In other words, the word ‘echo’ entails nothing at all about whether it refers to prompted or unprompted speech (which of course it doesn’t). That’s precisely why their argument that “they must be referring to unprompted speech because they used the word ‘echo’” is not just illogical but utterly mystifying and verging on schizophrenic thought derailment.
I mean, come on, let’s recap what we’re talking about. This guy responded to this question:
>> What part of the paper gives you the impression they imply voice assistants are listening to everything?
With this answer:
> For me, it's this: "Your Echos are Heard"
> That's what gives me the impression they imply voice assistances are listening to everything.
> I don't refer to voice commands or normal interaction as "echos" so the user of the word "echos" here implies something nefarious.
This is the most brain-damaged nonsense I have ever heard in my life. They are seriously arguing that the word ‘echo’ is some sinister cryptic message indicating – for absolutely no reason any sane reader can decipher – that Amazon is listening to everything you say.
Come on. I know you’re committed to arguing that his comment is actually a brilliant masterpiece of logic, because I violated the law that One Must Always Be Superficially Polite and so the template dictates that I must be Actually Wrong and Humiliated for my Arrogance, but you can’t convince me that you really believe that garbage represents a reasoned thought.
(Incidentally, in case the original commenter is reading this, I should underscore that I’m not trying to attack him personally. We all say stupid shit now and then. I’ve said far more than my fair share. But no one gains from being nauseatingly insincere about it, as though it were a grave insult to acknowledge that someone said something silly on one occasion.)
Alexa uses the data we give to it by speaking and performing actions via downloaded skills - is very similar to all ad platforms, conveying user intent into ad profiles.
Saying “process voice for ads” has subtle connotations in the current landscape of privacy discussions.
>Alexa uses the data we give to it by speaking and performing actions via downloaded skills - is very similar to all ad platforms, conveying user intent into ad profiles.
There is an argument that this is more privacy conscience than other ad platforms. One needs to say the word "Alexa" before Amazon will collect any potential targeting data. There is an active and distinct choice that must be made before every interaction. That isn't true for Google and Facebook. They will collect data in the background while you are doing other things. There is much less transparency in when and how they are collecting their targeting data and therefore we have much less agency in the process.
As clarification, you are objecting to the phrase “process voice to [serve] ads” in the title which was provided by the submitter not the paper authors?
> 1. If it goes from experimental to ship, you aren’t going to go back and make it shipshape.
Also, I'm constantly mining my codebase for snippets, so I would like them to be quality.
The other main reason, is that I like to establish good habits. If I do all my code that way, I don't have to worry about taking extra care for the shipping stuff.
There are dozens of examples in the wild of python code getting reviewed, corrected, and enhanced. I’m not a spreadsheet expert. Does that even happen for spreadsheets?
The most high-profile story is some grad students at UMass getting ahold of the spreadsheets powering the calculations in a high-profile economics paper by Reinhart and Rogoff about national debt levels, and finding elementary errors that destroyed the work.
> He chose instead to pursue a psychology degree at what is now Wayne State University in Detroit. After two years, he married, dropped out of college, and worked as a gas station attendant in Buffalo, New York. By 1930 he had risen to the rank of regional gas station manager.
> McGregor decided to resume his studies while also working part-time. He completed a B.A. in 1932 from Wayne State University.
> Soon after graduation, he entered Harvard University where he studied for three years, earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology.