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Category Archives: economics
Why Economic Inequality is Killing Us [Afternoon Reading]
Even in decidedly “wealthy” countries, human health is not always guaranteed. In fact, studies show that the best indicator of a country’s health is not its overall wealth, but how that wealth is distributed. Time Magazine’s Maia Szalavitz reports:
Im… Continue reading
Posted in economics, health, syndicated
Tagged Afternoon reading, Ecology, evolution, Maia Szalavitz, medicine, science, syndicated
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Microcredit loans do help, but not in the way we thought [Economics]
Microcredit institutes like Kiva claim to help small business in the developing world by offering small loans to people who aren’t able to get them through the normal channels. Their claim is that these tiny loans help the people who are the most impo… Continue reading
Posted in economics, syndicated
Tagged Fb, microcredit, microfinance, Microloan, Social Science, syndicated, tweet
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The Closer Your Last Name Is To Z, The Faster You Buy
A study finds that the closer your last name is to the end of the alphabet, the faster you make purchasing decisions. And yes, the behavior is ingrained in us based on how we all used to line up in school.
Researchers tested groups… Continue reading
Neal Stephenson’s gold farming thriller, REAMDE
HarperCollins have
announced the next Neal Stephenson novel, REAMDE, a thriller about gold farming. I sat down with Neal last year when I was touring with my own gold farming book, For the Win, and we marvelled together at the awesome weirdness, fraud… Continue reading
Posted in economics, syndicated
Tagged china, Entertainment, Fraud, goldfarming, happymutants, mmorpg, sciencefiction, syndicated, thriller
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Second-Cheapest Syndrome
Useful to know the next time to you eat out. Ever order the second-cheapest wine on the menu while dining out? You don’t want to spend very much, but you also don’t want to look like a cheapskate ordering the … Continue reading
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The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Seat Down: A Game Theoretic Analysis
Will this settle the debate once and for all? Probably not, but an amusing read nonetheless. All hope is not lost though. An important issue regarding social norms is whether they are created to increase welfare. Are they society’s response … Continue reading
Posted in culture, economics, funny
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Book: Founders at Work
Founders at Work Jessica Livingston Apress, 2007 This book contains 32 interviews with founding members of different tech startups. Most of the interviews follow the same general format: how they got their idea, their first steps in forming a company, … Continue reading
Posted in books, culture, economics, technology
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Grand Canyon Skywalk is a Ripoff
Watch out for this scam. Not only do they hike up the price once you are trapped there, they also don’t allow you to take pictures with some flimsy excuse about people dropping their cameras. We walked in to get … Continue reading
Posted in economics, rights
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Ads on Wikipedia?
Ars Technica has a short article on the recent debate about Wikipedia‘s funding model and whether they should resort to advertising on their site. Though Wikimedia has less than ten full-time employees, it has real expenses. Bandwidth in 2007 is … Continue reading
Posted in economics, web
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Firefox – A $50+ Million Cash Cow
A brief article on how profitable the open-source Firefox project has become. You see that little Google search box on the upper right? If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads … Continue reading
Posted in apps, economics, web
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The investment advice given to Google’s IPO millionaires
This is a long, but very interesting article on index funds. As Google’s historic August 2004 IPO approached, the company’s senior vice president, Jonathan Rosenberg, realized he was about to spawn hundreds of impetuous young multimillionaires. They would, he feared, … Continue reading
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Extended Warranties are for Suckers
You would think this is pretty obvious yet people keep throwing their money into these things. Someone’s done the math and my hunch was right. A New York Times article titled The Word on Warranties: Don’t Bother expains why: They’re … Continue reading
Posted in economics, math
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From Hobby to Independent Software Vendor
I came across this link on reddit and discovered a number of inspirational accounts of developers who took the plunge from writing software in their spare time to building relatively successful ISV businesses. Well worth a read. From The Road … Continue reading
Posted in computers, economics, programming
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Living in a hidden-fee economy
Printers, minibars, and cell-phone plans…what are you getting yourself into? The printer. It’s one of the most common peripherals in the computer age and so cheap — at first blush, anyway — that stores often give them away when you … Continue reading
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The Parable of the Broken Window
Wikipedia has a good article on the broken window fallacy. The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy. Everyone sympathizes with the man whose window was broken, but pretty soon they start to suggest that … Continue reading
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