Alex Kessinger Shared Items

SXSW: Boyd Calls Out Google and Facebook for Abusing Users’ Privacy

alex — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:20:07 +0000

Amazon.com: SMK-Link VP4910 RemotePoint Jade Presentation Remote: Electronics

alex — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:06:07 +0000

Shared by voidfiles

hmm, looking for good presentation remotes. Anyone have something they like?
From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer The RemotePoint Jade is a fully programmable presentation remote control that offers a bright green laser with 150 feet of wireless range for Mac and PC. In addition to dedicated presentation controls for Mac and PC, RemotePoint Jade offers four custom buttons which can be programmed to send a variety of key combinations. Jade simplifies setup by using Auto RF, a frequency agile protocol to ensure reliable communication in today's electronically noisy environments. Additional Features:

Full 360 Degree Mouse
PowerPoint Slide Control
4 Programmable Buttons
Left and Right Mouse Buttons
Auto RF Port

Product Description

In addition to dedicated presentation controls for Mac and PC, RemotePoint Jade offers four custom buttons which can be programmed to send a variety of key combinations. Jade simplifies setup by using Auto RF, a frequency agile protocol to ensure reliable communication in today's electronically noisy environments.

Python programming language

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:50:06 +0000

Shared by voidfiles

#backoftheNapkin: Ohloh.net estimates python, the language, would take 437 man years, and 23 mil. to create.
Python is a dynamic, object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools, comes with extensive standard libraries, and can be learned in a few days. Many Python programmers report substantial productivity gains and feel the language encourages the development of better code.

Effort (est.) 429 Person Years

Avg. Salary 55,000

Project cost $ 23,569,161

[Startup News] JavaScript: It’s Not Just for Browsers Any More

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:56:06 +0000

Shared by voidfiles

Breakdown of node.js; awesome. Reason one on a laptop 6500 requests per second. That's a JS webserver for you.
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[The Daily Dish] The Online Senate

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:50:14 +0000

Eric Lawrence, John Sides, and Henry Farrell have put out a new study: We examine deliberation, polarization, and political participation among blog readers.We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators.

[Startup News] Sword & Sworcery EP for the iPhone (looks unlike anything I've ever seen)

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:50:07 +0000

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[Startup News] IPad thoughts from Ben Fry (creator of Processing)

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:12:07 +0000

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[Startup News] Forbidden Fruit - Microsoft Workers Hide Their iPhones

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:56:07 +0000

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[Hacker News] We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:03:06 +0000

Toxic assets — home mortgages packaged into complicated bonds that no one wanted to touch when the housing bubble collapsed — are starting to trade again. Planet Money wanted to figure out how this chapter of financial history will end. So we decided to buy a toxic asset of our own.Toxic Asset IntroductionThis graphic requires version 9 or higher of the Adobe Flash Player.Get the latest Flash Player.Video: Toxic Assets IntroductionCredit: Nelson Hsu, Heather Murphy, David Kestenbaum, Chana Joffe-Walt / NPRHow We Found Our Toxic AssetThere's no store where you can buy toxic assets; you have to know a guy. We know Wit Solberg, a former Wall Street trader. Solberg left Wall Street to set up his own shop, Mission Peak Capital, in Kansas City, Mo. He and a dozen guys sit at desks with their tools: monitors, potato chips, Snapple, chewing tobacco. Pretty much all day long, Solberg looks at those monitors and evaluates toxic assets. "The big black Angus cow that everybody wants? We're not buying that cow because it's too expensive," he says. "We want the cow that's got a wounded leg, but she might produce a few more calves for us — and [she's] cheap."Tracking Our Toxic Asset Interactive: Tracking Our Toxic AssetSolberg starts searching for a bond we might want to buy. And that searching looks a lot like checking your e-mail. Brokers keep sending him announcements about which toxic assets are for sale today. One says: "Cheaper!" Another says: "Super senior steal!"Around lunchtime, Solberg finds a bond he likes for us. It's called an Option One Mortgage Loan Trust, or OOMLT (pronounced om-let). Solberg thinks we should offer to buy the bond for "half a cent" on the dollar. That means that, for every $1,000 of the bond's original value, we'll offer $5.But it turns out the guy who's selling the bond wants 17 or 18 cents on the dollar — more than 30 times what we bid. Solberg says these kind of huge spreads are pretty common in the toxic asset business. People just radically disagree about what things are worth.Do You Own Part Of Our Toxic Asset? We'd like to meet some of our partners in the pages of this gigantic financial transaction. If you bought a home in 2005 in Sarasota, Fla., ZIP code 34232, let us know in the comments below or e-mail us. Or if you've owned our toxic asset (CUSIP: 41161PUA9), let us know that, too.
We spend two days with Solberg looking for the right toxic asset. One, full of what appear to be California McMansions, seems promising. Solberg prints out a 604-page prospectus that reads like a historical record of the entire financial crisis. It's all in there — vaporized companies, people struggling to pay their mortgages, and some horribly complicated logic describing which bond holders get paid, in which order, under which conditions. But that bond falls through, too.Finally, we find a beautiful, totally toxic asset at what Solberg thinks is a good price: $36,000. Back in the bubble, somebody paid $2.7 million for this thing. We buy a piece from Solberg for $1,000. It's going to be our encyclopedia of the financial crisis. What Our Toxic Asset Looks LikeOur toxic asset has 2,000 mortgages, many of them in hard-hit states like California, Arizona and Florida. A lot of the people in our bond are really struggling. Almost half are behind on their mortgage payments, and 15 percent of the homes are already in foreclosure. At some point those homes will be taken over and sold for a loss. Every time that happens, the bond shrinks. Eventually, our part of the bond will disappear entirely.Until then, we get a little money every month from people paying off their mortgages. We just got a check for $141. If it goes to Thanksgiving, we could double our money. By the way, we bought the asset with our own money. Any proceeds will go to charity. If we lose money, we take the loss.
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[FFFFOUND! / EVERYONE] Patrick Dougherty - Installations

alex — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:38:07 +0000

via http://www.stickwork.net/installations2.php#