What depresses me more than the interview are the comments. There's no hope for humanity if that's the typical representative of humanity.
- Piaw Na
"Resistance is futile you will be assimilated into the one world government socialist police state and forced to comply with global warming regulations and bank recapitalisation."
- Jim Norris
He can spread his outrageous doomsaying all he wants. I'll still be here, living in post-industrial splendor, long after he's gone.
- Stefan Moluf
although he's a bit off the deep end, his carbon solution is novel and worth a look (by me, at least).
- grant fox
"You stick your cell phone in your microwave***DO NOT TURN ON*** and then get some one to phone your cell phone. If it rings your microwave is leaking radiation if not your microwave is a ok."
- Sanjeev Singh
via Bookmarklet
If anything this test indicates how well your microwave shields from pretty low power 800MHz or 1.9GHz signals. I'd say place your Wifi access point next to your microwave and then experiment measuring the link quality in different microwave modes.
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
Try it in the FF office. If the network craps out....
- ld
Congratulations for putting this out there. Is there a standard place I should be looking for service status (like I don't get at some other unnamed site) ;) It would be a great thing if it's not there already.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Nice! I actually had the good fortune to use one of these recently. The instructor began with, "This is the most dangerous tool in the shop..." At the end of all the "if you accidentally do that, here's what happens..." I felt like going back to saw & handle, but it's *really* nice to have a machine do the cutting for you.
- Rhandeev Singh
Wow, I would not expect different versions of Ubuntu to consume power differently. 5.04 seems best under load, 6.10 best when idle.
- Sanjeev Singh
via Bookmarklet
Without error bars, it's difficult to make any conclusions based on this experiment. The numbers like 21.47 look suspicious to me; implicitly they suggest that the error is less than 0.01 Watt, which I don't believe - there are too many factors that affect power consumption.
- Igor Krivokon
Yes, I am pretty amazing :) Actually, *that* Ana Yang is a Guinness record holder. I actually decided I'm going to go see her show in NY on my 30th birthday this year! :) http://www.telecharge.com/BehindT...
- Ana
Amazing stuff! The bubble liquid formula helps too. Even though it's kind of curious (if now unwanted ;-)) to have the identical name as someone very famous, the Bubble Girl is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Nenad Nikolic
No, Fan Yang is her husband. Ana Yang is the bubble lady whose Google results have been dogging me for a decade.
- Ana
I wonder what her bubble solution is made of.
- April Buchheit
I think this might be a bad thing for two reasons: (1) These megacorps are less likely to fail, but when they do, they can cause a crisis (Fannie, Freddie, AIG) (2) Do you actually believe the customer is better served if competition is reduced?
- Sanjeev Singh
Didn't some of the other European countries (Sweden? I forget...) end up buying their banks in a recent crisis and things turned out OK?
- Patrick Lightbody
Regardless, seems like either path (pseudo-nationalizing like we just did vs. letting them fail) leads to the same thing: fewer top-level ownership of banks. The only difference is who the owner is: Joe Taxpayer or BofA
- Patrick Lightbody
Please explain how having fewer, larger central banks is good. =)
- Jim Norris
Yes, rescuing banks (UK, USA) allows more of them to avoid acquisition by other banks. In the case of the UK, the prime minister is chairman of the board of a few of them and can set executive compensation. However, he's beholden to the electorate, so you can argue he'll make more globally optimal decisions. In the US, the fed forfeited their voting rights (I think) so there was no increase in concentration of control. It's probably too early to say "things turned out ok", though.
- Private Sanjeev
I like Buffett's plan the best. Spend the least amount of government money to kickstart private investment in undervalued banks, thereby keeping them afloat and independent. The Austrians would discourage any intervention at all.
- Private Sanjeev
I think Austrianists would argue that this crisis was caused by bad monetary policy on the part of central bankers and government over-regulation that prevented smaller private banks from being able to compete with larger ones.
- Jim Norris
I agree with the Austrian interpretation of the cause, but not their fix!
- Private Sanjeev
If insolvent banks weren't allowed to go bust when they are "too big to fail", that introduces a moral hazard (large banks can get away with taking larger risks since losses are socialized) and a big competitive advantage (smaller institutions like Countrywide and WaMu don't get the government guarantees that big ones like GS and JPMorgan Chase do).
- Jim Norris
It's an arguable point, but what if the cost of letting the big guys fail is anarchy?
- Private Sanjeev
I think the problem is that we shouldn't allow too many entities to get "too big to fail" in the first place. It also seems, with derivatives, that even fairly small entities can now become too big to fail (LTCM). Would the Austrianists have intervened to prevent or regulate derivatives?
- Private Sanjeev
Fed's assets, including loan to AIG and misc bear sterns investments more than doubled to $1.77 trillion last week from a year-earlier total of $873 billion that consisted mostly of treasuries. Fed balance sheet is above 10% of gdp and climbing.....
- david A
Isn't that was facebook is for? I use facebook for real life relationships, and friendfeed for good spirited conversations on the interwebs.
- Chris Hollander
Chris W, yes I'm going to kick off subscribers temporarily.
- Sanjeev Singh
Chris H, Facebook is more about socialization and social communication (how are you doing? what are you up to?). I just want to find and discuss cool stuff with my friends :)
- Sanjeev Singh
How will you let us know when you are back? I'll miss your stuff!
- Clare Dibble
Actually I think I'll just create a "private sanjeev" account.
- Sanjeev Singh