archive
index
gp originals
google i
google ii
celebrating porn
idiot voters
| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| 15-Year Old Stock Manipulator and SEC Nemesis |
| 3:29:43 am mst / 25 February 2001 found by paul / filed in legal / source NY Times 134 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Fascinating (and lengthy) article about Jonathan Lebed, the high school student who used the Yahoo! Finance chat rooms to "pump-and-dump" stocks he was trading online. The SEC forced him to return $285k of his $800k earnings, but they left him with over $500k. Why did he get to keep over half a million dollars? Click through to learn more. |
| The article took a surprisingly sympathetic view towards Lebed and unsympathetic view towards the SEC. Lebed's bold defense is that he is no more guilty of "manipulating" the market than the hordes of professional analysts, many of whom were far more wrong in their predictions than he was. The article caused me to rethink some of my views on the SEC and the financial analyst industry. |
 |
| Comedy central for the brain |
| 8:34:23 am mst / 25 February 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source U.S. News 58 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Neuroscientists have found the portion of the brain called the medial ventral prefrontal cortex responsible for "getting" a joke and finding it funny which is distinct from the two areas that comprehend the meaning regardless of whether or not the listener finds them funny. (Interestingly enough, the area that comprehends puns is distinct from the area that comprehends "semantic jokes".) |
| Some people seem to be missing this portion of their brain. |
|
| Buyers take advantage of e-tailers' goofs |
| 6:11:55 pm mst / 25 February 2001 found by paul / filed in business / source San Francisco Chronicle 93 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| When e-tailers accidentally list products for absurdly low prices, it doesn't take long for smart shoppers to discover the errors and pass the word on to their friends. Sometimes the sellers will honor the original prices and sometimes they'll refuse. |
| Interestingly enough, the traditional sellers' defense of "the buyers should have known this was too low to be true" doesn't hold up in an era when online companies are willing to endure losses in order to pick up market share. |
|
| Performance Review Generator |
| 8:34:39 pm mst / 25 February 2001 found by diana / filed in humor / source Dilbert 149 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the site: "You have to review the performance of a co-worker who exhibits the intelligence of a slug, but since today's incompetent co-worker could become tomorrow's incompetent boss, you don't want to say anything offensive. Do you lie?" |
| Dr. Paul Hsieh's review said that "no one has caught him sleeping on the job." Not quite true! |
|
| Cleaner air may be changing British accent |
| 11:42:12 pm mst / 25 February 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source ABC News 39 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The distinctive British accent known as Scouse (made famous by the former Liverpool natives The Beatles) has changed over the past few decades. One leading theory is that the cleaner air in Liverpool is causing less respiratory tract congestion among the locals, thus altering the "adenoidal twang" of their speech. (Link from Fark.) |
| Singers may have to start sucking on diesel fumes in the recording studios in order to recapture the old accent. |
|