skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I have yet to hear any of them put actual numbers to their assertions. If you have any, I would honestly love to hear them.

As would I. Unfortunately, actual numbers seem hard to come by. Performance of CRA loans simply wasn't tracked. From a Fed study some years prior to the crisis:

We received responses from 143 of the 500 institutions to which we sent the survey (a 28.6 percent response rate). These responses and our follow-up telephone contacts revealed that banking institutions generally do not track profitability and performance separately for CRA-related lending... [1] [2]

For this reason, arguments absolving the CRA [3] instead look at high interest rate loans to low income households. If this is a good proxy for CRA lending, then CRA lending was a drop in the bucket.

However, there is evidence to the contrary. Edward Pinto, chief credit officer at Fannie Mae during the 1980s, published a report in 2008 that has some numbers you might be interested in. [4] From another article summarizing them [5]:

While it’s difficult to find data on how these CRA loans have performed, the few bank reports that break out these loans show much higher default rates than prime loans. Pinto’s research indicates that Fannie and Freddie’s affordable housing loans are a good proxy for CRA loans performance. For example, Fannie’s delinquency rate on its $900 billion in high-risk loans, 85 percent of which are affordable housing loans, was 11.36 percent at September 30, 2009—about 6.5 times the 1.8 percent delinquency rate on the GSEs’ traditionally underwritten loans. While the vast majority of CRA loans were fixed rate and did not have higher interest rates like other subprime loans, Pinto’s research has found that most had high risk characteristics such as small downpayments and impaired credit, signaled by a low borrower FICO score. As a result, loans with these high-risk characteristics have performed similarly to fixed rate subprime loans.

Perhaps more important in its implications for the financial crisis, Fannie and Freddie did not report that their mortgages were subprime and Alt-A. So instead of the 12 million prime loans market participants expected, Fannie and Freddie had added 12 million subprime and Alt-A loans to the market...

So, by the middle of 2008, there were almost 27 million subprime and Alt-A loans in the U.S. financial system. This amounted to almost 50 percent of all mortgages. More than two-thirds of these mortgages were held or guaranteed by government agencies like FHA (about 4.8 million), and the GSEs Fannie and Freddie (12 million loans), and by U.S. banks (a residual of about 2.2 million).

But I personally think the real answer is, we just don't know, CRA lending wasn't tracked. Hopefully next time we decide to experiment on this scale, we collect some data. ;)

[1] http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2000/1100.ht...

[2] http://www.federalreserve.gov/communitydev/craloansurvey.htm

[3] http://dallasfed.org/ca/bcp/2009/bcp0901.cfm

[4] http://www.aei.org/docLib/Pinto-Sizing-Total-Federal-Contrib...

[5] http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n2/cj30n2-12.pdf
Could someone please tell me why Hipmunk is so...well, hip? Why are they mentioned in the same breath as Dropbox, for example?
I wrote this:

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/

It's free. Do this:

1. Use your current computer. It doesn't matter if you have Linux, OSX, or Windows. What matters is that, right now, you want to learn to code, so you should go learn to code, not learn to setup a new OS.

2. Just use gedit. Don't use vim, vi, emacs, or any "hardcore" editor. On a Mac if you're using a non-English keyboard, use Textwrangler. Learning a new editor is not learning to code.

3. Start now, do what I tell you in the book. Type code in, do not copy-paste, make it run, fix it until it does, do the extra credit, then go on to the next one.

4. Other programmers will tell you to use their favorite tools, just ignore them. Just use gedit, Terminal (cmd on Windows), and python. That is all. Nothing else. Everything else is a distraction.

5. Finally, do it every night, for 2 hours a night, and take a break on one day. You'll be surprised how quick you can get through the book, and you'll get stuck sometimes, but keep doing it.

After that, move on to other more advanced topics and try to learn more stuff, but for now, just do this.
Here's the one that I wrote for my Linode setup. Nothing specific to linode, though.
https://github.com/neeleshs/django_project_template/blob/mas...
Future of the textbook: Lifetime access to up-to-date info
Wicked winnipeg tickets
Portfolio Websites, Web Development SEO Services
Portfolio Websites, Web Development SEO Services
having worked in Amsterdam for quite a while, i can highly recommend this place. It is one of the prettiest and most liveable cities I experienced. People are down to earth, speak excellent English and love to party. Everything is accessible by bike (no need for car/public transport). Finding an affordable place to live is hard, but that's the case with every city/area worth living. I didn't find it particularly expensive, my feeling is that it's in the middle range of Europe. Downsides are bad weather, long winter, and if you're short then 180cm you feel quite insignificant.
I am also in your shoes, and have started with http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ It seems to be one of the best ways to learn Python.
I keep hearing the phrase "worldwide food costs are at an all-time high" on NPR and in other news outlets; although I would expect natural disasters and political conflict and other changes in supply and demand to affect specific regional markets, I find it difficult to ascribe a worldwide across-the-board rise in commodities to just those explanations.

(I would expect a higher demand in China for American milk to actually decrease domestic milk prices, for example, assuming that production could be scaled upward to meet demand; given what I've seen of the dismal conditions of several dairy farms in California, healthy pastureland doesn't seem to be a requirement for operating a dairy.)

There's a solid alternative theory -- as yet unproven, though -- that makes a lot more sense to me. Relatively recent changes in the handling of speculation in commodities is causing across-the-board price increases where prices should be decreasing instead. For more info: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011415...
Simply put, you're hiring people to get it done in a specific way. That is their primary purpose and that is likely what they are getting paid for.

They either are not privy to this information or are not interested in doing what they are getting paid to do. It has nothing to do with them being a friend or not.

As for your boss woes, you stated you're capable of documenting why your way is the most plausible path you've been able to identify. If the other guy wants this project done and is a numbers guy he should be able to be reasoned with.

As an aside, if your project only requires templates with minor changes made to them my suggestion is to simply hire 1 developer to create a small script for you that will alter them programatically and your dilemma should be averted.
How many tokens of Arc would it take to make the display of comment scores configurable? I know that removing options is a good way to impose design but this just might be one of the cases for which mere user preference is enough.
On a related note, is there a repository of generic (though distribution-specific) deployment scripts for VPSes [+]? In my personal case I'm thinking along the lines of setting up BIND, sendmail and tweaking your HTTP server in one go, but the more choices the better.

[+] It would clearly apply to physical servers as well, but probably this carefree approach would be used most on VPSes.
What about encryption?
16 character limit and at least some symbols... This is luxury compared to a lot of services, even online shopping or banking sites.

Not salting though, should be against the law.
Not protocol agnostic, protocol relative.
Why You Should Consider Cloud Hosting to Host Your Business Website
Interesting psychological hook in this. You'd better download it or you'll be the blind man in the valley of the one-eyed.
The point was that the 2-factor would have already been turned off by the hacker at that point.
Why Response Times Are Often Measured Incorrectly
There are two types of health insurance. Insurance that covers you in the USA, and insurance for the rest of the world. It seems you should be able to avoid paying the excessive premiums required for the first. I'd also check the contracts carefully around 'where you live' and 'how long you travel for' clauses.
Zed, thanks for the book, I just got started with it.

I have heard that when done with the book, I still won't be able to program in Python. Can you elaborate on that?

Also, what do you recommend after completing your book? I'm interested in building web apps.
Brush Up On Your Materials Handling Knowledge
Given that he was sorting out his gf's account because he knew her password, that's not at all an accurate tl;dr.
Do a YC Europe and have your regional headquarters in Amsterdam.
Also his prof from Harvard said that was nothing like him, plus credible sources like LAT pretty much concluding the movie was bs

Also, to bb75, isn't that a little black and white? Facebook doesn't give all its money to charity so its as bad as GS?
It's so sad to see the comments about healthcare costs. I've travelled the world on motorcycle - and been happily uninsured for all of it except for the USA. Costs of treatment overseas are a fraction of the US - and of any health insurance.
Exactly, but that proves the point: Davis is a not a suburb -- it's exactly the kind of small town that started to disappear fifty years ago.
And underwear.
Startups Don’t Die, They Commit Suicide
What I'd like to see is these criminals hunted down and brought to justice.
Nice.

The state of the art here is to use AWS CloudFormation to bring up the instance.

With CloudFormation you can specify the base AMI and other resources, such as an Elastic IP, and AWS will either bring up the stack or rollback the entire transaction if something goes wrong.

Then, you specify the script to set up the AMI as a userdata script, and that will be run as root when the instance boots.

The downside here is that the CloudFormation syntax is very funky, and 100% AWS specific. This might justify sticking with your strategy of simple fabric scripts.
A Tech Entrepreneur’s Plan for Grilled-Cheese Sandwiches
Something i do quite regularly is google search each of my passwords, and I would advise anyone to do the same.

I found several older passwords with my login up on a file-sharing website not so long ago. Luckily I didn't suffer the same fate as the writer's wife.

Also, I believe that google should have 'paid support' in place for this type of situation. No doubt it would be profitable for them, and would save many people quite a lot of pain.
Online marriage counseling
www.rockyourmarriage.com Marriage workshops that help couples regardless of denomination to rebuild marriages devastated by sexual and online pornography addictions. Workshops together with principles from God’s word that can transform your marriage. Visit us today.
I ran into this as well (Google Voice handles my texts and I couldn't read them without being logged in) but they provide an option to call as well (even though I didn't choose this as my preference) and Google Voice still rang my phone without me being logged in. So disaster was averted.
Although I am pleasured to know many of these guys, i am surprised to see so many IT companies in the list. I'd love to see more stories similar to nom nom truck...
Very cool. It works for me in chrome, but its shows this message four times before working
In windowStack::windowStack() : The DOM element passed was invalid.

It doesn't work for me in Firefox 5, but I don't have flash on my ff. Do I need that?

edit: more detail: On firefox, its sometimes a black screen, and sometimes a blue/green wavy screen.
I don't understand why so few comments mention that the "last chance form" is a huge security hole. It seems like most of the information for filling it can be seen by someone over my shoulder as I use Gmail. And it's apparently completely automated and can be tried multiple times. I use a strong passphrase and two-factor authentication for a reason, and this defeats it. I already disable the "secret questions", since I don't want cracking the account to be much easier than cracking the passphrase.

I would like Google to give me an option to disable the "last chance form" for my account. Or, if they inisist, I'd like the "last chance" to be to fly to Mountain View and show Google my passport or a court order.

EDIT: and for extra bogusness, it seems that the information needed for the "last chance form" can't be changed if it's compromised. I mean, I can change my passphrase if I suspect it leaked, but how do I change the date when I started using Gmail? Sounds like the best thing to do the moment a Google account is compromised is to close it.
Startups Don't Die, They Commit Suicide
I feel that Berlin is a far better startup hub than Amsterdam: It's cheaper, has far more space, and many creative people and programmers ...

That's why I'm moving THERE and not Amsterdam ...
You get 10 one-time use backup access codes for that case (which YOU need to keep secure).
Not exactly the same, but BitNami provides ready-made Django AMIs http://bitnami.org/stack/djangostack
In the 2nd Edition, I rewrote exercises 50, 51, and 52 to teach you to make a simple web app based on the game in exercise 41 and 42. I also rewrote 41 and 42 so that it's a little more complex and challenging.

When you're done with the book, I say you can't really code yet because you lack experience actually using Python. You have all the syntax and tools, you just don't really know how to apply them. What I recommend now is you go through the Django Book 2.0 and do all the code in that book. Once you do that you'll have enough to start building your own stuff.

I'd also say, whatever you make will probably suck for a while, but that's alright. Just keep making stuff, put it out there, get feedback from good coders, and improve.
Why would a server that only runs ssh and qmail be less secure than Gmail? Why would I need a password recovery system?

Remember that Gmail had a sysadmin reading the mail of users:

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
Dude, coding is alot easier than physics. Stop procrastinating on HN, get a Linux machine and start your first project. If you want to do web stuff, learn PHP, otherwise use python. For your project you would need a library to extract text from word documents and something like curl to query google.
Among the costs of war: $20 Billion in Air Conditioning
They're just copying Google Chrome. Why, is anybody's guess.
I like zsh for the same reason, but you will want to quote or escape the tilde in your second example.

rm **/*\~
rm '**/*~'
Interesting that so many companies featured here seem to have single founders (13 by my count).
Slow Down To Speed Up
I've lived in the UK and Finland. When I lived in Finland, I cycled everywhere in town, for work and shopping and for pleasure (needless to say, I was more than a few pounds fitter).

I never, ever cycle in the UK.

Reason ? In Finland towns have cycle paths everywhere. It's safe. People take their little kids cycling. Lots of people cycle.

In the UK it's appallingly bad in comparison. Some places may have a few cycle lanes here and there for appearance's sake but in the main it's nothing. When you go cycling in the UK you're taking your life in your hands. You're a completely unprotected second-class citizen. A guy I knew died that way, hit and run by a taxi. I certainly wouldn't allow my kids to cycle here.
I would also suggest one more thing: http://mitpress.mit.edu/SICM/

Since you say you have dabbled with physics, you may find this sort of method useful.
They have you print out a bunch of one-time passwords which can be used to access the account should you lose your phone.
I'm going to look into it when I get the time, but I hope you can add a second device. One of the not-inconsequential benefits to being married is the additional redundancy.

If I can't remember a password, my wife might.

Hopefully I can set this up with her phone as a fallback.
There are certainly cities in the UK that still depend on public transport far more than cars - I live in one: Edinburgh. I work in an office right in the center of Edinburgh and of the thirty odd people here nobody drives to the office - most take the train, some take the bus and a few (including me) walk.
We'd love to invite you over to get to know the startup scene here better. What does it take to steal PG away from YC for a day or two?
When you're setting up 2 factor auth, they ask you for a back up phone number.
Sure, but the legroom in the X-43A sucks...
Great demo! One of the most interesting ones I've seen. I liked seeing the AJAX requests appear as I was playing chess.
I bet the resource files are 503'ing from server overload. :/
16 years from now - I'm guessing we may be seeing the start of an energy revolution ... which will be even more significant than the communications and data revolution which just happened.

Also, a lot more progress will have been made in the area of genetics and medicine ...

exciting times!
Thanks Paul, I think you hit it right on the mark.

The startup community there has been building up steam the past couple of years — and it has become more and more organized. I'll definitely miss hanging out with all the talented people back there.

Worth another visit imho. ;)

- Dirk (one of the Sofa founders who's now moving to Palo Alto)
Social Security costs would skyrocket as people start living longer

They'd live longer, but since they'd be healthier they'd use less health care per year. Maybe zero sum game in that aspect?
Well, it's good to know this before rewriting ls, or sed, in Java.
The setup forces you to go through two backup steps.

First it gives you a list of 10 codes that you should print and keep save. Looks like a TAN list. You can only move on if you check 'I printed these items and will protect them like my first born' or something like that.

After clicking next you are able to set up a phone number that is used as another fallback. Testing if you entered the number correctly is optional here, but worked like a charm.
Compiler Construction, Niklaus Wirth, June 2011 (based on FPGA)
Was ready to make the same comment. Especially most philosophers working on ethical issues didn't follow their own propositions.
The whole theory is bizzare. Banks didn't have to be forced to write stupid loans at the lead-in to the crisis. Once securitization made it easy to take a cut up front but sell them off onto someone else's books before they blew up, brokers and banks (including mortgage banks unaffected by the CRA) were eager to push through as many bad deals as they possibly could, with basically any buyer who could fog a mirror. Wall St. was so desperate for stuff to bet on that when the supply of borrowers ran low, they resorted to making new side bets on the outcomes of old loans (through synthetic CDOs made up of credit default swaps).

Blame the credit rating cartel for declaring large tranches of the whole mess to be "AAA investment grade" and thus marketable to huge institutions that had no business being involved, because they didn't think homebuyer defaults would be strongly correlated due to underlying forces.
And this is why your advice is actually bad, op said nothing about his platform choice and you're recommending he should go run a marathon when he's never even jogged.

Windows programming is not a PITA, that's a flat out lie from you. It's total and utter nonsense, especially as Windows has arguably the best IDE of all the platforms.

In the end it's exactly the same as linux programming. And iPhone programming. And BBC Micro Programming. And Spectrum programming. It's just that you have some personal preferences.

Programming is just programming and that's what he wants to learn, not your dogmatic preferences.
The reason I brought up the "stripping them of their creativity" point is because I have an aversion to the belief that you must pigeon-hole yourself into a job that is not fun just because you need to make ends meet.

Pretty much everyone around me - friends and family, both - have always told me that I need to go the traditional route of working the blue collar life to achieve success. But, I've never been that type of person. I landed the job I have now by rejecting that belief entirely, and I'm in a position to achieve more success than those same people who hounded me to embrace it and I'm only 19. That being said, it obviously informs me in the business realm. I guess I'd see myself as a hypocrite if on one hand I have this belief that you should do what you love to do and not be forced into a job you hate because you have to make ends meet, or because it is what is expected of you, while on the other hand, I'm forcing the people I hire to do exactly what I reject.

I admit that I may have an immature view on things. I don't know everything, nor do I have any intent to come off as knowing everything. Hence, this thread! I've only been doing this for a couple months, but the nature of the industry I work in requires that I adapt quickly and assume roles that requires more experience than I have currently. To make up for that, I am reaching out to those who know more so they can help inform my ultimate decisions.

I am leaning towards being 100% business-minded, and suppressing my feelings of hypocrisy, because in the end what will matter is that I got the job done and put the infrastructure in place that catapulted the business into greater profitability. Not whether I preserved my life philosophies. Nonetheless, I think a good discussion could arise out of the whole preserve philosophical pureness for the sake of money, or not dilemma.

Anyways, going forward I will for sure write out a report for the partner. It may take me a bit to put together, as I will need to brief him on the history of what exactly we're doing, but I think I can sway him to see my side.

And, I never thought about hiring a dev to create a script to alter the designs programatically. I will definitely look into that. The only thing I see being a problem is how the script would be able to make each change with the proper font and color scheme, unless we developed a library of all possible fonts and color schemes that our designers may use that the script could access to make the changes seamless.
Just enabled 'Two factor authentication'. Thanks for writing this. Made me realize the loss I would incur if my account gets hacked.
IPhone Spy App - Home
"Troll" is the most abused word in internet forums.
Well, apart from the ramen bit. :)