Akkam's Razor

Shallow Journalism at the Wall Street Journal?

rzklkng — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:25:24 +0000

Murdoch’s emphasis from the beginning of his WSJ acquisition was for scoops versus investigative (longform) journalism. What we are seeing is an intended feature and not a bug. The lack of Pulitzer prizes for the WSJ team is reflective of editorial priorities. It remains to be seen if it is sustainable.

The problem with that is ‘scoops’ maps to pageviews whereas longform maps to time-on-site and engagement. The advertising environment favors the later and not the former. I guess there is also something to be said about the ease of measuring quantity of clicks versus the messy problem of asserting journalistic quality, and the even tougher job of mapping the above to key performance indicators for the news business.

Some of Murdoch’s properties – the NY Post particularly – did especially horrible regarding ‘scoops’ regarding the Boston Marathon – mostly in reporting straight from the police scanner at best or from the internet mob-sourced information which repeatedly fingered the wrong suspects or anyone brown with a backpack.

The old internet world (and old media world of cable tv) favored being first over being best. I’m not so sure if that is true anymore.

Murder by Spreadsheet

rzklkng — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:29:08 +0000

The Twitters are full of discussion about something called “Reinhart-Rogoff”.

From the NYTimes:

An influential 2010 economics paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff showed that countries with high levels of debt experienced significantly slower rates of growth – and became a justification for many countries to adopt austerity budgets to hold down their debt loads. Now a provocative new paper is arguing that the paper was seriously flawed, in part because of basic calculation errors in a spreadsheet.

The Next New Deal points out how it has been used:

This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget states their study “found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth.” The Washington Post editorial board takes it as an economic consensus view, stating that ”debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.”

Quartz links to several instances of how Reinhart-Rogoff has influenced the austerity debate:

“[I]t is widely acknowledged, based on serious research, that when public debt levels rise about 90% they tend to have a negative economic dynamism, which translates into low growth for many years.” — European Commissioner Olli Rehn.
“Economists who have studied sovereign debt tell us that letting total debt rise above 90 percent of GDP creates a drag on economic growth and intensifies the risk of a debt-fueled economic crisis.” — House Budget Committee Chairman and former Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan.
“It’s an excellent study, although in some ways what you’ve summarized understates the risks.”— Former US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
“[W]e would soon get to a situation in which a debt-to-GDP ratio would be 100%. As economists such as Reinhart and Rogoff have argued, that is the level at which the overall stock of debt becomes dangerous for the long-term growth of an economy. They would argue that that is why Japan has had such a bad time for such a long period. If deficits really solved long-term economic growth, Japan would not have been stranded in the situation in which it has been for such a long time.” Lord Lamont of Lerwick, former UK chancellor and sometime adviser to current chancellor George Osborne.
“The debt hurts the economy already. The canonical work of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff and its successors carry a clear message: countries that have gross government debt in excess of 90% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are in the debt danger zone. Entering the zone means slower economic growth.”— Doug Holtz-Eakin, Chairman of the American Action Forum.

Austerity has caused much more suffering globally than promised relief. One of the contributing factors? Microsoft Excel.

This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.

Reinhart and Rogoff have offered the following response to the criticisms.

T-Mobile Cutting the Bullshit?

rzklkng — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:40:12 +0000

I admittedly have a soft-spot for T-Mobile. After going through Comcast Metrophone, Sprint, and AT&T (later Cingular), T-Mobile had been the cellular service provider I had used for the longest period of time. Moving from the near-suburbs of Philadelphia to rural farmland necessitated a change – so we went with two iPhone 5s with Verizon.

I was more than a little excited at the prospect of a cellular carrier dumping both subsidies and contracts. I think TMO is making the smart move for the future. Customers who are out of contract or who are likely to buy their own phones are most likely to be higher-profit users. We’ll see how it works out over time as TMO’s network is fast but thin.

This comparison at the Verge of TMO versus Sprint versus ATT versus Verizon shows how little competition there is between carriers. The TL;DR is that ATT and Verizon cost exactly the same, to the penny, over 2-years, with TMO being cheaper and Sprint being significantly more expensive.

#theWolverine teaser?

rzklkng — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:13:27 +0000

We’re all familiar with the concept of a movie trailer. The trailer is typically a 30-second to 2-minute preview of a movie designed to ‘rope you in’. The downside of the modern trailer is that it gives away too much, often several key action sequences or big laughs.

The next X-Man movie, the Wolverine [IMDB], is a quasi-reboot telling the tale of the unbreakable feral Canadian’s adventures in Japan from the 1982 Claremont and Miller 4-book series. I think this is good use of Twitter’s Vine, in that 6-seconds is just long enough.

Politicians wearing their gang colors.

rzklkng — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:33:50 +0000

I wrote previously that politicians should have to publicly, literally wear their funders names on their sleeves.

There’s now a petition at the White House site to make it so. Via BoingBoing.

“Goodbye, Cruel World (no one gives a shit)”.

rzklkng — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:36:02 +0000

I quit Facebook yesterday over stupid drama. I’m embarrassed if only because publicly declaring you “quit Facebook” is like proclaiming that “you don’t even own a TV”.

Facebook is more a burden than anything else. Deciding what photos to like, restraining from commenting on the stupidity of others, and most importantly the pressure to copy and paste “Happy Birthday” on someone’s profile on the appropriate day (and not making it belatedly).

I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook is like a greeting card company.

“Happy Birthday! Happy Anniversary! Congratulations! I’m sorry for your loss.”

I ain’t got time for that. Not on Facebook.

Modern cars with 1960-1970s naming conventions

rzklkng — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:38:13 +0000

What if Ford, Chrysler and Chevrolet named their modern lineups following the conventions of the 1960-1970s?

A new GOP? Pardon my skepticism.

rzklkng — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:07:39 +0000

The GOP is promising a reboot, heavy on data (with Buzzfeed saying ‘data’ was mentioned almost a hundred times in near 100 pages), in their Growth Opportunity Project. You can get the document as a PDF here.

The GOP believe that “conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed” and that all their woes can be solved through better ~~marketing~~ messaging. Happy talk about apps, the cloud, and big data won’t solve the GOP’s product problem.

The GOP has stubbornly and repeatedly denied reality, choosing to substitute their own. I find it hard to believe that the GOP will not simply cherry-pick data that complements the political ideology of their funders and activist base as opposed to challenging them with a world that has left them behind (on many social and financial issues).

The highlights or TL;DR are here via TPM.

You Bastards Finally Did It (or you will)!

rzklkng — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:09:12 +0000

Google is finally pulling the plug on Reader. Here is Google’s official announcement. I’ve written about Reader previously, here.

gReader’s creator reflects. There are alternatives (my preferred solution is Feedly as both a mobile app for Android/iOS and Chrome extension).

I wonder if Google realizes the PR hit they are going to take here, as so many journalists and pundits – particularly those with large audiences and/or who cover technology have effectively used Google Reader for years.

White people afraid to talk about black people?

rzklkng — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:19:53 +0000

Neighbor, please.

My experience has been (like so many others) that white Philly people LOVE to talk about black people*.

So long as there are only other white people around.

I want my family, friends, and coworkers to talk like this, loud and proud. I prefer my bigots to be public and obvious. It makes it easier to judge them.

*Also the gays, poors, young, Jews, Asians, and other out-groups.