aarlo

It's ramadan. People in Cairo are fasting and hungry. So they see an ad for a bagel and click "like". That's all there is to it.

Why are you targeting for "funders" (I think you mean the people getting paid)?

In general, getting the money into systems is the hard part. If money is there, people will come - easy! Getting people to give money - whether to a company or for donations - that's hard!

Also, frankly, this is a nice proposition from the POV of the "funders". You seem to have built it for yourself. But, the value for the donors? Sounds like a tough sell.

So making donors happy is most important. Without them you're toast. With them you can AT LEAST support yourself, if nothing else :)

You spent too much time thinking creatively on your own, and not enough time understanding how the world works. If you want to improve the world you have to understand it better. Go understand whether you can design a business process (involving your software) that's better than the ones they brick and mortar stores are using now, and then sell it to them (or "give it away for free" - or is it worth it to pay them?). THEN think about the implications.

It's all about the anxiety caused by the fear.

Deep-down the unresourceful founders are afraid, which causes anxiety that their decisions are wrong, so anything that approaches being wrong causes the anxiety to repress and get in the way of the freedom to explore things.

Resourcefulness is also about letting new ideas and opportunities come to you, which helps if you listen to your unconscious, which you can't do if anxiety makes your conscious mind jumpy.

You don't think there are any genetic differences between people?

The mind is plastic, but there's a strong genetic component too...and this all has been debated soooo much...

I find it natural - not hard at all - to think in the abstract for extended periods. Most people don't.

Also I agree with you that it's a slippery slope. But only if you choose the wrong ski lift: The ski lift of assholeness. (How's this analogy going?) The truth is, there are plenty of facts out there that you could use to become an asshole with. Like the fact that your little brother is physically weaker than you. But that doesn't mean that you should beat him up. And it doesn't change the truth.

I got it from thinking about it a lot, also reading Carl Jung...

Is dev bootcamp new? Looks cool!

This looks like it will be effective.

Something to think about...coding well takes a certain type of mind that most people don't have. Code is, as Fred Brooks says, "pure thought-stuff." You need to be able to build and understand multiple layers of abstract stuff all at the same time.

Coding is like having a vivid dream in that you're occupied with something entirely mental and disconnected from your physical reality. But unlike real dreams, it's coherent and rigidly structured, and fits in your conscious mind.

Some people can think this way. Most people can't, even if their mind is advanced in other ways.

I don't think most people, even the ones who are interested in Codeacademy, realize this.

(That said, I think it's useful for people to try to learn to code to understand the basics. And surely lots of people out there could code, but haven't learned yet. But most people will not be able to build complicated "apps and websites.")

Frustrating. Hard to evaluate as a biz idea without knowing how valuable these things are - much energy/heat they would actually provide.

Also, I don't see a reason why it couldn't do realtime stuff as well...

And if this was at microsoft research why did microsoft not do something more strategic with this? They can't start running azure nodes in people's houses? Maybe it's because the economics don't work out...

Congrats guys. Very cool product.

We've found lots of opportunity to make email marketing more sophisticated, and not enough smart engineers thinking about it.

BTW There's a belgian company called 8seconds ( http://www.8seconds.net/ ) with some similar dynamic-image loading tech, combined with (I think) multi-armed bandit split testing on the backend.

- Aarlo from MiraPost

If they "click out" and move onto another message, they'll probably never read your email again. So for the marketer it's the same as a delete (and likely is an actual delete).

If they click on a link inside the message, that shouldn't get counted as a delete.

Feel free to ping me with more questions - aarlo@mirapost.com. Always looking to chat with others in the email world :)

Lie. If it was read for only a couple seconds, it's effectively a delete.

We have a special tracking code that figures it out over the email clients' use of HTTP and with some fancy server-side node/mongodb stuff.

Thanks! Let me know what you think. aarlo@mirapost.com

Low social return. High personal return.

domain spam?

So why does the bitcoin economy reward spending processing power?

I guess our economy does too (quant finance)

No, because that's too simple. It only has two variables (money and dollars received). The real-life case has tens of important variables

Cool. You said something about adobe cirrus on the FAQ. Can you explain more how it works?

I've heard this idea before (maybe from myself? haha). I think it's great!

Why not just do a smartphone app? Or an RSS feed reader that speaks your feeds? Then you get the GUI from the smartphone too. Or could be an all-voice interface for when you're in the car...

What do they use the data for?

A lot of the talk is from people who (should) have low confidence in their predictions. Meaning, there's a 80% chance this is bullshit, but hear my out anyways.

Yes, many of the facts are wrong. The conclusions are wrong. So why should we still discuss?

First, it's fun. Like a sport for us to watch (and some to play :).

More importantly, though: Forcing yourself to open your eyes, stay engaged and keep an active mind about what's going on in the world. To practice thinking things through, even with limited information (you'll never have 100% information). This encourages curiosity - so you get more involved, ask questions, do research. Overall it helps you learn how the world works.

Yeah! This interview is great. Get to know bill gates and his take on microsoft strategy in the 80s and 90s.

so what is kayak's actual valuation?

Come for the "gay bar", stay for the slides

Nice summing up of past MS strategy.

just like any big company

Nice essay. I agree with pretty much all of it.

It's rare for good engineers to have an entrepreneurial/business mind - thinking about, and being aware of, the business world outside of code (business strategy); understanding people (sales/marketing/team leadership, when there is a team). These kinds of engineers are amazing!! :)

multiple keys with the same name? what do you mean? arrays?

It doesn't matter what's right or wrong, or what we want! 5% of users know or care about privacy. And social networking services are all about the network effect. So, good luck competing. Facebook won.