Robert Love

Tiananmen, Then and Now

2009-06-05T14:00:00.004-04:00

Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Today, The Big Picture, the Globe's photo blog, put up a touching remembrance. The changes—the disconnect, the growth—between these two pictures, 1989 and today, are striking:

Changan Avenue, near Tiananmen Square, 1989

Changan Avenue, near Tiananmen Square, 2009

When I was last in China, my blog was blocked by the great firewall. That's me, a rabble rouser. I rouse rabble.

Cupcake!

2009-05-08T16:00:00.004-04:00

For users: Top 10 features you'll love about Android 1.5

For developers: Download SDK 1.5

Where I've Been

2009-03-31T04:00:00.006-04:00

I have been silent, I know. Both work and life keep me busy. At work, we released Android 1.1, which added voice search, Latitude, and paid apps. We continue to advance the platform, with exciting upcoming releases including the anticipated cupcake milestone. And of course there will be more phones.

In life, I spend most of my blogging cycles on my food blog (feed), knocking out several posts a week—that is not just a lot of blogging, but quite a bit of braising, infusing, roasting, and even foam making.

I find myself again with pen to paper—nothing anytime soon—and am happy to announce two new translations of Linux Kernel Development: Korean and Simplified Chinese. These new, updated, translations reflect the latest printing of the second edition. Find them at your local bookseller.

Also, I got engaged.

Outside Bankie Banx's Dune Preserve, Rendevzous Bay, Anguilla, Inauguration Day

But the largest reason for the radio silence is that a lot of my blogging is on economics and I do not have any insight into our current situation. It is disingenuous to blog otherwise. I don't have a great hold on what is going on, and neither do most commentators, including many economists. If the top macroeconomists are without agreement, I am not sure what a trade economist can add, let alone I.

That said, I did say this, seven months before AIG's liquidity crisis:

The problem: As CDS contracts are not collateralized or otherwise guaranteed, their real value depends on the creditworthiness of the involved parties. The CDS contracts are being marked to market as sizable profit, but if a series of defaults hit, can the reinsuring parties pay the hedgers?

Six months ago, I wrote that while the societal and economic situation is not as bad as during The Great Depression, the financial situation is worse. I believe that continues to be true. But therein lies our problem: This is largely a financial, not an economic, mess, thus our tonic is financial, not economic. Few outside of Wall Street fully understand the esotericism that led us here. Yet few inside of Wall Street are trusted by the public. The Obama administration, led by Secretary Geithner, continues to balance that opposition with a "fix" rather than "replace" Wall Street approach. That is my policy prescription, too.

Let's hope it works.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T14:00:00.005-05:00

This New Year's Eve, while you drink and dine and dance, as sapping as this roller coaster of a year has been, never take for granted what you have and who you are.

I'm luckier than most.

The Big Picture, The Globe's beautiful photography blog, features an amazingly well composed photo tour of Israel and Hamas's deterioration after six months of relative but illusive calm.

Even they are luckier than some.

Whither an Automotive Industry

2008-12-03T10:30:00.004-05:00

I have long argued, partly in jest, mostly serious, that America should just get out of the car industry altogether and focus our capital on things we are good at, such as the service sector, software, or torts. The cost issue was secondary, I would say, if the cars themselves aren't competitive. (Does everyone at GM have huge fingers? Why are the interiors filled with over-sized plastic buttons?)

My bafflement continues with this latest bailout—unlike the financial package, I am against bailing out the US auto industry—and these comments from Ford's chief on the necessity of action:

Ford said in its plan that it could survive through 2009 with its current cash levels and by tapping its credit line with private banks, and that it could return to profitability by 2011. Even though it is better prepared for the downturn, Ford said it wanted $9 billion in loans to draw upon if necessary.

Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said the prospect of a failure of G.M. would cascade through the entire domestic auto industry and put millions of jobs at risk.

"We are very, very concerned, and that’s why we went with G.M. and Chrysler to Congress even though we think we have sufficient liquidity," he said in an interview.

Mulally is saying Ford is financially secure and does not need the bailout to meet payments, but he is worried about the second stage effects from a GM or Chrysler failure.

That seems backwards to me. Ford—and every other car manufacturer—would assuredly benefit from two of its competitors going under. There would be a small drop in demand as supply falls and prices rises, but that drop would be significantly smaller than the decrease in supply. Moreover, the substitution from GM to other manufacturers would overly favor Ford, in contrast to Mulally's statements, as "buy American" types swap one Detroit icon for another. The converse has the government funding a broken GM, propping up supply to the detriment of Ford. I don't get it.

I suppose Mulally could be bluffing, hoping to look good in the eyes of Wall Street and Ford's creditors but still get government help—to have his cake and eat it too. But somehow I doubt his posturing is worth the risk.

I love this city tonight, I love this city always

2008-11-04T09:00:00.005-05:00

I will be live-twittering tonight's election results.

Boston, mid autumn

As I wrote four years ago: If you are informed and have an opinion, please vote. Laziness is not an excuse. Although voting for Ralph Nader is.

The Economist Endorses Senator Obama

2008-10-30T16:00:00.003-04:00

The Economist endorses Senator Obama for President.

The why is summed up in part by the endorsement—"if only the real John McCain had been running"—and in part by last week's Conservatives for Obama, so-called Obamacon:

The biggest brigade in the Obamacon army consists of libertarians, furious with Mr Bush’s big-government conservatism, worried about his commitment to an open-ended "war on terror," and disgusted by his cavalier way with civil rights.

Of course, the endorsement should be no surprise. The Economist has a history of endorsing the other party: Governor Reagan in 1980, Governor Clinton in 1992, Senator Dole in 1996, Governor Bush in 2000, and Senator Kerry in 2004.

With this heady endorsement, the Illinois senator might just win.

Android is Now Open Source

2008-10-21T11:30:00.004-04:00

Via my coworkers at the Android Developers Blog: Android is now open source.

Android is the first free, open source, and fully customizable mobile platform. Android offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications.

Across my career, I am most proud of Android—as a platform, as a family of phones, and as a catalyst for change in an otherwise closed industry. But the most exciting part is what's next. Download the SDK and start hacking.

Android!

2008-10-02T12:00:00.004-04:00

Download the Android SDK 1.0 release 1.

Walt Mossberg: "The first real competitor to the iPhone ... the software is slick ... the G1 is a powerful, versatile device."

But the sui generis: Android is open to developers, open to consumers, and open to handset manufacturers. Cannot wait to see what's next.

Just Do Whatever Bernanke Says

2008-09-29T12:00:00.006-04:00

The Journal has a great primer on this morning's compromise bailout bill.

Do read the article, but the gist is this: The Treasury will initially have $250b, and up to $700b, to buy either directly or via auction bad loans and assets from financial institutions, in return for warrants for equity. Compromise language includes disincentives for high CEO pay, additional congressional oversight, and a surprising requirement for the president "to submit a legislative proposal to seek reimbursement from the financial institutions that participated" if the value of the purchased assets yields a net loss.

The best analogy I can come up with to describe the crisis is the lemon problem, exasperated by mark to market accounting: Balance sheets are full of mortgage-backed or otherwise related assets, the popping of the housing bubble resulted in a revaluation of these assets, and capitalization requirements are driving banks to liquidate the assets. Enter the lemon market. Is the bank selling the assets because it needs cashflow, or because the assets are full of subprime contagion? Is this the firm's best or worst assets? The information asymmetry has snowballed to the point of credit market implosion. Thus the government's first solution, improving lending opportunities. When that was found insufficient, as the last few weeks have witnessed, we enter this second round, where the government actually buys the troubled assets.

It is hard to comprehend how dire this situation is as the economy still "feels" okay. Gas prices might be high, but unemployment is not at 30%. Yet while the societal ramifications are not as bad, the financial conditions are worse than those that kicked off The Great Depression.

Sur la Table

2008-09-16T09:00:00.011-04:00

If you are not reading my food blog, Food Tastes Good, you are missing out on recipes such as …

Spaghetti alla Carbonara con Lobster Mushroom

Slow-Braised Carnitas

Pesto alla Genovese

Wild Mushroom Risotto with Green Peas

Red Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs

If not the actual dishes, at least the pictures are ambrosial.

Some sort of Cat

2008-08-22T14:00:00.001-04:00

The greatest Wondermark ever, if not the greatest thing, ever:

Slightly switching gears, David Leonhardt on Obamonics in the Times.

And, in case you missed it, we released version 0.9 of the Android SDK. Its dreamy.

Broken Elevators

2008-08-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

Via Google's Open Source Blog, this Google-sponsored project to study Linux I/O scheduler behavior is quite interesting, yielding unexpected results—for example, deadline is actually best for some workloads and CFS, while ideal for others, has awful worst-case performance.

Curious about I/O schedulers? Check out chapter 13 in my favorite kernel book. Want to optimize your code's file I/O and understand scheduling from the perspective of user-space? Read chapter 4 in my favorite system programming book.

Hummers, Cristal, and Cambodian Children: Hello, Nouveau Riche!

2008-08-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

Hat tip to loyal reader for making me a billionaire:

Expires six months after issue

Somewhat unrelated, Amazon is running a special this month wherein you can try Amazon Prime Free for One Month—in other words, get a month of gratis two-day shipping. US only, unfortunately.

There is always money in the banana stand

2008-07-19T15:20:00.000-04:00

Zimbabwe introduces $100 billion banknotes, each valued at one US dollar.

In all seriousness, for posterity, I would love to get one or two of these new bills. If anyone can help, I will pay handsomely.

EDGE puts me on Edge

2008-07-11T11:30:00.000-04:00

The line of 3G-hopefuls outside of Boston's Apple Store:

The fervor Apple instills in their customers, particularly compared to their competitor, is impressive.

Incidentally, down the street, the line outside of the decidedly-less cool AT&T Store was only ten or so folks deep.

The Business of Elections

2008-07-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

To date, clearly poised to surpass $1 billion before the cycle is over, the campaigns have spent a whopping $900 million. The New York Times, again proving that their core competency is in producing remarkably-informative graphics, has this rad little interactive visualization:

$4.3m to Verizon for cell phones!

See also the related article, Cashing In on Obama and McCain .

Martian Skies

2008-06-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

Collected by the Boston Globe, these photos of Martian skies are without peer. There is a romance to exploring the unexplored, about going somewhere new simply because that's what's next.

It reminds me of President Reagan's speech, quoting from the poem High Flight, later cribbed by The West Wing, on the night of the "Challenger" disaster. Scheduled to give his state of the union, he spoke in lieu from the West Wing:

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

Anyhow, beautiful pictures.

Food Blog

2008-06-17T10:30:00.001-04:00

I am keeping a food blog, Food Tastes Good. It is mostly recipes, such as,

Do check it out, if that sort of thing interests you.

Growth, Inflation, Politics, and Mistakes

2008-06-01T21:35:00.000-04:00

Mankiw on the corporate income tax:

The ultimate payers of the corporate tax are those individuals who have some stake in the company on which the tax is levied. If you own corporate equities, if you work for a corporation or if you buy goods and services from a corporation, you pay part of the corporate income tax. The corporate tax leads to lower returns on capital, lower wages or higher prices—and, most likely, a combination of all three.

Krugman on embedded versus non-embedded inflation:

Imagine that there are two entrepreneurs, Harry and Louise, both of whom change prices only at fairly long intervals—say, once a year. Other things equal, Harry want his average price over the next year to be about the same as Louise's; Louise wants her average price to be about the same as Harry's. But their price setting takes place on different dates. (This is a metaphor for the real economy, in which people setting prices have to think about the prices of many competitors and suppliers that will prevail until they revise the price again.) In this situation, inflation can feed on itself: Harry raises his price above Louise's, because he expects her to raise her price in the future, and she does the same thing when it's her turn.

Love on the 2008 US Presidential election:

Clinton, citing Puerto Rican victory, soldiers on ... PR cannot vote in general ... Obama 48 delegates shy of lock

Biz Stone on why the above is so damn slow:

We currently use one database for writes with multiple [sources say two] slaves for read queries. As many know, replication of MySQL is no easy task, so we've brought in MySQL experts to help us with that immediately. We've also ordered new machines and failover infrastructure to handle emergencies.

I can't believe this is Massachusetts

2008-05-27T14:35:00.000-04:00

Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA

A Beautiful Day

2008-05-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

Spring arrives in Boston (cf. winter)

In yesterday's Financial Times, Larry Summers on tax competition and cooperation:

First, the US should take the lead in promoting global cooperation in the international tax arena. There has been a race to the bottom in the taxation of corporate income. Closely related is the problem of tax havens that seek to lure wealthy citizens with promises that they can avoid paying taxes altogether on large parts of their fortunes. It might be inevitable that globalization leads to some increases in inequality; it is not necessary that it also compromise the possibility of progressive taxation.

Agreeing or disagreeing with Secretary Summers' point is largely a question of the role of government as much as it is one of international economics. I generally view tax competition as a healthy restraint on the tax burden and thus a bridle on the size of the state. Here, Larry is taking the view that without cooperation, you will have nanny states without nannies and thus nothing to transfer.

You're gonna be so proud. Proud? Proud.

2008-05-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

From the make-Edward-Tufte-proud department, another stellar graphic in today's Sunday Times, this one visualizing the basket of goods making up the CPI and both the relative size of those goods within the consumption bundle and the year-on-year change in that size:

All of Inflation's Little Parts by Amanda Cox

You always glean points from a good visualization that you don't from the tabular data. For example, consumers spend the same amount (about 1% of total) on cable service as on doctor visits. The portion of consumer spending allotted to "computers" has declined 12% year-on-year. Rising import prices, particularly oil (which, although denominated in dollars, experiences the same exchange rate pressure as other world market goods), and growing food costs account for the bulk of inflationary pressures. I am happy to note if you rent your home, don't own a car, and spend most of your money on clothes and bacon, your purchasing power has actually increased year-over-year.

Note that, while a proxy, the change in spending on a category is not the same as inflation. For example, the share of spending on citrus dropped 9.5% year-over-year. That could be due to deflation, but the spending drop could also be caused by a decrease in demand—perhaps consumers are substituting oranges with apples, which grew 7.5% year-on-year. Alternatively, note that while the cost of most health-related expenses went up, so did the science advancing the field, ushering in new drugs and improved procedures. If you aren't comparing, say, apples to apples year-on-year, you are measuring more than monetary inflation. These are just two of a myriad of problems with computing inflation.

A page earlier, Alan Blinder argues for greater regulation of the financial industry. Unfortunately, Prof Blinder notes:

It will, for example, substantially reduce the profitability of investment houses and, therefore, reduce their scale. But that’s the price you pay for access to a publicly financed safety net.

No doubt increased regulation, particularly in the area of margin requirements curbing excess leverage, will lower short-term profits. But I don't see why the goal of any changes in regulation shouldn't include maintaining or even improving longer term profits. After all, you'd have to take substantial bites out of Goldman's earnings to equal the loss in a single implosion such as Bear's.

Linux Journal Readers' Choice

2008-05-03T16:00:00.002-04:00

Linux Journal unleashed their annual Readers' Choice Awards the other day, and I am proud to note that Linux System Programming—my recent work on system-level Linux hacking—received an honorable mention in the category of "Favorite Linux Book." Whether you live strictly at the lowest levels or only occasionally reach outside your cozy virtual machine; whether you code in C++ or Python; whether you are wolf or neophyte, the text is both an excellent guide to systems programming and a handy reference to Linux's sparsely-documented system call API.

Also, congratulations to GNOME for winning "Favorite Desktop Environment" and—natch—vi for winning "Favorite Text Editor."

Disclaimer: I am Contributing Editor at LJ, but I was wholly uninvolved in the Readers' Choice Awards. Hat tip to "loyal reader" for the link.

Economists in Post on Gas Tax

2008-05-01T10:30:00.000-04:00

Today's Post tackles yesterday's topic:

A growing chorus—including a top congressional Democrat—labeled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposal for suspending the federal gasoline tax ineffective and shortsighted yesterday, even as she continued to paint Sen. Barack Obama as insensitive to drivers' woes for not endorsing the plan.

The initimble Prof Mankiw chimes in:

Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who has written a best-selling textbook on economics, said what he teaches is different from what Clinton and McCain are saying about gas taxes. "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept by the suppliers and is not passed on to consumers," he said.

Over the short-run—and particularly over the summer, with refineries already at maximum capacity—the quantity supplied is fixed. Cutting the tax will cause consumers to simply bid the price back up to its original value, allowing demand to meet the fixed supply.

Here is a policy proposal: Ditch the gas tax and replace it with a broader tax on all carbon. Offset the carbon tax with a revenue-neutral reduction in marginal tax rates. Also—for good measure—abolish all farm subsidies.