niketdesai

The 9gag team is solid.I first met them at 500Startups early last year.

At the time they were working on a number of products, but they truly had a mastery in understanding the creation and sharing process of people between 15-30. It showed within each product they created and it was ultimately 9gag that went bananas in terms of user adoption.

They also have a pretty neat mission that extends beyond a r/funny wrapper -- though with the myriad of clones and previously created similar sites there is some credit due to them for their rapid expansion.

I hope the raise will give them the resources to expand further as I have no doubt they are already doing quite well.

As for why YC -- probably to connect more fully in the Valley since they are (or intend to be) based in Hong Kong.

Pretty connected names in the investor list over at angel.co/9gag // Ben Ling, Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose etc..

Oh, and while I agree to some extent that sites like these marginally improve the internet, humour is a great remedy to many of our ails.

They have a lot to ship, still. It seems that being a CTO and moving down the chain to program more is a precarious road to traverse.

Most people seem to leave their respective companies and hang on as advisors. Maybe it's just too awkward?

It's a disappointment this writer is covering this topic.

Self-driving cars can be great because of the shear impact on utility for vehicles and safety implications.

I'm quite excited about the advent of self-driving cars and the underling operating systems that will make them amazing for humans.

I do believe there is room for both types of driving. It's possible our freeways will be segmented such that automated cars can go in certain lanes (perhaps even barrier protected) while the remaining traffic stays in other lanes / roads.

Traffic, or more specifically congestion, is primarily caused by excess cars on any edge (road) in which it simply takes N+1 cars to cause. Inconsistent driving patterns cause effective waves of inconsistency down the pipe exacerbating the situation (stop and go traffic actually makes congestion even worse).

Thinking about the overall network at a higher level makes all of this even more exciting. Consider the scenario in which N cars are on an edge with capacity N. If your car was about to enter the road you would basically contribute to traffic. This cost, C, is then felt across N+1 (don't forget to include yourself!) people at a minimum which is C*(N+1) minutes of human time that is lost.

If our cars, and ourselves, were better informed you might take an alternate and sub-optimal route that taxes you an extra T minutes but the overall network of time is optimized. Perhaps you'll even get a reward for it. And perhaps the reward is simply allowing all the people currently on the road a faster commute home so they can be with their loved ones.

Beyond that, as people have mentioned here already, the faster we can go and caravanning (which can be done safely by allowing cars to attach to one another in train format) improves overall throughput (and make traffic less likely).

Finally if we think about traffic, it's really just load and it needs to be distributed better across all possible routes and time. We have commute hours, but one thing to think about is that with a self-driving car I can leave to LA at 12AM and get there at 6AM while sleeping in the back of the car.

Self-driving cars will increase utility on vehicles, but also on time for travel routes ideally. This will spread the load (since humans generally have some biological clock they operate by) to utilize the 24 hours a day we have a little bit better.

And if your car can't speed I guess we should invest in really good alarm clocks and reminders :)

One option to reduce convoy risk is have cars attach to one another such that no single car can cause a failure in the overall system (similar to trains).

We shouldn't think of automated cars as independent as we do. They are in fact simply compartments.

With that in mind, imagine cars attaching to each other to form trains and break apart as they begin to reach the desired destination.

This also has impacts on fuel efficiency since drag can be reduced across the entire system.

(Cars don't have to be the same model, they just need a formalized attachment system on the front / rear).

Yep, even with it closed the tip dries and I have to wet it a bit / scratch a bunch to get it flowing. Not sure there's a fix that is reliable.

There was definitely some entitlement among the community, but I don't think that should silence the call for better services (and API enforcement) from these providers (or, hopefully alternatives all together).

If there is API access it should be enforced with more care or not made available at all. Personally, I was skeptical that PadMapper would go anywhere (expecting CL to kill the scraping early on). Much to my surprise it stuck around and furthermore was really useful. I'm not mad that it is gone: I read the TOS from CL - it's totally their right to do that. It just hurts end users which is the problem.

And sure, I do believe it's dangerous (and can be misleading to users [like when your data access gets pulled]) to build a product entirely on a platform, but it's almost unavoidable. (That's why you are the platform). Companies like PadMapper are going to try to improve where you have left off. (They probably didn't even register on CL's logs until they queried a lot which might explain the delayed C&D).

Let our entitlement / disappointment be a message to these companies on how to improve their services (ideally they could improve in a way that makes them more money). Or hopefully fuel for others to build competing products.

I appreciate the Author's attempt to empathize with the founders/team on the acquisition results. It's not an obligation for customers to consider anything beyond what they were promised and pay for - so kudos there.

That said, the difference between the startup and big co. is so vast that there will never be a single person to be blamed for botched acquisitions. In fact, both parties are at fault - not for initiating the buy - but rather for the failure to commit so fully that an alternative outcome could have been had.

In some circumstances it does make sense to shutter a project, but that doesn't mean a good plan to make that happen appropriately can't be had (I understate the complexity of making that happen). Additionally I'd like to note that within larger companies, both the appetite and passion for making acquisitions work is highly variable. And frankly, it requires a lot of broad effort to make it work which is why acquisitions are so hard to do well.

Anyways I'm glad that gittip was able to find a replacement solution; these setbacks are only part of the process in building your own entrepreneurial endeavor.

"Facebook's biggest threat is a loss of meaning through noise, not users using an alternative app to capture their media."

This is true of any data aggregator and visualizer. I'd argue they, probably next to Twitter, are the best at attempting to handle it within a social context.

I guess my thought about photos is incomplete in that making FB a storage for media means that your mean average of shared media will go up as well (it's already there, might as well). We see this in bulk uploads.

I agree that there is a certain amount of selectivity involved - but we vary as individuals. I think only in the last couple of years, after the fad of being able to toss everything online in heaps - have we begun to understood how our online perception is made.

"As for Facebook Messenger, I'll be damned if I let Facebook permanently record every last one of my private message for eternity."

Agreed. That's why I'm off it.

This.

Two things people do that FB wants channeled through their systems: Photos & Chat.

Replacing your camera app with FBs means that all photos go to Facebook, which also represents the most important content on Facebook.

If your photos and your friends photos are all on FB then they go to FB.

If everyone you know is on FB then you'll probably use FB to talk to them. Thus, the chat ecosystem. Because FB is device and OS agnostic, it works even better than what Apple is trying to do with iMessage.

So why separate apps? Because people today already do these things as separate apps. You take a photo with your camera and then upload to FB. Now you just take a photo. This is actually what Google does with G+ and its automatic photo uploads. But FB can't do that, because they don't own the device ecosystem so this is their technique...for now.

I'm sorry, but this is a highly naive point of view. You could have had an iPhone in 2005 for an amount of money you probably wouldn't be able to part with. These products still have to be produced in quantity and therefore supply chain innovation is just as critical as the design and engineering itself. Apple doesn't market it that way, but the disparity in cost to sell price is one of the reasons they have been able to do so well and fund their next endeavors.

Apple doesn't design and build buildings, which are expensive, time consuming, and generally done in small quantities.

They design products meant to reach millions of people and as such design and engineering of that feat is innovative in its own right.

Your statement, taken more broadly, would dismiss the work of companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Their goals are to bring their unique products to a wider market providing a next generation experience.

I mean, I guess it would be cool if it was just Elon Musk rolling around in his single space ship or Tesla Roadster. But it's much more exciting that this can be the case for many people.

This is beyond awesome for a few reasons. Historically, learning a new language was hard because it generally wasn't interesting.

This extensions allows you to browse the internet and specifically your interests while immersing you to a language...uh whoa. Half the reason I didn't like my language courses was the content and classroom was hardly stimulating or relevant to my interests; this changes that entirely.

A great model if we could apply it to education more broadly.

I think you're right here. This is a non-issue. Google's core value proposition to users is search. If that can be improved by gathering content from the + network, they will (and should do it).

If Google could have access to FB/Twitter content with consent, they would index and serve those results as well (it's fundamentally better for the user AND google).

This whole thing is getting blown way out of proportion because people like to see giants fight.

Yes this is true, and that is what the HFT developers say to themselves as well. Just a point of data.

That's a fair goal, and I believe the answer breaks down like this:

You can work for a big company that serves billions of people, claiming that you are making an impact on the world, while in reality doing nothing.

On the other hand you can start your own company, perhaps only directly impacting a few hundred people, and still accomplish the goal of maximizing your change on the world (as that was your ceiling).

I noticed this as well, but I was able to see the team over on their Jobs page (and get a little bit of information about them too). I don't mean for this to be a solution to what you have brought up, but if you want to see something about them now it's a start.

You're right here. Every person that sees the money flowing and focuses on that will lose out on actually making something people want.

It's easy to look at a startup space and see which companies get it, and which are there because the probability of success (due to focus on that particular market from acquirers and VCs, market size, etc.)

This article is kind of scary because people are taking the approach that entrepreneurship is something that everyone can do. I think everyone can try (and would advocate for it) but this type of attitude normally precedes many failures.

That's definitely an option, but from a usability standpoint for business owners it's a nightmare (as they have to keep track of many things already). Seems easy enough, user study showed it was a pain point.

I agree current implementation isn't exactly ideal, but we'll probably find a good compromise soon.

Generally at a larger company with a more defined process the people that make acquisitions will be at least a piece of the corporate development team along with a product head.

It seems like a person, or group, inside the company becomes aware of a target and advocates for the acquisition of that target. The product group might then make first contact to explore the opportunity of acquisition (confirming interest) and hand off to the corp dev team to complete the transaction while keeping an eye on the whole thing.

On the matter of paying a little extra for better service shouldn't we consider the option of "tipping" our flight attendants then?

I know this won't fly in general, especially outside the US where tipping is not nearly as customary, but this has been a method to offset low paying jobs where service level influences our overall spending.

I don't know what the lifestyle of a flight attendant is, but if the advancement of flight has reduced their positions to that of a McD's manager, blame us, the general public, because we've forced Airlines to optimize for scale transport.

As for Pilots...it gets tricky because they are very much vital. The seniority crap sucks but is understandable in a job market with a very finite requirement of personnel. To be a Senior Captain with a large carrier, like Singapore Airlines, means you'd be in the 200k+ salary club.

The number of short-hop vs long-leg flights is probably indicative of why there are so many junior level pilots paid less than senior level pilots paid more.

Furthermore, I'd say aircraft like the Airbus 380 compounds this problem by basically forcing a hub and spoke model where the large "carrier" aircraft can only be manned by senior pilots. If we had more direct-direct flights it would open up room for many semi-senior pilots and potentially distribute wages better.

Uhhhh. I'd look at turntable.fm and see their "version" of what you're talking about. Their "rooms" are effectively channels, and they have heavy integration with music collections (and I think they'll make uploaded music available to a more general library soon).

I think your idea is a good one, though and I get it.

Did you get the in your pants thing from the Punchd pitch by chance? :)

See below @26:53

http://www.livestream.com/500startups/video?clipId=pla_71863...

I think part of the reason he doesn't do that is so he can pop in his two cents when he has time. Consistently blogging well is such an underrated and difficult job. Agreed though - his stuff is quite awesome and at the very least stirs a great discussion from which a lot can be learned.

It's pretty amazing to be part of two incredibly successful companies. If anything this is simply proof that you can get it done.

I'm sure it's tough to maintain control when companies become (or are acquired into) behemoths. I can't imagine all of the emotional turmoil being successful in entrepreneurial adventures can be in comparison to failure, quite frankly.

He can walk away knowing that he was at the VERY least part of game changing contributions to the world. And that's pretty neat no matter what he decides to do next.

And they say...3rd time is the charm.

I am interested in finding out how many people decided not to choose a number at all, and if that fact could help mitigate the experiment's inherent bias.

As for people making multiple entries into the experiment, a simple IP filter could help reduce overall error.

I think it would be neat to offer an option to not choose a number, but rather a number to help offset selector's bias (in participating in the number choosing experiment knowingly). It's similar to the multiple choosing UIs.

Nonetheless, I can only appreciate simple things like this that lead to a spirited and educated read.

Cheers and can't wait to see "final" results and accompanying analysis.

I am pretty much doing the same thing, and I've found good success using Ruby Koans, Rails for Zombies and then Rails Tutorial as dustinchilson points out.

The order helped me out though. I started with Ruby Koans which taught me the fundamentals of Ruby and let me make a program or two without needing to setup a dev computer...it's an easy way to just get a feel for programming and learn about why Ruby works in the way it does.

http://rubykoans.com/

Next I moved onto Rails for Zombies. This was a great, great site because again you could learn the fundamentals of rails with a lot of tutorial help in a completely online browser based environment.

It really helps you get the basics of creating a typical application and it's fun too.

http://railsforzombies.org

And finally, I moved on to Rails Tutorial which is amazing because you actually learn how to setup your computer to program and deploy code (which I think is harder than writing it at the moment)!

It goes from zero to deploy and you write a similar app as the one you will see in Rails for Zombies, but this time from complete scratch. Which is an amazing lesson that I can't stress enough.

http://ruby.railstutorial.org

My recommendation is in that order because it allows for quick wins, overall understanding (I get MVC now!), and a meaty project that you can feel proud of at the end.

It's grueling at times to learn, but well worth it. Good luck and try to stay dedicated and focused. (I've been wavering a bit, but I'll figure it out).

Yeah I agree with you on the material bit. Since there's always a lot of talk about incubators etc. I just wasn't sure what a good alternative would have been to get this parody to this specific group.

It's up to SF to manage their city accordingly. If anything the city has been blessed by the types of organizations that keep it afloat. They can definitely tax, but they should look to make it competitive. For instance...the projected number of 3000 Twitter employees in 2013 at a rent rate of 1000 dollars per employee per month equates to 172M dollars in rent a year in the city of SF. Of course, not everyone will live IN SF, and perhaps the average will be lower -- but that's still an enormous amount of money moving out of the city (to pay for all those nice things you mention).

Furthermore, and I'm still figuring out the numbers on this one, I am curious to see what the sales tax losses (among others) will be when major companies like these move away from the city.

And really, it puts entrepreneurs in an awkward position of being forced to go to SF (because that's where all the talent want to be) and having to find a way to survive as well. San Francisco is definitely right to earn taxes on the many wealthy individuals that live in its borders, but I do think there is a more symbiotic relationship to be had.

One reason I can think of is high volume small transactions. Since the fee is flat percentage companies could get around the flat rate. This is problematic in settings where you are selling items for 1 or 2 dollars and the 15/30 cent fees eat up your margins.

I'm not entirely sure what the rates are for GC/Paypal but I'm sure you could manage a merchant account that gives you as good of a deal and is optimized for the web.

For instance, how many people will buy through "Square" online when they are so familiar with PayPal.

Oh wow, I totally blanked on that - yeah agree. I'll edit that in because it blows my argument.

I suspect, however, that the cc terms will be nicer since, in theory, Square is opening up the market more than it's cannibalising it.

Pretty neat as I know that small purchases are hampered by flat fees. I guess the dollar stores will rejoice?