JSig

I really like the package management options in emacs. Between Package.el (baked into emacs 24) and el-get I can include almost anything I need by configuring my dotfile. Packages from marmalade, elpa, git repo, hg, emacs wiki, etc...

I can blow away my .emacs.d and, when I restart, all of my configured packages are retrieved and installed. Bliss!

For me, this whole situation comes down to personal responsibility. It was EJ's decision to let a stranger stay in her home. No one made her do this. While it is unfortunate that this happened to her, she should have realized the risk. If others don't like the risk/reward they should not use the service.

If AirBnb were to bail her out, it would send signal that any future/past cases like this would be met with a similar reaction (hello US GOV!). I don't think this is a road they want to go down.

EJ's problem is her own. AirBnb's problem existed long before EJ.

Chrome dev tools now have pretty print built in. Probably need dev channel.

I eat with Peanut Butter and Jelly.

Whenever I need a refresher I go to Khan ->

http://www.khanacademy.org

While reading this, I kept thinking of the excellent Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last."

In it, The book loving protagonist survives the "end of the world" and, after being all alone, is ready to kill himself. But once he stumbles upon the library, he realizes he has the rest of his life to read whatever he wants. Of course, things don't go as planned.

"The answer to long term to unemployment is... We need to add to the Constitution the right to a decent education for every America. (including providing every student with an iPOD and a Laptop!)"

- Jesse Jackson Jr (March 2, 2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhdPrA0b1UM

Here is a nice chart showing YOY price index changes in various categories.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/what-is-really-inflatio...

The lead quote from Mans Adler is interesting. I'm still trying to grok it ->

"You don't start a rock band today, you start a company."

Is he trying to say that it is fashionable or trendy to be in a startup these days?

These ribbons look to be the same thing that exists in MS outlook. I must say that I think the outlook UI is messy. Way too much going on. If I used it more I would spend more time to learn the shortcuts. Since I don't know them I have to hunt through the numerous icons/options in the 'ribbon' like header which can be very frustrating.

"It's not a surprise that we know we have crises every five or ten years. My daughter came home from school one day and said, 'daddy, what's a financial crisis?' And without trying to be funny, I said, 'it's the type of thing that happens every five, ten, seven, years.' And she said: 'why is everybody so surprised?' So we shouldn't be surprised..." - Jamie Dimon (Chairman & CEO @ JP Morgan; Dir of the NY Federal Reserve)

If you agree with Mr. Dimon, the party will come to an end sooner or later - bubble or no bubble. Your best bet is to relax, enjoy yourself, have some drinks and ensure you have a driver to take you home when the party is over. As John Wooden said, "Failure to prepare is preparing to fail."

Personally, I don't know if there is a bubble. But, I see plenty of cracks in the system that are cause for concern.

Are we moving towards a world where people walk around with video cameras strapped to their heads to broadcast for all? While elements of such a world might be cool, it seems a little too 1984 for my likes.

I find it interesting that people would choose to forgo organic real life experiences in favor of these augmented tech mash-ups. If I'm on the beach, I want to breath in the crisp air, feel the warmth of the sun, touch grains of sand, hear birds singing, and see the ocean waves wash ashore. I don't want to have my face stuck to the god damned igadget to see a pic someone else took of the same damn thing I can see with my own eyes.

To others, the matrix awaits.

How about a website that will aid in classifying your something as either a nothing, project or a startup?

OK. I think I've just found my new startup. YC look out!

Attn MEAPs: I was notified this morning of the following:

"We are pleased to announce that The Joy of Clojure is now complete! As a MEAP subscriber you can download your copy of the finished ebook right now! "

I was starting to wonder if I was going to ever get a final copy.

I wish to hell I had learned the Soroban growing up. Now it's on my unending todo list. I'll probably make a go at it when my kid is ready for it. We can learn together :)

I'm using sound manager on http://hackernewsradio.com as well. Right now I am just forcing flash. I had too many problems with html5 audio.

I really wanted speex encoded audio but that is not an option. If I remember correctly Opera handled streaming speex/ogg like a champ. Firefox may have worked... I can't remember. Everything else sucked.

Great, idea! It is now available on radiotime.com!

>>is it just reading /newcomments? If it read out the on: <topic> that would give it more context.

It is currently reading comments for only one submission at a time. Each submission's comments are read from top to bottom so each thread's context should be retained.

Yes you can! The TTS Engine I am using ships with a British female. Tomorrow I will load her up just for you!

A year ago I wrote up some notes for an idea that has elements of this. Funny enough, I sent it to Google and Amazon. I don't know why I bothered. I just wanted to tell someone, I suppose. I did not have a blog then... well I barely have one now. Also, The plan was not exactly something I could do on my own.

The idea was called Travel Packs. You're going to travel? Send your itinerary to Google and it will decide what you need/want to go into your luggage. Google will do all of this by using your itinerary, profile, body dimensions, weather, etc... The Travel Pack will then magically appear at your destination. When your done with your trip, just leave it behind.

Great things about this:

1) You no longer have to pack or bring luggage with you when traveling. 2) Companies have a new way to target consumers. Imagine all of the companies who will compete to have their products placed in these packs. 3) Consumers get to try out new things without having to buy them. How about letting consumers purchase items from the Travel Pack at discounts.

To make this work, the clothes will have to fit. To do that we probably need 3D scans, although that may not be necessary for first iterations. Google has shown the initiative to map the world, why not drive around and start mapping the people. Just think of what you could do with these data! Of course many people would be uncomfortable with these scans and discussion probably needs to happen about who would own these data.

Anyway, I was once pretty stoked about this. Now I don't really care. But I think it's something that someone will do. Actually, I think there is already a company trying to make a go at pre-packaged luggage though I don't know how intelligent it is.

The title implies that we have functioning market today. Let's say a functioning market is something that provides real time price discovery and efficient transaction execution.

I think it's fair to say that a clever person would not have to steal a bank's quant code to take down the market. I'm sure some element of the infrastructure could be targeted.

Maybe a better question to ask is, Do we currently have a fair market and if Hackers steal a bank's quant code would we have less of a fair market?

I suggest this question based on the following quote:

"The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti [in regards to the code taken by Sergey Aleynikov]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=...

Here we have the bank admitting that the software can be used to "manipulate markets." With these banks having quarters with no losing trading days, are we to believe that they are not using this software to manipulate markets?

Your note on diversification reminds me of a video I recently saw from Eric Sprott. In it he said the following.

"I focus in on things. I get deep into things that I like. I dont worry about diversification. I think it was Warren Buffet who coined the term 'diworsification'. I dont belive in diversification. For example on the long side of our funds we are well through 70% into precious metals. For me, I am probably into 70-80% gold. For me it does not bother me because I know that is the place where I have to go."

He is a man of conviction.

Here is another post where OP talks more of dipshit company.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1650651

This is the approach I took when learning Clojure. I started diving into the language and then stopped everything to learn Scheme. It was painful because I really wanted to be doing Clojure. When I finally got back to Clojure I think that it helped out a ton. Cons, car and cdr oh my!

I believe that doing what I did is not necessary to get started with Clojure. It seems like the choice between top-down and bottom-up design. If you choose Clojure first, you will learn concepts that will help if you should ever approach scheme.

This thread from the Clojure Google group may be of some interest: Thinking in Clojure

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure/9JufDYgE8DQ/overvi...

Three years ago when we took my daughter to her first pediatrician appointment, the doctor brought a laptop into the examining room with her. The doctor barely looked at my kid. She just sat there typing away looking at her machine. In my mind technology had become a barrier to the doctor/patient (parent) relationship. It was very frustrating. But, there were many things frustrating about that Dr. so it could have just been her. We quickly found a much better one.

So, maybe you should design the interface good enough that docs want to use it but not too good that they use it all the time. Or you can put some alerts in there so that when the doc has been watching too many videos, it reminds them to look at the patient..... just kidding....

When I spent more time writing songs, I would go through a similar emotional and mental strain but in smaller iterations. There would be periods in which no matter what chord progression or melody I came up with, it always seemed to sound like a song that someone else had already written. When this happened I would discard the song in frustration, even if it had great potential.

In time I figured out that some of my favorite songs had the same chord progressions, structure and melody as each other but they still did not sound the same. Why not?

Every artist has a vision and a song written by someone else should have no impact on that vision. My problem was that I was too worried on being original instead of being focused on having a vision.

Just as music has been passed from generation to generation so are ideas. Many ideas seem to owe to some other idea. Don't worry about being the first. Worry about being the best.

These people are supposed to be public servants. You would expect a special kind of person willing to make sacrifices for the greater good to take these jobs.

I would expect that pay and benefits should be pegged to the private sector. In some cases they could make more and some cases they could make less. But overall it should come close to private sector pay.

Average Compensation (2009)

Federal (123,049) State & Local (69,913) Private (61,051)

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afe...

I'm not a big fan of public unions. It seems like there is nobody at the bargaining table on the side of the tax payer. Also, if people don't like the benefits that come with serving the public, they should not take the job. Like I said, it should take a special kind of person.

Here is a nice article on public unions

The Beholden State How public-sector unions broke California http://city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html

>> So who won in this debacle?

The author does not mention the advantages that would come to GM as a result of this recall. Since the gov is an owner of GM, you could argue there was a potential conflict of interest here.

See this ->>>

"GM isn't wasting any time taking advantage of Toyota's weakened position after its massive recall and sales stoppage. The General has just announced new incentives for current Toyota customers.

In a phone call to Inside Line, a GM official said the new offer consists of zero percent financing for 60 months on most Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models. Cash buyers get $1,000 toward a down payment and lease customers can get a waiver of three payments up to $1,000.

To qualify for the incentives, customers must show proof that they own or lease a Toyota.

This is starting to get interesting. "

http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-reca...

>> It's a collaboration of MS employees and community members and they take outside contributions. Not sure what's wrong with that.

I agree, nothing wrong with that. I think a lot of the stuff that MS has been doing under Scott Guthrie in recent years has been very good in regards to fostering a better community.

>> It needed to be in VS to take off.

Do you think NuGet would be successful if MS had not officially endorsed the project?

My beef with .NET is that the platform and community does not feel very organic like it is with others. Making a huge generalization, I would say that the .NET community waits around for the Mother ship to produce something that it can use. This was one impetus for the ALT.NET movement.

A great example of community in action is the castle project at http://www.castleproject.org/

In the year 2010, .NET finally has a package management system. Guess who created it?