big data

[JohnRoberts]

I am not generally a fan of more government regulation, but shenanigans related to market manipulation has long been a sore point with me...  Just like high speed trading gives a small number of traders an advantage over all others, an insidious trading practice is "spoofing" where traders submit a flurry of fake trade bids to move a price up or down beyond the market fundamentals. This can be hard to prove without a documented trail of all bids and trades.

7 years ago the same agency was usable bring a case about suspected silver commodity price manipulation. Now thanks to advanced data analytics, the CFTC (regulator of commodities trading) just fined JPMorgan $920M. 5 years of CME (commodity exchange) trading data is 1.7 terabytes of data.

A handful of banks have been charged with fraud for spoofing trades but the almost $1B fine against JPMorgan is a record. It looks like that party is over... IMO a good thing.

JR 

PS: I don't think all on wall street are crooks, but there are snakes in the wood pile.

 

[john12ax7]

This has,  perhaps unsurprisingly,  received very little coverage at most news outlets.  I don't think the party is over though,  the fine is still less than 1% of revenue and will just be absorbed as a cost of business.  The party will continue until there is personal accountability with significant penalties and / or jail time.

 

[JohnRoberts]

This has,  perhaps unsurprisingly,  received very little coverage at most news outlets.  I don't think the party is over though,  the fine is still less than 1% of revenue and will just be absorbed as a cost of business.  The party will continue until there is personal accountability with significant penalties and / or jail time.

That is the point, big data analytics allowed them to catch these pukes who were getting away with this for years...

Perhaps the almost $1B fine will allow them to invest in even more technology to keep ahead of the crooks in the fast trading arms race.

JR

 

[boji]

Culture that rewards cheating until caught. 
https://youtu.be/o9PLuKWRlQk

 

[JohnRoberts]

Culture that rewards cheating until caught. 
https://youtu.be/o9PLuKWRlQk

JPMorgan run by Jamie Dimon should be better than that, but like I said snakes in the woodpile.

I appreciate "creating" wealth, but not deviously engineering wealth transfers based on misinformation.

===

For more bad guys caught, three companies got charged for colluding and price fixing chicken prices.

Some cultures are far worse than ours regarding corruption, but it is part of the human condition to have a fraction with a broken moral compass.

JR

 

[Squeaky]

Some cultures are far worse than ours regarding corruption, but it is part of the human condition to have a fraction with a broken moral compass.

A question to consider is, in the milieu of man what to floats to the top?

 

[JohnRoberts]

A question to consider is, in the milieu of man what to floats to the top?

As the old joke goes "shit" floats.... not just cream.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Heres an article on whats become known as RTB 'real time bidding' on internet advertising space.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40051355.html

Light touch regulation has allowed this profiligacy to happen .
Tie in Realtime bidding , electioneering  and fake news  , its like shooting fish in a barrel .

If you or someone in your family went down the Ancestry DNA route ,likelyhood is all that gets aggregated into the dataset as well . Its a truly monsterous amount of data in the hands of marketing machines .

 

[JohnRoberts]

Heres an article on whats become known as RTB 'real time bidding' on internet advertising space.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40051355.html

Light touch regulation has allowed this profiligacy to happen .
Tie in Realtime bidding , electioneering  and fake news  , its like shooting fish in a barrel .

If you or someone in your family went down the Ancestry DNA route ,likelyhood is all that gets aggregated into the dataset as well . Its a truly monsterous amount of data in the hands of marketing machines .

I still can't figure why so many people enable microphones and web cams to snoop on them inside their homes. 

I dislike how buying stuff over the internet gives them so much information, and information is power.

I find it a little annoying how pricing is so similar between different vendors as if they were price fixing (illegal last time I checked)... :

I've gamed them a few times by postponing a purchase and magically the price is lower next time I look.

===
I try to be careful about sharing too much information but I am sure they know more about me than I like.

Not too surprisingly but after deleting porn spam here in the course of my moderation duties, they push risqué  ads at me here.

JR

 

[rob_gould]

Heres an article on whats become known as RTB 'real time bidding' on internet advertising space.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40051355.html

Light touch regulation has allowed this profiligacy to happen .
Tie in Realtime bidding , electioneering  and fake news  , its like shooting fish in a barrel .

If you or someone in your family went down the Ancestry DNA route ,likelyhood is all that gets aggregated into the dataset as well . Its a truly monsterous amount of data in the hands of marketing machines .

This is a great article, thanks.

The Great Hack is a documentary well worth watching.  A representative of (now defunct) Cambridge Analytica claimed to have about 4000 data points on every single voting age American.

It sounds like hyperbole, but it seems that online marketing algorithms can genuinely know what you want before you do.

 

[JohnRoberts]

This is a great article, thanks.

The Great Hack is a documentary well worth watching.  A representative of (now defunct) Cambridge Analytica claimed to have about 4000 data points on every single voting age American.

It sounds like hyperbole, but it seems that online marketing algorithms can genuinely know what you want before you do.

I watched a 4 hour PBS documentary called Hacking your mind, or something like that. It was mostly based on work by Kahneman (thinking fast and slow), and other master persuaders (Cialdini, etc).

They do not know what you think, but know how to nudge you to make the choices they want in a higher percentage. This is something they should be teaching kids in school...

It makes me angry when web merchants think they know what I want, but maybe that's because I'm old and a little odd...

JR

PS: Watching the political campaigns reveals that both teams are using master persuaders, but they did the last several election cycles. 

 

[Squeaky]

I watched The Social Dilemma film last night and there seemed to be references to real time bidding in the family role play (the radicalised teenage boy was being sent ads that appeared to be selected through an auction process).

One of the messages (for me) from that film is that if all these ex-executives from internet companies didn't realise that the algorithms and platforms that were being developed could be exploited and cause social harm then perhaps there is some question begging to be done. 

Years ago I was trying to work through a concept, a way to turn around the prevailing what I will call the "personal" data acquisition/advertising/revenue model of "big data". My concept (I don't claim for it to be necessarily novel) was based around an opt-in/opt-out model and it involved the "big data" monsters having to pay some nominal amount to people that opted-in to having their data mined. Basically like a licensing fee for access to their intellectual property. Those that opted-out retained the privilege of privacy but made no money. To me, this seems more like how it should be, but I never really thought it through.

The most amount of time I waste on social media is writing posts here and then ending up not posting them. I decided to post this one.

 

[bluebird]

Ha! I found a good thing to do is delay my posting if I wrote a charged opinion about something. Wait an hour or two. Usually someone else says what I wanted to say or I cooled off enough to realize it was wrong or hurtful. And if its still stands after some time, then its valid. But 9 times out of 10 its not, but still usually serves a therapeutic purpose...

 

[JohnRoberts]

Ha! I found a good thing to do is delay my posting if I wrote a charged opinion about something. Wait an hour or two. Usually someone else says what I wanted to say or I cooled off enough to realize it was wrong or hurtful. And if its still stands after some time, then its valid. But 9 times out of 10 its not, but still usually serves a therapeutic purpose...

I find that if I write a response and then delete it without posting, both me and person I was responding too feel better.  8)

JR

 

[Tubetec]

I remember my mums wise words about writing important letters , write it , sit on it over night , re-read next morning , if it passes send it .
I think getting someone to proof read your work is also a great help , 

Ive heard of so many getting in the height of trouble for text messaging after drink was taken ,on top of that  lack of proper spelling ,grammar and syntax must lead to confusion . The subtleties of the spoken word including irony and humor often get lost in translation to the text medium. The other point about text vs spoken word is ,say something nasty face to face over time the hurt caused fades from memory , while text message remains as a reminder and keeps the parties involved at loggerheads. If the people that invented all these new wonders of tech were half as smart as they thought they were ,surely they would have foreseen potential downsides .

In the course of tidying up my mothers affairs such as utillity bills etc almost every single company is trying to get me to fill out online forms , which I steadfastly refuse to do , I explained to one supervisor the woman had nothing to do with online and thats how it shall remain . Sad, but a persons demise is highly marketable information , even though my mom was issued with a free TV license for 2020 because she was a senior citizen  , the relevant authority sent a letter to 'The occupier' @ my address telling me I need now to pay 160
euros for the pleasure of getting my cerebral cortex bombarded by government covid propaganda and advertising , I'm pulling the f@king Tv aerials down off the chimney tomorrow. What I will demand to know is how 'AnPost',the Irish postal service  who manage TV liscensing mined the data , they best have done it by the book or I'll haul 'em over hot coals under GDPR rules.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Speaking of big data and AI, I recently watched a fantastic comedy movie Jexi(?), a parody about all the named AI assistants (siri, alexa, et al). The movie was kind of adolescent but funny... About a guys smart phone that just about ruins his life.

JR