Yes, and that reason is that people brainlessly copy whatever the 'latest thing' is. I far, far prefer physical keyboards so can't regard the wave of iPhone lookalikes as a good thing; and of the no-keyboard phones, I think the best is Galaxy Note because it has a reasonable-sized screen, again very unlike the iPhone; and Android lets me install whatever I want without trying to force me to the One True Way, ditto.

Yes, iPad and iPhone had a huge impact, but not for the better as far as I'm concerned. I want more buttons on my MP3 player so that I can use it without taking it out of pocket - it's Steve Jobs' (and brainless copymonkeys') fault stuff doesn't have buttons anymore...

Sorry, can't agree with your comparison of Richard Dawkins and religious nuts. Richard Dawkins would be more than happy to re-evaluate his views were he presented with any scientifically valid evidence that any religion's statements about reality are actually true (eg, God does respond to prayer, etc). In the face of complete absence of such evidence, he rightly continues to call bullshit on these claims, and just as rightly points out that we shouldn't tiptoe around bullshit claims and intolerance just because they're driven by religious views.

Note that, unlike religious nuts, he does not call for censorship of the views he objects to, merely does his best to present his views.

I find the resurgence of religion in the last decade or so truly scary, people take for granted all the advances science keeps bringing us and keep trying to impose their medieval views on everybody around them, regardless of the damage it causes.

I'm doing a machine learning course with them right now, and they ask you as one part of the homework to write Matlab code, and include a script that connects to their servers, and checks your code for correctness. This, plus a set of partly randomized multiple-choice questions for each lecture are a great help for me to focus on the content.

That's pretty awesome in my book, way more than any forums (well already at Uni I mostly skipped the lectures and discussion groups, and passed everything by reading the lecture notes, then doing the homework).

All this needs to match everything a real university can give me is the option for those few that can pass that sort of course with flying colors (doing the advanced homework well etc) to get a chance for a follow-up advanced course where after passing the automated code check you'd get a real human to comment on your solutions to the more interesting problems. I'd be more than happy to pay for that sort of course, too, after I'd had a chance to check out the professor and material during the free initial course. I already have a career so couldn't care less about getting a piece of paper out of it, but could always do with learning some bleeding-edge techniques.

Well there is high-freq execution, that's a service very much in demand as it allows to lower market impact and thus get filled at a better price. Secondly, a lot of what's described on Slashdot as HFT is marketmaking (Knight for example), these folks have an obligation to provide tight prices all the time, which is a service.
Finally, as for pure HFT prop guys, they mostly make money off each other, contrary to what you read on slashdot it's not at all easy to make money in HFT these days, this is not 2009. Also the spreads on equities have collapsed in the last decade, so a very plausible scenario is that the money that the brokers were earlier getting from charging high spread, HFT traders are getting now while lowering the spreads for the rest of us.

And why does HFT provoke so much vitriol when for example the fact that retail currency exchange points routinely quote spreads of several cents on the dollar, while the professional markets are 0.01 cent wide means that the money lost by retail consumers when exchanging currencies is a very large multiple of anything they might lose due to HFT (if anything)?

There are murky corners in finance, no denying that (LIBOR anyone?), but HFT just isn't one of them.

Well that doesn't answer my original question, how any of this can make your pension pot to become worthless in 0.005 seconds.

Making decisions on information before it's public knowledge is called insider dealing, is a criminal offense that lands people in jail, and has nothing to do with HFT, in fact algos don't generally trade events or use information like that even if it was available.

Ditto for market manipulation.

Of course every trade made affects the market, what you haven't given a single argument for why HFT's effect is _adverse_.

Why - those trades were made by people who have nothing to do with Knight - is it always fair that they suffer because of Knight's blunder?
E.

Do you have shares in an HFT fund? No? Does your pension fund? ( Even if it does it soon won't because of Volcker rule)

So how exactly do you see yourself losing it due to HFT?

How? What tax? I can go into the market and buy equities any time, the more counterparties willing to take the other side, the smaller my market impact and therefore the better price I can get. The place where the small inverstor can get ripped off are the brokerage fees they're asked, but that has nothing to do with HFT.

Which one? Knight? Unfortunately you're wrong there, Knight lost a sum that was a large fraction of their market value and had to sell itself to a consortium of other firms (ie lost its independence) as a result. The trades reversed were some of the trades done by other counterparties after the Knight trades effectively messed up price discovery for those 20 minutes or so.

So what's your problem exactly?

Amen. Every full-time job I ever had was found through headhunters.

> Sometimes, large segments of the people are not able to recognize what is good for them.

All too often. Your attitude is scary - the last thing I want is some official deciding what's good for me in contradiction to my own opinion. Or do you honestly believe that a) there is some objective standard of what's 'good for the people' distinct to what people themselves think and b) that officials are somehow more able to perceive what that is than the populace at large?

The reason we need government is because different groups of people have different preferences, and we need a mechanism to mediate between them - but that's a very very different thing to 'doing good to people who don't know what's good for them'. If I am to be coerced, I'd rather it be done on honest motives of someone's selfishness, or being outvoted, etc, than 'for my own good', thank you very much.

Which part of 'Humans using computers to carry out pre-defined series of actions on request' don't you understand? When you wrote your post, were its contents 'algorithmically controlled' because as a human you're not able to send signals over wires in milliseconds to the Slashdot web server, and rely on your computer to do so on your behalf?

And FYI I work in finance (not HFT, but similar stuff) and so know nearly as much about HFT as people who do it - and find the level of ignorance on Slashdot mindboggling, these posts are my attempt to bring a bit of commonsense into that discussion.

The distinction you describe makes no sense. It's an electronic exchange, so computers are involved. So you say human should push the button to do a trade - fine; what if I want to do a portfolio of different stocks - do I have to press the button for each stock separately or am I allowed to press the button once? Now what if I want to split a big trade into multiple small trades over the course of the day to minimize market impact - should I be sitting there, watching a clock and pressing that button every so often? Don't you think that's silly?

So what exactly are you proposing to ban? Humans using computers to carry out pre-defined series of actions on request? That's all automated trading is. Of course there is a human somewhere at each legal entity that enters into trades on exchanges, who bears responsibility over what trades are done and controls what sofware runs when, so ultimately 'pushes the button' - or do you think the software trades on its own account without humans involved?

Income tax? What about wealth tax? Income taxes that high simply guarantee that the already rich get to stay rich and in power.

If you want a more egalitarian world, you should tax wealth and especially inheritance, not income.

> Rather than expecting joy from a woman, I've come to simply not expecting joy for any reason really.

That's your real problem I think. Your vibe matters more than anything else when picking up, certainly more than anything you do or say. I've had a really hard time picking up women until I was about 30, and these days it just happens. The main thing that changed is simply that I'm comfortable with who I am and (this is very important) look at the interaction as one where I offer them something (my company, to begin with) rather than one where I want something from them. That's a fundamental difference in mental posture that makes all the difference in how people react to you. Secondly most of the flirting happens in the tone of voice and body language, took me a while to learn to ignore the actual words (well you have to not say anything that's an actual turnoff, but you notice fast when you do that;) ) and focus on the tone of voice, body language, and the eyes - being aware of all this and interacting on that level is another huge step forwards. Finally, it helps to be aware of how you're perceived by women (clearly there's a huge spread here as they are all different) - one thing that might help is ask some of those girls that you're 'only friends' with for advice there. For this to work, you must genuinely just ask for advice without meaning it as a come-on; and then treat what you hear as data (mostly on what factors even figure) rather than gospel truth.