interesting_att

Brave is great -- but just objectively they aren't growing. Their MAU was literally larger a year ago. Compare last month's stats to last May's stats: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1643104574532894721 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1532100051966697472

Weird how a company can experience NEGATIVE growth for something like browsers and search

Thank you all! I am incredibly grateful to the HN community, I am finally getting in touch with a real person at Stripe who can hopefully rectify this situation.

Thank you, I will email you now

Remember this is an ALLEGATION.

I knew Fahim personally. I know people who spoke to him the day of about this very issue, so I have some information that most people don't. I absolutely do not believe this kid did it.

Fahim was well liked in Nigeria but he was disrupting a dangerous market.

I was friends with Fahim and know personal information about this case. This kid absolutely did not do it, but it's easy to pin the blame on him.

It absolutely was due to his work in Nigeria.

Does anyone know how this would compare to Twilio's programmatic video? Specific use case is for livestreaming within a mobile app.

If the hotel industry ever got its act together, they could really use this for a great marketing push.

Advertise the fact that AirBnB lets racial discrimination go unabated, unlike the hotel industry which is regulated for this. Younger, more liberal minded individuals will be less likely to use AirBnBs.

This is what I wondered too. Yahoo could be a great business if they just accepted that they were the Internet Portal for Old People.

But this would never impress investors who are looking for insane returns. As a result, they're taking everyone down with them.

It's important to note that when the investment was made, enterprise tech companies (like Workday) like were getting a really high valuation, whereas consumer tech companies weren't doing so well. Investors like a16z probably wanted to invest as much as possible before the enterprise IPO market would go south. Moreover, I am sure investors probably had strong liquidation preferences, ensuring a profit in the case of an exit or IPO.

We're now seeing the downsides of their thesis. Workday's market cap has since cratered, down 33% in the past year, indicating a weakening interest in the enterprise IPO market. Zenefits itself has a number of growing concerns- regulatory and competition concerns (ADP is only getting better by the day).

Keep this up and you'll be the dev golden child in no time. Best of luck!

Really glad YC is pushing for research into this. This is a fascinating topic that deserves more research. There have many points in my life where many of my friends and I needed welfare just to purchase food. For all of us, we experienced unbelievable amounts of shame even considering the idea. As a result, two things happened.

i) Some of us didn't go on welfare to our detriment. Not eating = decreased ability to be a productive citizen.

ii) Some of us had to 'over-sell' to others and to ourselves our disabilities, out of the fear that we would be denied access to these services or be accused that we were gaming the system. The effects of overselling these disabilities were devastating on one's mental health.

Having a shame-free way of getting welfare could be a great thing.

Did you see an improvement in your credit score?

I would actually disagree. eCPMs on mobile have steadily been going up, but not because game companies have been spending unsustainably. eCPMs have increased because brands have slowly been moving in, there is better adtech/targeting, and because game companies have a higher LTV, hence can spend more. Many US-based mobile game companies have basically given up fundraising from VCs as a significant part of their strategy, because it became too difficult to do so post-Zynga's crash.

Point is: If you're a ad-supported mobile app, can purchase users at an ROI+ rate, and know how to iterate productively, it sounds like you have weathered the storm. Mobile ad-supported companies will stay around (though they may trim workforces to ensure long-term viability).

PG's point is so obvious it is almost tautological. Of course we should get rid of negative causes + negative effects, while keeping the positive. That applies to literally anything (gambling, friendship, work, etc). Maybe people are interpreting this w/ the most controversy because PG has a history of controversial statements (remember his article on immigration which caused an uproar on HN?).

A more interesting argument that PG could have made is that it is theoretically possible to have inherent wealth inequality in the system without negative results. At this point, I see very few believe that it is even possible.

Fidelity marked down its investment by a whopping 43% http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup...

Add this to the fact they announced layoffs a little while ago + are now experiencing significant competition from bigger players, one has to have a not-so-great forecast for the company

The stocks you mentioned barely get any buzz in tech media (TechCrunch) or HN. The stocks that OP mentioned get a significant number of mentions here. A number of unicorns are dying, experiencing significant criticism (Theranos), doing not-so-well (Square, Zenefits), or exiting negative returns for investors (Gilt Groupe)

The point is the companies that seem to be getting the most hype (young, 'disruptive' companies) don't seem to be doing well as IPO companies. This is an issue for the public investors (who are often pension funds, average investors, etc) and employees.

This seems to be a clear indictment of tech media, who are more interested in hyping up stories than really digging into a company's fundamentals. The only losers are common people in this scenario.

What's really interesting about this is that being a truck driver is one of the most common jobs in America. Most of these drivers have limited ability to do many other decently paying jobs. By getting self-driving countries, we would be dramatically changing the economic + social landscape of the country.

We have already gotten rid of the factory worker and that has led to withering away of Middle America. Removing the truck driver would be a huge nail in the coffin of Middle America. (If lab grown meat + vertical farming takes off, we can potentially drastically reduce the number of farmers in this country.)

I am all for these technical innovations, but we must be aware that this can dramatically change the economic/political/social landscape. Radical regressive ideologies spring out of such environments.

It seems intuitive to me. People who often do psychedelic drugs routinely state that 'resisting' the experience often leads to temporary mental distress.

How is being the CEO of Yahoo and getting paid 100m+ 'high risk?'

Her presence is now well known. She can work anywhere, and doesn't ever need to work again.

Welcome to Hacker News, where people's conflict of interests are not disclosed.

I agree with OP- this is an absurd tool. If you can pay $100/hr for an anonymous 'personal assistant' you can pay for a real personal assistant. This is another example where rich SV-elite are making out of touch predictions on the market.

The worst part of this is that Lumosity probably did a cost-beenfit analysis years back, realizing they would make more money via these deceptive ads than the expected FTC fine.

For those who don't know- Lumosity is killing it. They can easily pay this fine with their enormous profits.

I thought Arrested Development has been parodying the tech scene well.

Seasons 1-3, which aired during the Bush era, showed the lives of incompetent and corrupt property developers + military contractors.

Now the main running gag is a BS non-existent app.

He probably says things like this because the resulting media attention is a profitable strategy. Being in the media often confers a sense of legitimacy, making it easier to fundraise.

Just look at Donald Trump. He has mastered the art of getting free media attention by saying 'earthy' statements.

China has become a significantly better partner for African countries than the West can ever hope to.

Having spent some time in international development, the stories are the same: Western loans are always tied towards 'education', which barely makes a dent when you figure out how much corruption there is on both sides of African and Western governments. Chinese funds are often for critical projects, which have clear measurable impacts, like roads and dams. In return, China gets access to Africa's plentiful resources.

The article brings up the important point on Yahoo's acquisitions. For the billions it spent, it got barely anything in return. The real canary in the coal mine was Summly. Mayer paid 30M for an app that licensed its core machine learning (which is why she bought the app in the first place). Unsure how anyone could have expected Tumblr to be a smart acquisition at that price.

We have no idea if the food estimate is correct. The article mentions that many people in Yahoo interviewed by the reporter think the investor's numbers are widely off.

My guess the $108m includes other things than just food.

Exactly. Would you trust Mark Zuckerberg with spending 15bn for the supposed betterment of society, or would you trust the US government?

Given that the US government wastes so much via corrupt deals, inefficiencies, insane surveillance, and absurd military spending- I would favor Zuckerberg directing the fund.

It's a pity on how he started the campaign by saying he would resign after day 1.

Looking at the public's interest in 'outsiders' this political season (Carson, Trump, Fiorina) and the lack of any real opposition towards Hillary outside of Bernie, Lessig actually did have a chance of getting his voice heard.

To echo another commentator's post, King has had sustainable revenue across multiple titles for years. Mobile isn't going away, and I don't suspect King will either. The synergy is obvious: King will share plenty of F2P monetization design + data to Activision's other mobile titles. Activision will supply King with basically unlimited funds for expansion + very valuable IP. Any hit that King has on FB/mobile, Activision can bring it onto consoles. And any hit Activision has on the consoles, King can try to bring it on mobile.

There are two ways VCs can make money from investing in companies like this:

1) Hopefully by increasing prices + slashing their own expenses (i.e. Uber reducing the driver's share), some of these cash burning companies can be instantly profitable. Idealistic for sure, but not out of the question.

2) Using the startup as a vehicle to raise more funds from investors- Remember that the VC is mainly just concerned with getting the company to the next funding round. Take this hypothetical: VC firm invest in company X at a 50m valuation. In 1 year that company raises at a 100m valuation. Even if it's an overpriced valuation and the company eventually has a huge chance of dying, the original VC firm can say that their fund already has a 2x annual return before that happens. They use that as marketing material to raise the next round. Remember that VCs get around 2% of whatever they raise for operating expenses, regardless of how the funds perform.

If you are a VC in a bubble, it is in your financial interest to raise as many funds as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible. That in turn means you have to invest big and invest quick.