vide0star

Tl;dr No

The field of probability was invented by largely French philosophers wanting to understand the math behind casino games. Casino games are nothing more (or less) than pure math. The 'unethical' part of casino comes from operators extracting too large of an edge. Obviously, the operator needs to make something to get paid to run the game, but the 'house edge' can be around 10%.

When thinking about gambling being ethical or not, IMO the important question is the price of the risk, not the mechanic of money traded for risk. Money for risk is very common (think insurance for example). Nobody would argue insurance is unethical. But if a home owner policy cost the price of the house annually, people would consider that unethical.

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile ONSITE

We're working on a financial exchange to trade events, mostly sports. Open source/linux stack.

We have a self-management system, no bosses.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/careers

Smarkets uses erlang extensively.

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £600 million of bets. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100. We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help. The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git.

For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

We have a flat structure with no technical managers at Smarkets (London). Engineers self-organise into projects. Projects are self-directed and members of the project appoint a lead and have quantitative goals. Salaries will be set from anonymous peer review. We're a team of 11 engineers.

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £600 million of bets. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100. We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help. The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git. For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £500 million of bets. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100.

We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help. The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git. For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £500 million of bets since launching in 2010. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100.

We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help. The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git.

For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Favorites win every game! Try doing your March Madness basketball bracket like that and you will not get very far. Saying the 1st and 2nd seed teams will be in the final is not a reasonable prediction.

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £365 million of bets since launching in 2010. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100.

We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help. The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git.

For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, VP of Engineering and Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £350 million of bets since launching in 2010. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100.

We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help.

The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git.

For more info: http://info.smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, VP of Engineering and Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team, and our platform has handled over £300 million of bets since launching in 2010. Smarkets has been featured in publications such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and was recently selected as part of the Startups 100.

We're building a reliable, low-latency exchange system to facilitate automated traded strategies, as well as a fast, modern web interface. Our team constantly works on significant, challenging software engineering problems; if you're fed up of writing yet another boring CMS, we might be able to help.

The Smarkets platform is written predominantly in Python and Erlang, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We make extensive use of version control, configuration management and automated testing, which allows us to reliably deploy code to production several times a day.

Our team builds on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef and Git.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team. We've handled over £250 million of bets since launching in 2010.

Our office near Old Street in London is shared with other exciting startups and has a pool table, foosball table, and fully stocked fridge.

We're heavily driven by user-focused design and a focus on technology and engineering as a first class discipline. We write our software in Python and Erlang, and rely heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We build on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef, and Git.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/about/jobs/

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python, Erlang & Mobile

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team. We've handled over £250 million of bets since launching in 2010.

Our office near Old Street in London is shared with other exciting startups and has a pool table, foosball table, and fully stocked fridge.

We're heavily driven by user-focused design and a focus on technology and engineering as a first class discipline. We write our software in Python and Erlang, and rely heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We build on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef, and Git.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/about/jobs/engineering

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python & Erlang

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team. We've handled over £200 million of bets since launching in 2010.

Our office near Old Street in London is shared with other exciting startups and has a pool table, foosball table, and fully stocked fridge.

We're heavily driven by user-focused design and a focus on technology and engineering as a first class discipline.

We write our software in Python and Erlang, and rely heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We build on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef, and Git.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/about/jobs/engineering

Smarkets, London, Software Engineer, Python & Erlang

Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We're a well-funded company with a small, agile development team. We've handled over £200 million of bets since launching in 2010.

Our office near Old Street in London is shared with other exciting startups and has a pool table, foosball table, and fully stocked fridge.

We're heavily driven by user-focused design and a focus on technology and engineering as a first class discipline.

We write our software in Python and Erlang, and rely heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We build on a modern, open-source software stack which includes Linux, Vagrant, Flask, Eventlet, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Graphite, Chef, and Git.

For more info: https://smarkets.com/about/jobs/engineering

London: Python and Erlang Engineers, FT, not remote

Smarkets (https://smarkets.com)

Smarkets is a real-time online trading platform with an Erlang backend and Python frontend. Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange platform with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We have traded over £150 million of bets since launching in February 2010.

The part of our stack which runs behind the website is one of the few that uses Erlang as a primary language, and is supported by other well-known Erlang projects such as RabbitMQ and CouchDB.

The non-Erlang pieces of our stack are mostly written in Python, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We use the following technologies: VirtualBox, Vagrant, Flask, gunicorn, PostgreSQL, Ganglia, Icinga, Graphite, Cacti, Jenkins, Trac, Git and many other open source packages.

We are well-funded and growing quickly so are looking for Python and Erlang engineers to join our team. If you are looking for a flexible, agile team to work with; want to work somewhere free of big corporate politics; would like a cool project to work on; we’d love to hear from you! More details about the role and what we're looking for can be found on our blog: http://blog.smarkets.com/2012/07/31/smarkets-seeking-python-...

London: Python and Erlang Engineers, FT, not remote

Smarkets (https://smarkets.com)

Smarkets is a real-time online trading platform with an Erlang backend and Python frontend. Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange platform with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We have traded over £150 million of bets since launching in February 2010.

The part of our stack which runs behind the website is one of the few that uses Erlang as a primary language, and is supported by other well-known Erlang projects such as RabbitMQ and CouchDB.

The non-Erlang pieces of our stack are mostly written in Python, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We use the following technologies: VirtualBox, Vagrant, Flask, gunicorn, PostgreSQL, Ganglia, Icinga, Graphite, Cacti, Jenkins, Trac, Git and many other open source packages.

We are well-funded and growing quickly so are looking for Python and Erlang engineers to join our team. If you are looking for a flexible, agile team to work with; want to work somewhere free of big corporate politics; would like a cool project to work on; we’d love to hear from you! More details about the role and what we're looking for can be found on our blog: http://blog.smarkets.com/2012/07/31/smarkets-seeking-python-...

London: Python and Erlang Engineers

Smarkets (https://smarkets.com)

Smarkets is a real-time online trading platform with an Erlang backend and Python frontend. Smarkets is disrupting the global betting industry by offering a modern betting exchange product with significantly lower transaction fees than the competition. We have traded over £150 million of bets since launching in February 2010.

The part of our stack which runs behind the website is one of the few that uses Erlang as a primary language, and is supported by other well-known Erlang projects such as RabbitMQ and CouchDB. 

The non-Erlang pieces of our stack are mostly written in Python, and relies heavily on asynchronous programming techniques and REST. We use the following technologies: VirtualBox, Vagrant, Flask, gunicorn, PostgreSQL, Ganglia, Icinga, Graphite, Cacti, Jenkins, Trac, Git and many other open source packages.

We are well-funded and growing quickly so are looking for Python and Erlang engineers to join our team.

If you are looking for a flexible, agile team to work with; want to work somewhere free of big corporate politics; would like a cool project to work on; we’d love to hear from you!

More details about the role and what we're looking for can be found on our blog:  http://blog.smarkets.com/2012/07/31/smarkets-seeking-python-...

A review of a review?

Casino Jack documentary is a pretty good insight into the more unfortunate side of the lobbying process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Jack_and_the_United_Stat...

This is too general to be helpful. I think it's dangerous to try to distill entrepreneurship to a few bullet points of advice. Starting a company is complicated and nuanced. It takes years of hardwork. It's great to pass on experience of failures or successes, but would be better served in a more detailed format so it can be useful.

It's interesting that this question keeps getting mod'd up and then mod'd back down again. Elephant in the room? For as successful as Tumblr's growth has been, my guess that it's in large part due to the platform distributing a bazillion free porn images and videos. I would be curious to know how much of their traffic is actually porn. My sense is it could be > 80%.

Fwiw, I have nothing against porn. I think it is part of what powers the internet. But I think it's disingenuous to tout the success of a site when you're giving away something for free (much like free music or videos) virtually everybody wants.

What percentage of Tumblr traffic is pornography?

This is further evidence the industry should be regulated and taxed in the US. The amount of money following around the poker/betting/online gambling industry is immense and there's no reason with a little oversight that this mess can be avoided.

A few of my favourite docs:

Spellbound: story about kids entering a spelling bee - great film about the fabric of America Fog of War: Former Sec of Defence talking about war Capitalism- a love story: humorous look at our economic system Planet Earth: Breathtaking view of our environment

We use Erlang at Smarkets.com for a lot of things including a trading exchange

Smarkets in London: http://smarkets.com

Real-time trading platform. Python frontend, Erlang backend.

Smarkets is one of the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Tech Startups to watch in Europe and was shortlisted for the Startups Awards.

There's a lot of FUD surrounding the topic of high frequency trading (lowercase). Much more important to stability and sanctity of markets is transparency and effective regulation. Traders by design are trained to find inefficiencies to exploit -- that's how they make money. If some traders have discovered that by having computers trade really quickly, they can get an edge - well, that's kind of the point of trading. I think this paper is right to point out that high frequency trading has little to no impact on the overall marketplace.

We created a prediction market for the next winner of the Clay Prize here http://smarkets.com/current-affairs/clay-prize/next-winner