If mindlessly scrolling through social media posts is called doomscrolling then is mindlessly scrolling through this forum because I don't have anything to do called "scrolling"?
Posts made by Placeholder
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RE: Random thought of the day
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RE: Fun with maps
@Gurth said in Fun with maps:
Whoever came up with Irish spelling must have been in a comparable situation, but have the added disadvantage of having the idea that using more letters makes words better
Sound like something the French would do
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RE: I, ChatGPT
@Tsaukpaetra said in I, ChatGPT:
I'm doing my part to increase entropy.
You're way too consistent of an upvoter to be doing that
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RE: A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
@error Right click them, copy them, and paste them into this thread so we can explain them to you
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RE: In other news today...
@izzion said in In other news today...:
Put Options are contracts, so that up until X date you have the option to sell the stock at the specified price
@izzion said in In other news today...:
If the value of the stock drops below the strike price (the contracted price you can sell at by exercising the contract), you can make the difference between the market price of the stock and the strike price of the option
@izzion said in In other news today...:
Or you’re using the options to hedge a position (you own the stock at $100 and you buy a put option at $80 to make sure you can’t lose more than $20 per share, but you pay a small price for that insurance)
Here's a example of how put options work:
- A while back, I bought 1000 shares of a stock with some fun money, for fun, because I thought I might be able to turn a decent profit off of it. I paid a price of $2.86 per share, meaning I spent $2860 dollars.
The price of the stock went up to around $3.30. Meaning, if I sold everything I would have turned a profit of $440, or a gain of about 15%. Not a bad gain, right? No, that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted more. However, at this point I was concerned that maybe something would happen that would cause the value of the stock to drop a lot. At this point, I decided to take some steps to protect myself in the event that the stock price dropped.
- I bought 10 put option contracts for a strike price of $3.00 that expire on May 17, 2024. Each contract cost me $0.55 per share, which comes out to $55 per contract (because contracts are typically for 100 shares). Since I bought 10 of them, I paid $550.
This purchase gave me the right, but not the obligation, to sell my shares for a price of $3.00 per share at any point up until May 17. Because these are American-style put options, I can call up my broker at any time and "exercise" my right to sell my shares for that price. In theory, I could do this even if the price of the stock was higher but that would be a phenomenally stupid thing to do. The value here is that even if the price of the stock is lower than $3 I can still do this.
If you crunch the numbers, that means I spent $2,860 on shares and $550 on put options. I have now spent $3,410 on shares that at the time were only worth $3300. In the event that the stock fell below $3, I would be able to use my put options to sell my shares for a total of $3000, meaning the worst that could ever happen is that I lose a total of $410. If the stock is less than $3.41 per share I am guaranteed to lose money, even though I only spent $2.86 per share.
That's a really expensive insurance policy, even for fun money. Should I have sold the shares right then and there for a decent profit? No, I'm a greedy bastard, dammit. I thought this stock could go even higher and I didn't want to miss out on all the potential profits. Buy put options at a higher strike price, meaning I could sell the shares for more? No, puts at a higher strike price cost even more money. Buy put options at a lower strike price instead? No, because the insurance is cheaper for a reason. I would lose even more money if the price of the stock tanked. Instead, I did this:
- Sold 10 call option contracts for a strike price of $4.50 also expiring May 17, 2024. Received a credit of $0.41 per share, meaning I gained $410 dollars.
When I buy a call option I gain the right, but not the obligation, to purchase 100 shares of a stock at the strike price of the contract. This is a great deal for me if the stock goes up above the strike price of the contract. I could make a metric ton of money if I'm correct. This is why people love to gamble with options contracts.
You'll note that I sold the contracts, instead of buying them. That means I gave somebody else the right, but not the obligation, to buy my shares from me at a price of $4.50 per share. If the price of the stock were below $4.50 then they would have to be incredibly stupid to exercise those call options. I'd happily sell them the shares if they did that though. If the price is above $4.50 then they get to be the ones making all the profit while I miss out because I sold my shares to them at $4.50 instead of at a higher price.
Let's crunch the numbers again. I spent $2860 on shares, $550 on put options and I got paid $410 for selling some call options on my shares. In total, I'm out $3000. My put options let me sell my shares for a total of $3000 if I want, meaning I can get all my money back no matter what the stock does. However, if the price of the stock goes above $4.50 I will have somebody else call my shares away from me at $4.50, no matter how high the price of the stock goes. In other words, I traded away any profit above $1,500 in order to not lose any money no matter what.
Here's a pretty graph describing my profits and losses, as it would look like in May when all the options contracts expire:
I posted about this strategy not too long ago in another thread, as a way of illustrating how you can use options contracts to do things other than high-risk gambling. Since then, news came out that caused the price of the stock to go down. A lot. It's trading at $1.77 now.
- If I had sold all my shares instead of engaging in this financial nonsense, I would have profited by $440.
- If I had not made my options contracts trades, I would have shares worth $1,770 now. I would have lost
$1,090. - If I had only bought put options, my shares would still be only worth $1,770 but my puts would be worth $1,340. I spent $550 on those puts, so my net is $2,560. I lost
$300. - What I did was sell those call options on top of everything else. I sold them for $410 and they are currently worth $40 meaning I would have to spend that much to buy them back to close my position. My net is positive $70.
If the stock stays the same price all the way until May I will exercise my put options and keep all the credit I got from selling call options, and still lose money in net because my brokerage charged commissions for my options contract trades. In other words, I played with options contracts in a "semi-intelligent" way and still managed to lose most of my profits. However, I was able to use options contracts to define and control my risk. The risk management was worth the cost. That's why options contracts are useful.
TL:DR: Don't even bother thinking about trading options if you skipped over this wall of text. Just don't. There are several more topics I didn't even hint at in this post that affected my decision making process.
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RE: In other news today...
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I need to learn how Put Options work ASAP.
Here's how put options work:
- You get seriously offended that a stock's price is continuously going up, or could possibly go up when you don't want it to.
- You throw some money at a mysterious third party in the hopes that the stock goes down and they sell you put options in return for your money
- The stock doesn't go down and your puts lose all of their value. Alternatively, you paid such a high premium for your put options that you still lose money even if the stock goes down a lot.
More seriously, IPOs don't typically get options chains right away, so the only safe way to profit off of them is to be one of the lucky few that gets issued shares ahead of the IPO, selling the stock immediately when you get the option to (many times there are restrictions on this). Otherwise, you have to short sell the stock which carries its own risks (especially since you can't buy call options to hedge your short position). If options are available then you should seriously consider using options spreads instead to control more precisely how much risk you're taking on.
In contrast, if you spend your money on instead you can stay on the sidelines, watch everybody else lose their money, and then you at least still have your . For a little while. The theta decay on popped popcorn kernels is vicious.
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RE: I, ChatGPT
There are plenty of examples of machine learning models gaming the systems that humans create for them
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RE: I, ChatGPT
@Arantor said in I, ChatGPT:
This is going to add a whole new dimension to the copyright infringement discussion
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@izzion There are some uses for options beyond rampant speculation. I'm currently using the collar strategy for my one and only fun money stock position. I was up a bit (out of sheer luck, I admit) and I had reason to believe that it could keep going up (which has happened before), but I was concerned that the price of the stock might suddenly drop (which has happened before). Using the collar strategy, I am effectively giving up all the profit above a certain point if the stock goes up a lot in exchange for being protected if the stock goes down a lot.
This is great, because the stock proceeded to go down a lot. I would have kept more of my gains if I had just sold everything, but using an options strategy in a non-speculative way allowed me to keep a small amount of the profit I already made no matter what and I still have the potential to make more money if the stock reverses course and starts going back up again.
Admittedly, I did have to lose some fun money on speculative options positions first before realizing that they can be used for more than degenerate gambling.
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@topspin said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
I keep wondering if I could make some money if I understood that
Understanding how the Black-Scholes formula helps you understand approximately how the price of a European-style options contract changed when the underlying conditions changed. That is not the same thing as understanding how to make money using options contracts. You'll understand how you lost/gained money but not why.
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RE: WTF is happening with Windows 13? And nothing else
Microsoft is going to change their OS numbering scheme long before they get to this release. This thread will get reused for a totally unrelated topic by someone unwilling to pay the new thread tax.
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RE: I, ChatGPT
We should ask the AI itself what it thinks about its alleged violation of copyright. I'm sure this will clear everything up.
https://wibble.fbmac.net/content/ai-asks-am-i-the-real-copyright-criminal
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RE: WTF is happening with Windows 11? And nothing else
I spent a significant amount of time thinking that I had enabled the "automatically hide the taskbar" setting, mainly because that's what I normally do and because the taskbar seemed to be hiding itself properly.
One day, the taskbar showed up again and refused to hide itself. I assumed for a while it was because a program was keeping it activated. After some investigation, that turned out not to be the case. The auto-hide setting was in fact turned off. I opted not to turn the setting on because it I don't really care about the taskbar.
Today, the taskbar has disappeared again. Moving the mouse down to the bottom of the screen doesn't make the taskbar appear. Pressing the Windows key does make it appear though. Checking my settings again while writing this post, I can see that the auto-hide setting is turned on. In addition, using the mouse to make the taskbar visible works again.
Either I'm crazy, Windows 11 is crazy, Microsoft is gaslighting me, or Windows 11 is just a with a dubious veneer painted over it. Or it's all four things at once.
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
It's the blue person's fault that they assumed the avecage speed was only 75. Red should have implied that they were one of these people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge
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RE: WTF is happening with Windows 10? And nothing else
Microsoft, being a small company and all, barely has the budget to translate their blatant advertising so I can see why they would want to get their money's worth by sending it to my work PC. Said blatant advertising also doubles as a throat clearing exercise . How considerate of them
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RE: Killed by Google
@hungrier said in Killed by Google:
I'm still using regular Youtube, with uBlock Origin on desktop, and NewPipe on mobile, without issue
You can use the SponsorBlock extension with both and then you don't even have to watch the ads that are embedded in the videos. There's a NewPipe build out there that has SponsorBlock built in.
I may have wasted too much of my life watching YouTube videos but at least I didn't waste even more of it.
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RE: Suggestions for new controller
I used my wired Xbox 360 controller regularly for about 11 years before it died. I think it was because the USB cable frayed too much near where it connected to the actual controller. I don't think you can go wrong with one of those, though I can't speak to the quality of more recent versions of the wired controller.
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RE: In other news today...
In recent years, they uncovered the protein responsible for detecting sour taste. That protein, called OTOP1, sits within cell membranes and forms a channel for hydrogen ions moving into the cell.
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Mice showing more sense than Samiyuk afficionadoes:
Mice with a functional OTOP1 protein found the taste of ammonium chloride unappealing and did not drink the solution, while mice lacking the OTOP1 protein did not mind the alkaline salt, even at very high concentrations.
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Liman speculates that the ability to taste ammonium chloride might have evolved to help organisms avoid eating harmful biological substances that have high concentrations of ammonium.
"Ammonium is found in waste products—think of fertilizer—and is somewhat toxic," she explainedMore like salmishit amirite?
Is that why @apapadimoulis rated the strongest flavors of salmiak as "caustic"? Ammonium chloride just tastes like a different variety of salt to me. I had no idea it could taste sour. I actually enjoy salmiak. For reference, I also appreciate the taste of cilantro and judo-chopped mayo, so maybe I am a bit nonsensical.
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@dcon said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@cvi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
And, yeah, "C#/C++" is kinda a nope. I'd assume that means half-assed C# user with delusions of grandeur.
Or it means a C++ programmer that uses .Net (because said person can't separate C# from .Net)
Or a C# programmer that is forced to work on a C++ codebase from time to time because years ago somebody else got scared of the garbage collector and mandated that an application be written in C++/CLI for "performance reasons".
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RE: The nerdy jokes thread (bonus original title mode!)
@Zerosquare said in The nerdy jokes thread (bonus original title mode!):
@Applied-Mediocrity said in The nerdy jokes thread (bonus original title mode!):
@PleegWat That's how the 3rd movement of @HardwareGeek's Op.1 begins!
That reminds me, I've got to publish the score for my masterpiece, " in G major":
A real would use the key of C major.
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RE: Where does one shop for computer parts these days (USA)?
I usually search for a part on PcPartPicker and pick the vendor that sells it the cheapest. That's typically Amazon or Newegg. Occasionally there will be another big online retailer that sells something with a better price, but it's usually one of those two.
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RE: Care to explain your avatar?
is the "killpocalypse" medal that you get from killing enough enemies in a short enough period of time in the Halo games, but with the Discourse project logo photoshopped in front of it. In other words, it's the discopocalypse
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RE: I, ChatGPT
@cvi said in I, ChatGPT:
@Arantor Isn't there the somewhat famous quote by Babbage? *google*
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Well, turns out Babbage didn't anticipate LLMs. Or our slightly more modern definition of "right answers", I suppose.
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RE: The Wibble
@sockpuppet7 Take a look at the article "Local Hero Acquitted for House-Flaming Incident" and try to figure out how that thumbnail got generated. That image completely belongs in the NOPE thread.
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RE: The Wibble
The last time I tried to make this article it generated a horrifying thumbnail that wasn't related to the article at all. This one is a lot better. All it's missing is a MAGA hat and a double barrel salute
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RE: The Wibble
@Arantor A direct quote of the whole poster gave me this article a while back:
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RE: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™
@status clearly doesn't work. Have you tried @by-joining-this-group-you-agree-to-be-mentioned-randomly-for-no-reason-is-that-okay-yes-no?
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@Tsaukpaetra Technically, it's the least significant 8 bits of the integral image. The full dynamic range version of that image wasn't interesting at all because most of the source image was white to begin with. It looked something like this:
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@Zecc said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@remi I think I just memorized it after seeing the words a couple of times, but if I had to come up with sort sort of mnemonic, I think I'd go visual:
(c) 2023 Zecc. I hereby put this image into public domain with one exception: it, or any derivatives, must not under any circumstances be involved in the creation of non fungible tokens.
So I can mint a NFT of this integral image of your work then?
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RE: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™
@BernieTheBernie Κανείς δεν περιμένει την Ισπανική Ιερά Εξέταση!
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RE: In other news today...
@cvi said in In other news today...:
others are sticking "AIs" into fighter planes:
In the article, this is referring to the AI dogfighting tournament that happened back in 2020. If you dug even a little bit into it, you would see that although it was a very impressive demonstration of machine learning techniques it is very, very far removed from the real world.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lTzyfhvTXoQ
TL;DW: Take a trained fighter pilot, deprive them of all of the physical feedback they would get in a real jet, give them a simplified weapon system that has no resemblance to the real world, give them no time to practice with these constraints, and pit them against an AI with perfect sensors and information that has been trained with nothing but this unrealistic approximation of the real world and they will probably lose.
Give even an amateur gamer some time to practice and the AI can be beaten:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Isig_RRRqY
Again, this is some really good work for advancing the development of machine learning but we don't have to worry about rogue AI pilots any time soon
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RE: Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Now I'm fearful, I'm certain there are no company holidays on that day!
Your company doesn't celebrate Bismarck Launch Day?
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RE: WTF is happening with Windows 11? And nothing else
@loopback0 Does Windows 11 still opt you in to beta releases of updates when you manually hit the "check for updates" button?
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RE: Stadia: New Twitch Competitor
@PotatoEngineer I tried Stadia out when Google was desperate enough to toss in a free Chromecast and controller with the one month trial. I had internet service with 300 Mbps download, so I figured it was worth trying for fun.
At first, everything seemed to be going well. I was able to beat a game that required fast and precise inputs with some struggle, though I always wondered if the difficulty was because I just wasn't good at the game or if my connection wasn't as good as I thought.
I gave up on the platform later on due to jitter and lag of the type you'll never get with a local system. I'd be playing a game normally and then the game stopped responding to my controller inputs. A few seconds later, sometimes up to 15 seconds later, the inputs would start registering but in absolutely the wrong way. It looked kind of like what you'd expect if you handed the controller over to a toddler and let them mess with it every few minutes.
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RE: So, It's not just Neymar to retire!
@HardwareGeek I see you've previously made a contribution to the discussion
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RE: So, It's not just Neymar to retire!
@boomzilla said in So, It's not just Neymar to retire!:
Still mad about the so-called "tuck rule."
The game would be far more interesting if the ball had to follow the mach tuck rule instead
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RE: A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
@HardwareGeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Could I interest you in some gummy bears? They're sugar-free!
The end result of eating those still has more worth and practical use than any shitcoin.
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RE: US / EU Level
US Level 78
There would be significantly more "stayed" states out west if it weren't for the pandemic. Also, I'm counting being stuck in a traffic jam on a highway for multiple hours in Arkansas as having "stopped" there.
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RE: The Whisky Topic
@Arantor said in The Whisky Topic:
That depends, do I have to write the Fortran part and/or the JavaScript part?
One of your managers read somewhere that every language was designed to be interoperable with C so you are actually going to write a translation layer between the Fortran and the Javascript in C using an undocumented compiler the CTO found on an old floppy disc that he claimed worked really well back in the day.
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RE: Re: ↕👆⯬⬇✴↗🔁⛔🔚🚌 - Wallpaper e-peen
@Luhmann said in Re: ↕👆⯬⬇✴↗🔁⛔🔚🚌 - Wallpaper e-peen:
Ah! We don't appear to have a wallpaper thread ...
https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/16605/the-semi-official-backgrounds-thread
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RE: If "real" water isn't for you, try some hydrogen water
I remember seeing an advertisement for a machine that could "process" water to supposedly change the bond angles of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Different bond angles had different medicinal properties.
I hope they choose a particularly beneficial bond angle for all that extra hydrogen they added to the water...
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RE: Another AI based art generator, DALL-E Mini
@boomzilla this is the best result I've been able to get out of it. I would keep trying, but, you know...
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RE: Another AI based art generator, DALL-E Mini
Stable Diffusion prompt: "a photo of a kneeling warthog watching a bus garage burn"
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RE: TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML)
TIL that the Curiosity Rover calculated the best focus position for one of its cameras by taking an image, converting the image into a JPEG, and measuring the size of the resulting file. The bigger the JPEG file, the better the focus of the camera.
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RE: The Official Status Thread
Status: A pin on the control board for my electric tea kettle needed to be re-soldered. I am now able to make tea again. All of the effort I put into my electrical engineering studies has been justified and validated in this one moment.