Merry Almost Christmas Link Roundup

Here's a neat way to look up MICs which is more accurate than the files I get from ISO.

Seriously considering becoming a VIX perpetual swap dealer.

A snoozing blog with an excellent breakdown of different .net async models, and new features in new C#.

C# 7 looks like a party

Article goes over these awesome-looking features:

Part 1: Value Tuples
Part 2: Async Main
Part 3: Default Literals
Part 4: Discards
Part 5: Private Protected
Part 6: Read-only structs
Part 7: Ref Returns
Part 8: “in” Parameters
Part 9: ref structs
Part 10: (This post) Span and universal memory management

Can't wait until I get off of VS 2015 to something a little more modern.

Need to do some ASCII art?

Look no further than ascii.today!

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$$ |  $$ |$$ |  $$ |$$ |$$  __$$ |    
$$ |  $$ |\$$$$$$  |$$ |\$$$$$$$ |$$\ 
\__|  \__| \______/ \__| \_______|\__|

Windows console text editor roundup!

I'm not sure why I find this so exciting.

Real network debugging

This is some hard-core problem solving.

A coworker was experiencing a strange problem with their Internet connection at home. Large downloads from most sites worked fine. The exception was that downloads from a Amazon S3 would get up to a good speed (500Mbps), stall completely for a few seconds, restart for a while, stall again, and eventually hang completely. The problem seemed to be specific to S3, downloads from generic AWS VMs were ok.

Quant.SE roundup - 2018-01-23

Some interesting reads . . . What happens if a custodian bank defaults? Have your money elsewhere, and don't let those securities get rehypothecated.

How credible is Knight pointing the finger at Rule 107C? Not very - looks like they released test market making software into prod.

Blackberry retiring the World

A sad day - still have 2 BB10 devices in production.

A little more than a year ago BlackBerry Executive Chairman and CEO, John Chen, declared that BlackBerry’s transition to a software company was complete. And still, in an era where consumers have been “trained” to upgrade their phones every 18-24 months, it is a testament to the durability of our designs and brand loyalty that there are still millions of people actively using BB10 and BBOS devices, many of which are already more than ten years old. We manufactured our last BB10 and BBOS devices in 2015 and in the years since we have received many questions about our plans for ongoing support. First, we want to say thank you for your continued interest and passion for all things BlackBerry. Second, we want to acknowledge that we know your productivity relies upon the security, reliability, dependability, durability, extended battery life, and ease-of-use we designed and built into each handset. Third, we want to reward your loyalty by committing to providing you with at least two full years of additional support for BB10 and at least two full years of BlackBerry network access for BBOS devices. As a further show of our appreciation and gratitude, we are working with our partners at BlackBerry Mobile to offer a trade-up program that will provide you with a significant discount and incentive to upgrade your current BlackBerry device to a new BlackBerry KeyOne or Motion, both of which are the world’s most secure Android smartphones. While we are pleased to announce continuing support for BB10 and BBOS users for at least another two years, current device owners should be aware that we will be closing some ancillary services such as the BlackBerry World app store (12/31/2019), the BlackBerry Travel site (February 2018), and the Playbook video calling service (March 2018). Customers who upgrade to a new KeyOne or Motion won’t miss a beat as they’ll have immediate access to the rich universe of apps in the Google Play store without compromising on either security or their desire for a physical keyboard. Stay tuned to this site for details on how to take advantage of the trade-up program and we look forward to your continuing loyalty and interest in BlackBerry. Thank you.