It seems to be pretty much close to the speed of similar languages (python, ruby, etc). It loses a lot in the languages shootout[0], but that was back in January and its a very young language. It does seem to beat python in vector ops[1], so who knows what else it wins at.
Anyways, speed isn't the reason he is rewriting Io for the JVM - he wants the advantage of all the libraries already available, as well as being able to fix some small things he doesn't like.
I've been hanging around on the mailing list for a while, and it's clear to me that there has been very little work going on in Io in past months. (E.g.: There are obvious bugs in the Range addon that they've known about for as long as I've been using Io.) I'd be very doubtful that we've seen any performance increases, even small ones.
The vector benchmarks show off the sort of code you wouldn't really write with Io anyway, are three years old, against Python three versions ago.
You're right that Bini doesn't seem to care about performance here, and that's fine. But it's certainly a huge problem for Io, obvious even in small scripts, that would be reason enough to fork it.
Taleb isn't saying that this event can't be explained ("simple debt implosion"), or that no one predicted it. He's saying that the markets as a whole didn't take into account what ended up happening.
This crisis is built upon the fact that people thought they could predict mortgage repayment rates, and they didn't expect a major decline in housing prices. Huge parts of the world economy took these bets. The unexpected happened. Hence the black swan.
In some respect, what Taleb is saying is obvious - markets aren't predictable, and it is unwise to place bets that will kill you if your predictions are wrong. Too bad more people didn't do this.
i'll explain this market for you all so you can understand it
DEBT UNWINDING
the world has flooded itself in debt, far more than any economic expansion or confidence can handle. there is always an inflection point where confidence in debt unravels. this is why even the govt can't stop the debt unwinding.
until a significant de-leveraging takes hold, all markets will stay in the toilet
for de-leveraging to take place, assets need to be repriced
we are now in a period i will call
THE GREAT REPRICING
all assets will be repriced. you see stocks reprice quickly now because they are the most liquid asset. bonds are next. houses will continue to fall. in the end, houses will fall by a minimum of 50%. i say this as a homeOWNER, i have already made peace with the fact that my home (in desirable bay area) will fall by 50%. in some places they have already fallen 50%
this is the exact experience of the japanese in the 90s. even 0% interest rates could not induce more consumption and debt. it took them TEN YEARS to work it off
I agree with you - there is really no need to be talking about black swan events, it's simple math. Over the last few years people (especially in the US) have been borrowing like crazy based on the value of their homes. These were inflated because of banks being willing to loan to people that really couldn't afford it, thus driving up the price. A simple but vicious circle that ends the day someone yells "the emperor has no clothes on". And that time is now.
If you look through all the bank-yadayada and think for yourself it's both very simple and inevitable. And the only thing that will fix it is bringing prices and spending back to their natural level, which is well below what it is today.
I think you misunderstand what a "black swan" event is. It isn't necessarily an amazingly rare or complicated thing; actually, kind of the opposite. It's an event that is thought to be rare based only on the flawed reasoning that it hasn't been seen yet - the danger of a black swan comes from people betting so heavily on that perceived rarity.
Taleb's book deals (among other subjects) with the reasons why, in the real world, nearly all of us - regardless of common sense and knowledge of history - continue to be surprised with such events.
A complete lockup of the global financial system has been seen often before? Come on.
As for whether or not the scenario should be well understood by anyone who has common sense: yes, that's the point. People were blinded by their faulty statistical models, and stopped acting in a sensible way.
Well, it all seems so simple and inevitable now, but we have the benefit of hindsight. A year ago trillion dollar losses, nearly trillion dollar bailouts, and general financial collapse was not so obvious.
ugh, here's a better idea, i'll self-fund so i don't have to indulge stupid cunts and the lists they scribbled down in the business section of barnes and noble
if things were nearly as much of a lock as this person demands, i sure as shit wouldn't have to slum it with angel funding, i could go to a marquee vc firm
I don't think it's about being demonstrable. Start with plausible. A lot of the items are about intent. While you can never be sure that items like '1-$2m tops before reaching 25 -$50m value' are a yes, you can often be sure that they're a no.
It might be in the strategy. The strategy might not be viable without more down the line.
indeed! the aeron chair went from cool office tech to sad artifact from the collapse. amazingly i found someone who actually paid the retail list price for one.
layoffs are coming all over the bay area. whatever started with GOOG going public is now over in the markets. AAPL and GOOG are off 50% from the highs. YHOO is headed for 14 (congrats jerry, could of had 34). INTC is trading at levels from the 90s. and at least these companies can claim to be "in business". for the rest of the living-on-funding, maybe-one-day crowd, its time to read the tea leaves: the party is over
I thought the same thing. The acquisitions part seems to me to be positive news, and my impression of eBay is that it has become large, slow and bloated.
