I'm waiting on "Code" by Petzold to arrive, which I'm hoping will scratch a similar itch, but this seems like a really great way to do it! The nand2tetris course seems so very great. Emulating it all in C sounds fun.
Sounds great. Don't listen to the pseudo-realists who chase dreams of grandeur rather than doing something (at least semi-) useful or good with their lives.
The word "free" is being ruthlessly abused here, surely...
If I follow the link there, it costs 239E for a 5-day pass, where each of the 5 days must be used in a 1 month period. That's not "gratis", that's 47.8E per day the train is used?
I only learned yesterday after reading this article that, apparently, a good many countries have no taxes on gambling wins. The reasoning is - again, from my quick bit of reading, if someone in the know wants to correct me please do - that most people lose, and the government doesn't want to be liable to help all the people who lose heavily.
Which is great for the pros, I suppose. Here's a list of countries, which you'd have to check individually, after I searched "gambling tax free countries":
Austria
Australia
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Luxembourg
Malta
Romania
Sweden
United Kingdom
> The laws concerning gambling tax around the world aren’t all black and white. In most cases, there is a sort of gray area which states that you will be taxed on winnings if gambling is your profession or your main source of income. However, if you gamble and win but you have a bigger source of income and don’t rely on professional gambling to pay the bills, you won’t be taxed.
In other countries, like Kenya and Ireland, players aren’t taxed on their winnings, but bookies must pay a certain percentage of taxes on the total bets or winnings they record. In Ireland bookies must pay 1% on all bets placed through them, while in Kenya bookies have to pay 7.5% tax on all winnings they record.
I am to provide some context, in many of those countries people do not normally fill in tax reports, themselves, either. Lots of those countries have rather sophisticated regulations when it comes to gambling.
Take Italy which (along the UK) has one of the largest gambling market and the strictest regulations. Effectively every bet is sent to the regulator in near real time and some stuff like bringing money to the table (game) requires an explicit approval of the regular beforehand. To put it simply taxing the gambling firms, that already need a license, is much easier.
There are monthly reports, regulator mandated vaults that have to reflect the state of each player, including all bets and wins done, player (and operator) set limits (e.g deposit limits)
So overall not taxing the end user is a good choice, it just it's a lot more involved that just 'no taxation'
I've probably 10 more questions, but you've already shared generously in a couple of other comments. Thanks for that. I've bookmarked, and will investigate. Best of luck with it
Could you share the name of your former employer, or if you can't, could you share the name of similar employers?
I'm on a bit of a probability (gambling, sports betting, stats, etc) kick these days, and I'd be interested in reading more about people and companies doing this in practice. I'd been imagining there must be organised sports gamblers, but they don't seem to be overly searchable.
I don’t know exactly how these companies make their money and how successful they are, but I at least believe all of them are in the odds computation business. They might be supplying prices to bookmakers instead of betting themselves etc.
Longshot Systems
Football Radar
Gambit Research
SportsRadar
Odds Reactor
Star Lizard
Smartodds
Smarkets
These companies are known more for their HFT trading in financial markets, but I believe they have also expanded into sports betting.
jane street
jump trading
Susquehanna
Also some of the bookmakers such as matchbook have started as betting group and then overtime turned into a bookmaker as that is where the real money is.
Oh wow, it's happening there! I've followed and starred and bookmarked and all that, and will be having a browse around a bit more closely when I get a moment. I think I'm roughly understanding what the group is about. I'll follow up, thanks!
Does anyone have any links to political analysis of what's going on with chess.com, and its involvement in various scandals? I think your wager has something to it, in any case.
I think there'd be material there for an investigative journalist (if such a thing still exists to get out the old whiteboard and start figuring out connections and trying to piece together what might be going on behind the scenes. In any case, there's a lot of money involved.
