cowmoo

Haha, touche.

Uhh, I really hate INTJ personalities, most are so uptight centered on being judgmental. The "worker bee" personality that I see at IT/software places.

INFP ftw, feeling up and perceiving people over thinking and judging people!

You are right that for a individual investor focused on the long term, a algo-order probably wouldn't make a difference in comparison to a market order with your E-Trade/Schwab account (most likely, your order-flow won't go directly to the market anyways; it is either crossed internally, or re-routed to a broker/dealer that's paying retail brokers for the order flow such as Timberhill).

However, I respectfully disagree that humans are better at making trading decisions than computers. The world of algo trading can be divided into two sides, a) high frequency traders, who through fast cancel-and-replace limit orders and colo with the market centers, try to act as virtual market-makers (or scalpers, depending on your perspective), b) buy-side institutional fund managers who want to complete their orders, without HFT predators and negative market pressure. Large block orders are spliced into small lots (i.e., VWAP) and sent to the market using intentional limit price over time to hide the movement of a huge buy or sell order on the market.

Human beings might be better than machines at picking single stocks for long term investing (although most people are probably still better off investing in an ETF). But that's not how sell-side traders make money in the first place. Guys like GS/MS/Timberhill make money by having the unfair advantage of faster execution speed, more capital and specialized trading algo's against the small retail investors.

"Yes it takes practice to become a good singer, but any number of hours of practicing poor technique won't do much good."

Yes, this is true and oft-repeated mantra on YC News. But it begs the question, how does one practice the "proper" technique (I mean after all, doesn't everyone want to follow the correct form of shooting hoops/strumming a guitar chord, but most people don't have a dedicated shooting coach/guitar teacher to watch their every move or they do know the right technique by heart in theory but can't carry it out in practice for various reasons).

The best protip I've received in learning an instrument (and actually doing anything) is when you are stuck at a particular exercise, move onto the next hardest exercise anyways. When you stumble upon the simplest guitar lick on the first page of a guitar book,you might say "are you crazy? I can't even play the first exercise." But if you play the next hardest lick and stumble upon it for a couple of days, then try to play a third lick even harder than the second lick for a couple of days, and then go back to the very first lick. You might find that you can now play it pretty well, or suck much less than before.

Yes, practicing is all about hard work and all that, but it is also about momentum and keeping things fresh and new. If it's not fun, you are doing something wrong.

Yea, write a simple Python/Perl script that interfaces with TOR and force-reset your exit nodes each time you send out a new request and randomize the time interval. There are plenty of TOR exit nodes in the world to swing the vote your way.

I think your analysis is correct despite of all the self-congratulations that goes on here on Hacker News.

A couple caveats though; I think your definition of technology is too narrow, Web 2.0 is only one segment. The smartest people have moved on from IT which has already matured, and are working on green tech and genetic therapy where supposedly the next break through will come.

Also, even in software since money seems to be the biggest concern to you, consumer-centric software isn't where the money is made - it's just what appeals to be the most sexy to the young & naive. High frequency trading, e-discovery, medical informatics, Sarbones-Oxley compliance modules - there are tons of enterprise software companies in those fields make revenue more than most of the Web 2.0 startup's you listed.

Finally, I don't think what motivates programmers aren't necessarily the same that motivates a business-person. The best way I can describe this is by the musician and A&R example; there are some musician's who want to make it big and appeal to as many people as they can (i.e., Linkin Park), there are those complementary record labels who can help popular musicians by handling the business side and tailor their records to the focus groups. But there are also those musician's who care more about pushing than envelope than selling records, and if they are successful, like the early black blues & jazz musician's in the 40's and 30's, their influence will get heard in the 60's and 70's (ripped off by white musicians). Most people in IT operates on this sliding scale between craftsmen and A&R as well.

Ahh ... isn't Mint build off a platform that allows it to do all of the fancy secure financial banking login and information sharing?

There's a saying that if you start learning a musical instrument when you're an adult, "you'll always play with an accent."

I suppose you could also program or seen code programmed with an accent.

Good advice.

After you have learned the basic open chords, scales and the fretboard notes, and "Wonderwall" - and are bored with the strings. You could go always back to silicon and build

a) an Arduino interface to an software/hardware mixer such as Ableton Live for live mixing and improvisation

b) an machine-learning program that takes GuitarPro tabs of the entire catalog of your favorite band and permute MIDI compositions/new guitar tabs based on the band's style.

c) Program your own synth in Max/MSP.

d) Develop a real-time music note recognition software that tab/annotate the chord changes, drum tabs, make music sheets for live online music jamming.

Also try to play the sitar/banjo/mandolin, there's already lots of guitar players.

Thank you for your $0.02; this might be really obvious to you, but could you be kind and enlighten the oblivious engineering crowd on this forum and be more specific as to what kind of value-add does sales and marketing add to a early-stage hardware startup or any consumer-oriented tech startup in general?

Thanks for your advice and the link to the book.