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cawelon Steady-state economics

But the problem is that if there’s an oil spill off the coast of Mexico or the U.S., this also contributes to GDP. If we have more crime in society and pay to deal with it, this contributes to GDP. If we have more war, it contributes to GDP. Our main indicator of economic progress doesn’t distinguish between beneficial economic activity and dysfunctional economic activity.

This is my favorite paragraph, because it is key to make people realize why GDP growth does not necessarily improve people's lives.

cawelon How I Explained REST to My Wife (2004)

And that time period might be at most a month, considering the last post with the exact same link (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5186774 ) predates the current post by 31 days.

cawelon Why Study History?

So far, I have been taking 2 history courses [1][2] on coursera.org (which offers over 300 free online courses) and I can certainly recommend both of them. Each course looks like this: about 2 hours of video lectures per week (which you can watch whenever you want), over a period of ~15 weeks. Clearly, following those history courses meant that I do not see the world with the same eyes now. For one, I feel that I am developing a (healthy) reflex to view news events in perspective within a longer period of time, instead of just considering the events in themselves (thus lacking context). Also, drawing parallels with similar events in the past provides insight and offers a wider and more informed framework for devising an appropriate action.

[1] "The Modern World: Global History since 1760" https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld

[2] "A History of the World since 1300" https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300

cawelon Unix tricks

Here is a detail when using '!!:n' with ':p' when trying to iteratively construct a complex command. I want to emphasize the use of the up-arrow (which will show the interpolated arguments), as opposed to rewriting exactly what you wrote in the previous command, since the usage of ':p' will be interpreted by the shell as a command in itself:

    $ echo a b c d
    a b c d
    $ echo !!:2:p
    echo b
    $ echo !!:2
    -bash: :2: bad word specifier # there was only 1 argument in last command

However:

    $ echo a b c d
    a b c d
    $ echo !!:2:p
    echo b
    $
    <up-arrow pressed once will give the following prompt> 
    $ echo b

cawelon Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality

While this is mathematically true, I don't think it is necessary to acknowledge it in order to suggest/discuss a reasonable model for wealth distribution. I would even say that it is beside the point. The OP is trying to show that the order of magnitude of US wealth (or income) inequality is shocking. Moreover, most of us vastly underestimate the magnitude of US wealth inequality. And I would add as an example that many still believe in the American Dream, even if the US is one of the worst OECD countries when it comes to social mobility [1]. As George Carlin was saying, "You have to be asleep to believe it."

Back to the OP, when the top 1% has 24% of income (and 40% of wealth), that means there's a lot of luxury in the US which could instead be used to improve the life of some other less fortunate citizens. The economics rhetoric is clearly failing: the current wealth distribution is certainly not the most efficient distribution of resources if one is to include "quality of life" in the equation.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/economicpolicyreformsgoingfor...

cawelon Scientific publishing: Changing Nature

Episciences would piggyback on ArXiv, a free online repository beloved of physicists and mathematicians who post most of their work there, whether or not they submit it to peer-reviewed journals. ArXiv is already hosted by Cornell University at a cost of around $830,000 a year.

That sounds like a lot of money, even considering the amount of publications. What would be the lion's share of the cost?

cawelon Behold, the Kindle of the 16th Century

Princeton professor Anthony Grafton has an actual book wheel in his office. One can see it behind him on the first picture on the right: http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/11-0404/f...

cawelon Is your stuff falling apart? Thank Walmart.

Blame the government. They are the gatekeepers that choose to allow this type of pollution.

It is Walmart – not the government – which pollutes in somebody else's garden. And North American consumers are certainly to blame as well for shopping at Walmart and thus contributing to increase its clout.

If consumers could see the details of the whole supply chain (from collecting the raw materials all the way to putting the product on the shelf), companies with no concerns other than maximizing profits – like Walmart – would lose their customers in no time.

cawelon Is your stuff falling apart? Thank Walmart.

As usual, the capitalist view has it in terms of the individual (as opposed to the collectivity or even the whole planet). One can think about the (perceived) benefits of buying (allegedly) cheap products. But like many things, the figure on that price tag is not the real price. It leaves out externalities.

Indeed, there was both a human (e.g. low salary for those workers, incredibly long working days for those Asians manufacturing the cheap product) and an environmental cost (e.g. pollution in countries where the anti-pollution laws are non existent, carbon emitted during transport). Those costs are not factored into the figure one can see on that price tag.

cawelon Nick Hanauer: Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators

My favorite paragraph is this:

It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.

That's an excellent counter-example of trickle-down economics.

cawelon The lexicon of hedge funds

"Zilch Capital LLC": how appropriately named! And how ironic that the cover title of this week's edition reads "Over-regulated America".

cawelon Rage against the machine

I stand corrected. 1999 it is. Thanks for caring about historical accuracy.

cawelon Rage against the machine

That's crazy, isn't it. It makes you realize how important it is to diversify one's sources of information (as well as to be open to different points of view), in order to avoid unconscious brainwashing.

cawelon Rage against the machine

The removal of a regulation is quite different from co-opting the government to do the industry's bidding.

In 1993, the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall Act under pressure from Wall Street because Clinton wanted to secure Wall Street's financial support for his coming reelection. Wall Street money effectively contributed to shape the financial system in Wall Street's favor, that is, towards less financial regulation.

With this perspective, I see the removal of the Glass-Steagall Act regulation as an example of co-optation.

cawelon Rage against the machine

I thought the formulation of the OWS's protests was both succinct and accurate:

The Anglo-Saxon model claimed that free markets would create prosperity; many voters feel instead that they got a series of debt-fuelled asset bubbles and an economy that was rigged in favour of a financial elite, who took all the proceeds in the good times and then left everybody else with no alternative other than to bail them out.

But it's painful to see The Economist recasting the problem along the lines of state interference (especially at the end of the article: Western governments have failed their citizens once) whereas the issue here is the co-optation of the political sphere by the financial sphere (the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under Clinton in 1993 being only one example).

cawelon After crisis: creative construction

Is there such thing as cycles for the world economy?

I'm guessing Perez cycles (covering an 'installation period' and a 'deployment period') would be laid out as such:

  1870-1920 (from severe recession towards the Belle Epoque)
  1920-1980 ("canal and railway manias ending in panics, the roaring twenties ending in the crash of 1929", followed by the booming post-war era)
  1980-2030 (dot com bubble ending in the 2000 NASDAQ crash, and financial bubble ending in the 2008 crash, probably followed by a booming period in the forthcoming decades)

cawelon Computer ownership by country

And personally I think they mean 'Canada' :)

cawelon Computer ownership by country

Ah. Israel has more computers than people.

cawelon YooPlace Ranks Popular Twitter Items With Replies, Mirroring Hacker News

We'll see if YooPlace can do more than the others have, and get real traction with the new features before Hacker News sues them and wants their interface back.

cawelon New hire cannon fodder

Point well taken for the unjustified personal attacks in the OP. Although exaggeration clearly is a figure of speech in this case, just like the 'cannon fodder'.

Although indeed there is no mention of 'lifestyle business' and 'VC-funded business', I read the OP as a voice for the former, in the context of the current (and interesting) debate between the two. Linking to and siding with Daniel Haran (the author of 'YC is cult', a pro lifestyle business) tend to support this.

I object to your reasoning that if I criticize someone who is doing X (combating and casting enemies), I must also be doing X.

I understand what you mean, and I'm sorry if you meant to criticize as opposed to 'combat'. However, your How can anything manage to be this incoherent, ignorant, dysfunctional did not sound right to me, hence my first reply to your comment.

cawelon New hire cannon fodder

I think it's an interesting perspective (plus, I like his style of writing).

We all get that the 'lifestyle business' runs with different assumptions than the 'VC-funded business'. It really is two different worlds. Why not just accept, then, that the 'lifestyle business' crowd has their own assumptions (just like HN has its own), instead of casting it as the new enemy?

On another (but related) line of thought, since the 'lifestyle business' crowd is in general older (compared to the HN crowd) and not a marginal group (it's quite a movement), don't you think it deserves some attention, instead of combating it?

cawelon Reddit vs Hacker News traffic

Awesome!

With the-largest-the-higher convention, you have a very telling visualization of the evolution of the streams with time.

And I thought Google Analytics graphs were the best. There's always room for innovation!

cawelon Breaking Free of Outlook

I wish Lightning would support the 64bit architecture. No calendar for me in Thunderbird :(

cawelon Spreading the gospel of entrepreneurship in the developing world

Interesting (as well as recurrent) property of the developing world, notably different from the developed world:

“If Endeavor had been an investor, rather than an independent, objective, non-profit enabler, it would not have been trusted by the business elite, or the entrepreneurs,” she insists. “Trust is everything.”

cawelon Developers needed; Hackers need not apply

It is sad that this discussion is about the definition of the term 'hacker', instead of the article's topic: some programmers care about the business core (a concept also touched on by Eric Evans (DDD)) while some others don't.

It is a good reminder, as often we're going too deep into the rabbit hole while writing code, forgetting in so doing the real business requirement.

Working on the business core resonates with Agile principles.

cawelon What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

This kind of talk reminds me of "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education": http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.htm...

cawelon If someone can do it for free, then it will be inevitably free

if someone can do it for free, then it will be inevitably free.

While this is a trend, it might not always be true.

In France, Mediapart (mediapart.fr) is a website with a focus on investigation-journalism, built on principles such as independence from political/media groups.

Subscription fee: 9 euros (14 usd)/month. The project founders are hopeful to reach a sustainable number of subscribers (which is 65 000, 3 years from launch; they currently have 8000 subscribers after 4 months).

Conclusion: a high-quality customized product for a niche, although online, could justify the price - directly paid by the users - for that product.

cawelon Happy Birthday, Stanley Kubrick

[...] the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

source: last sentence in this article from Nicholas Carr: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

cawelon Five Questions with Ryan Bates (Railscasts producer)

GitHub has improved my coding more than any other tool recently. [...] because it brings the social aspect into coding like never before. [...] It’s easier to go the extra mile for readability when you know others may be watching.

Github, the social network for hackers.

cawelon What does the word "Quality" mean?

The same piece of code will have a different value from one owner to the other. Thus, since the definition of quality depends on the context, doesn't it make quality inherently subjective?