kanamekun

Derek's first principle is true on so many levels:

<< #1: You can afford to be generous - The #1 most important mindset to start with, underlying everything, before engaging in communication with a customer or client, is that your business is secure.

Even if it’s not, you have to feel that it is. Money is coming your way. You are doing well. You are one of the lucky ones. Most are not so fortunate. You can afford to be generous.

All great service comes from this feeling of generosity and abundance. >>

Investing in your existing customers is one of the highest ROI marketing efforts you can undertake. You've already paid to acquire these customers - and any incremental investment you make in them is usually going to be less than the cost of acquiring a whole new customer. Plus, it's the right thing to do - to make sure that everyone has a great experience.

This is a key quote, and anecdotally I've seen it playing out with people I know: "[T]he drying up of cognitively demanding jobs is having a cascade effect. College graduates are forced to take jobs beneath their level of educational training, moving into clerical and service positions instead of into finance and high tech. This cascade eliminates opportunities for those without college degrees who would otherwise fill those service and clerical jobs. These displaced workers are then forced to take even less demanding, less well-paying jobs, in a process that pushes everyone down. At the bottom, the unskilled are pushed out of the job market altogether."

Is an automated "yellow box" to show the strike zone ever going to happen? I feel like that would have a huge impact on the viewing experience!

<< So, it may make perfect sense for the OP to refuse doing them normally (after all he does not seem to go after strength training) and for someone going after strength celebrating them. >>

One reason the OP isn't going after strength: she's a former athlete currently working to cross over into fitness modeling.

http://erinsimmonsfitness.me/

http://erinsimmonsfitness.me/2011/11/30/picture-post-novembe...

Companies are usually reluctant to raise a down round due to anti-dilution provisions:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2009/sb20090...

If the SEC ever decides to shut you guys down for operating without a securities license, would lenders lose their ability to withdraw their own money (i.e. to make one of those "voluntary promotional payments offered at Zidisha's sole discretion")?

Facebook is like any other marketing channel: it can drive a great deal of sales and brand awareness, if you know how to manage the channel well.

Facebook is taxing their channel more in order to capture more of this value for themselves, but there's still value left over for companies to generate and capture for themselves.

The satellites need to be repositioned to provide eyes on coverage. Source: every episode of 24 ever.

This system of empowering community members to endorse comments from newer users has worked really well on Gawker!

<< The editors are the only ones who can give you a star, and we'll be giving them out to the commenters we trust the most. ... [Y]our comments will automatically appear in the featured comments, and you will have the ability to promote non-star comments up to the top level. In fact, just replying to a comment will bump up to the front page. You'll also see all of the unapproved comments left by new users and can approve the ones that you think are up to snuff. But use your powers wisely. We're going to be taking a closer look at who's doing what. Use your star powers to make mischief, and we'll take them away. >>

http://gawker.com/5311027/gawker-comments-are-made-of-stars

It looks like someone reverted your conflicted edits, and posted about the edit to the Talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiva_(organization...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kiva_(organization)#Zidish...

That's pretty much spot on policy for Wikipedia.

That's not how Wikipedia works. Everyone always thinks that readers should be made aware of their own service, so they're constantly editing promotional info into various pages.

At the very least, you should always disclose your affiliation with Zidisha when making edits:

<< COI (Conflict of Interest) editing is strongly discouraged. COI editors causing disruption may be blocked. Editors with COIs who wish to edit responsibly are strongly encouraged to follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously. They are also encouraged to disclose their interest on their user pages and on the talk page of the article in question, and to request the views of other editors. If you have a conflict of interest, any changes you would like to propose that might be seen as non-neutral should be suggested on the relevant talk page or noticeboard. >>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

Was just reading up on Kiva and Zidisha on Wikipedia, and noticed this on the Kiva talk page. Looks like someone at Zidisha (from a Mountain View IP) edited Kiva's Wikipedia page to add criticism of Kiva and plug Zidisha. Is this part of the "help" you're referring to above?

<< Zidisha Edits

Removed the lengthy section spotlighting a known competing organization, Zidisha from the interest rates section. The information is consistent with Zidisha marketing language and the editor IP is attached to a series of edits inserting Zidisha into other pages. Seems like clear COI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/67.188.17...

IP is also in Mountain View, where Zidisha is working this quarter http://www.ip-adress.com/reverse_ip/67.188.179.148 https://www.zidisha.org/forum/threads/zidisha-launches-at-y-... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djbrusca (talk • contribs) 17:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC) >>

Actually I just looked at Zidisha's website to see how it works, and their terms of use [1] basically state that once you make a loan, the money is no longer yours:

<< Zidisha makes no guarantee or representation that funds lent through its website will be repaid to lenders, regardless of whether the loans financed with lender funds are repaid to Zidisha. Any cash payouts are promotional gifts offered solely at Zidisha's discretion. >>

So basically, I make a loan and then if the entrepreneurs makes a repayment, Zidisha can choose to give me my money as a "promotional gift." But wouldn't lenders have to pay taxes on their "promotional gifts"? And aren't I getting taxed on my entire loan (principal and interest), not just my interest income like with a normal loan?

I don't get it... why structure things this way?

[1] https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=5

I don't know the source of Ben's quote, but there's a well-known "ripple effect" from educating a girl. It's largely because educated women tend to stay within their local community where they reinvest in their family and community, whereas educated men are more likely to move away to seek opportunity.

"According to Camfed, when you educate a girl she will earn up to 25 percent more and reinvest 90 percent of her income in her family." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons_plans/important-ed...

I couldn't find the original research cited, but my family lives in a remove village in the developing world... and you can definitely see the educated boys move to the capital city and the educated girls stay in the local community.

If someone hits a pedestrian at even 40 mph, it's 85% likely to result in a fatality: http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/04/27/waiting-for-raymond-de...

If that same accident happens at 20 mph, there's only a 5% chance of a fatality. That's a big reason why London lowered the speed limit in the heart of the city to 20 mph: http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/09/13/the-heart-of-london-ad...

New York is pushing for a similar change... hopefully if and when it happens, more bollards can be put in place without endangering others. http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/05/16/neighborhoods-across-n...

In parts of the world, bollards are much more common. But in New York City, they are much more rare: http://www.streetsblog.org/2005/10/14/making-nycs-streets-sa...

There have been a significant number of cases where cars end up sidewalks near where I live. It's not just drunk drivers; it's often distracted drivers who are texting or using an app.

Bollards are a great and fairly cheap solution, but many bureaucrats are pro-car and oppose them for the danger they might pose to drivers.

<< [O]ne of the downsides to bollards is that while protecting human beings, they can do damage to automobiles. John Kaehny, the former executive director of Transportation Alternatives was a big fan of bollards and often pushed the city to install them at dangerous locations. DOT traffic engineers consistently opposed his efforts telling him that bollards were no good because they did damage to cars or that bollards struck at high speed could "become dislodged and become dangerous projectiles that might kill or injure pedestrians." These are the kinds of stories that makes one think New York City traffic engineers empathize more with automobiles than people. >>

The Economist has a longstanding policy of leaving bylines off of articles: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...

<< Part of the answer is that The Economist is maintaining a historical tradition that other publications have abandoned. ... Historically, many publications printed articles without bylines or under pseudonyms—a subject worthy of a forthcoming explainer of its own—to give individual writers the freedom to assume different voices and to enable early newspapers to give the impression that their editorial teams were larger than they really were. The first few issues of The Economist were, in fact, written almost entirely by James Wilson, the founding editor, though he wrote in the first-person plural.

But having started off as a way for one person to give the impression of being many, anonymity has since come to serve the opposite function at The Economist: it allows many writers to speak with a collective voice. Leaders are discussed and debated each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited. Accordingly, articles are often the work of The Economist's hive mind, rather than of a single author. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. >>

Wait, I thought doctors were supposed to break into their patients' houses without permission in order to search for clues as to how they got sick!

This undermines everything I learned about medicine from the TV show, House.

Pretty interesting decision to include a lengthy "technical digression" in their SEO apology:

<< Technical Digression: How to scrape 178k URLs in Ruby in less than 15 minutes - Ok, so you have 178k URLs in a postgres database table. You need to scrape and analyze all of them and write the analysis back to the database. Then, once everything’s done, generate a CSV from the scraped data. >>

South Park made a whole episode about this (re: Apple's terms of use) a few years ago:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humance...

I couldn't find the brand anywhere, although I found a good picture of his boots here: http://www.kjonline.com/news/NY-lobsterman-rescued-after-12-...

That article has a quote that explains why the brand of boot isn't mentioned: << His father, John Aldridge Sr., joked to his son not to reveal the brand name on the boots to reporters: "Not until we get a contract offer." >>

This quote from the article makes a really crucial distinction between mobs of the past versus today:

"[I]n the past it was often the poor who rallied against the rich and powerful. But today’s riots are different in that it is the powerful, specifically those with the largest followings online, that could help quell these eruptions, yet instead douse them with more anger and hate."

<< Here's what happened: A wealthy religious Southern man told GQ an interview that he believes homosexuality is a sin, >>

That's not all he said though. http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynas...

There was also this incredibly ignorant statement: "Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana: “I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

It's amazing how little coverage has focused on his ignorant comments about race, versus his graphic comments on how homosexuality is wrong.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/the-real...

Sorry but I've worked in crisis PR, and this article doesn't jibe at all with my experience. This statement in particular rings false: "If for one second you think that Phil Robertson of ‘Duck Dynasty’ isn’t coached by a public relations team prior, you’re an idiot."

I'm sure that Phil Robertson has gotten a lot of PR support over the years. I've seen it happen over and over again though: someone gets used to receiving only positive coverage and gets overly confident about press interviews, and then refuses formal media training. Amazingly, things can go great for years... until that one disastrous interview where everything changes. Then every interview after that focuses on that issue for the next few years. Then a PR team gets called into manage the newly formed crisis situation.

That's probably what happened here: he had gotten used to getting tons of positive coverage, and he started to think that he had a handle on the press. So he (and his team) start to do less and less preparation and due diligence for each interview, until this disaster occurred.

This proposed workflow reads like a product spec for a great web app... hopefully someone builds a website which does this exactly!

Looks great!!

Was just about to set up a Secret Santa on Elfster... was wondering how your site stacks up in terms of facilitating a gift exchange between friends/coworkers?

Spoilers for a bug report... that's a new one! Very thoughtful. :)

Unfortunately, I can't click on your embedded link... and it's not easy to cut and paste links from my mobile device. So if people started doing this, I would probably just stop clicking on outside links unless I was on my computer and the link looked extremely interesting.

According to US law, any online service provider that receives actual knowledge that child porn exists on their services is required by law to report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children... or face a fine of $150k for a first offense, or $300k for subsequent offenses:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

To my knowledge, Google wasn't required to check its hosted files for specific image hashes: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote computing service provider to— (1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider; (2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or (3) affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in sections (a) and (b)."

But once they did, they were required to report the results. Any privacy concerns are waived as an "[exception] for disclosure of communications" as part of 18 USC § 2702: "Voluntary disclosure of customer communications or records". http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2702

It's not surprising that Google is affirmatively scanning its servers for child porn, as they have a long history of providing assistance to NCMEC:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/building-software-too...

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2012/01/crowdsourcing...

"$1 Million from Google to Fight Child Sexual Exploitation Received by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children" http://www.missingkids.com/news/page/4898

Not sure, but an alternate explanation is that spammers are now emailing brandname@[domainname].com. I've gotten emails along those lines forwarded to my catch-all email address.

You can also use brandname+randomnumber@[domainname].com to more definitively test if your email has been sold or compromised by a particular website...