parm289

Yeah, the disk space issue is what I'm concerned with. I'd prefer not to use local disk space to store a copy of my emails but I haven't been able to find a way to disable local storage in Mail.app.

This is great in terms of UI. Does anyone know if you can use Mail.app with Gmail and keep all emails on the server? I'm currently using Mimesteram which has a great UI and doesn't keep a local copy of all emails. But, I would rather use the native mail app if possible.

Got it, that makes sense.

What about a firm like Knight?

Why aren’t these firms insuring against this risk? Seems like any other risk that can be managed - pay premiums and so that a third party would fund any erroneous losses.

Was going to post this - have users submit the track data! That also might make it easier to expand to other stations where you aren't as familiar with the track layout.

Interesting, thanks. I had in mind a system that would basically regex match a string and add an entry to the ledger (similar, but it would probably be a bit more flexible than the built in system).

Separately, I saw you have also worked on a similar system for food logging. That got me thinking...what else could you track with a plain text file in this format? Fitness/workout info came to mind, as well as rewards points, sleep tracking, any others? Would be cool to have a single system to track all these things, which could be linked up to APIs like Fitbit, myfitnesspal, etc.

Have you ever thought about using a natural language interface with ledger? For example, the Mac/iOS calendar app Fantastical lets you create an event by typing or dictating a sentence like "lunch with mike at 2 on Tuesday at Wendy's", and the app will parse the input to create an event with the right parameters.

I ask after reading your vacation write-up. Seems like the input side could have been a lot easier if you had a speech or text NLP interface to ledger. "$10 entertainment expense paid from MasterCard today," for example. That could be the holy grail for people who are not inclined to keep a detailed ledger, or for situations where input is difficult. (Theoretically you could email/iMessage/SMS/slack that string and have it picked up by your ledger file.)

Thanks for the insight. Are there any particular social media sources you like to use? I find that Twitter and reddit are the most real-time, but reddit can often carry its own biases as well. Twitter seems like it could be the best social media news source if field reporters released news directly through their streams (ie not tweeting as a representative of FOX or NBC). Essentially the IRC chat you mentioned above, but public-facing.

Your comment was enlightening and compels me to ask: where can the public get access to live field reports such as the one you mention? If news companies transform these reports into faux-news, I'd like to bypass them directly and read/watch directly from the source. Are there any publicly-accessible resources that provide access to field reports or "real" news?

I posted this comment on another taxi medallion article, but figure it's hopefully more relevant here:

Just a little background on medallion finance:

A few summers ago, I worked in commercial credit and we did a financing for a "taxi mogul." He was replacing several cars in his fleet, and wanted to take out term loans for the full purchase price of the cars (approx. $30k each, IIRC).

The loans would be secured by cash flow, but the business also posted medallions as collateral. Each loan was attributed to the vehicle purchased with the proceeds and secured by that vehicle's medallion.

It's hard to value something like a taxi medallion. Medallions aren't liquid -- they are usually sold in very low volumes at auctions controlled by the TLC (in NYC). Additionally, the TLC limits the number of outstanding medallions. In practice, most of the medallions are concentrated in the hands of "taxi moguls" who started taxi businesses in the early 20th century when medallions were cheap (think $30k). The best approximation for value we had was the prices commanded by medallions at auction. When I was doing diligence on this deal a few years ago (before Uber), prices were accepted as $1.1mm per medallion. (In reality, that was at best the value of the "marginal" medallion sold; i.e. you could probably not put 10 medallions up for auction at $11mm.)

That means that a $30k term loan would have a loan-to-value of about 3% -- a dream for a bank, assuming the medallions can be seized and sold at market value upon default. That also meant that the loans would be approved almost regardless of the integrity of cash flow. Those characteristics allowed the more cunning taxi moguls to borrow a lot of money against their medallions, securing low rates due to the strength of their collateral posting, and lend the money out at higher rates to earn arbitrage.

There was a good amount of discussion about the medallion bubble -- all it would take is a significant increase in the number of medallions authorized by the TLC or a few failed auctions, and a medallion sold at a large haircut, for the value of all medallions to plummet. Granted, the drop in value might not trip loan covenants, but it would significantly erode the balance sheets of these businesses. At the time, we didn't expect that there would be an external force that would hurt medallion values.

Honestly, skyrocketing medallion prices made it clear that additional ride capacity was needed/demanded. The interesting fact is that the medallion market wasn't disrupted by the issuance of additional medallions, but rather a drop in the demand for yellow cab rides -- a scenario that taxi moguls likely hadn't planned for.

All in all, an interesting asset class that most people aren't aware of -- those 4-letter signs on taxis hold no meaning to riders, and almost nobody on the street would guess that they represent assets worth over one million dollars.

Just a little background on medallion finance:

A few summers ago, I worked in commercial credit and we did a financing for a "taxi mogul." He was replacing several cars in his fleet, and wanted to take out term loans for the full purchase price of the cars (approx. $30k each, IIRC).

The loans would be secured by cash flow, but the business also posted medallions as collateral. Each loan was attributed to the vehicle purchased with the proceeds and secured by that vehicle's medallion.

It's hard to value something like a taxi medallion. Medallions aren't liquid -- they are usually sold in very low volumes at auctions controlled by the TLC (in NYC). Additionally, the TLC limits the number of outstanding medallions. In practice, most of the medallions are concentrated in the hands of "taxi moguls" who started taxi businesses in the early 20th century when medallions were cheap (think $30k). The best approximation for value we had was the prices commanded by medallions at auction. When I was doing diligence on this deal a few years ago (before Uber), prices were accepted as $1.1mm per medallion. (In reality, that was at best the value of the "marginal" medallion sold; i.e. you could probably not put 10 medallions up for auction at $11mm.)

That means that a $30k term loan would have a loan-to-value of about 3% -- a dream for a bank, assuming the medallions can be seized and sold at market value upon default. That also meant that the loans would be approved almost regardless of the integrity of cash flow. Those characteristics allowed the more cunning taxi moguls to borrow a lot of money against their medallions, securing low rates due to the strength of their collateral posting, and lend the money out at higher rates to earn arbitrage.

There was a good amount of discussion about the medallion bubble -- all it would take is a significant increase in the number of medallions authorized by the TLC or a few failed auctions, and a medallion sold at a large haircut, for the value of all medallions to plummet. Granted, the drop in value might not trip loan covenants, but it would significantly erode the balance sheets of these businesses. At the time, we didn't expect that there would be an external force that would hurt medallion values.

Honestly, skyrocketing medallion prices made it clear that additional ride capacity was needed/demanded. The interesting fact is that the medallion market wasn't disrupted by the issuance of additional medallions, but rather a drop in the demand for yellow cab rides -- a scenario that taxi moguls likely hadn't planned for.

All in all, an interesting asset class that most people aren't aware of -- those 4-letter signs on taxis hold no meaning to riders, and almost nobody on the street would guess that they represent assets worth over one million dollars.

Why don't we launch the nuclear waste into deep space? Seems like that would avoid the burial problem described here, and since space is mostly, well, empty space, wouldn't inflict much harm to other bodies.

Great idea. To start, why not have the app find episodes that match the user's commute time? For other episodes, an app like Overcast could first apply SmartSpeed and then speed up the entire episode (ie 1.1x) to match the commute time. I'm finding myself looking for good (financial) news podcasts that are < 20 mins per episode.