muerdeme

You may find this perspective interesting: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/356376-black-monday-less...

Defining "bubble" can be surprisingly difficult and in some cases the illusion of a bubble persists after history proves the speculation or enthusiasm to have been correct despite an earlier collapse in prices. So one interpretation of "Not all bubbles have negative consequences for the economy" is that there are events that are widely perceived to have been bubbles that were not, in fact, widespread misallocations of investment capital.

https://images.gibson.com/Lifestyle/English/aaFeaturesImages...

The benefit of S-corps is to pass through taxation to the owner's personal tax return in order to avoid double taxation. There is no added benefit with lower corporate taxes because they are effectively 0% at the corporate level.

Agreed. There is a very interesting and recent EconTalk podcast that touches on this. A great majority Americans are proud to be taxpayers, but many also feel that the money is spended wastefully. When interviewed in depth, this often reflects partisan misunderstanding.

EconTalk: Vanessa Williamson on Taxes and Read My Lips https://overcast.fm/+JDN9N7o

Thanks for the pointer. Are you referring to Sections II C&D? Tables 4A and 4B seem like they would have the same categorization issue I described above. As I read it, the "Never drugs" column refers to a given offender never having a drug offense as the most serious offense for a conviction. This doesn't mean that the offender was never charged with a drug offense.

If a violent offender that was also charged with a drug offense is classified in the "Violent" category, how can you draw any conclusions about how likely they are to have ever been charged with a drug offense? The data seem to only show that you are unlikely to end up in prison with a drug offense as your most serious crime.

This jives with David Simon's description of the prevailing attitude of enforcement in The Corner. The justice system is too overwhelmed to press charges for mere drug offenses, so you are less likely to end up with a conviction without a more serious crime attached.

I'm a huge fan of spaced repetition and a regular Anki user. I think the value proposition is a little too vague here. It seems like your target market is people that don't already know about or use spaced repetition. In order to win them over, I think you need a more specific reason to use the product.

I saw another YC company recently that is using spaced repetition as a means for corporate training. I'm not saying it's the best or correct market, but that strategy seems plausible to me.

Good luck!

Footnote 9 seems like a glaring issue with this analysis:

9 Technically speaking, the claim that “a large majority of those admitted to prison never serve time for a drug charge” means that for that majority of inmates the most serious charge was never a drug charge. Many inmates are convicted of multiple charges, and someone convicted of a violent or property offense along with a drug charge will be classified as a “violent” or “property” offender, not a “drug” offender.

Opponents of the War on Drugs believe that a significant portion of violent and property crimes are causally linked to strict enforcement of prohibition. Prohibition gives an implicit monopoly to criminal organizations, which causes violent crimes in the form of territorial disputes. This monopoly also increases the price of drugs for addicted users, which drives property crime, e.g. stripping copper to sell for scrap. An analysis that categorizes a heroin dealer that shoots a victim as a "Violent" offender but not a "Drug" offender seems flawed.

For those interested in learning more about geology, I highly recommend John McPhee's Annals of a Former World [1]. It won a Pulitzer in 1999. Through a series of 5 books written between 1978 and 1998, McPhee weaves together the geological development of North America with highly detailed and beautifully written portraits of the geologists that study various sections of the continent. It touches on both basics of geology and highly detailed accounts of geological events in North America as they were understood at the time.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Annals-Former-World-John-McPhee/dp/037...

Putin (or his representatives) knows his audience. This piece eschews the normal alpha bravado that I would expect from Putin in favor of a coherent argument in favor of restraint. I found myself not merely nodding along, but inspired, and I hope that we can at least agree with him on this.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

From my experience, these are things I wish I had known, not should have known, at 20. As Rod Stewart said, "I wish that I knew what I know now... when I was younger."

There are good and bad VC's, and with funds lasting 10 years it takes a long time to sort them out. It'll be interesting to see if the institutional money really pulls out of the industry or if they start driving up the price of the good VC's. Folks with solid track records might use this data to justify a better deal than 2 and 20 with their LPs.

1) Why isn't this feature built in to smart phones? I know it's a big pain point for me on iOS. I assume it's not on Android if there is this much uptake.

2) How on earth are they going to make money? Their suggestion for location based sponsored group chat sounds terrible to me, because you'd be opting in to miniature twitter feed that clogs up your text inbox instead of being able to read it asynchronously.

Also available on Infochimps =)

http://infochimps.com/collections/million-songs

Best calculator ever - HP 32Sii: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-32S

Usually the financial aid office includes (extra) generous allowances for food, travel, and rent expenses that may be included in your student loans. Any credit card debt is on top of all of that.

I think that for me this only makes sense for projects that have no explicit deadline. For a procrastinator, a deadline is the only thing that matters. I can block off all the time that I want to for a project, but if my brain is in procrastination mode, virtually nothing productive will get done.

Early on, I imagine that guilt about doing nothing during the creative blocks would motivate me. Over time, I suspect whether anything got done would roughly break down based on whether there is an explicit deadline. With no explicit deadline it would depend on how excited I was about a specific creative project.

If you're doing creative work for a living, I don't think that you can assume deadlines away.

Does anyone know what this actually means? Yodlee seems to already have a beta of their API available for developers (http://www.finappstore.com/howTo.html). However, it's unclear whether they charge for API access. Perhaps this is a price break for YC companies?

I suspect the board of governors got sick of dealing with the escalating costs of labor (fixed in arbitration with unions) and had to figure out a way to really get Congress' attention once and for all. They are warning about impending bankruptcy without even trying some of the drastic measures they had toyed with, i.e. no Saturday delivery. Those measures only would have delayed the inevitable, but this still smells to me like the leaders are sick of Congress passing the buck.

How many Air users are going to want to hook up this monstrosity to the "gorgeous industrial design" that they currently have?

I think I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but saying "Time has no cash value" is overly broad and a bit silly. Do you think interest rates only exist to hedge against inflation?? What is the value of angel investors??

I'm an organizer of the 3 Day Startup here at UT Austin. We concentrate on bringing together students from a variety of disciplines here at UT, but we are open to students and (especially strong) non-students from anywhere. The event is totally free, and please apply now if you are interested!

Most of those hundreds of thousands of songs have no rhythm notation to parse.

Majority(5): Business methods are not categorically barred, but this particular patent is not eligible subject matter under 101 because it encompasses an "abstract idea." Machine-or-transformation test is NOT the exclusive test, but no further direction is given in terms of a standard.

Concurrence(4): J. Stevens writes for the four typically liberal judges, who are in favor of categorically barring business methods.

Overall, the judgment is 9-0 to strike down the patent. Software patents are not directly addressed, but the initial impression is that the opinion will likely make it easier to obtain "pure" software method patents because the machine-or-transformation test is insufficient to reject a a claim under 101.

The social stigma associated with vocational and trade schools needs to end, and the university "experience" is BS. I imagine a big opportunity to fill the social needs of young people that don't go to college (even beyond selling them alcohol). Businesses that do a good job of matching people socially (maybe IM sports teams not associated with universities) would go a long way to dispelling the idea that you have to pay $50k/year for the intangible college experience.

You can't get 500MB downloads over 3G. The App Store forces you to wait for wifi.

Giving the other investors the opportunity to participate on a pro rata basis isn't per se "fair." The technique can be used to freeze out other shareholders that don't have the liquid capital to participate in the transaction.

This looks interesting, but I'm thrilled to hear that you are actually talking to customers first. Listen to them.

Nits: 1) I don't like that the 3 sellings points on the splash screen are aligned with 3 unrelated feature images. I was expecting each image to reflect each selling point and got a little confused.

2) The green hills footer bugs the crap out of me on the inner screens. Seeing text peak around a curved footer when I'm scrolling just doesn't look right.

They are hard because there is always risk that an "obvious" decision will create civil or criminal liability. A lawyer can help you assess and mitigate that risk.

I don't have a link handy on my phone, but The Economist discusses this issue in an article this week about Europe's existential crisis with the currency system. I think one of Italy's ministers mentions joining the EU specifically to force the parliament to quit running budget deficits, so tying their own hands was probably part of the deal for everyone to some extent.