Jason Chen › Comments

Another Artisan Blue production. Ugh. - EricaJoy

Joel: http://friendfeed.com/eskimo.... Plot details: NO - Jérôme Flipo

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009... - Jason Chen

More details: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Jason Chen

Wow, thanks Jason. Would you mind joining this discussion? http://friendfeed.com/googleb... - Matthew DeVries

I also did a Euro delivery, so am not discouraging, but you can probably get 5-6% (maybe more?) off the price just by negotiating. Also, check if the 8% is off the full price or just base model. Finally, you'll need a car for the 2 mos. it takes them to ship it over. - Dror Shimshowitz

Also, imho the best way to buy a car these days is to do it all via email. The "internet sales managers" are compensated on volume of sales as opposed to percentage of sale price for the showroom floor sales critters, so they're more flexible on price. I contacted all the dealers within the radius that I was willing to travel with the exact config I wanted and asked for a quote. There's nothing like forwarding dueling price quotes to drive the price down towards dealer invoice. - Jason Chen

"Many members of the punditocracy, including your Frustrated and Increasingly Irritable Correspondent, have commented at length on what is charmingly known as "regulatory capture." This is the phenomenon—most aptly demonstrated by the historical relationship in this country between the financial sector and its regulators over the last several decades—whereby the regulatee worms its way into the mind, practices, and governing philosophy of the regulator to such an extent that it effects something like a reverse Stockholm syndrome. The regulator adopts the objectives, goals, and mindset of its supposed charges, and becomes hostage to the institutions it is supposed to regulate. Let me suggest here that this conception, while empirically valid, is at once both too narrow and incapable of explaining why the current Administration, with the mighty wind of a once-in-a-generation financial system collapse and the massed voices of millions of pitchfork-toting Americans at its back, has been... more... - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"The gut response is that the U.S. might be more expensive, but must be more effective. This graphic has that covered. It isn't." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

(via http://daringfireball.net) - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

This is how you properly road test a car. - Jason Chen

"As analysts and media hailed the tentative emergence of green shoots last week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman caused international shock with a prediction that the world economy would stagnate just as badly, and for just as long, as Japan's did in the 1990s. In an exclusive interview, he talks to Will Hutton about his anxiety for the future - and how Gordon Brown might have saved Britain from the blight that hangs over the West." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"Although widespread allegations of fraud, manipulation, intimidation and other all too common elections tactics have been be common, statistically detecting fraud or manipulation is a challenge. For example, while mathematicians have been evaluating vote returns for irregularities in normal situational random number distribution , determining what the "correct" results should be is very difficult. However, given the absolutely bizarre figures that have been given for several provinces, given qualitative knowledge - for example, that Mahdi Karroubi earned almost negligible vote totals in his native Lorestan and neighboring Khuzestan, which he won in 2005 with 55.5% and 36.7% respectively - there is room for a much closer look." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

Nate Silver, back at it—this time examining Iran's election results. - Jason Chen

"As a service to future historians of the long, slow death of the newsweekly, Reason offers this Top 10 list of the most horrifying, silly, irresponsible, or downright ridiculous Time cover panics from the past 40 years." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"When people buy a smartphone, which they’ve been doing like mad, they’re buying their primary mobile phone. It’s the mobile phone and computing platform that they’re using day in and day out and the device that they’re pulling out of their pockets, often to the point of interrupting conversations and crashing the trolley they’re operating. When people buy a netbook, they’re often not buying their primary machine. It’s a second computer, a backup device that people take when their real machine – which is often a laptop computer that isn’t much larger or more expensive – seems like too much to carry. It’s a luxury that people might ditch if the current economic situation continues or worsens and as the differences between laptops and netbooks vanish. Netbooks, as a blend of the worst of both mobile and laptop worlds, will be a transitional technology; at best, they’ll enjoy a brief heyday similar to that of the fax machine. The people are going with smartphones, and as developers, you should be following them." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

I hope we're going to see video of that. - Andrew Bowers

Here's some video of GDD China opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Jason Chen

That's brilliant. I love the progression from from our first GDD Beijing in 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Andrew Bowers

Seems to be a running theme. My taxi drivers in Beijing tried to give me less change than I was owed b/c I don't speak Mandarin. - Jason Chen

He speaks *some* Chinese, doesn't he (at least that's what I thought)? Either way, that's unfortunate. - Joel Webber

I speak a few hundred works more or less with some wobbly pronunciation of the tones. The issue is more listening, as they talk fast and I might not understand what they're asking. In any case, I had a map from the hotel with instructions. Beijing taxi drivers seem really angry in general and probably want to avoid any extra hassle. Our Hotel is kinda hard to find, it's not one of the major chains. - Ray Cromwell

"[A]s Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.” Having seen a lengthy demonstration, as ridiculous as it may sound, I have to agree. Wave offers a very sleek and easy way to navigate and participate in communication on the web that makes both email and instant messaging look stale." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"The much better comparison is coincidentally the company started by another group of (former) Googlers, FriendFeed. But Wave is a different product for a number of reasons, and seemingly has loftier goals — all of which I’ll touch on below." definitely raises the bar on real time. - Karl Rosaen

This app gives you the ability to kill any running app that may be bogging you down. DOES NOT REQUIRE ROOTING THE PHONE. - Matthew DeVries from Bookmarklet

I'm assuming this is the full version? If so, everyone should spend the $1 to support the dev, or use the lite version which is full featured with an expiration. - Tim Hoeck

On Android 1.5, you can do this by going into an info panel for a specific app via Settings > Applications > Manage applications and using the Force Stop option. - Jason Chen

(via kottke.org) - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"The mathematics of cities was launched in 1949 when George Zipf, a linguist working at Harvard, reported a striking regularity in the size distribution of cities. He noticed that if you tabulate the biggest cities in a given country and rank them according to their populations, the largest city is always about twice as big as the second largest, and three times as big as the third largest, and so on. In other words, the population of a city is, to a good approximation, inversely proportional to its rank. Why this should be true, no one knows." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

That was absolutely sick. Count me as a witness. - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

so bummed i missed it live - Karl Rosaen

"Some American consumers believe sriracha (properly pronounced SIR-rotch-ah) to be a Thai sauce. Others think it is Vietnamese. The truth is that sriracha, as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods, may be best understood as an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"HT-03A: Android™ OS phone optimized for Google's mobile services with touchscreen, trackball, Wi-Fi and more." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"The official version is that Joseph Cassano, who occupies the stucco-fronted house near Harrods, brought down a safe and stable company — and by extension, the world — with incompetent gambles. “You’ve got a company, AIG, which used to be just a regular old insurance company,” Obama explained during a recent TV appearance. “Then they decided — some smart person decided — let’s put a hedge fund on top of the insurance comp-any, and let’s sell these derivative products to banks all around the world.” Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, adds: “This was a hedge fund, basically, that was attached to a large and stable insurance company.”" - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"But the official version overlooks many things, including episodes of fraud at AIG that go back at least 15 years. It fails to explain why Public Enemy No 1 was allowed to leave the company on generous terms, with a retainer of $1m a month and up to $34m (£23m) in bonuses. And it does nothing to tell us why other big companies, whose profits looked as smooth and certain as AIG’s in the good times, are also fighting for survival." - Jason Chen

Seth Godin on the distinction between luxury vs. premium (via http://daringfireball.net) - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

interesting, but he ignores the case where scarcity isn't artificial. when oil prices go up, oil is no more useful, but I wouldn't call it a luxury either - Karl Rosaen

"Huge ad agency Ogilvy and executive creative director Fran Luckin created these three ads for History Channel to run in South Africa" - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.” But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"After two decades of almost constant expansion and profitability, card companies today are in deep trouble. Monstrous losses — estimated to top $395 billion over the next five years — are growing as cardholders, brought low by the recession, walk away from their debts. And Congress and President Obama are pushing for legislation that would make it much harder for companies to hike up interest rates and charge many of the sneaky fees that have been an easy source of revenue for years. So credit-card firms are changing their business plans. Gone are the days of handing out cards willy-nilly and hoping that the cardholders who dutifully pay up will offset the losses from those who default. Today companies are focusing on those customers most likely to honor their debts. And they are looking for ways to convince existing cardholders that if they only have enough money to pay one bill, it’s wiser to pay off their credit card than, say, the phone." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"Over the past decade, China and the United States have developed a deeply symbiotic, and dangerous, relationship. China discovered that an economy built on cheap exports would allow it to grow faster than it ever had and to create enough jobs to mollify its impoverished population. American consumers snapped up these cheap exports — shoes, toys, electronics and the like — and China soon found itself owning a huge pile of American dollars. Governments don’t like to hold too much cash, because it pays no return, so the Chinese bought many, many Treasury bonds with their dollars. This additional demand for Treasuries was one big reason (though not the only reason) that interest rates fell so low in recent years. Thanks to those low interest rates, Americans were able to go on a shopping spree and buy some things, like houses, they couldn’t really afford. China kept lending and exporting, and we kept borrowing and consuming. It all worked very nicely, until it didn’t." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"There IS money to be saved from sharing a single infrastructure. Especially when the product is standards-based. GSM, EDGE, 3G, HSPA, LTE are all pretty standard. As are Metro Ethernet, IP backhaul, etc. So I believe the carriers are on to a good idea in reducing their CapEx by sharing common network elements. Even more so because of the frequent 2G-3G-4G-... upgrades needed to compete. They can easily continue to differentiate by offering special "additives" to their product. And while the gas companies' additives are mostly snake oil. The telecom "additives" are quite important, and can truly differentiate a mobile subscription over the raw bits inside the dumb pipe: Customer service, retail presence, data services, location platforms, fixed/mobile integration, easy-to-read bills, the iPhone, fave-5, rollover minutes...these are all very important parts of the service mix, and are true differentiators about which customers care. The things that subscribers don't care about might as well be shared." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

"The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

yeah, the * was to indicate nonsense. - j1m

"Security is about technical measures, like the strength of the locks on your doors and windows. Safety is about the likelihood that you’ll actually suffer from sort of attack." - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet

Conceptually neat ad for Mercedes-Benz's brake-assist technology. - Jason Chen from Bookmarklet