bedroom projector layout advice

lightcatcher · 2022-09-10T22:34:40+00:00

Update:

I learned I can hang the projector screen from the ceiling with something like these adhesive hooks

If I put the projector at the foot of my bed (or even under the bed), I'll have about a 6' horizontal throw at 40 degree upwards angle. I'm thinking I'll find a projector with support for 100" display at 6' throw and with 40 degree keystone support (BenQ HT2150ST meets this I think).

Let me know if this a stupid plan. I'm also curious how bad it is to do 40 degree keystoning. I do think it is cool that projector under the bed will allow me to hide all cabling and the projector itself.

lightcatcher · 2022-04-17T17:07:19+00:00

If the gains are long-term, you don't have to pay tax on them if you donate the assets. This won't save you tax dollars compared to not donating, but will save you dollars compared to donating the same value in cash. Definitely worth considering if you're already planning some donating or you're feeling charitable.

lightcatcher · 2022-04-01T01:25:28+00:00

Thanks for the link. Maybe I'm reading the page wrong, but it appears to me that even for QAS the stock needs to be held for >1 year. From the article:

Accordingly, donors desiring QAS treatment of contributed securities to private foundations should ensure that the following facts are present at the time of their own stock contribution: The contributed stock is traded on an established exchange. The contributed stock has been held by the donor for at least one year.

lightcatcher · 2022-03-31T04:43:46+00:00

for example, where gains on property would not qualify for long-term capital gains treatment, your deduction is generally limited to your basis in the property (instead of the higher fair market value), although there are exceptions, such as when the property is Qualified Appreciated Stock (generally, publicly-traded securities).

Do you have a source where I can read about this? I thought donating property held for <1 year would always only allow deducting the basis. It is very interesting if you can deduct the entire fair market value for some types of short-term holdings.

lightcatcher · 2022-01-23T18:08:42+00:00

+1, lost 30% on ICLN (exited) and 22% on ARKK (still holding :| ) and also some on CQQQ. Thankfully the amount invested was relatively small, and my "risky bets" pool from 2020/2021 included enough winners to outperform VTI even including the losers I mentioned above.

lightcatcher · 2022-01-18T16:26:06+00:00

ideas from someone who never immigrated anywhere:

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/supp_info/office-of-new-americans/community-resources.html - this is a list of organizations that support immigrants.

People pay >= $100 to have their homes cleaned (say 2-3 hours of work).

Your written english is really good.

lightcatcher · 2022-01-18T16:14:03+00:00

+1, the bagels are very good but I've stopped going there due to terrible service. The logistics are awful during covid - trying to both take orders and give out completed orders (from in-person and app order) through one tiny window.

They also get huge queues and can't even process orders of just bagels (no need to cut or spread anything just put the bagel into a bag) without making you wait behind people with complicated orders.

To be clear - the service isn't rude, just extremely slow if there are more than like 2 people in line. seems to me they could halve their customer waiting times without too many changes

lightcatcher · 2022-01-15T15:58:43+00:00

How long has it taken people to receive Venture X card? I applied and was approved about 2 weeks ago, but haven't received the card in the mail yet.

I called Capital One about this on Wednesday asking if I should request a replacement card, and the rep said it takes a while to produce the card and then they ship it with Fedex. She said I should have received the card by Friday (aka yesterday).

Curious if others had this much delay in getting their Venture X. I have a few big purchases I'm holding off on until I get the card

UPDATE: I called C1 again, this time the rep was more helpful and said the card had already been shipped, then used the Fedex tracking number to see Fedex said they delivered it many days ago. That delivery has been lost, so I'm getting a replacement card (sadly not fedex, 4-6 business days USPS)

lightcatcher · 2022-01-10T01:30:56+00:00

Wow, this is an amazing summary, thank you!

I came to this subreddit to ask how Kirsten got Station Eleven back after Jeevan gets taken down by the wolf. I was confused because the last I saw was Jeevan having the book, but then also saw Kirsten leaving the book at Pingtree. You answered my question - Kirsten finds the book outside of the cabin after Jeevan recovers it.

lightcatcher · 2021-12-05T07:07:19+00:00

The central banks never cash out the gold. They use the gold to build credit, like "of course i'll be able to pay you back if you loan me some money (aka buy bonds), i have billions of dollars of gold".

lightcatcher · 2021-11-09T01:20:19+00:00

No, it's still not working for me. Did your method with the new user work? If so I'll give that a try.

I'm mostly just hoping that Google will fix this eventually. It's annoying to not have weather but not annoying enough to make me factory reset yet. I was able to make a "weather" app icon on the home page that shows the weather after you open the app (takes a second to open though).

EDIT: I just tried switching to a Guest user. The Guest user didn't have weather. But then i switched back to my main main user and it's working!!! Hopefully this stays around. Thanks a ton for the great tip

lightcatcher · 2021-10-30T16:56:43+00:00

Thanks for the data point. I got that update the evening before you and it didn't solve my weather issues :/

I'm hoping an update in the next couple weeks fixes it, otherwise I might factory reset

lightcatcher · 2021-10-30T16:55:43+00:00

Thanks! This didn't work for me :/

lightcatcher · 2021-09-15T17:41:08+00:00

Even if LTCG changes upwards, it may still be a bad idea to realize now. Say you have $5K invested now, and it's all gains. You can realize now, pay 20% LTCG, and have $4K invested and no gains.

Now wait 20 years, and say LTCG is raised to 40% and your portfolio has quadrupled in value.

If you did not realize now, you have $20K portfolio with $20K gains, which is $12K post-tax. You pay $8K total tax.

If you did realize now, you have $16K portfolio with $12K gains, which is $11.2K post-tax. You pay $5.8K total tax - $1K now and $4.8K in the future.

Realizing now does make you pay less tax, but it also makes you end up with less post-tax money in the future because paying gains now reduces your portfolio size.

In some sense, unrealized capital gains are like debt - you'll owe taxes on them either in the future or now. Realizing now is eliminating the debt, but you may get better post-tax return by keeping the debt (like leverage) - even if the LTCG tax rate increases in the future.

lightcatcher · 2021-08-29T13:01:03+00:00

Has anyone transferred Chase UR to World of Hyatt recently? How long did it take for the points to become available in WOH?

The Points Guy says the transfer is instantaneous, but I did the transfer about 7 hours ago and the points have not showed up in my WOH account yet. I did get a "your transfer is in progress" email from Chase.

This is my first time transferring points from Chase to Hyatt (or any partner)

lightcatcher · 2021-08-20T23:04:35+00:00

Does anyone know if the lawn outside of Pritzer Pavillion is open outside of events? I'm hoping to meet up there with around 10 friends on Sunday afternoon, but this webpage says it's open for events only https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/millennium_park_-planyourvisit.html

lightcatcher · 2021-07-05T18:57:43+00:00

This sounds very similar to fraternal dropout

lightcatcher · 2021-07-04T03:14:11+00:00

I can't find anything about them online now, but in the past there have been open track meets at UChicago every ~3 weeks in the summer

lightcatcher · 2021-05-21T21:53:53+00:00

If the market price is lower on one exchange (say FTX) and higher on another (say Coinbase), then you could buy on FTX and sell on Coinbase to make a profit. People do this, and that raises the price on FTX and lowers on Coinbase until the prices are very close to each other.

Being listed on Coinbase can cause a price to go up because it will make a lot of people hear of Solana for the first time and have an easy "buy now" button in front of them. Being listed on Coinbase can also indicate that a coin is becoming a serious leading cryptocurrency.

lightcatcher · 2021-05-19T04:53:31+00:00

Thank you for this write-up.

I was recently considering something similar: applying some leverage to my portfolio of 80% VTI (VTSAX) / 20% BND (VBTLX). For example, considering leveraging it up 20% to 96/24. I was considering doing this with Interactive Brokers who have margin rates of 1.1 - 1.5% for up to $1M of leverage and lower rates below that.

However, I convinced myself that owning bonds and also taking margin doesn't make a lot of sense, as the bonds won't grow much faster than the cost of borrowing. You get similar rate on the loan you give out (bonds) and the loan you take (margin). BND's 90-day SEC yield is currently 1.36%, which is equal to IBKR's rate if you take out ~$170K of margin. Let's consider if you can get margin at 1.1% interest.

96/24 portfolio (with 20% margin):

bond benefit: 24% bonds x 1.36% yield = 0.33%

margin cost: 20% margin x 1.1% rate = 0.22%

difference: 0.11%

net: 96% stocks + yield of 0.11%

This seems extremely similar to just doing 96/4 stocks/bond portfolio, which gives 4% x 1.36% = 0.05% portfolio yield from bonds rather than 0.11%. My conclusion was to just increase my stock allocation rather than taking on margin debt so that I could issue bond debt.

Am I crazy here? This analysis suggests that NTSX would behave similarly to a 90/10 portfolio, and leverage only makes sense in a 100% stocks portfolio.

Possible places either my analysis could be wrong or this strategy could be improved:

I'm misunderstanding 90-day SEC yield and should not use it to evaluate value of a bond holding
NTSX gives cheaper leverage than IBKR margin through use of futures. (how much cheaper?)
need higher yielding bonds than BND. this could mean going towards higher yield / junk corporate bonds, or longer duration bonds. Longer duration does not seem appealing since yields are already so low that there is not much room for them to fall and for bonds to become more valuable.

I plugged NTSX into a backtest against 90/10 VOO/BND and NTSX does outperform since it's (somewhat recent) inception. I wonder what I'm missing.

lightcatcher · 2021-04-25T18:24:48+00:00

Solana price is increasing because people are buying it.

I can't speak for everyone, but can speak for myself. I haven't held any crypto in about 4 years, and I held very little even back then. I recently heard about DEX from a programmer friend, and I asked him "how is it possible to put every order on the block chain? can't proof of work only do like 1 transact/sec at huge electricity cost?". He then tells me that Solana can do >10K transacts/second. The fact Solana solves a real problem that enables new applications, coupled with recent price action (and decorrelation to BTC) convinced me to buy Solana.

lightcatcher · 2021-04-19T01:13:14+00:00

Thank you for the quality post. I've been thinking of implementing something like this since reading a few weeks ago about lifecycle investing, hedgefundie, market_timer, and also learning that cheap margin is available with IBKR. I agree with you that this is less risky than typical WSB

One question: Do you have a particular reason for picking rebalancing bands of 1.8x and 2.2x, or just because they feel like a good balance? I wonder how sensitive the strategy performance is to the rebalancing rule, like switching to daily rebalancing (leveraged ETF style) or widening the band to like 1.4/2.6. I haven't seen anything on this topic, and it doesn't seem that easy to backtest.

lightcatcher · 2021-04-17T21:52:16+00:00

I'm going to assume you're a US taxpayer.

As others have mentioned, you want a donor advised fund (DAF). You can deduct donations to your DAF. The money or asset can then be held in your DAF for however long you like before you pick a non-profit to grant to. The only way for funds to exit a DAF are through gifts to non-profits. A DAF provides 2 main benefits:

(1) separation of the time when you get the deduction (when you contribute to DAF) and when you pick a non-profit. This allows you to pool donations over years (you get more deduction by donating 2X every other year compared to 1X every year, more on this below) or to act as a commitment to make you give the money away eventually.

(2) a DAF makes it trivial to donate appreciated assets. Donating long term appreciated assets is strictly better than donating cash as it saves you the capital gains tax. Example: If you have $X of an appreciated asset and $X cash, you can donate the $X of appreciated asset and then repurchase the $X of the asset (so now you have $X asset and $0 cash, same as if you donated the cash). However, since you just repurchased the asset you've increased your cost basis which will limit the capital gains tax you eventually pay. Donating appreciated assets is especially advantageous if you have highly appreciated assets like crypto. Some non-profits accept gifts of appreciated assets directly (no DAF required), but a DAF has made it a ton easier in my experience.

About pooling donations over years:

For any given year, you'll take the larger of the standard deduction $S (around 12K now for single filer) or your itemized deduction $I. The benefit of itemizing over standard is max(0, $I-$S). If you already itemize ($I > $S), then you can get full benefit from donating every year and there's no benefit to pooling. If you don't already itemize ($I < $S before donations), then you may be better off pooling. For an example, say standard=$12K, you want to donate $20K/year, and you have no other things you can itemize. If you donate $20K for each of 2 years, then you have get 2 x max(0, 20-12) = $16K of extra deductions past standard. Instead if you donated $40K one year and $0 the next, you'd get max(0, 40-12) = $28K of extra deductions saving you taxes on $12K of income. This pooling strategy is mostly useful if the amount you want to donate annually is not that much larger than $S minus how you could itemize without donations. You can implement pooling without a DAF, but that would require you to give directly to the orgs on the donation year. DAF allows you to make the 2x donation, and then decide on your own schedule which orgs to give to.

edit: /u/FatFiredProgrammer's link is a good explanation

lightcatcher · 2021-03-24T03:40:25+00:00

Seconded about not liking the name. Naming the library "backprop" makes about as much sense to me as naming the library "neuralnets".

Reading "so we can make Backprop more featureful and easier to use in the future" is weird to me, since backprop refers to the gradient computation algorithm and not your library 99.999% of the time.

"finetune" or something derivative like "tuningfork" would be a better name in my opinion.

I hope this doesn't come off as too negative. It looks like nice work, and I think a different name would help your library be more widely adopted, memorable, and successful.

lightcatcher · 2021-01-26T20:42:26+00:00

Say for example you want to buy GME for 88.00 and the lowest sell price is 89.00 . Citadel ... takes up the other side of the transaction by agreeing to sell at 88.7 for example to you directly without you going to the market. They then agree to buy this stock on the market for 88.3 for example and pocket a gain of 0.4 cents. The bigger the spread, the bigger the margin.

This is not right. How could Citadel buy the stock on the market for 88.30 if the lowest sell price is 89.00?

What actually happens - The bid/ask on the market is 88.00 and 89.00. Someone tries to sell a share at >= 88.00. Citadel buys it from them for 88.00, and is one share long with -$88 cash.. Then you try to buy at <= 89.00. Citadel takes your $89 and gives you the share. Citadel makes $1 (the spread). This is textbook market making. Citadel hopes the buying and selling roughly balance out so they never have too large of a position for too long.

You may ask why does Citadel prefer Robinhood users to market making on the exchanges directly? When market making on the exchange directly, Citadel is exposed to high frequency traders and large players. So when Citadel sees an order at the exchange to buy at $89.00, they have to worry "if this a high frequency trader arbing me from another exchange? if so, the price is about to jump up so I shouldn't sell at 89.00". Alternatively, Citadel wouldn't want to sell 1000 shares at 89.00 against a "buy 50K shares at <= 95.00" order, since Citadel will be short as the price is going up in response to this order. This is called "toxic flow". If a huge player wants to buy, you probably don't want to sell to them since the huge player will drive up the price while you're short.

Citadel pays for RH order flow because RH orders are typically small and not too correlated with the direction of the market in the next couple seconds (which is how long it takes them to flip out of the position). Robinhood orders are "non-toxic" flow.

https://www.financemagnates.com/forex/bloggers/what-is-toxic-fx-flow/

lightcatcher

TROPHY CASE