skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem with your theory is that many banks kept the riskiest tranches of loans for themselves while selling the safer tranches to others. They would only have done this if they believed the underlying mortgages were still good.

Regardless, none of this would have been possible if housing consumers didn't become housing speculators. Realtors ran commercials encouraging women to browbeat their husband into buying houses they couldn't afford (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubsd-tWYmZw). Bush and Barney Frank encouraged commercial banks to lower lending standards. Speculators followed the crowd and suffered for their folly. The bubble would have existed without speculators, though it probably would not have been as large.
Going up? Not at Supreme Court entrance
I am building a tablet from scratch with identical specs based on the Tegra developer kit. Will post about it on HN once the project is farther along. Ive waited for others to deliver features I want for too long, time to build my own.
I like reading books, but I don't have a Kindle and I haven't purchased any books on my iPad.

imo you're making a mistake in looking at the "average" number across all iPad owners. Many of these people will probably never buy a Kindle anyway.

Before you use any "average" numbers to make conclusions about the iPad, you should be looking at the average number of books purchased on an iPad within a more narrow segment of the market - e.g. among iPad owners who have bought more than 3 e-books on any device.
I keep hearing about how hyperinflation is about to hit. Surely in an efficient market, if this was truly likely, its effects would already be being felt? What is the rationale behind its prediction?
Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction?

It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their personal definition of "death" is.

The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back", some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because they believe it would be someone else who would come back.

So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit defined as you would not be operational anymore".
Really? I absolutely hate it :( It doesn't slide well at all on any surface I've tried, so it's so uncomfortable to use. And to make matters worse, it detects right vs left clicks quite poorly. Apple makes fantastic hardware, but in my opinion they have never once made a good mouse (and I've used every single mouse they've ever released).

And not an actual knock against the magic mouse as this is not its intended purpose, but: worst gaming mouse of all time :)
List Comprehensions in Ruby
Exactly. Extrapolation from limited data is bound to be useless, give it 6 months and then let's look at it. By then there will probably be a lot more books available too, publishers will look at the number of ipads sold as a big factor in deciding whether or not to release their content on the medium.
Nice! Has anyone worked with embedding Bespin? How difficult is it to add to your own work?
Tim Ferriss: Dealing with Haters
I have an HP enterprise laptop for work. It's junk. Just moving the mouse makes the fan spin up to sound like a jet taking off.
In the event that they use WebOS, How is Linux more 'proprietary' than Windows 7? How is it untested when it's shipping on real phones right now?
I tried very hard to use ogg for encoding a video about 1.5 years ago as well (it was a requirement) and it was so painful. The tools are awful and it took me 5 tries just to get something that wouldn't crash most players if you tried seeking.

After I finally got something valid, I ended up settling with a file 1.6x the size of the h264 file I would've created that looked only a little worse.

For amateurs like me ogg is hard. h264 is easy.
Being 23 With Nothing Can Get Better
Well, remember that most people in the world aren't from the US. It's like saying "you can't say whatever you want on the Internet" because in China you can't.
Hawkins: Virtual Goods Market To Hit $100 Billion This Decade
AT&T’s farce Also know as their messaging plan.
Retitled after "link-bating" accusation. I disagree, but let's all hug :)
I saw a Kindle 2 for the first time last week, and I was seriously underwhelmed. I can’t imagine how it has gained any traction. The screen is slightly larger than a post-it note, and the best comparison I can come up with is of reading a book on an Etch-a-Sketch.

I have read a ton of Project Gutenberg books on the iPad already, and it is fabulous. The screen does wash out in direct sunlight, but it’s still very readable—I took it to the beach in Hawaii last week a ton and read it for hours. Beyond the beach I can’t imagine anywhere I would ever read something in direct sunlight during the course of my normal life—it’s an enormous edge case for me. Ironically, I’m unable to read a real book at the beach in direct sunlight, because too much light reflects off the page and I can’t stare at it.

And I don’t agree that it’s not as nice as reading off paper or e-ink. Everyone mentions eyestrain but my eyes have never felt ‘strained’, even after reading for six hours. I guess different strokes for different folks, but I don’t think the Kindle and iPad are any comparison. It’s like comparing a calculator and a laptop.
An interesting point, though I don't think it justifies the way the new article chose to change the meaning of the original by rephrasing it.

I don't think it's just Windows that encourages x86 use; it's also the fact that the ecosystem is richer for that chipset anyway (hardware compatibility for things like the webcam and card reader come to mind). If you decide to go with a linux distro on top of custom hardware, then you might have to develop drivers yourself, as well as build up some UI paradigms customized for touch. WebOS gives them a great starting point to do just that, so in the end their actions still look consistent with their goals.
Not just rationing. TFA talks about price controls, nationalization of oil companies, and even outright invasion of other countries to obtain "cheap oil".
Yes, but then Firefox users on Mac OS X or Linux would be out of luck.
True, without any specific knowledge I would guess that power online services would still be more economical than revering back to an offline business model. Sure the costs will go up but freighting costs will go up more.
Sigh. I have a Pre and I love it, but I don't want a bigger one. I want Windows 7 on a tablet (if any tablet at all). I want access to Roboform and Zumodrive and Dropbox and Trillian and full fledged Outlook/Exchange. I want Flash so I can play Facebook games (oddly more for work-related reasons).

I can't imagine trying to use a browser without Roboform for anything other than the most casual Googling on the go. All my media is in the cloud in Zumo.
I'd never realized how enormous the Burj Dubai is.
Fascinating stuff. It would be nice if after harping on how expensive it is, the author put the cost in perspective, maybe by giving a rough $/pound comparison between, say, this, a farmer's market, a CSA, and the grocery store. $20 a week isn't bad at all if it's getting four people the majority of their produce. And I know a lot of people who'd pay a premium for this.
Using WordPress.com's TOS for your Web site could strip away legal protections
So, is Step #1 "Call all critics 'haters'"?

I'm thinking it's just bait in the title.
Alternate title: Reality distortion field explained
I still don't get it. Why change the position of the controls and put indicators there? Why not use the left side for the indicators and remove the `arrow`?

Maybe I'm becoming one of the tinfoil hat people, but: They change the controls position and allow the application itself to draw the windicators. Application knows nothing about the controls position or the theme really, so it's possible that ubuntu applications will simply draw on the right. Suddenly people have to patch the applications to use them on another distribution and use themes that match what ubuntu apps try to do... Did I miss something?

All of this seems weird again when they presented screenshots with ~6 icons in the notification area as a "bad" example and now they put the same amount of icons per application (where applications can use their own icon styles).
How Flash currently aids Javascript development
"Foo is a fast, easy way to bar." makes it clear what Foo does, and on what dimensions it's supposed to excel. That's clear and useful.

Please don't bog me down in details right out of the gate. Give me the 30,000 foot view, with an option to drop down lower if I like the lay of the land.
Where can I download the WebOS source code? Where is a WebOS-only laptop that I can test?
Goldbugs think any fiat currency will eventually hyperinflate. Note this is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
Good advice. I'll start tonight.

Thanks!
That might work if the developed world was driving the increase in fuel consumption, but that hasn't been true for quite some time. North American oil consumption is already going into decline, but global demand pressure is coming from the developing world - China, mainly, followed by India - as well as all the oil-producing countries with nationalized industries and artificially low domestic prices (Venezuela, most of the Middle East).

Those consumers will not be buying plug-in Priuses; and with consumption growing rapidly in the oil exporting countries, once they pass their national production peaks their export rates will decline faster than their own production rates.
Yes but PCI compliance still leaves people open, see this which is not covered by any of the regulations :
http://www.merchant-advise.co.uk/The_Biggest_Flaw_In_The_PCI...
Ask NH: How much is good marketing worth?
A couple of friends and I have a start-up business. We have all the technical know-how and are confident of making a good product. A contact of mine is interested in the project and wants to participate. She claims to have a good network, incl. Techcrunch et cetera, and would use it to promote us. She also made some money from an earlier successful start-up, whereas this is the first start-up for everyone on the current team.

How much is she worth in shares of the company?
Wrong question - 25 from years from now, our aggregate energy needs will certainly have increased, but we will have had ample time to adjust for the decline in oil reserves by substitution and per-capita demand reduction, which is relatively elastic over longer terms.

If we wanted - and anyone who questions the existence of political will is right to be worried - we could replace our oil fuel use almost entirely over that timespan with nuclear power. I know, there's a peak uranium issue as well.

On the other hand, Europe and the US now find themselves awash in natural gas, which is a pleasant reversal of where we expected to be a few years ago; and renewable power generation is becoming price-competitive and deployed in sufficient volume to yield economies of scale, so we can reasonably hope for that trend to continue over the next 25 years too. I don't think we need to resurrect Thomas Malthus just yet.
I've only got one caveat about this article - in a competitive space where money is being raised, being 'the leading provider of' or 'the market leader' counts for a lot. There's therefore a lot of incentives for the less-than-ethical to exaggerate numbers that can't easily be independently verified.

If you go out the door with hard stats, be prepared for someone else to use those stats and claim they're doing better than you - and their claim will have a bit more verisimilitude because they won't have to guess about your performance. Frustrating, but it happens.
I think it opens up a bunch of new doors for reading. Its perfect for interactive children's books with mixed media. I can see my future child learning how to read by using an iPad.
Or, in other words, the believers become relaxed and content. Never thought of prayer-time as being a time of needing to having one's guard up. Is the suggestion that prayer is bad?
A Flash/HTML5 "Comprimise"?
Alex Proj Ch 16: You Want Aliens With That?
United and Continental Airlines Merge
Gaming market. It'd be cool to see them go up against xbox/wii/playstation. I think they could do a very nice job.
I’ve read my iPad at the beach for hours, and I have no complaint whatsoever. It’s actually superior to a book, because the pages of a book reflect too much sunlight for me to look at it comfortably.
Fun. The only value the name brands have over generics is an assumption that they are going to put the right dose in, and not use untested ingredients. That's why you pay extra, because they are not going to fuck around with ways to cut costs.

But I forgot, this is America. Buy generic, I guess...
I wouldn't be so confident about naming a particular ceiling price, but as oil becomes more expensive demand will fall and individuals and industries will move to other sources of energy. In particular within the next 5-10 years it looks as if electric vehicles are going to be a growth area, mainly driven by rising costs on conventional fuel.
Very little electricity is petroleum based anymore. Depending on region it's mostly coal, hydro, or nuke.
Mint.com: 'Android is just more logical'
Don't worry, I'm sure the downvotes you saw were from a reading of your comment as snarky. There are a lot of Apple haters out there and "what are those?", can easily become "oh yeah? well, what are those use cases smart guy? paper-weight?" in some people's mind.

Your question is totally relevant. The iPad has been presented as being great as many things, but I'd also be curious to know the opinion of people who've used it extensively. During a brief test with one, I just didn't what to do with it. It's the kind of device that you need to really use to see the benefit I think.
It's all good re. the link. $9 is not alot to spend on this quest. Did you get a chance to look at the results?

I think I have alot to go over (trying not to get overwhelmed) but I am very glad for all the input.

Good idea about the blog, thank you.
There is probably a similar effect in Apple fans listening to a Jobs keynote, and so on. If you like what you are hearing, you are not going to be skeptical about it.
Disregard this statement.
Since I was speaking about this specific case and not similar DSLs in general, all I can say is that neither of those is valid Ruby with either of these frameworks.
I think an intervention would be a disaster.

If Steve Jobs is right, and the progress of the platform is really slowed by cross platform toolkits, then intervention would literally slow down the progress of computing, and possibly set a precedent that slows progress indefinitely. If by being right, Apple ends up in a more dominant position, that won't prevent Google and Microsoft from altering their own strategies to compete. Both of them still have massive market power they can leverage.

If he's wrong, then surely he's handing a serious competitive advantage to Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia etc, and as all the cool apps start to appear on all of these platforms along with a plethora of interesting and cool devices, Apple will shrink back to a minority player differentiated only by style.

I think it would be a terrible for both sides of this debate if the outcome is determined by judges and Apple is not allowed to take this risk.
That's my hypothesis, anyway.
The book is simply great. The arrogance people refér to is called skepticism towards bs
lol, thanks for givin' it to me straight-no-chaser.
Or perhaps "self" is the leaky abstraction.
How GPS works: a very thorough GPS tutorial
From the article: "The brain activity changed only in response to prayers they were told came from the healer."

In other words, it's not the perception of prayer. It's the perception of supernatural intervention. Totally misleading title.
Monetization of massive US debt, particularly due to the present value of the future liability of social programs. If current spending patterns don't change, monetization is the only alternative to defaulting on Treasury obligations, unless we begin cutting programs (ex. military spending) to help fund those liabilities or reduce those liabilities by reducing social program benefits.

Given what just happened in the RMBS and CMBS market, it's hard to claim that we live with an efficient market, particularly with respect to long-term trends.
I would like to see some sources for the "more than 100 years of oil left" claim. If it's at all based on 'public reserve levels' declared by oil producing countries, those are basically totally fabricated.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilan...

In any case, it's the first claim in the article, he should back it up.
This is a good step for both Bespin and Processing: a practical implementation of Bespin, and an interface for Processing that's nicer than the current one.

It seems a bit unfinished though; I couldn't get any animations to work, and saving and such is clearly on the way, but hopefully it'll get there. There's a lot of potential here.
"The time has passed for the Twitter API" -Mullenweg
For most readers that screen-size is fine, but if you really want to read you'll need the Kindle DX.
Press agency sues photographer for claiming copyright in own photos via twitpic
Except, that's not what the article is talking about. It was not the person praying that had their activity shut down, but the person hearing prayers. And not prayers in general, but only when coming from someone they perceived to be a "healer", but not prayers by an "ordinary" Christian.
That's an encouragement; thank you.
Honestly, I'd've happily taken "because we want to remind people of the Mac, not win32" as a reason. Which is what I inferred and seemed perfectly good justification for a "we said so" type decision.

Of course, in light of this I may be blowing smoke out my ass here, but I'm still in favour of it for that reason even if it wasn't Canonical's reason.
Right, that's why I think that the total number of books sold, not the number per device, would be an interesting number to compare. Are there more books being bought for the Kindle or for the iPad? What does that graph look like?
On the other hand, I read on a kindle DX which has a large screen. I can't imagine reading on a smaller screen but the DX is perfect for me.
Thanks! That's great feedback.
Helpful, thank you.
Estimate for number of books sold per Kindle: 27
I believe Apple has the same deal.

How much would one have to charge each user to release a library for Linux that covers the H.264 fee?
The fifth is for this article, a guest post of hers.
Sounds like the Adam from Notion Ink: http://www.notionink.in/adamoverview.php
But at that point, you’re spending as much as an iPad for something that has a fiftieth the functionality, and not to mention no color screen. I still just don’t get it.
Hey Mark, it would have been a good idea if you'd mentioned this in the context of the whole "buttons on the left" debacle. At least then there would have been some justification for the UI change other than the nebulous "frees up space nicely on the right".

Maybe he just enjoyed watching the ensuing drama.
The one use case that I've seen so far that I really didn't anticipate was the 'toddlers computers', that was totally original.

There must be countless others. I'm still in 'wait and see' mode about the ipad, especially with the way Apple has been behaving lately but there is bound to be competition and form factor related applications are likely going to be portable from one platform to another.
I made this estimate as a follow-up for this discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1315149. Please suggest how to make this more accurate, and whether you believe the assumptions above.
MongoDB development release 1.5.1
But it is authentic.
Why not just make an API and let the community add the codec?

//Anders
Just a thought. Wouldn't it make more sense for HP to take that cool billion to microsoft for an initiative to further 7 for tablets... OR microsoft to buy palm and further the initiative themselves? HPs business is not OS (we'll leave HP-UX out of this).. I really see no point in them controlling their own OS for devices like these, unless they want to open source it eventually or something I'm not seeing.
I've found that most of the things I do for fun and to "waste" time on the internet are easier and more fun on the iPad. Twitterrific, Instapaper, Net News Wire, checking HN, and several different games are what I have used it for the most so far. I mostly find myself turning to using my traditional computer for coding and watching hulu.
I estimated number of books sold per Kindle as 27 - discussion is here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1315532
They could port from a touch interface to something like a cross between the Magic Mouse and the Wii controller and/or use your iPhone to interact with the screen.
Someone should do something like this for hackers interested in math...or does such a site already exist?
Teach Yourself Programming in 10,000 Hours
Where's the app?
Just curious: Are you being cynical?
Android Game "Push Down" shown to be NP-Complete
Is it? My marketing copy doesn't agree. And that has worked out pretty well.
Wrong! The effect is exactly the same because Apple is a religion. :-)
If your left-click finger is resting on the left side of the mouse when right clicking it registers as a left click. Back and Forward are achievable with two-finger dragging to the left and right, but what about middle clicking?

I agree that it seems pretty magic, but at the end of the day different physical buttons are preferable to a single flat surface that affords everything; The mouse gives you no physical hints on how to use it.
Curious, what does it mean to "bikeshed" something?
the price driver is not so much the cost to produce as it is the rate of production.

Neither of these are ever what determine the price. Price is determined by the intersection of what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept in payment.

Now, the cost to produce, as well as the production rate (in relation to the consumption rate at a given price) may well feed into the seller's decision about what they're willing to accept. But that's a second-order effect. Sellers charge what buyers are willing to spend. They'll make more of it if there's a good profit to be made; if nobody will pay very much, they'll invest their money in producing something different.

The price that a buyer is willing to pay is influenced by how important is the goal for which he wants to use the product, but also how readily he use an alternate product in substitution for this primary one.

Thus, he may be willing to forgo the purchase of a vacation trip, because it's just not worth the money.

He might also, in the longer term, substitute different goods. So in a longer time horizon, he might change jobs to one that allows him to telecommute, in order to circumvent gas prices. Or car manufacturers might see that they themselves are having trouble selling gas-guzzlers, and change production to alternate-fueled cars, like electric (whose power is ultimately generated by coal or nuke), or maybe engines fueld by natural gas, or something.

So in the big picture, there are many safety valves allow this pressure to be dissipated.
My bet is AppleTV+Console combo, though they have burned themselves on Pippin. But then again, they burned themselves on Newton also and they brought it back as an iPhone and iPad. I guess they are determined to bring their ideas/products to light, no matter how much they wait!