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ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

Ok, so basically the system wasn't really set up to deal with this strange asset. Because if I sell a put option (which means I may be required to buy shares later on), my brokerage is definitely going to enforce margin requirements to make sure I can afford those shares if things don't go my way.

ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

He only sold the voting rights associated with the shares in that transaction.

ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

If you're referring to the bank buying back shares as a "favor" to the investors who didn't know better, I don't think that was part of his plan, just luck.

ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

Right, I guess what I'm really questioning is who let him take on that much liability without having him personally guarantee it. I can't get a small business loan for my brand new corporation, pay it all to myself as compensation, and walk away saying "oh well, the business failed."

ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

Also it seems like this was just luck. I don't think he expected to have the liabilities waived (by being bought back by the bank).

ericwalleron The best unknown activist investment of 2009

What about the liability?...He contained the liability to his investment vehicle, Australian Style Investments. The A$4.5M was paid to an another entity of Bolton’s, Australian Style Holdings, to quarantine it from the $120M liability in Australian Style Investments.

I thought it was a great story until here. This just seems totally unethical. Am I missing something?

Certainly I can't just evade the liability of a risky short sale (for example) by making the trade through a shell corporation?

ericwalleron Typewar (By Eldarion)

text-decoration:underline clears things up pretty well

ericwalleron Please review KartMe

[KartMe is a] free service for easily organizing and sharing favorite books, restaurants, gadgets, recipes and more

Yeah, I would literally stick that text below the logo/search and above the three-steps description.

ericwalleron Ask HN: Does a startup always need a new idea

Definitely not. Google is the canonical example of a startup entering a crowded market and just doing it better.

If you're from India, you're probably familiar with http://www.smsgupshup.com/. I don't know too much about them, but my understanding is that they're very similar to twitter, but managed to grab the Indian market by catering specifically to those users' needs. I think I remember reading that sms was a much bigger focus for them because of the availability of net access in India. Sometimes doing it better means doing it better for a specific subset of customers.

ericwalleron The end of AI winter?

That difference in kind is probably an illusion created by the magnitude of the difference in degree.

From what I've gathered, the consensus, both in neuroscience and in philosophy of the mind, is that consciousness is totally emergent from the "simple" building blocks; there's no specific component unique to higher primates that explains the difference.

ericwalleron Pandora: From near-death to profitability in a year

Hey Chris, I'm a huge fan of Grooveshark, and it's cool to see you guys on HN.

I do have one suggestion for you though: autoplay is a great feature, but it took me a long time to realize the button was even there. If there's a way to make it more prominent I think that would help.

ericwalleron The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing)

I do see your point that in some sense we make infinite many implicit decisions all the time, but I think the word really refers specifically to the intentional act of creating a position. Though that's a semantic argument and not really important because my main point in the above comments was that this is not a now or never issue. Inaction today isn't a commitment of any kind, because the same options will be available tomorrow.

Do you mean that we should (oof, I hate to bring "should" into this) sometimes maintain the status quo even if doing so doesn't have the highest expected outcome for us?

No, certainly not. I mean that we should maintain the status quo until we can reasonably estimate those expected outcomes and their costs/benefits (ask questions first, shoot later). This article is arguing that we don't yet have those reasonable estimates.

I think the "innocent until proven guilty" approach is and expected value approach. Public loss of faith in the system is a huge cost (probably much bigger than letting the average criminal go free). So I think there's an implicit cost/benefit analysis there.

There are also costs associated with (at least some of) the proposed global warming solutions. I'm thinking specifically of cap and trade, a system with far reaching economic consequences we can't fully understand until it's actually implemented. So before we implement it, we'd better know with some degree of certainty that the current situation is bad enough to warrant a potentially dangerous economic experiment. On the other hand, I think investment in alternative energy is a relatively low cost decision (sort of a "what the hell, it can't hurt").

ericwalleron The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing)

But that's kind of the point, regardless of what you think about global warming you should be wary of "you're either with us or against us" type arguments.

And for the record I don't know much about global warming, it seems at least plausible, and I certainly don't reject it. I'm just wary of the kind of argument from urgency that's become so popular lately in American politics (and I'm sure it's been an effective political tool since the beginning of time).

ericwalleron The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing)

You still oppose carbon regulation

In fact I do not, and you've placed me into one of the two mutually exclusive categories I accused you of creating earlier.

I'm only arguing that relevant data/predictions should be reasonably vetted (this article makes some pretty strong claims against that point). And second, that whatever policies we enact should be supported by rational gathering of evidence, not just fabricated urgency.

ericwalleron The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing)

It's only a decision in the sense that each day I "decide" not to go to medical school, and so sacrifice some future earning potential. Inaction may have consequences, but that doesn't make it a decision. And by inaction I mean maintaining the status quo not literally doing nothing.

Inaction is always our default position: innocent until proven guilty. Your argument is tantamount to "consider the cost (amortized over the probability that he actually did it -- which we can't actually know) of letting this murderer go free!"

ericwalleron The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing)

That's a false dichotomy. There are not only "believers" and "non-believers" in any issue. It should always be the goal of all parties in the discussion to work from the best possible data/predictions.

Besides your argument is circular. The urgency you express with "THERE HAS TO BE A DECISION MADE" assumes that the data/predictions are correct.

ericwalleron Mistakes we made when naming our computers

Luckily, there's an rfc for that http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html

ericwalleron Our corporate WebSite runs on Clojure and Google App Engine

I think amazon.com does something like this. I read an article that dissected their product image urls to explain how their image service worked but I can't find it now. If I remember correctly the service could resize/rotate, add sale "stickers," and a bunch of other stuff.

EDIT found the article: http://aaugh.com/imageabuse.html

ericwalleron Climbing the wrong hill

I agree that the connection to startup v. career just isn't there, but I really like the analogy insofar as it concludes that it's worthwhile to "meander some in your walk (especially early on)," and "randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain."

ericwalleron Ask HN: What do you think of GitX?

GitX is awesome software, I use it everyday. For the most part I'm comfortable with git on the commandline, but I still need a gui for looking at complicated branching situations and I can build commits much more quickly with a point and click interface. And as I'm sure you know, gitk/gitgui are terrible on OS X.

So, thanks for GitX!

ericwalleron XSS Twitter in minutes; Why you shouldn't store important data with 37signals

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why the PGP key?

ericwalleron Startup Hotbed Inferiority Complex

Sure, a lot of successful tech companies come out of Silicon Valley, but there's a disproportionate amount of tech companies in Silicon Valley to begin with. It's certainly not obvious that the success rate is any higher there.

ericwalleron Metro Crash May Exemplify Paradox of Human-Machine Interaction

Well it seems clear to me that the "core human task of driving" is the supplying of inputs to the 3 major controls: brake, accelerator and steering wheel (5 if we include clutch and gear selector). I'm not necessarily agreeing with kirse, just saying that the line is well defined.

Adaptive cruise control (and even regular cruise control) definitely crosses the line and is available today in a bunch of mass market vehicles.

ericwalleron Metro Crash May Exemplify Paradox of Human-Machine Interaction

The distinction is clearer than you think. The technology in the GTR and F1 cars is limited to "managing braking, shifting, steering, etc." Intent is still left entirely to the human driver. He decides when to brake, the computer helps to do it as efficiently as possible.

ericwalleron Hecklers show dangers of Members of Congress using Twitter

I'm sure I have as well, but I didn't publish it.

ericwalleron [dead]

[Jokes] are funny only if you accept the premise. If you don't accept [the] premise, [jokes] become cancerous hate speech.

Totally wrong. Try: [racial minority] is [derogatory adjective]. The hate groups who accept the premise aren't laughing when they say it. It's a only a joke when you clearly do not accept the premise.

ericwalleron Ask HN: what unwanted domain names are you sitting on?

seebulletin.com stealyourradio.com stolenradio.com

ericwalleron Reminders by SMS using a clean UI

The signup/login UI is very interesting, I was skeptical at first but now I think I like it.

It's kind of awkward that you have to enter your email again as a reminder destination, which then ends up killing the reminder I had started to create.

But overall I think the UI is very good.

ericwalleron Freshman Economics Won't Quite Be the Same

It's funny because that's actually what I liked the most about an intro economics class (at an engineering school): that it was more philosophy plus illustrative math than anything like a science.

But I had to laugh at this line:

The textbook answer to recessions is simple...the central bank can cut interest rates.

That really depends on who wrote your textbook

ericwalleron Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download

Here's the NPR stream they mentioned: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1041295...