jugad's comments

That sounds very similar to hiding behind sneaky talk in order to keep the practical effects in the background.

Almost no-one cares about the terms "Manifest v2 extensions" - because almost no one recognizes them for what they really are. Most people can understand it by its effect - that it will disable UBO. Only sneaky people will insist on using the technically correct, but obscure term in a PUBLIC announcement - clearly the aim is to make sure that the public overlooks the announcement.

> backed it up with a kangaroo court of 1 or 2 buddies weighing in on the Talk page

If they had a couple of other editors backing them up, then it doesn't sound all that "jumped up" to me. Sounds more like you are playing with a different set of rules in mind.

What are you talking about... the audio might not professional studio level 10/10, but I don't see anything significantly wrong with it - given that its more like a standard presentation mic. Its clearly good enough.

Speak for yourself... in the great Amurica, most can't afford to retire.

Not the poster, but when I actively think about it, I use common sense, ask for clarification, use some imagination, and a reasonable margin of error (imo). Then I try to judge the situation/reaction.

Without that, the word overreaction is meaningless.

George Carlin would probably approve and applaud.

I don't know the nuanced answer but overall Google seems less irritating, and less fake (because G+ failed)?

THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB - Richard Rhodes

This Pulitzer prize winning book proves the adage "Truth is stranger than fiction". Surprisingly, you don't need to know any math or much of physics / chemistry to read this one.

It is the story of one of the most amazing achievements of human kind and its more engaging than all the Dan Brown novels put together. This is no exaggeration - the book will entertain, educate and enlighten you like no other book you have ever read.

About this book, David Eisenberg wrote thus on his blog...

> The Making of the Atomic Bomb is not only the best and most comprehensive treatment of the [Manhattan] project and its antecedents (and I’ve read a number of them), it is also possibly the single best history or non-fiction book that I have ever read, and that’s a lot of books.

> Of course, it is not for everyone. If you don’t like history or science (don’t panic, no math necessary), World War II stories, daring commando raids, hair raising escapes, behind the scene politics, mysterious conversations, intellectual battles between the world's greatest scientists, between scientists and soldiers, scientists and politicians, the interpersonal relationships of the great men of this century, incomparable drama, massive death, powerful explosions, personal sacrifice and “a ripping good yarn” as they used to say, then don’t read it. If you are interested, I promise you that there will be no disappointment.

> a person can continue to be happy and have a meaningful life after going through an experience of losing everything

The life of a person who has lost everything is very different from a person who didn't have much in the first place. Whether it should be different or not can be discussed, but the reality for most people is that the 2 cases are very different.

Regret and despair are very real and play a vital role in life after a big loss.

I believe you and your parent commenter don't agree because you seem to be trivializing the issue a bit - in a way similar to how people who haven't been through big loss, or feel that because they got through it fine, so everyone else should also be able to do it as easily.

It ignores the inherently different way in which people deal with such circumstances.

> You have the power to not let your feelings be determined by external events.

There are smart people who are unable to exert enough control over their feelings (even when they know the above idea). People are diverse and often biologically (or culturally or both) wired differently, and people who are a little lucky in the ability to handle such situations better often find it easy to wonder "how idiotic can the person be to commit suicide on losing everything" - just because they handle it better.

ps: About people being wired differently, it is easy to see in certain aspects. Some people tend to panic more than others, and then there are those who have panic attacks under pressure. Then there are those who have an inherent bias towards one of either fight or flight.

I have seen many sides of this dice...

I have lived in New Delhi for 20 years, in Singapore for 5 years and in SF/Berkeley for 10 years.

Public transit in SF Bay area is horrible. You are right... it smells because of the homeless riding it all day, and service times are bad, and its quite expensive too.

Even New Delhi's metro is nicer and cleaner than the BART / Caltrain (because its newer but also because the company keeps it clean).

Singapore's public transit system is out of this world. Its absolutely amazing. Clean, efficient, reasonably priced, etc.

It was a shock to me when I landed in the "greatest country on earth" to see such a pathetic public transport systems.

I brought a motorcycle after my first year in US. We have 2 cars now, not only because we like the cars, but precisely because we would like to avoid the public transport.

However, people who have seen good public transport would always vote for that. I would love to see a Singapore like public transport in the US. I loved it and would give up 1 of our cars for that (still need 1 car to head out to Yosemite). But alas, I don't see that happening in the US because US people have not seen good public transport.

What about replying to multiple ones... or all of them?

Daesh is like the the hindi word for "country" written in english.

The spelling is something between Dash and Desh... Daesh is the closest and its a poor substitute, if the aim is to not call them a state. Now, we are just calling them a country.

Almost any largely spoken old language will have unique quirks of its own... stating some unique and weird points of english don't suddenly make it extra unique.

Can there be a national referendum? A vote by everyone in the USA on whether the charges against Snowden should be dropped or not?

Why or why is this not a good idea?

Only saying that "he broke the law, hence he is a criminal", is almost meaningless. Its like, the sun rises in the east. Everyone knows he broke the law, and its not part of the debate at all.

The question is... knowing all that we now know, should we treat him like a criminal?

Many people broke the law and became criminals, in order to do what was right.

Gandhi became a criminal by refusing to pay tax on salt. Americans became criminals by refusing to play ball with 'taxation without representation'.. (or the boston tea party). Rosa parks became a criminal when she refused to sit in the back of the bus. In taliban's view, Malala became a criminal when she decided to go to school.

Breaking the law is not always bad... sometimes, it is essential to break the law, in order to do the right thing.

I find it difficult to believe that you really don't care, don't have an opinion or have no moral stand on this issue. It reminds me of this famous line...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Mass surveillance and punishing whistleblowers are not just American evils. They are the evils of the powerful, who are everywhere around the world.

This is pretty cool.

4 years ago, I spent few days playing with colors to come up with an algo which allows us to automatically generate a set of colors for objects in our 3D scene. Some of the algos considered were to sort the colors in some way which includes the darker and lighter colors, and still allows us to choose n different colors from the whole range.

The result was good but not as great as we expected. The conclusion was that our algorithms are still not capable of replacing human chosen color themes.

Maybe if we had more time, or an intern with such an inclination for color selection, we might have gotten farther.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I look forward to your website updates and the future simplification of the credit industry.

I also find it a little surprising that the 30 day numbers are missing from your simple interest page... that's the single most important time frame, given that its common to everything that we are talking about.

I did some numbers on the 5k outstanding debt. After 30 days, simple and compound interest difference, on 5k debt looks like this...

  compound interest total : 5074.50
  simple interest total : 5073.97
  difference : 0.53

So, a regular joe would save 53 cents a month on debt of 5k, if they pay off more than the interest every month.

Also, you seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on the evils of minimum payment in your comments... and if the minimum payment is less than the monthly accrued interest, that is EVIL. I hate paying a single cent to the banks in interest, and have had enough money to pay all debts in full every month. So I never felt the need to study the minimum payment booby trap in detail. But if banks are doing that... I hope you succeed in derailing them.

Good luck convincing people to be financially responsible, while other banks are inviting them to be irresponsible.

I think building a story around "avoiding the minimum payment booby trap" might be useful... but its a complicated story to tell in a way that an average joe with a short attention span can understand.

Brief version: Its sounds like the benefits of "simple interest" are being inflated and being used as a marketing tool. The monetary difference between simple and compound interest are minuscule if the interest is paid off every month - which this service insists on. If you pay off 100% of your compound interest every month, you can only save a few cents per month by signing up with this simple interest. If you can't pay off 100% of your interest every month (the only scenario where simple is substantially better than compound), this service is not available to you.

This looks like marketing a very marginally better product (if at all), with excessive pomp. This is no revolution... its much more like well disguised misleading stuff from financial institutions that we are so much used to.

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[ edited to clarify some points ]

Karthik,

Since you insist on the complete interest being paid at the end of each month, the grand idea of "simple interest" has very little meaning. Hear me out here...

The whole idea of compound interest is to charge interest on the unpaid interest. You are "solving" the compound interest problem by not compounding interest for a month and forcing people to not have unpaid interest at the end of the month. However, the benefits amount to very little. If people are capable of paying off their interest at the end of each month, there is little difference between simple and compound interest.

I find your explanation on simple interest (https://www.simplycreditinc.com/simpleinterest) a bit misleading and self serving.

The difference between simple and compound interest (as stated in your essay) arises only in the long run, and your service does not allow long runs of unpaid interest... which means there can only be very little difference. Its misleading to compare long runs (> 30 days) if you don't allow them. The large savings from simple interest only apply to people who cannot pay the interest for 4 years. But you will kick them out after 2 months of non-payment.

Also, if a person is capable of paying the interest every month, they don't gain anything by signing up with your service... maybe a few cents on 5000$ every month, but that's it. Nothing more.

The positives I really see...

  1. Convenience of not worrying about paying different credit cards.
  2. Possibly lower interest rate... but I have seen no solid numbers on that on the website.
  3. By forcing people to pay off the interest every month, you might make them more financially responsible.
  4. I would like to see banking evolve, and this might be a ray of some hope... but I need to see more.

Also, it will be useful to give us some ballpark figures on the APR... I would like to see a table of some figures before I take the pains of giving out further details.

This might come as news, but wifi data is still data and counts towards the data cap.

Its not some free magical data flying around on its own.

Couldn't resist a (weak) shot at google ...

"The only thing we didn't reinvent was the alphabet."

Also, the ipod is missing from the apple store website. You can still search for it, but its lost its place on the top menu.