kitcar

"any company can hire programmers overseas and just import the source code (git clone) and how is any govt supposed to tax that?"

In South America many countries tax imported professional services (including the outsourcing of source code development) - the way they monitor those types of activities is by tracking all outgoing payments from the country - if you can't pay your service provider, you can't get the service provided.

Therefore the government forces you to report what services you are importing in order to pay for them, and in doing so makes them taxable.

Meta comment: If you check out the source of the page, you can see the <h1> and <title> tag read "Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine. But He didn’t Believe in It." - that's the original title I saw / submitted the article under.

Since then the "but he didn't..." has been dropped by Slate from the article itself (I'm guessing as a result of A/B testing by CTR% or similar on Slate's side).

Would kind of suck to be the author of the article in this kind of scenario, watching the title of your article change based on the whims of the web (I guess in that sense its not really your article...)

Agreed - targeting bot nets is a whole other ball game - one that likely can only be combated at the ad server / exchange / DSP level, as they are the only entities with large enough data sets to tease out which machines are infected.

From the single advertisers perspective, the easiest solution I can recommend is working with networks which provide eCPA-type bidding* - as then sites which actively buy traffic from bot nets will over time be blacklisted automatically from your campaign. Back when I was on the buy-side of online advertising, we used that "trick" to great success with a major credit card issuer buying billions of impressions.

*What I mean by eCPA type bidding is when you tag your conversion page with the network's pixel, and the network uses your conversion data to optimize the campaign on their end to get rid of publishers which send click that never convert. I know there is a better term for this, but it's a Sunday night and I haven't worked in media buying for a few years now...

I believe you can repost a mirror link, such as a Coral cache link:

http://www.replyall.me.nyud.net/the-replyall-cast/an-inside-...

(Coral cache appears to be working as of 10:26 PM EST)

My last business was ad-supported (premium, big-brand advertisers). One day, out of the blue, one of the companies which sold ads on our behalf sent us a nasty letter accusing us of buying junk traffic / creating false impressions and clicks - something we most definitely did not do.

Digging through the raw ad server log files, I discovered that the "suspicious" impressions and clicks were all originating from AWS IP addresses - most likely someone was using AWS to run a spider on our site, the spider followed Javascript links, and therefore clicked every ad on every page.

We ended up adding a rule in our ad server to prevent ads from being served to any IP address which belonged to cloud hosting / VPS providers - this solved the problem for us.

I've since sold the business and therefore don't know if the problem ever arose again, but I believe blacklisting IP address blocks which are highly unlikely to belong to real human beings* could be a good start for anyone running into these sorts of issues, either on the advertiser or publisher end.

*Yes, I know some people run VPNs on AWS or similar VPS instances, which means they are real humans - that was a loss we were willing to deal with.

Some friends and I built RingReminder over a few nights / weekends as a side project - the core problem we were trying to solve was "how can we improve the reliability of our friends/family, so they do the things they are supposed to?", like show up to social plans on time, take their medications, etc...

The solution we landed on was a telephone-based automated reminder service - controlled from your calendar app.

The hypothesis driving our solution was while many people may check their email every few seconds / view upcoming events in their calendars, everyone we know picks up calls to their phones. Therefore, if we could create a near-frictionless method of automatically calling our friends to remind them to leave early, maybe we could improve their reliability. The calendar seemed like a natural place to do this - Just invite a ringreminder.com email address to the calendar entry, and a telephone call reminder is set. Also, us organized folks already used our calendar apps to keep track of when we were meeting said friends.

On the back end, its built in Java (spring framework) - we basically poll a mail account at regular intervals checking for calendar invites (Google/iCal or Outlook format) - we then parse out the necessary information to schedule the reminder call from the invite, and call Twilio to make the outgoing call. Any changes to the event (including cancellation) are automatically processed, assuming that you let your calendar app notify all guests to the event of the change. There is also a web CRUD interface for manually managing reminders.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Few different alternative reasons: Capital gains are generally taxed at a lower rate than bonuses/salary - therefore in after-tax cash terms a $500,000 signing bonus is not the same as selling shares for $500,000. Potentially different tax treatment from the acquirer side as well.

Also - Investors are commonly the ones that orchestrate the talent acquisitions - therefore they want to get their share of the pie.

Also - shareholders of public companies perceive acquisitions differently than large salaries, both in technical terms (i.e. where the transaction appears on financial statements) as well as psychologically speaking.

Also - its potentially more complex to negotiate individual hires, especially if its a large team. (i.e. Some employees may choose to walk away from an individual hire - maybe the employees you really want. They don't really have that luxury if the deal is dependent on all-or-nothing)

CanCon stands for Canadian Content. High level, in order to maintain a broadcast licence in Canada, you need to have a certain percentage of your content be defined as "Canadian". The way you get a piece of content certified as Canadian is via point system - Canadian director, +1 point, Canadian lead actor, +1 point, etc... more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content

One really odd thing about Canada is we don't "naturally" produce enough content for broadcasters to meet their Canadian content requirements (let alone content people actually want to consume), therefore there are HUGE subsidies in place for the production of Canadian content - like billions of dollars a year huge. These subsidies enable broadcasters to pick up Canadian shows cheaply in order to meet their quotas. Most Canadians don't realize how much money is given to media creators because the money is distributed in many different forms from different institutions, at both the provincial and federal level, i.e. those which invest in media (http://telefilm.ca/) distribute tax credits (i.e. http://www.omdc.on.ca/ ), and so fourth. This is ignoring the CBC by the way, the government financed broadcast organization.

The subsidies haven't followed changes in Canadian media consumption patterns though, meaning we over-subsidize mediums which are consumed less and under-subsidize those that are consumed more. It will be interesting to see if / how things change moving forward.

I assume the drop was in search referral traffic - did specific keywords get hit more so than others? If you're whole site has been penalized, you should see the affect across all your keywords. Also check out webmaster tools for more insight - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

One reason why Blackberry holds leadership positions in a few markets is they work directly with the government to ensure their products don't get hit by the same import tariffs their competitors do, giving them a very significant price advantage - for example, they started assembling BB's in Argentina a while back for this reason (http://investba.com/2011/07/research-in-motion-blackberry-ar...).

In the last few years Apple has started to do the same: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/24/apple_begins_selli...)

I've worked on a few loyalty programs of Forbes-500 type companies, and the short answer is yes, definitely.

I clearly remember one company actively monitoring points collection to identify outliers (i.e. people who went through the trash collecting barcodes for points, etc..) to ensure they weren't becoming unprofitable program members. If the person crossed that threshold, the program would take actions to slow down or limit their redemption (i.e. limit the number of points redemptions which one account can do in one 24 hour period, etc...). They usually wouldn't kick the person out of the program as that action had the potential to generate bad press, and it was usually relatively easy for the person to just sign up again using different information. Limits, on the other hand, actually limited or prevented the "abuse" activity without hurting the "good" program members.

BTW, my favorite part from the article:

David approached the local Salvation Army with an offer; if they gave him a bunch of volunteers to peel off all the bar codes on his pudding, he’d donate the pudding to them. But here’s the beautiful part, doing this counted as a considerable charitable donation, which let David claim just over $800 back in tax deductions at the end of they year.

Similarly, I believe her assessment of the job creation associated with new businesses is deceiving. Her comment, "GM employed hundreds of thousands, Facebook fewer than 10,000", while may be factually correct, is a function of how Facebook chooses to organize its business, rather than a true reflection of the jobs it created.

GM liked to control all parts of their value chain - GM parts (I.e. Delco Electronics), GM service centers, even GM financial services.

Facebook's strategy is more akin to owning the toll roads, and letting other people build the cars. Hence, Facebook doesn't provide social media management services, app development, or FB media buying - external businesses do.

Therefore - comparing the two businesses directly in terms of job creation is not comparing apples to apples - there ARE hundreds of thousands of people employed in businesses directly related to Facebook's existence, they just aren't directly on the FB payroll.

Granted, while I feel this specific critique doesn't necessarily significantly weakens her overall thesis, her usage of comparisons like this one makes me cautious of accepting her other examples I am less familiar with at face value.

Reading up a little on it beforehand may make you appreciate it more, the movie is really an pivotal moment in the development of sound design as a core aspect of film making. I know the first time I saw it I found it boring as well, but then a second viewing after reading up on it was much more enjoyable.

http://www.philipbrophy.com/projects/mma/Conversation.html

http://cinephilefix.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-power-of-so...

BTW, there is a dedicated site which caters to that need - http://founderdating.com/ (I believe they may have a fee for new members now though)

Title is inaccurate; the trials just showed the vaccine was safe for humans, it did not have anything to do with the success of the vaccine in combating HIV infections, that comes in the following testing phases.

Great question re: "Blackberry V.S. Mozilla work environments" -

Related: one thing I've noticed some people don't place enough emphasis on when choosing initial internships/jobs out of school is the business models of companies, and the direct effect that can have on the working environment.

In this case, while Mozilla is technically a non-profit, rather than being funded by donations it makes the overwhelming majority of its money by sharing in the advertising revenue generated by the search engines which come pre-installed in Firefox (see http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2010/fa...). Therefore, even if Mozilla does absolutely nothing in terms of improving any of their products, they will still continue to make money (in the short term, at least), which lifts quite a bit of stress off everyone who works there, and let's management take a longer view perspective in general.

Professional service firms (i.e. tech. consulting and agencies) are effectively arbitrage plays - they sell the time of their employees for $X / hr, but only pay the employee $Y / hr, and then collect on the spread. If these companies ever stop selling for just a few moments, the arbitrage breaks down (as they still presumably need to pay their employees...). Therefore, there will likely to be more "stress in the air" in these types of firms, as in some cases all it takes is 1-2 contracts to be canceled for the firm to be unable to make payroll.

Hit driven businesses (Which Blackberry as a whole arguably is not, due to the significant revenue driven by their enterprise server), have a different set of issues, which is that losing really sucks for morale - therefore if the company you work for is focused on building a better mousetrap, and slowly over time people internally begin to doubt the quality of the mousetrap they are working on, that can make it really frustrating to work there, regardless of the other perks the company may provide.

Totally different technology - motion sensing does not = high resolution object capturing

More accurately: "desktop-based US website visitors who have the comscore panel software installed"

(Yes, comscore does have their website tagging program (http://direct.comscore.com/ ) , but last time I checked their measurement philosophy was still heavily panel-weighted)

Also see Abbott Ensure ( http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder ) and Nestle's Boost - ( http://www.boost.com/healthcare-professionals )

I honestly don't know why this is even on the front page... It shouldn't surprise anyone that companies with thousands of low-paid roles are bound to sometimes end up with people which act unethically - we should be judging these companies based on how they deal with these employees, rather than the mere fact that these employees exist.

Soylent is not a new concept - in hospitals it is a quite common need to provide patients with most / all their nutritional needs in liquid form. Off the top of my head, famous brands in the field of "meal replacements in liquid or powdered form" are Abbott Ensure ( http://ensure.com/products/ensure-powder ) and Nestle's Boost - ( http://www.boost.com/healthcare-professionals ).

Anyone else getting "Please sign in to view this" ?

back of napkin, $2 CPM, CPM = 1000 banner impressions. 3 Banners per page, mean $6 Page CPM. $3000 / $6 = 500, therefore you will need to generate 500,000 page impressions per month. 3 page impressions per visitor means ~166,666 visitors per month

Lots of assumptions made, but gives you somewhere to start.

In some cases Yes. Specifically, for government regulated products such as Credit and Insurance it may be illegal to price discriminate based on Geo-IP, as the factors allowed for use in determining the pricing of the product are set by the government.

For example, I vaguely remember reading that in Quebec, Canada, you are not allowed to use people's location (postal code) when pricing banking services, for example.

More information about the food in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglena

It's tough to generalize across all VCs and Angels in the country, but a few high level items to consider:

- Canada is somewhat unique in that there are federal and provincial subsidies for specific sectors related to technology (I.e. Video Game development tax credits, scientific research and develop credits - see http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site//cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/... for some of the big ones at the federal level). Most of these incentives don't require your business to make a profit. Some Angels and VCs have a preference to invest in businesses which are eligible to receive these incentives, and in rare cases will even ask you to relocate in order to a specific location in Canada to maximize incentives.

- There aren't THAT many VCs in Canada, and of the few that there are, some of the more active ones are are operated by pension plans (http://www.omersventures.com/) and arms-length government organizations ( https://www.bdc.ca/EN/solutions/venture_capital/ , http://www.marsdd.com/aboutmars/partners/iaf/, etc... ) . As can be expected, this affects the types of companies most likely to get funding in Canada.

- IMHO, the cliche that Canadians are conservative with their money is mostly true - historically the majority of the big money in Canada was made in resources, banking, real estate & manufacturing, which are all (for the most part) much less risky than early stage technology investing. Yes, there have been a few big tech winners - but they are almost rounding errors compared to the amount of cash made in these other industries. My personal hypothesis is the "conservative" cliche is somewhat self-enforcing, as the Canadians who like early stage technology end up moving to NYC or SF, have success there, and then rarely return. This has resulted in the creation of informal Canadian clubs in those locations, as well as formal organizations like http://www.thec100.org/ .

Some general links for more info: - http://www.cvca.ca/ - http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/h_02772.html

If anyone is seriously considering applying and needs assistance meeting the Canadian angel / VC requirement, feel free to reach out to me, I am based in Canada and active in the angel/VC community. Contact info is in my profile.

Odd they list Page Views and not Unique Visitors - page views as a valuation metric really isn't THAT important, as you can inflate/deflate it using design (i.e. split articles onto multiple pages, etc...)

(It's poking fun at the recent posts along the lines of "(object) created in CSS!")

There are a few different ways; Flash Shared Objects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_shared_object ), using Browser + Machine ID information to make sure cookies are linked to the right machine, etc... - see http://samy.pl/evercookie/ for a few different other methods