gersh

So, if you randomly decided which startups to invest in, would you be more successful? Can you really predict anything? If you randomly invested in 100 startups, would your returns be better than your screening process? Can you test this?

I think real Silicon Valley start-ups are generally serious organizations with very rigorous hiring requirements. There have been more and more second-tier city "Silicon Valley" startups, but many are not really comparable to typical Silicon Valley startups.

I think there is probably more a bubble in New York and London than Palo Alto. Inexperienced investors can give anyone some money, but that doesn't mean they will succeed.

I think it is interesting idea. However, I think you need a better system than just the number of commits, or lines of code committed. I don't these are very accurate measurements for the degree which someone contributed to the project. You need a more sophisticated system to determine that.

Read good code, and think about how they've done it. Read all the major open source projects. Really try to understand how different people organize different types of projects. Learn different programming languages, and learn how to code in different styles.

Would it be possible to make a nicotine patch for Starcraft 2? How about a less addictive version to wean yourself off it. Maybe, you switch to Starcraft I, and then Warcraft. How about messing up the resolution, or having a slow internet connection with lag? What if you have a computer that cheats for you?

What would it take to make such a thing? Is it possible? Exactly what elements of Starcraft make it addictive? Would it be possible to make a similar but less addictive version?

It seems like <,:, and certain other characters don't work. Also, why do you skip over white-space?

It is interesting. I wonder if I can learn to make fewer typos.

Can we encode all of human knowledge into the DNA of some organism? How can organisms access data stored in their DNA? Imagine being born with knowledge of every Wikipedia article, or even every website. What would that be like?

How do you grow the rat brain? How hard is it to keep the rat brain alive? How hard would it be to mass produce rat brain CPUs?

I think the way it works is the company sets up an offshore subsidiary to provide life insurance to its employees in a low tax jurisdiction. Next, they pay life insurance premiums to the offshore subsidiary, and the offshore subsidiary books the profits on the life insurance policy offshore.

For example, suppose they pay $1,000,000 premiums to the offshore subsidiary, and then pay out $800,000 in claims. The offshore subsidiary has a profit of $200,000, and the on-shore company has an extra $200,000 to write off.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs all attended college. They just didn't finish. Yet, I think they all derived some value from the time they spent in college.

You need Algebra even for "trade" school. According to http://www.njatc.org/training/apprenticeship/index.aspx, you need "One Year of High School Algebra" to become an electrician. I think the same is true for other trades.

Plain old marketing is simple. You gotta reach your audience. You gotta figure out what they look at, and you gotta get their attention. If your audience is searching Google, you hit them with SEO and Adwords. If they are watching TV, you gotta get on the shows they are watching. Once you get their attention, they know about you, and then it is matter of sales if they buy.

For good branding, it helps to have a good name, logo, etc. Although, in the end it helps if they like your product.

If you're in a crowded space, marketing is going to be harder. Although, I've never really found marketing to be that complicated. If you are in a crowded space, it can be harder to market, because your message gets crowded out.

Who is struggling with marketing? Let me know. I don't really think it is that hard.

You can split it into training, validation, and test sets if you have enough data. Then, the validation set would be used for the training. Presumably by using a genetic algorithm, he isn't going for a perfect fit, which may help avoid overfitting.

From the comments to the article, Chicago's I-Go Car Sharing's consumer survey seems to showed "helping the environment" as the 6th most important reason for being a member.

I wonder if this is about car sharing in general, or more a reflection of Zipcar? Do people just not like Zipcar? Does Zipcar have specific policies that anger people?

Why can't Facebook start charging for its API, and for business pages? Banner ads were big in the 90s before people realized they were that effective. I don't see why Facebook would need to rely on them forever.

His appellate court has jurisdiction over the federal courts in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. The chief district judge assigns cases. The chief judge designation is based upon seniority, and all of the district judges have lifetime appointment as well.

He has a lifetime appointment as a judge. Only 9 judges have ever been removed in the history of the country. It isn't likely that he will be removed. They can just appeal his decisions.

Solving problems is good. You can also appeal to people's passions or identity. Addictive also seems to work.

If you want to just solve a problem, you gotta understand the worst problems people have. Twitter and Facebook work because they have people on there, who others want to follow or friend. Video games appeal to raw passions, and can also be addictive.

If I want to sell something, how can I get my Bitcoins converted to cash, safely and reliably? I don't trust MtGox, and I don't want to long-term forex risk exposure. Is there someone who could settle Bitcoin to USD, daily in San Francisco?

Are incubators the new investment banks? How will this play out when crowdfunding becomes legal?

Can you crowdsource all the way to IPO? Do the crowdsourced investors get right of first refusal? Can you do something like: Round 1) 1000 investors put $100 Round 2) 10000 investors put in $1000/each Round 3) 10000 investors put in $10000/each Round 4) IPO

Will VCs become more like activist hedge funds, that invest in public companies. If startup stocks are liquid, will VCs have to deal with mark-to-market valuation of their portfolios?

New York had a greater percentage of investment during the dot-com boom in the 90s. Since then, it has fluctuated. However, New York hasn't produced too many big tech companies. I think New York's biggest success has been DoubleClick. Outside of media, what other big tech companies have been started in NYC?

There is a lot of media in New York, which includes internet media. Also, I think there are a lot of bloggers in NYC. Although, I don't see evidence the New York tech boosters claims match reality.

Users can also be investors. How many users does Facebook have, who will want to own a piece of it? How many of them are going to worry about valuation?

I think Facebook is going to have good run. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook goes up to 400 billion. Facebook even has the possibility of making investing in internet companies at ridiculous valuations 'cool'. Wall street must be salivating.

You can have a whole economy without operations jobs. The futures jobs will only be innovating and fixing when things have problems. The self-driving tractor will plow the fields or harvest the mine, and send it to the factory. Robots make it, and the self-driving delivers it.

What law allows hospitals to do this? If they don't tell you the price beforehand, and they don't publicly post the prices, legally, how do you ever owe them any money?

How do hospitals collect these bills? Can the hospital sue you to collect on these bills?

I asked the original question, and I was never notified that they were posting it to Forbes. I guess it is kinda cool. I suppose they only notify/ask permission from the people, who write the answers.

If 90% of the population randomly picks between two candidates and 10% makes an informed decision, the better candidate will win. If the most informed are also the most engaged via volunteering, donating, etc. their influence will be amplified.

What is the cheapest way to get the actual data? A number of years back, opentick had a pretty cheap API for getting market data. However, they have shutdown. Is there anyone out there with a good api, and relatively cheap data feed?

If they pay on PayPal or via their credit card, they can always do a chargeback.

Check out http://climateaudit.org/. He has obtained lots of data and caught bad data which exaggerates global warming.