gaford

Re:Warren Buffett: 2nd Stimulus Needed, Expects Longer Recession on Thursday July 09, 2009 @10:37PM (#697017)

Good point about the inappropriate delay in spending the stimulus. That said, if fiscal policy were pushing up interest rates the Federal Reserve could simply lower them and use monetary policy in place of extra fiscal policy.

This would present the risk of inflation, but if there were inflation (rather than deflation) we would not be in a liquidity trap requiring fiscal stimulus.

I think Krugman has gone over all of this. It's fairly well spelled out in Keynes as well.

Re:Ask YN: Rate my idea: (britekeys, music learning tool) on Wednesday July 01, 2009 @08:03PM (#683602)

I think this is fantastic design.

Only negative point is that it was not clear to me what you were selling without scrolling down. I'd suggest turning the graphic into a clickable demo video so that people can see it in action.

Re:Ask HN: Rate My App (Bingo Card Creator, Now With Extra AJAX) on Wednesday July 01, 2009 @01:48PM (#683041)

I'd suggest less text and more big bright green buttons. It may seem ridiculous, but people just don't read instructions. They'll avoid text like the plague until they aren't sure what they need to do, then frantically scan. Then give up.

I'd also widen the width of the page - fullscreen gives more space for communicating and will help your app feel more professional.

Re:Ask HN: Collect payment info before 30 day trial? on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @11:18PM (#682031)

Collect the email addresses. You will be able to monetize a certain percentage of your users in unexpected ways. Maybe because they use your free version for years and finally decide to pay.

Don't scare people into denying you the ability to sell to them out of fear or mistrust..

Re:Drug-Resistant Flu Strain Turns Up In Denmark but Doesn’t Last Long on Monday June 29, 2009 @08:07PM (#679941)

http://cryptome.org/h1n1/cdc-flu-fuzz3.htm

James Atkinson (www.tscm.com) writes:

27,127 Confirmed Cases, over 126 confirmed deaths, 50% increase over last week on deaths... It looks almost like it is starting to get deadlier, and it may have mutated in the past two weeks.

Several states that did not report any number last week as expected provided huge numberers for the past week, that were way out-of-the-park even more then they would have public over two weeks ago.

Average of 895 new cases per day, and trending upwards

Notice how everything is strongly trending upwards.... way upwards.

The CDC announced that the number of people infected is way, way up this week (see attached charts).

They have now added a disclaimer to their web site that now says that the numbers the CDC is providing could be inaccurate because some of the states have missed the cut-off date or times for submitting their numbers.

The most interesting trend is to see the increase in the average number of people per day are being confirmed as infected, and the ever increasing upward trends. All the while the CDC is issuing press releases where they falsely claim that the infections are tapering off and that the spread of the infection is slowing down (but their own numbers show they are lying).

This results is significant fuzzing up of the the CDC H1N1 numbers and makes them inaccurate.