I was a big fan of pandora.com. The service provided a great way to listen to my favourite music and discover new appealing tracks based on sets of songs or artists. Then about two years ago it had to begin proactively preventing access to the streaming for most countries outside of the USA.
I had to switch to last.fm which I thought was slightly inferior in terms of suggestions. And now they are starting to charge €3/month for everyone outside US, UK and Germany. Thank you RIAA but no thanks!
Then yesterday a miracle occured. I opened pandora and it worked. It still does. I have not stumbled upon anything about a change in their policy and there is nothing on the website to suggest that. I am definitely not in the US - the gold-plated domes of Alexandar Nevsky cathedral are in my sight right now. So the only plausible explanation is that the Internet Gods are convincing pandora’s servers that my IP address is in fact American. They must love me.
Academic Earth streams lectures from Harvard, MIT, Yale, Berkley, Stanford and Princeton. The web site is clean and easy to navigate. Everything is free.
A somewhat lengthy profile of Larry Summers - National Economic Council chairman and former president of Harvard. I tried to speed read through some bits of it but almost every time there was a phrase that would actually make me reread the passage. It was worth it without a fail. This says enough about the quality of the piece.
Greg Mankiw calls it Larry Summers: A Hagiography. I say GREAT! You know that Beatles song - All you need is love. Well, that was in the sixties. Now all you need is confidence. And what better way to gain some but by idolizing the people who are supposed to fix the economy. I am looking forward to similar stuff about Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner.
There is a new star on the news webscape. The Browser is compilation of links by a bunch of smart people which leaves digg, stumble upon and their likes in the dust. I found it via Tyler Cowen (who is also a contributor).
I like it enough to get seriously worried about my personal productivity. Again. Being well informed is one thing but this is turning into a new form of amusing myself to death.
Warren Buffett is probably the greatest investor alive. He is CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. His annual letter to shareholders is here. Even if you are not into investments you will find it amusing.
As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions was unveiled. This led to a dysfunctional credit market that in important respects soon turned non-functional. The watchword throughout the country became the creed I saw on restaurant walls when I was young: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”
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As predicted in last year’s report, the exceptional underwriting profits that our insurance businesses realized in 2007 were not repeated in 2008. Nevertheless, the insurance group delivered an underwriting gain for the sixth consecutive year. This means that our $58.5 billion of insurance “float” – money that doesn’t belong to us but that we hold and invest for our own benefit – cost us less than zero. In fact, we were paid $2.8 billion to hold our float during 2008. Charlie and I find this enjoyable.
Over the last 44 years with Buffett at the helm, Bershire’s per-share book value has increased from $19 in 1965 to more than $73,000 as of today. He is the real superman.
