Category: News

Two things I love are sleeping and data collection. Now, thanks to a new iPhone app, I can do both at once.

Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to record vibrations in your mattress caused by you moving in the night. In this way it acts as an actigraph, keeping a record of your body movement, which in this context reflects how deeply you are asleep.

Here is the data from my last night’s kip. As you can see I show a fairly typical pattern: sleeping deeper in the first half of the night, compared to the second half, and having alternating patterns of deep and light sleep (although I seem to cycle through the stages of sleep every hour, rather than the typically quoted every one and a half hours).

The app also has an alarm which promises to wake you up during a lighter stage of sleep, so saving you the unpleasant sensation of being woken by your alarm from deep sleep. I’ve yet to try this out but it sounds like a good thing, as long as avoiding the jarring sensation is worth forgoing the extra minutes shut-eye!

Link: to the Sleepcycle app

Something has changed over the past year with our iPhone voice services around our home (Macalester-Groveland, St Paul, Minnesota) and, to a lesser extent, along my commute (St. Paul to Roseville).

Voice services have gone from mediocre to intolerably bad. The “bars” are meaningless; even with 3-4 “bars” connection failures and call drops are ubiquitous. We can’t reliable make or receive calls from our home, which is rather a problem since we don’t have long distance landline service.

Curiously data services (3G) are doing well. We’ve tried turning off 3G services at home (EDGE only) to see if voice connections improves, but that doesn’t help enough. I suspect local AT&T carrying capacity is the problem, not wireless signal.

We rely on our iPhones for a lot of things, but we need voice services.

I understand that iPhone-class technology, and the absurdity of flat-rate data service pricing, has put a great deal of strain on AT&T’s networks. I understand that our community is resistant to installing new cell towers. That understanding does not translate into sympathy. Our family is paying, I’m chastened to confess, thousands of dollars for services AT&T is not delivering.

There are things AT&T could do. They could end their insane flat-rate pricing, and institute pay-per-use bundles with similar value but user-aligned incentives. They could provide us with a free AT&T 3G MicroCell (aka femtocell) along with discounts for use. They could give us substantial discounts on their mobile services pending a fix.

They’re not doing any of these things. Instead of providing free MicroCells and discounted services, for example, AT&T charges for their femtocell solution.

I miss the days when it was possible to initiate class action lawsuits for failure to deliver contracted services.

If some other company gets iPhones in June our family will switch. We have only one under-contract iPhone and we can sell it and pay the AT&T penalty.

If no other company gets iPhones, I will find out how good Droid really is.

Update: A computer generated (location customized) AT&T response has some relevant details:

… We see that the coverage around your home is considered to be our best coverage and it includes 3G service.   We also see that there is a planned tower about 2 miles from your home at Osceola and Lexington Parkway S.  This tower is slated to be operational mid August 2010…

…Please contact Customer Care at 611 from a cell phone or at 1-800-331-0500 from landline phone if the problem persists.    Have your wireless device available to allow for proper troubleshooting if problems persist…

So even though our coverage is failing on multiple phones, AT&T considers it to be pretty good. There’s something wrong there.

The 3 miles tower is too far away to help us directly, but it’s close enough to reduce the burden on our proximal towers. On the other hand by August we’ll have the 2010 iPhone and the 3G iPad – so any additional local AT&T capacity will be swamped.

If you do try to phone the 800 number, check the gethuman recommendations:

Press "1" at the system asking for your phone number, and then press "0" at next prompt.

Things are unlikely to improve.

Google is slowly but steadily adding all of the basic features into Wave. Recently they added email notifications, and not long before that they added access permissions. Now they’ve knocked out another one of those “must have” features; being able to remove someone from a wave.

ou can read more about it on the Google Wave Help site.

More information [GoogleWave]

Esto no es sólo una excusa para poner un vídeo de Los Planetas, es también para recoger quiénes son los nuevos reyes de las listas de ventas de discos en España: Los Planetas, los segundos que más venden detrás de Mago de Oz. Los datos los analizan en Hipersónica y Surfer Rosa, quienes más pierden en venta de discos son los “productos de radiofórmula” mientras que los grupos con una fuerte base de seguidores y con una propuesta menos prefabricada siguen vendiendo. Se vende más gracias a una conexión con el artista que saliendo en Los 40, quizás aquí merecería la pena que los responsables de marketing del sector hiciesen una reflexión. Curiosamente Los Planetas lo consiguen con su peor disco en muchos años.

Os dejo con una canción suya “de las de siempre”:

It’s the Biggest… It’s the Newest… But Palomar Telescope Won’t See Far Enough!

BY LOGAN REAVIS

SOME time this year an astronomer will peer for the first time through the largest telescope the world has ever known—will penetrate space to a distance of two billion light years farther than the eye of man has ever explored.

But he won’t see far enough.

When the huge 200-inch monocle of science is finally completed after 18 years of work at a cost of $6,000,000, the astronomer will discover hundreds of millions of stars which man never knew existed. He will discover vast new secrets of the universe. He may find new planets — and perhaps learn whether there is life on those he already knows.

But he won’t discover enough and he won’t learn enough.

California’s “giant eye of Palomar” will be perceptibly dimmed by a no-man’s land of dust which hovers above the globe at an average height of seven and one-half miles. This is the layer known as the tropopause in which the temperature ceases to fall with increasing altitude. It lies between the troposphere, the atmospheric layer in which man lives and works, and the stratosphere, and is about five miles thick at the poles and ten miles at the equator.

The tropopause is the catchall basin for dust storms which swirl upward from the arid regions of the earth, for volcanic soot and for sand-storms, all carried upward by thermal currents and deposited there. And there they sit, dust in the giant’s eye, distorting celestial images and impeding significant lines of the spectrum.

Scientists have come out with a daring answer. If a land-based telescope is hampered by a layer of dust in the sky, they ask, why not put a telescope above the layer so that crystal-clear vision may be obtained? Why not, in short, put an eye in the sky ?

This bold plan has come from the fertile brain of Dr. Lyman Spitzer Jr., associate professor of astrophysics at Yale University. He has taken the theories of several noted physicists and * engineers and woven them, with his own, into a specific design for an artificial satellite circling the earth. He plans an observatory spinning about in space more than 22,000 miles above the earth’s surface, on which astronomical instruments could unravel the mysteries of the skies far more effectively than any post on this planet.

But first would come the problem of transporting the materials into space to construct the platform. How can the scientists get them up there, in view of the fact that more than 600 tons of the types of fuel known today are needed to move just one ton of material into space?

The answer symbolizes the age in which this startling project may become a reality: atomic energy, the only energy source powerful enough for that job.

Atomic energy would be the gasoline and—another scientific miracle—rockets would be the moving vans! Rockets, carefully insulated from suspected high temperatures in the upper realm of the stratosphere, would tow the prefabricated parts upward for assembly “on the spot” in the stratosphere. Let’s have a closer scrutiny of the astral outpost, illustrated in detail on pages 104-105.

Completely assembled, it is 194 feet in diameter and consists of a circular platform upon which is mounted two huge telescopes, a motor and generator, camera, radio and television equipment, living quarters and a vast assortment of scientific instruments to observe and record astronomical phenomena.

The platform spins in an easterly direction at a speed approximating the rotation of the earth, 1,080 miles per minute. This speed must be maintained in order to create, through centrifugal force, the equivalent of earth’s gravity.

The motor which drives the satellite lies in the vertical axis and spins the entire structure through connecting spokes. Energy is obtained from steam which is created when the great circular mirror shown above the platform concentrates the sun’s rays upon water in the pipes in the lower part of the structure.

The main telescope for observation of the skies stands on a turntable atop the platform while a smaller one, whose chief purpose is examination of the earth’s surface, is attached to the lower platform. The 200-inch reflector of the larger “eye,” supported by a high carriage, is permitted an extraordinary fore and aft sweep of some 240 degrees, limited only by the periphery of the mirror. This action is facilitated by a gear train in the trunnion assembly and the depth of the front and rear yokes. The instrument can be swung completely around, forward and backward. The turntable permits circular movement, while a forward yoke and a rear worm gear acting on rollers permit back and forth action.

The tower in back of the main ’scope contains the coelostat and a coronograph used in solar observations. From the mirror, the sun’s image is reflected to the base and again reflected to the inconoscope of a television camera. The televised image is then carried directly to a projection room below, where it appears on a screen.

The smaller telescope would prove invaluable in relaying back to earth information observed on weather conditions of all sorts, and ship and plane movements. It is easy to see how important this would be in time of war. Location of enemy troops, planes and vessels could be spotted and speedily passed on to headquarters.

The instrument in the right central portion of the platform, resembling somewhat a military mortar, is a great camera inspired, in principle, by the present-day “super-Schmidt” camera designed by Harvard University’s Dr. James G. Baker. It is remotely controlled from inside the platform and will be used in record- ing rocket and meteor flights and other astral phenomena which flash by so speedily that the human eye cannot observe them.

Inside the platform, located on various levels along the rim, are the living and working quarters for members of the satellite’s crew. These quarters are compartmented so that a measure of safety can be provided if some part of the platform is sheared away by flying meteors.

They look like weird men from other planets, these crew members of the observatory in the sky. Encased in bulky, electrically heated “breathing suits,” they tread cautiously in their well-nigh weightless world. Security lines connect them at all times with the central airlock in the bowels of the satellite, which supplies life-giving oxygen to all on board. When they emerge from the interior and prowl atop the platform, they proceed by means of hooks.

This, then, is the answer of science to the limitations of the Palomar telescope. Weird, startling, unbelievable? No, answers science. Not half so unbelievable as the myriad or wonders which the age of the atom will eventually bring. •

Nook owners are getting a surprise from Barnes & Noble in the form of a major software update. Version 1.3 has the standard bug fixes and performance enhancements, and also adds some new features to the Nook. The ability to read e-books for free while in B&N stores is finally enabled with version 1.3. Nook owners can take the reader into any store and read any e-book title for up to an hour each day at no charge. There are plans to add periodicals to the “read for free” titles soon.

A beta web browser is also added in this new version on the Nook to take advantage of the Wi-Fi capability. This browser is likely to be crude, such as that on the Kindle, but it enables the ability to use the Nook in hotspots that require a web browser login. Nook owners have been crying out for this ability since the device launch.

If the update doesn’t show up automatically on your Nook, go to My Library while on a Wi-Fi connection and check for new content. You should see a prompt to get the update.

This update leads to the question when iPad owners can expect a version of the B&N Reader app for the device. CNET was told by B&N that an iPad specific version of the reader should be out “sometime in May”, with an iPhone version out sometime after that. The iPad version is being totally rewritten to take advantage of the device, according to B&N.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Irrational Exuberance Over E-Books?

Environmental News Network: An oil drilling rig that had burned for 36 hours in the Gulf of Mexico sank on Thursday as hopes dimmed for 11 missing workers and the risk of a major oil spill loomed, officials said.

The fire went out as the Deepwater Horizon, operated by Transocean Ltd, sank below the surface at 10:21 a.m. CDT (1521 GMT), about 42 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The rig was drilling BP Plc’s Macondo project with 126 workers on board when it was ripped by an explosion and fire on Tuesday night. Some 115 workers escaped, including 17 helicoptered to New Orleans area hospitals with injuries.

Search and rescue operations turned up two empty lifeboats, and officials cited dim hopes that the 11 workers missing since the blast about 10 p.m. CDT Tuesday night would be rescued.

“We do continue with search and rescue activities,” the 8th District Coast Guard Commander Rear Admiral Mary Landry said. “As time passes, however, the probability of success in locating the 11 missing persons decreases.”

Transocean, based in Zug, Switzerland and the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, said some of the missing may not have been able to escape the rig.

“Based on reports of crew members, at the time of the incident, they believe they may have been on board and not able to evacuate,” said Adrian Rose, a vice president of Transocean.

U.S. lawmakers called for the Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service to investigate the incident.

“It is critical that these agencies examine what went wrong and the environmental impact this incident has created,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat.

The explosion comes almost three weeks after President Barack Obama unveiled plans for a limited expansion of U.S. offshore oil and gas drilling.

It was unclear whether the rig sank to the bottom in about 5,000 feet of water, or how much oil still flowed or had spilled from the well, officials said.

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Here’s a lecture Steven Johnson gave last night at Columbia about the future of text. (Steven has a transcript here.) Lo and behold, that degree in semiotics twenty years ago makes a lot of sense now!

We’re a little closer to getting this beautiful tablet in our hands. Amazon is now taking pre-orders for the Archos 7 tablet. You can place your order now for a very pocket friendly $199 for this 8GB model. The 2GB model is expected to be priced at $179. Amazon may be the first of many retailers to carry this device, now shipping date has been set but it’s expected to start at the end of this month.

Product Features

* Your movies, music and photos will look great on the 7″ high-resolution touch-screen. You can even watch your favorite HD movies (720p) on the ARCHOS 7 home tablet.
* With the Android application framework you can now get your favorite Android apps on a 7″ device.
* Stay in touch with your family and your friends with the pre-installed email application. If you need to reach them right away, you can use the chat application or visit your favorite social networking sites.
* Use the USB host connection to connect a mouse, keyboard or external mass storage so you can surf the web or access your office documents easily and quickly. With the home tablet you won¿t need to start up your PC.
* With an 800 pixel wide resolution and a 7″ screen, you can comfortably surf the web in full width. No need to zoom in and out because the web pages are fully displayed on the ARCHOS screen.

As you can see from the specs above, this has a 7 inch screen, 720p playback and an ARM processor clocked at 600 MHZ. It will ship with Android 1.6.

[via liliputing]

Today, my daughter put my old iPod Mini into the iHome clock radio in her room and was surprised to see it spring to life.  Surprised, but not nearly as surprised as I was. Astonished is probably a more accurate word for my reaction. Not only had that iPod lasted me for years in my car, at the gym, at work, and at home, I had used it until the battery no longer held a charge.   The Mini came with me on trips around the country, driving and flying, my constant companion. At one point I loaded Linux on it, just because I could, became tired of it and set it back to factory defaults.

After the battery gave up the ghost, the Mini continued to work great, as long as it was plugged in, for a couple more years. After the Mini refused to power on when plugged in, (or so I thought) I put it up, and generally forgot about it until my two year old son somehow found it and decided that he needed it.  Since it was busted anyway, I let him have it, and that’s when the real abuse began.

My son dropped it on the concrete, used it as a hammer, and may have even taken a dive in the tub with it once or twice.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a device as throughly beaten as this old Mini. For months, what was my companion became my son’s, inside and out. So, imagine my surprise when, after months of neglect and mistreatment, the Mini powered on and filled my daughter’s room with music once more. My old iPod is not without its scars, the click wheel doesn’t work, and the black and white display is a little patchy, but it still accepts the buttons on the iHome.

Have you had a similar, jaw dropping, “it still works” moment with your Apple gear?  I’d love to hear about it, sound off in the comments!

Image courtesy of Flickr user mfajardo

By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest

Goldman Sachs, which has long prided itself on being one of the
smartest operators on Wall Street, has apparently decided that the best
way to defend itself against federal fraud charges is to plead incompetence. The
firm is taking the position that it is not guilty of
misleading investors in a 2007 issue of mortgage securities because it
allegedly lost money — more than $90 million, it claims — on its own
stake in the deal.

In fact, Goldman would have us believe that it took a bath in the
overall mortgage security arena. This story line is a far cry from the
one put forth a couple of years ago, when the firm was being celebrated
for anticipating the collapse in the mortgage market and shielding
itself — though not its clients. In a November 2007 front-page article headlined “Goldman Sachs Rakes in
Profit in Credit Crisis,” the New York Times reported that the
firm “continued to package risky mortgages to sell to investors” while
it reduced its own holdings in such securities and bought “expensive
insurance as protection against further losses.” In 2007 Goldman posted a
profit of $11.6 billion (up from $9.5 billion the year before), and CEO
Lloyd Blankfein took home $70 million in compensation (not counting another $45 million in
value he realized upon the vesting of previously granted stock awards).
Some bath.

Goldman is not the only one rewriting financial history. Many of the
firm’s mainstream critics are talking as if it is unheard of for an
investment bank to act contrary to the interests of its clients, as
Goldman is accused of doing by failing to disclose that it allowed hedge
fund operator John Paulson to choose a set of particularly toxic
mortgage securities for Goldman to peddle while Paulson was betting
heavily that those securities would tank.

In fact, the history of Wall Street is filled with examples in which
investment houses sought to hoodwink investors. Rampant stock
manipulation, conflicts of interest and other fraudulent practices
exposed by the Pecora Commission prompted the regulatory reforms of the
1930s. Those reforms reduced but did not eliminate shady practices. The
1950s and early 1960s saw a series of scandals involving firms on the
American Stock Exchange that in 1964 inspired Congress to impose
stricter disclosure requirements for over-the-counter securities.

The corporate takeover frenzy of the 1980s brought with it a wave of
insider trading scandals. The culprits in these cases involved not only
independent speculators such as Ivan Boesky, but also executives at
prominent investment houses, above all Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham.
Also caught in the net was Robert Freeman, head of risk arbitrage at
Goldman, who in 1989 pleaded guilty to criminal charges. When players
such as Freeman and Milken traded on inside information, they were
profiting at the expense of other investors, including their own
clients, who were not privy to that information.

During the past decade, various major banks were accused of helping
crooked companies deceive investors. For example, in 2004 Citigroup agreed to pay $2.7 billion to settle such charges
brought in connection with WorldCom and later paid $1.7 billion to former Enron investors. In 2005
Goldman and three other banks paid $100 million to settle charges in connection
with WorldCom.

In other words, the allegation that Goldman was acting contrary to
the interest of its clients in the sale of synthetic collateralized debt
obligations was hardly unprecedented.

What’s not getting much attention during the current scandal is that
in late 2007 Goldman had found another way to profit by exploiting its
clients, though in this case the clients were not investors but
homeowners.

Goldman quietly purchased a company called Litton Loan Servicing, a
leading player in the business of servicing subprime (and frequently
predatory) home mortgages. “Servicing” in this case means collecting
payments from homeowners who frequently fall behind in payments and are
at risk of foreclosure. As I wrote
in 2008, Litton is “a type of collection agency dealing with those in
the most vulnerable and desperate financial circumstances.” At the end
of 2009, Litton was the fourth largest subprime servicer, with a
portfolio of some $52 billion (National Mortgage News
4/5/2010).

Litton has frequently been charged with engaging in abusive
practices, including the imposition of onerous late fees that allegedly
violate the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. It has also been
accused of being overly aggressive in pushing homeowners into
foreclosure when they can’t make their payments.

Many of these complaints have ended up in court. According to the Justia database,
Litton has been sued more than 300 times in federal court since the
beginning of 2007. That year a federal judge in California granted class-action status to a group of plaintiffs, but
the court later limited
the scope of the potential damages, resulting in a settlement in which
Litton agreed to pay out $500,000.

Meanwhile, individual lawsuits continue to be filed. Many of the more
recent ones involve disputes over loan modifications. Complaints in
this area persist even though Litton is participating in the Obama
Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program and is thus
eligible for incentive payments through an extension of the Toxic Assets
Relief Program.

There seems to be no end to the ways that Goldman manages to make
money from toxic assets.  On Wall Street, as in Las Vegas, the house
always wins.

BONUS FEATURE: Federal regulation of business leaves
a lot to be desired, but it is worth knowing where to find information
on those enforcement activities that are occurring. The Dirt Diggers
Digest can help with our new Enforcement
page, which has links to online enforcement data from a wide range
of federal agencies. The page also includes links to inspection data,
product recall announcements and lists of companies debarred from doing
business with the federal government.

Design guy Seth Aaron Henderson sewed up victory on the seventh season finale of Project Runway on Thursday. Judges Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia, Michael Kors, and special guest Faith Hill chose Henderson over fellow finalists Emilio Sosa and Mila Hermanovski on the final episode of the current season of Lifetime’s reality fashion design competition.

Throughout the season, Henderson presented a collection of high-collared dresses and professional separates, inspired by 1940s German and Soviet military. His looks were accentuated by thick leather belts, leather gloves, and patterned leggings.

“I’m a risk taker,” says Henderson, a 38-year-old stylist and designer from Vancouver, Washington. “I feel you have to push the envelope all the time, otherwise you’re going to blend in. I’m ready to start a large clothing line. I’m ready to conquer the fashion industry….”

After out-designing the competition, Seth will take home this year’s Runway grand prizes: an editorial feature in an issue of Marie Claire, a cash prize of $100,000 to start his own line, an opportunity to sell the line on Bluefly.com, and a $50,000 technology suite from Hewlett-Packard to create, design, and run his design business.

About a year ago, in 2009 Shell Oil started injecting nitrogen into their gasoline. According to Shell, “Nitrogen is a key element of the active cleaning molecule in the new fuel, making it significantly more stable at higher temperatures common in modern engines, such as direct fuel-injection gasoline engines.”

But, this leads me to the question of doesn’t this enrichment lead to more nitrous oxide coming out the tailpipe? Now this laughing gas (N2O) is no laughing matter as it is also one of the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

So, a company called ACTA SpA is taking a different approach by injecting hydrogen into diesel fuel to help long haul truck drivers increase mileage by 17-percent. This hydrogen injection unit pays for itself in 6 months and not only will it cut down on fuel consumption (thereby greenhouse gases) but it will save money at the pump as well.

According to ACTA about its new hydrogen injection unit, “The tests took place in Verona at Car Diesel S.p.A., one of the largest independent test centres for fuel consumption and engine performance in Northern Italy. A new Volvo earth mover truck, fitted with a 7.2-litre capacity, 280HP engine (D7E280), compliant with Euro 5 emission standards, was tested at 80-percent of its power with hydrogen gas injected to enrich the fuel, and the fuel consumption was compared to the same test conditions without hydrogen injection.

“The Company estimates that the reduction achieved in consumption represents a net fuel saving of over €6,000 per annum for an average long-distance HGV, which would represent a payback period of only six months, based upon Acta’s anticipated commercial pricing for this system. These results are an important technical validation of the data obtained by the Company in its own laboratory, in a previous independent engine performance test, and in road tests.”

Unlike many emerging technology companies, ACTA is starting to see a profit on its hydrogen generators which are being used to both produce and store renewable energy on a large scale and to help diesel trucks attain higher mileage.

Sure there will be skeptics to this new technology. But, validation from independent lab tests from a center with an excellent reputation is a good start where even a denier will find a hard time in quibbling with the results.

Late last year, we created a presentation on some of the greatest trades of all time. It featured men who had achieved billions of dollars through their financial aptitude, brilliant investment strategies, and some luck.

However, with every winning trade comes a loss to another party, and today we focus on… the losers.

Here are the individuals and institutions that lost hundreds of millions, to billions, of dollars. All by letting one group or individual gamble with their money.

Be it excessive leverage, poor decision-making, or outright illegal activity, this is a story of epic failure.

See The Worst Trades Of All Time ->

Robert Citron: The man who brought California to its knees with 292% leverage.

In 1994, Robert Citron was Treasurer-Tax Collector and the only Democrat to hold office in Orange County, California. Through a series of highly-levered deals that included repo agreements and floating rate notes, Citron was able to at one point achieve leverage of 292%. The funds he managed were worth around $8 billion and if interest rates went up, he stood to lose big time due to his collateral which consisted almost primarily of US Treasury bonds.

Well guess what? Interest rates rose and as a result, Citron lost Orange County lost a boatload of money. From Wikipedia:

“The county’s finances were not suspect until February 1994. The Federal Reserve Bank began to raise US interest rates, causing many securities in Orange County’s investment pools to fall in value. As a result, dealers were requesting extra margin payments from Orange County. These extra margin payments were funded in part by another bond issue made by Orange County; the size of that bond issue was $600 million. However, this fix proved to be only temporary. In December 1994, Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) realized what was going on and blocked the “rolling over” of $1.25 billion in repos (“rollover” essentially means issuing of another repo when the previous one ends, but, at the new prevailing interest rate).

At that point Orange County was left with no recourse other than to file for bankruptcy.”

Jerome Kerviel: Derivatives arbitrage totaling over $60 billion

Kerviel made headlines last year as the trader at “a french bank,” which ended up being Societe Generale, He lost approximately $6.5 billion just like Leeson and others in this list through arbitrage of equity derivatives. Unauthorized trades totaled as high as $66.7 billion. Kerviel was ultimately charged with creating fraudulent documents and making attacks on an automated system.

Nick Leeson: Wiped out the world’s oldest bank, Barings

Leeson is most likely the most popular guy on the list. He started his career trading derivatives at Barings Bank and was eventually moved to Singapore where he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and made plenty of money. That is, because he hid mounting losses in a special account known as the “five eights” account. He was eventually caught and sentenced to five years in a Singaporean prison where he acquired cancer and his wife left him.

Tim Geithner: Plowed $6.6 billion into a dead, unpopular automaker

Consider this: when was the last time Chrysler made a car you would actually buy? I’m dead serious. Who buys a new Chrysler, excluding the Jeep brand? Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must not have thought of this when he wrote Chrysler a check for $6.6 billion to keep the company afloat via a new company.

This isn’t the first time Chrysler has needed help. In 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter approved a $1.5 billion loan package for the automaker called the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee.

Since 2009, Chrysler has yet to fully recover and continues to be a money-losing business. Kyle Bass once said that this country needs to consolidate its auto industry. There is no longer room for three major players and perhaps, not even two. Ford will stick around, but it remains to be seen if Chrysler and GM can survive despite their divine intervention.

John Rusnak: Lost $691 million and thousands of jobs trading FX

Rusnak was a currency trader at Allfirst Bank who placed bets he couldn’t handle. He was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for bank fraud and lost Allfirst a total of $691 million. As a result, Allfirst was sold by parent company AIB Group to M&T Bank. Over 1000 employees lost their jobs as a result of the case.

Joseph Jett: The hacker who lost it all

After GE purchased investment firm Kidder Peabody, it ended up finding out the company was more trouble than it was worth. Joe Jett, an MIT and Harvard Business School graduate, worked for Kidder in its fixed income department. He exploited a weak computer system to emulate trades to appear as if he was making sums of money. He appeared to have made $264 million when in reality, he had $75 million in losses that he covered up.

After becoming a rising star in the company, he was fired for reportedly causing over $250 million in losses according to then-GE CEO Jack Welch. As a result, the SEC charged him with record-keeping violations and ordered him to forfeit $8.2 million in bonus pay in addition to a $200,000 fine.

John Meriwether: The hedge fund that almost blew up the entire global economy.

This story is one that’s appeared in many a book about finance. It goes something like this:

Back in 1998, John Meriwether’s hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, had levered up 100:1 on Russian bonds. Russia defaulted and as a result, the fund lost $4.8 billion in a matter of months. A consortium of Wall Street banks was brought together by the New York Fed in order to bail out the hedge fund and save the economy. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse were all forced to post hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the firm afloat. Over $1.9 billion in principal was completely wiped out, making Meriwether the laughing stock of The Street.

Yasuo Hamanaka: Attempted to corner the copper market and lost

This Japanese copper trader used to be employed by the Sumitomo Corporation, which was one of the larger trading firms in Japan. Back in 1996, Mr. Hamanaka attempted to corner the copper market and was unsuccessful. At stake? $1.8 billion in authorized trading with losses as high as $2.6 billion. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and was released in 2005.

Andy Fastow: Enron’s CFO Cooks The Books, Funnels Money, And Cheats His Way To Riches

The downfall of Enron will forever be known as one of the greatest crimes (and tricks) in modern finance. As Enron’s Chief Financial Officer, Fastow was responsible for unloading balance sheet debt into special investment vehicles, including the famous JLM and Raptor vehicles. He also set up off shore entities, directed traders on how they should make money, and lied to investors all in the name of Enron.

When the government went after Enron, he was able to cop a plea agreement that required him to serve a maximum 10-year prison sentence and forfeit $23.8 million in assets. He got six years and is awaiting release in 2011. His losses? Billions of dollars, wiping out shareholders completely, and costing thousands their jobs.

Peter Young: 80,000 investors get cheated

Young was a fund manager at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (DMG) and had access to quite a bit of capital. He was known for making big, speculative bets in European markets. He set up shell companies so that he could circumvent financial regulation and place big bets on specific companies. After these bets, regulators came looking for answers and trading was shut down temporarily. Parent company Deutsche Bank was forced to offer DMG a $300 million cash infusion, only to have $400 million withdrawn from its funds in the ensuing weeks.

DMG was forced to pay a $1 million fine and investors profits were cut short after the bank announced to 80,000 investors that money was lost due to trading irregularities. Together, the three European funds Young managed were worth a combined $2.5 billion.

Bernard Madoff: The greatest Ponzi scheme of all time

You know the story by now, so let’s review:

• Former head of NASDAQ starts up Madoff Securities in mid-1980s.
• For years showed investors great returns, told them to keep their money in the fund.
• Turned out he didn’t have anywhere near as much money in the fund as he claimed he did, bilked investors out of billions when it was discovered he was running a Ponzi scheme.
• Goes to jail for the rest of his life, assets and cash divested to claimants in case.
• New York Post has a field day with its headlines.

David Lee: An explosive natural gas play

Lee, a natural gas trader for Bank of Montreal, ended up losing his bank $237 million due to his trading in natgas derivatives. He originally lost up to $853 million using a scheme to disguise his losses – a recurring theme in our presentation.

According to Reuters, it went down like this:
“Lee overvalued the positions on BMO’s books by regularly recording inflated values that were then purportedly validated by Optionable Inc,” the SEC suit said.

It said the three Optionable traders “schemed with Lee to have Optionable simply rubber-stamp whatever inflated values Lee recorded.”

Love stories on the underbelly of Wall Street? Then check out…

10 Awesome Tales of Wall Street Excess ->

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Author and friend-of-the-site Craig Johnston let us know that his new book My Palm Pre (co-written with Joe Hutsko) from Que is now available for preorder (you should pardon the expression) at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  It should also be hitting actual bookstore shelves between May 10th and 20th. It looks to be a useful guide for new webOS users.

Look forward to a full review once it is released!

Hyundai today unveiled the new 2011 Verna at the 2010 Beijing Motor Show. The subcompact model, known as the Accent in other places of the world, gets a Sonata influenced design with a sloping roofline that gives it a more dynamic and sportier look – heck, it looks a lot better than the current model.

Powertrain choices (in China) include two new Gamma gasoline engines with multiport fuel-injection. The base Verna is powered by a 1.4L engine making 106-hp and 100 lb-ft of torque. When mated to a 5-speed manual, the base Verna can return 41.2 mpg (in U.S. terms). The second powertrain choice includes a 1.6L 4-cylinder making 121-hp and 114 lb-ft of torque. It will only come with a 4-speed automatic transmission.

The 2011 Verna will be produced at Hyundai’s Beijing plant starting July and will go on sale in the second half of this year. Hyundai will launch it in the Chinese market first, then introduce it to other regions.

2011 Hyundai Verna (Accent):

Press Release:

Hyundai Unveils All-New Verna at Beijing Show

– All-new Verna is Hyundai’s 3rd China-exclusive model
– Hyundai holds world premier in China

(Beijing, China) Hyundai Motor Co. staged the world-premiere of its all-new Verna at the 2010 Beijing Automotive Exhibition today. With its eye-catching sloping roofline, the new sub-compact, Hyundai’s third China-exclusive model, projects a coupe-like dynamic image that is at once sporty, stately and futuristic.

Developed over a five-year period expressively for the Chinese market, product planners conducted exhaustive market research of Chinese consumer tastes and trends to ensure every detail meets local requirements. Built on an all-new platform at the company’s highly automated plant in Beijing, Verna is targeted at China’s strategically important C1 segment and fully reflects Hyundai’s philosophy of quality.

“Today is a really special day for us, not only because we’re launching a new car, but because it’s one of the very few times we’ve done a world-premiere outside of Korea: And we chose to do it right here in China because it’s our way of recognizing how important our Chinese customers are to us,” Euisun Chung, Vice Chairman of Hyundai Motor said today at the Beijing auto show.

“In 2009 we posted a 94 percent Y-o-Y growth in China and have sold over 2 million cars since arriving in 2002. We are not losing any momentum, continuing to expand our lineup in China with our most stylish and advanced models like the all-new Verna and our compact SUV “ix35.”

To minimize fuel consumption without sacrificing performance, Verna is powered by the new generation Gamma gasoline engine, featuring multiport fuel injection. Verna delivers best-in-class fuel economy, in keeping with Hyundai’s pledge to be the industry’s eco-leader. And it fully satisfies China’s Step 3 fuel economy regulations — two years ahead of schedule.

Featuring all-aluminium construction for weight-saving, the 1.6L DOHC Gamma delivers 90.4Kw@6300rpm and 155Nm of peak torque @ 4200rpm through a smooth-shifting four-speed automatic transmission.

For cost-conscious car buyers, the base Verna is offered with the 1.4L DOHC edition of the Gamma which puts out 78.7Kw@6300rpm and 135.4Nm@5000rpm and comes with the choice of a five-speed manual gearbox or four-speed automatic. Fuel economy is rated 5.7ℓ/100km with the manual; 6.2ℓ/100km with the automatic (1.4L with Fuel Economy Package).

Such impressive performance was made possible by a variety of enhancements to the engine including Continuously Variable Valve Timing, a smart alternator and air conditioning compressor plus the adoption of motor-driven power steering.

Verna hugs the ground with a new low-floor platform and a sloping roofline both of which contribute to Verna’s impressive aerodynamics and superior fuel economy.

Special ultra-high tensile strength steel has been applied to the car to enhance the overall stiffness of the body structure for superior crash protection: Verna achieves best-in-class safety, aiming to satisfy the CNCAP 5★ rating. Thanks to the highly rigid body, the suspension is more securely anchored thus enhancing ride and handling characteristics and eliminating vibration and booming noise.

Verna’s wheelbase—longest-in-class—and its low overall height, give it extra stability and a very stylish look but without incurring a penalty in cabin size. In fact, the overall cabin dimensions are bigger than any rivals. And the trunk, measuring a spacious 454L can easily accommodate as many as four golf bags plus three small tote bags. So not only does it look great, but it’s very practical.

The Verna will be built at the company’s highly automated Beijing plant from July and will go on sale in the second half of this year. Hyundai will launch it in the Chinese market first, then gradually introduce it to other regions.

– By: Kap Shah

A Belgian bishop resigned on Friday after admitting to abusing a young man decades ago. The resignation came one day after an Irish bishop was forced to step down for failing to report pedophile priests when he was in Dublin.

Both men were made bishops – considered successors of the apostles in Catholic teaching – by Pope John Paul II.

Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of Bishop Roger Joseph Vangheluwe of Bruges, Belgium, and Vangheluwe issued a statement saying he profoundly regretted what he had done to the young man, a minor at the time.

“Over the course of these decades I have repeatedly recognized my guilt towards him and his family, and I have asked forgiveness,” the bishop’s statement said, “but this did not pacify him, and it did not pacify me.”

Vangheluwe, 73, steps down two years before the normal resignation age of 75, admitting that the victim “is still marked by what happened.”

The Archbishop of Brussels, Andre-Mutien Leonard, said that with the resignation, the Catholic Church wants to turn a new page “with respect to the not-so-distant period in which the Church, and others, preferred the solution of silence or concealment.”

After two bishops stepping down this week, more could be on the way. Other Irish bishops are expected to resign because of the scandal, and a German bishop has offered his resignation after admitting to physical, not sexual, abuse in an orphanage decades ago.

While Benedict has found himself under fire for allegedly mishandling abuse cases, both as Archbishop of Munich and as a Vatican official, the bishops being forced to step down bring the scandal closer and closer to his predecessor.

Most of the bishops serving now were named during the 27-year papacy of John Paul II. Vangheluwe, for example, was made a bishop on 1984, six years into the papacy of John Paul II. The Irish bishop who stepped down Thursday, James Moriarty, was also a John Paul II appointment, having been made a bishop in 1991.