The Daily Cow

For Gmail, ironically. Here's why it sucks:

When I open Gmail on Chrome, I get this:

So I have to do a manual reload a couple times. (60% chance the above page shows on first load) When I decide to quit Gmail by closing the tab, I get this:

So I have to use Gmail on IE8. It works pretty well, actually.

In many states, electronics companies are required to pay for recycling functional devices. But in many developing countries around the world, people cannot afford televisions at normal market price but would love to have some way of staying connected. Why don't we ship the televisions to those people, and they can pay for just the cost of shipping? Why waste functional hardware when we can make 99.1 million new television owners happier and more connected?

Summer has arrived! We "cows" spend lots of time in the sun, so here is a review of the sunblock tested by your very own sunblock critic, me.

Coppertone Sport Sunblock Lotion, Ultra Sweatproof, SPF 30

This sunscreen is fairly cheap and easy to use. No fancy smells or perfume. It's quite runny despite the "ultra dry formula" label, which actually makes it easy to spread. However, be careful not to let it drip on the carpet or your clothes.

Target Sport Sunscreen - Continuous Spray, SPF 30

A no-rub sunscreen? It seemed like a good idea. However, breathing in the fumes was not fun. Also, the spray stinked up my room and carpet for hours. Be careful when spraying - a thin film did not seem to block as much UV. If you don't mind coughing on the fumes, this sunscreen is fast and convenient. Plus, it's transparent so you don't have to worry about walking around with a white blob on your nose.

Lancome UV Expert 20 Sunscreen, SPF 20

It's expensive ($35 for 3.4 oz. at Macy's), but it works very well and doesn't feel oily. Although the SPF is lower than the Target Sport Sunscreen above, it's better at blocking UV rays. It's white and has a thick consistency, so be wary of white patches after applying.

Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, SPF 70

This sunblock works very well. It does smell a bit funny, but the smell is well worth the SPF 70 protection. Despite the high SPF, it feels "lighter" (less thick) than the Lancome sunblock. It's quite inexpensive - around $10 for a 3 oz. tube.

Alba Hawaiian Green Tea Suncreen, SPF 30

This smells good! It's probably the best smelling sunblock I've tried. Buy it for the smell! It's almost as runny as the Coppertone SPORT sunblock, so beware the drip.

Hawaiian Tropic 45plus Sunblock, SPF 45

One of my favorites. It smells good (like coconut) and works fine. However, it leaves my skin feeling oily, so I wouldn't use it on my face. Also, I'm a bit skeptical of the "all day waterproof."

That's all of the ones that I can remember! Feel free to post your own recommendations.

After years of diligence and perseverance, multinational team invented an algorithm for movie-recommendation that improves upon Netflix's current algorithm by over 10%, beating the many other teams that vied for the same achievement. But this is all part of a contest: The team that accomplishes the goal (10% improvement in accuracy) and maintains their lead for a month wins one million dollars. The rest have just wasted their time.

Crowdsourcing is like an all-pay auction. One person benefits, and everyone else loses. In this case, even the team that "wins" isn't necessarily winning. Think about it: Netflix is a 2 billion-dollars-a-year business. If you start a competing company whose product recommendations are over 10% better than that of the leading competitor (Netflix), don't you think that you will get at least 0.01% of the 2 billion dollar business? That's 200,000 dollars, every year. If you don't think you can get even 0.01% of the business, then your algorithm isn't good enough.

Speaking of algorithms, I am curious how they determined the 10% rate, and how efficient the algorithm is. If it takes twice as much computing power to produce a recommendation that's 10% better, perhaps it does not make business sense (to double the cluster size). If it's an NP-hard algorithm that works only on small samples, then it's obviously not going to scale to all of Netflix. The semantics of the competition are important--so what are they?

I do wonder though: For those who participate in Crowdsourcing projects, do they expect to win? If so, how do they react to losing? If not, then are they participating just "for fun" or the experience? Really--what's the incentive?

Warren Buffet asserts: "If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell -- the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for them. They’re going to find out about it anyway, so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort."

The fact that Steve Jobs' presence and health are materially relevant to the company and thus its shareholders, it is Apple's and Jobs' fiduciary responsibility to keep the public updated on the status of Jobs' health. If he did not want to be subject to such public scrutiny, he has every right to resign and let someone else take over his role. However, because he still remains the CEO of Apple, the shareholders deserve to know everything that may affect the value of their holdings.

It was wrong for Apple to cover the stories up. It's even more wrong for it to encourage others to cover it up--the hospital in which Jobs got the surgery (ironically, although there are patients waiting for more than a year for a liver, he was one to receive the first available liver, which smells of improper use of money, but that's another topic) reported that they did not admit Steve Jobs.

What a lie!

Len Gillman from Auckland University of Technology, who led the study that concluded that "microevolution happens faster in warmer environments", is baffled by his findings, which is "the first time the effect has been shown in mammals, which regulate their own body temperature."

Apparently when you control for both temperature and species, those in the tropical regions tend to develop more mutations. So why do you conclude that warmer environments lead to more frequent mutations? Did you look into the fact that the tropics receive significantly more ultraviolet (and other short-wave) waves, and it takes those high-energy waves to disrupt the DNA replication process. It's possible that cooler temperatures encourage more conservative energy use and cell replication schedules (which decreases the likelihood of mutations)--but that doesn't mean it's appropriate to forget the most obvious cause.

Don't try to defend your legitimacy by claiming consensus: "We have previously found a similar result for plant species and other groups have seen it in marine animals. But since these are 'ectotherms' - their body temperature is controlled directly by the environment - everyone assumed that the effect was caused by climate altering their metabolic rate." No. Not everyone.

As you can see, it doesn't take a scientist to do science, and even "scientists" can produce bad science. Forgetting the difference between correlation and causation is a major flaw--not even seasoned scientists are immune to that pitfall. Therefore, we need to be more skeptical of the findings published outside of peer-reviewed scientific journals.

As long as a human does it, at least according to Pakistan, which "officially objects to the strikes by pilotless US aircraft." Apparently whether the aircrafts have a pilot matters.

If I intend to accomplish anything this summer, I need to make it into a list:

1. Complete all of my work items and commitments and perform beyond expectations
2. Interact with other teams at Microsoft to see where I might be interested in working should I return (and get a return offer)--Windows Mobile, XBox (the Entertainment division in general), Internet Explorer (just because I want to make it better), and even Microsoft Shuttle Service (their assignment algorithm sucks) are on my list so far
3. Complete my Facebook application (40%)
4. Complete/pass all of the Facebook puzzles (5%)
5. Read through the 1000 page corporate finance textbook (10%)
6. If you click here, the world will explode

   (50%)

7. ...Get my bike fixed. It's been four weeks since I've ordered it (?%)
8. Swim at least twice a week (100% so far)
9. At the end of the summer, update my resume

Things I will work on in the summer:

1. Sharpen (ahem) my C sharp skills: Build some useful windows form applications
2. Learn ASP.NET -- should not be too difficult given #1
3. Learn to cook more things, cook them better and more efficiently
4. Read at least half of the books I've received in my first three weeks. That would be two of four
5. Renovate originxt.com
6. Reclaim all of my 2008 losses from the stock market (Ha, yeah right)

Hopefully I achieve all of the first list, and do a fair share of what I can from the second list.

The LA Times poses the drug makers' decision to expand their market as a purely humanitarian decision. According to them, "U.S. drug makers agreed Saturday to shell out $80 billion over the next 10 years to lower the cost of medication"--which sounds like a pure donation for a good cause. What they overlooked is the economic motivations behind it, which is to ultimately increase profits by enlarging the market.

I've discussed monopoly pricing in the higher-education market and the practice of segmentation in general to charge different buyers different prices for essentially the same thing. If a monopolist (because of patent laws, each pharmaceutical company is in effect a monopolist) attempts to get more customers by lowering its prices, it must sacrifice the much larger profits from those willing to pay more. Therefore, the traditional monopolist with no means of pricing differently for different customers always produces less than the profit-maximizing level under conditions of price segmentation.

In this case, they are introducing the price-segmentation scheme in an extremely sneaky way. It's really no different than Apple selling (a non-redistributable version of) an iPod touch to me for $100 while selling the exact same device to Apple fans for $400; I would actually purchase an iPod touch for $100, which I am sure is above their cost of production, and this scheme allows them to sell the device to those who want it more, for more. To the LA Times, this would be Apple's humanitarian effort to bring light to us all (like Microsoft employees) by giving us a "discount" when in fact this expands their market and allows them to charge many of their existing customers much more.

Although for Apple, figuring out who's willing to spend how much is extremely difficult, the task is much easier for drug companies. People will spend as much as they can afford to purchase life-extending medicines--so to extend "discounts" to seniors for drugs not covered by Medicare is no altruistic deed. To illustrate the point, I've diagrammed the whole discussion in two simple standard supply-and-demand diagrams:

It is true that this overall system of pricing segmentation is socially more efficient than the incumbent system (the red triangle gets smaller), but that does not mean we consumers are better off. It's questionable whether the consumers as a whole benefit from this. Although it is true that the seniors who could not afford the drugs previously do benefit--and that's great--the drug companies are free to raise the price on the rest of us, so the entire concern regarding the cost of health care is definitely not alleviated.

The only group that's sure to benefit from this is represented by the green: the monopolists. They can sell the drugs for more to those of us who can afford it, and they can now sell the drugs to those who they previously could not reach--at a good profit. That's not to say that giving discounts to seniors who can't afford the drugs at "normal" prices, or increasing incentives for biotech companies to invest are bad consequences; we--and especially the media--just need to be more careful in interpreting their actions.

Sometimes, a discount is anything but a discount. It's a path to greater reach and profitability for the monopolists.