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biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Intractability of Financial Derivatives

This is interesting, but I'm struck by the sheer amount of serious analysis on this topic. It always struck me as very simple requiring no deep understanding.

There's an old saying on wall street, the harder it is to understand the deal the bigger the profit. The truth of this should be self evident. Add to that the fact that the people gambling weren't gambling with their own money. That way if they won then got big bonuses, and if they lost they simply didn't get bonuses. Clearly the only rational action in this situation is to go all in with other people's money.

Is it really that complicated? You wouldn't give your money to someone else and send them to Vegas, tell them to gamble if they win you split the profits, if they lose you lose your money.

You shouldn't invest in things you don't understand, and mind that old wall street saying.

But people do invest in things they don't understand, and pyramid schemes, and tulips, none of this is new. Sure some fancy math was involved this time, but that's only tangential.

I think everyone is concentrating on the fancy math because it's like magic, and then it's not their fault, it's not the same old story of everyone just being stupid again like in .COM 1.0, oh no - It's magic!

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: World of Goo does a Radiohead. Pay whatever you like.

2) That's called "cramming" and you should report it to the FCC so that (hopefully, someday) they can put those guys out of business.

Already done it, apparently the (scam) company was started by an ex-high level At&t insider. But yeah they sure did find a way to take 20 dollars from me without me having to do anything.

And yes it is micropayments, I guess I'm just surprised and angry that the closest I got to micropayments was a scam.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: World of Goo does a Radiohead. Pay whatever you like.

The cost of filling out my cc or paypal info exceeds my personal cost of spending $20 dollars. I would literately pay $20 just to avoid the hassle.

On a related subject matter, recently I spotted something a bit off on my Verizon bill. I get phone/cable/internet from them on one bill, but I noticed an odd charge. I had to dig through the bill to find the one page that mentioned a charge from payment one on behalf the internet commerce company.

In short, it was definitely a fraudulent charge and apparently they can bill you, via Verizon, TimeWarner, At&t, etc. automatically! It has happened to a lot of people, there is nothing you need to do for them to start billing you.

In fact, you HAVE to preemptively call your ISP to tell them to lock your account so that 3rd parties can't aoutmagically bill you!

However, why can't we have legitimate charges which are this easily billed? Why can't I sign up once for an advertising project or something, and then it divides X amount of dollars every month to websites I visit?

Or something like that. Ideas?

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Can You Be Shy and Still Succeed in Business?

How does a fundamentally shy person succeed in business? Most people don't percieve me as shy, but I started out being introverted. I get along pretty well with people at work, and I'm fine in one-on-one situations. But I don't say much at team meetings, and still have no clue how to give effective speeches/presentations. Still can't be in group situations professionally without feeling attacks of paralyzing gut-level fear. What do you think I can do about it?

As the reply attempt to explain that's introversion. All the introverts I know, me included, have no more trouble (probably less in fact) with giving presentations, public speaking, any kind of large audience.

Also we tend to get along much better then "fine" and "OK" with people at work and other places. It's simply that all of these activities are mentally draining, whereas being alone is energizing. That's introversion.

However, low self-esteem, in fact any kind of self-esteem level is independent of shyness. There's plenty of people that are anything but shy, who are also clearly in a very bad place self-esteem wise.

And if you're in bad place emotionally and/or psychologically you should not take on entrepreneurship.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

Take this thought experiment to its extreme and the unlucky should have gone extinct. The fact that both lucky and unlucky personality types persist, suggest both have advantages.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Is it a sin to leave your cell phone plugged in overnight?

I did read the article, but already knew the meme is stupid and wrong and thought the same of the HN readership, thus I'm surprised to see it in any form, pro or against.

And I comment when I disapprove of a thread because the flag and shut up mantra has never sat right with me. I prefer to explain why I dislike something.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

This reminds me of a recent study in bird personalities. It turns out there are very big differences from bird to bird in terms of curiosity and risk taking and other things.

And there is a huge body of scientific work about bird behavior EXCEPT that now it turns out the birds studied, trapped, tagged, etc, would have been a self selecting group of atypical super curious risk takers.

And all of this science is now suspected to be skewed.

And the fact that there are BOTH lucky and unlucky birds and people tells us that there's more than one way to optimize fitness.

Curiosity, optimism, luck work some times, and other times get you killed.

Now in the modern industrialized world, you're probably better of being open and optimistic and all the rest. But then again we've had an unprecedented multi-decade period of peace stability and economic growth.

If we are heading into a new great depression this might change.

Or imagine you're in some kind of accident or disaster, perhaps a building fire, and being a pessimist and super focused you bail at the first hint of smoke and single mindedly make it down the stairs as fast as possible and you're out and alive. Still a worried unlucky pessimist but alive. The lucky optimist on the other hand might have tried the elevator, when the heat expended both the elevator and the shaft, it got stuck, and the lucky optimists got cooked.

Just saying.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Top 50 Biotech Blogs

I suppose you can sort 50 blogs in some way. But I doubt there are a total of 50 biotech blogs worth reading. 50 is a large number if you're looking for intelligent writing.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: A Quest to Read a Book a Day for 365 Days

When I was a kid, during one particular summer, I read two books a day. And one book a day does not sound like a quest to me, but like a wonderful hobby for anyone who has the time. Also this article is pure fluff.

biohacker42 | 16 years ago | on: Ask HN: Thoughts and a suggestion concerning off-topic items.

"At the expense of" is an interesting way of putting it, aren't we all here specifically because HN is more exclusive with a more select group of users? Aren't exclusivity and selectivity the very goals we seek? And isn't HN becoming truly popular and thus generic and shallow exactly what we seek to prevent?
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