Waterworld: 12 million American households are under water (1)
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Peter Viles (6)
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L.A. Land (6)
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News item, from the Wall Street Journal: "The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults -- the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year." Owing more than your home is worth is known as being "under water" or "upside down." More:About 75.5 million U.S. households own the homes ...
Greg Mankiw's Blog: How to Recapitalize the Financial System (4)
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Greg Mankiw (140)
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Greg Mankiw's Blog (168)
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There is broad agreement among economists that what the financial system needs right now is not only an injection of liquidity but also a recapitalization. The essence of the current financial crisis is that many firms bet that housing prices would not fall; the prices fell nonetheless; and now these firms have too little capital to perform the crucial function of financial intermediation.(As an aside, one might ask, why did these firms make such bad ...
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cbsmith said:
I like this: private investors pay half the money *and* get half the reward. In general, it follows the tried and true principle of government as a silent partner.Now the sticking point: why don't we do this with all industries? Not a fun question to have to answer.
Sony PS3 Update Will Sell You Premium Themes [Console Decor] (1)
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Sony has dropped a brand-new feature on its PS3 console that will let you buy Premium themes—specialized themes that contain high-quality graphics, customized buttons, and (sometimes) special sounds....
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cbsmith said:
I have found PS3 themes amusing... but pay money for them!?!
Do it yourself first (26)
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David (541)
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Signal vs. Noise (1021)
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You should never hire anyone for something you haven’t first struggled to do on your own. It’ll teach you most of what you need to know to actually interview candidates, it’ll allow you to understand the nature of the work better (do I even need to hire or can we outsource?), and you’ll know exactly what a job well done will look like. It’ll also give you a sense of whether the job is big ...
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Danbrown said:
This requires a big investment, in hours spent learning and doing whatever "it" is. It's what I'm doing right now... hopefully there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
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cbsmith said:
This is a nice idea, but in practice you are simply too limited if you have to learn how to do everything yourself.
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AnthonyB415 said:
A lot of great points here!
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Mahesh CR said:
Good advice for upcoming technology managers. Pure play managers are not what is needed to make a cutting edge product!
New Apple Notebooks May Start At $800, Made From Actual Bricks [Rumor] (1)
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Amidst a flurry of alleged pictures and some wise words of caution, another Mac notebook rumor has surfaced: the Inquisitr claims that, according to their source, Apple's new line of notebooks will...
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cbsmith said:
Oh great... now I have to think about waiting for these to come out...
Borg Institute study finds women in tech face greatest barriers at mid-career (1)
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Tech companies are attracting college graduates "” women made up 34 percent of the technical workforce surveyed by the study "” but they are not keeping them or promoting them to senior positions.
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cbsmith said:
So, while I agree there are definitely problems for women in tech reaching mid-career goals, I'm not sure I buy what the survey suggests. In particular, it'd be interesting to see how these numbers compare to men and women surveyed from *outside* the tech industry.
Yahoo shares plunge to lowest level in more than five years (1)
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Yahoo"s shares plunged Wednesday to their lowest level in more than five years as its core advertising business weakened and investors increasingly doubted that a proposed deal with Google would get done.
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cbsmith said:
Awesome. Yahoo has managed to sink lower than before its acquisition of Overture.
PSP Store [PSP] (1)
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Eye-Fi Software Update Adds Support for Flickr, Twitter, RSS [Eye-Fi] (5)
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John Herrman (306)
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Gizmodo (6742)
3 days, 6 hours
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Eye-Fi keeps kicking ass with their wireless SD cards, adding upload support for Flickr along with feed publishing capabilities through Twitter and RSS — all in a software update. It was only a few weeks ago that another downloadable upgrade boosted download speeds and threw in MobileMe support, albeit for a fee. Owners should get an Eye-Fi Manager Software update pushed through automatically, and new customers can now find the cards on the Eye-Fi website. ...
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cbsmith said:
I keep thinking about getting one of these.
RealNetworks Barred From Selling RealDVD Ever Again [Realdvd] (2)
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John Herrman (306)
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Gizmodo (6742)
3 days, 6 hours
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Last week a judge put a temporary ban on the sale of RealNetworks' DVD backup program RealDVD, claiming that it violated the DMCA. The court has decided to uphold the ban indefinitely, and judging by...
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cbsmith said:
Wow, that was short lived.
Barack Obama's $3 Million Overhead Projector (49)
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John Herrman (306)
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Gizmodo (6742)
3 days, 8 hours
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During the last Presidential debate, John McCain delivered this line about his opponent with withering contempt: [Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. I'm already tired of hearing these guys talk, but that caught my ear. A $3 million dollar projector? What does that even look like? Gearlog did some digging and found out ...
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Justin said:
I really thought Obama should have thrown this remark back in McCain's face. Three million dollars small potatoes and education, especially science education, should be one of the FIRST things we're spending tax dollars on.
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cbsmith said:
Two thoughts:1) It seems likely to me that $3 million for a top quality planetarium projector is a great deal.2) Why have it earmarked just for Chicago? Why not have a fund for planetariums, rather than just one specific one, which is selected by means of politics rather than some kind of objective criteria? That's the trouble I have in earmarks: not that what the money is spent on wasteful things (which happens, but far less often than people think), but that the criteria for where and on whom it is spent is highly arbitrary and inevitably NOT in the nation's best interests.
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lance said:
This is an awesome "overhead projector" wish we had these things in high school and college...oh wait, there is one at the planetarium, but I don't think it was as fancy as this!
Windows XP downgrade deadline extended to July 31, 2009 (6)
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Donald Melanson (431)
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Engadget (5088)
3 days, 20 hours
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Filed under: Desktops, LaptopsMicrosoft wasn't quite ready to comment when rumors about yet another reprieve for Windows XP first starting circulating late last week, but that now seems to have changed, with a spokesperson for the company reportedly confirming in an email to InformationWeek that it is indeed pushing the cut-off date back six months, all the way to July 31st, 2009. According to the spokesperson, that's being done to ensure that customers moving to ...
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Steve said:
BUT VISTA IS SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER!!!
Fed 101 (1)
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Explaining the Financial Crisis (2)
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Do you take models (too) seriously? (2)
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Greg Mankiw (140)
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Greg Mankiw's Blog (168)
5 days, 6 hours
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The very wise Paul Romer suggests that the key divide among economists today is between fundamentalists and realists.The financial crisis provoked three open letters to policy makers. Fundamentalists opposed the plan (here.) Realists supported the plan (here) or supported more discretionary powers for dealing with the crisis without endorsing any specific plan (here.) A quick look through the lists of economists who signed the various letters shows that the camps do not separate cleanly along ...
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cbsmith said:
I can't say I agree with this line of thinking in much of any way. I would agree that things like the great depression are indications of when *existing* models fall apart, but they also usually point to some of the changes that are needed in the models.
Apple updates DTrace... again (2)
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ahl (9)
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Adam Leventhal's Weblog (9)
6 days, 8 hours
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Back in January, I ranted about Apple's ham-handed breakage in their DTrace port. After some injured feelings and teary embraces, Apple cleaned things up a bit, but some nagging issues remained as I wrote: For the Apple folks: I'd argue that revealing the name of otherwise untraceable processes is no more transparent than what Activity Monitor provides — could I have that please? It would be very un-Apple to — you know — communicate future ...
This American Life - 365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy (28)
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Chicago Public Radio (39)
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This American Life (39)
6 days, 15 hours
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Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson - the two guys who reported our "Giant Pool of Money" episode - are back. They'll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could've done to prevent all of this from happening...
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Harper said:
This was a good show.
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Jacob said:
Available for free download for now in the iTunes podcast directory. Haven't listened to it yet, but the first one was very enlightening.
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Brad 2.0 said:
Go back and listen to Giant Pool of money too, it was the best explanation I've heard about the sub-prime mess.
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Fang said:
Definitely listen to this. The conversational, casual tone helps explain just what the heck these last two weeks have been about.
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Successless said:
This episode and the previous linked episode are 2 hours of worthwhile listening for anyone confused by the financial meltdown of the US. Clear, concise, and compelling listening.
