chaz

On weekdays, lots of people using Gmail and Google Apps to send work emails to each other which are more likely to accept encryption. But on weekends, inbound commercial, non-work related emails (such as newsletters and promotions) drops off, leaving the percentage of personal emails higher.

"Critical?" No. But it was built by a publicly traded media company, so they're probably interested in promoting it and making money with it.

> Hill liked the concept, of course, but Fox thought that the price, $25,000 per game, was too steep. [...] Our last stop was ESPN and the reception was decidedly different.

So interesting to see that FOX balked at the seemingly low $25k but ESPN didn't flinch and insisted on exclusivity for games they didn't even have rights to. Telling of how the networks viewed themselves and each other, but also how important it is to find the customers that are the true believers.

Amazon's revenue is only 7% books, or about $5B. Then again, Hachette is just a part of a conglomerate and is not itself a $10B company and may be way smaller than that. Regardless of the nitpicking of who is the bigger fish, both companies are well-equipped with clever people, bankrolls, and influence to fight this one out.

I used to work on buying keywords at eBay 10 years ago, and one of the first features we built was a suppression list to prevent exactly this, so I'm a little surprised to see this. These ads can be costly, embarrassing, or carry a legal liability. It's possible they dropped the ball with a big bug that no one noticed, but it's also possible an affiliate was buying these ads hoping to turn a conversion.

It's great for design ideas of almost any kind. For example, I wanted to see how people were setting up their stacked washer and dryer units: http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=stacked%20washer%20d...

Another source for home decor is Houzz, which is more of a professional designer portfolio + marketplace, but also a good source of inspiration. http://www.houzz.com/stacked-washer-dryer

That's the best situation, since they know the content and can segment their content very effectively. YouTube Partners and VEVO can get premium pre-roll ads because it's considered to be premium content. Content that gets flagged or has negative keywords in the title, desc, or comments may get no ads at all.

Any publisher can do this on their own. They can sell their own ad space at a premium, and use an ad network throughout the rest of the site -- it's called "remnant" inventory. If someone writes profanity or uploads something for that page, them switch the ads off, or use a different ad network that will tolerate that. High traffic sites frequently use multiple ad networks to maximize revenue yield.

If you have lots of UGC, then AdSense is probably not for you. A lot of companies shy away from UGC specifically because it can risk advertising revenue from higher end brands that will pay more.

Fortunately, there are many different ad networks for many different publishers. Reddit is using Adzerk ... maybe they will work for you. There's also a bunch of ad networks that specialize in different areas, including porn, gambling, etc -- stuff that Google won't ever touch. You may still be able to use AdSense if you segment where the ad is shown in places where you're less likely to have negative UGC, such as non-UGC portions of your site or forum topics that are more moderated.

Sure ... mind the pennies, but don't risk your dollars to do so (aka penny wise and pound foolish). Ads are a trust business, and a lack of trust erodes their entire business away.

The problem is that advertisers don't want their brands associated with that kind of content. In order to keep advertisers happy, Google needs to police for content wrt to ads. It's a different set of rules than things like search results or YouTube.

I don't believe there actually is an UPSERT command and that it's just a nickname for the activity. MERGE is a part of the standard, so I think any implementation would use that as the actual command.

These bets are easy because it's hard to figure out if you've won or lost. Among the challenges is that acquisitions like WhatsApp and Motorola can be more about stopping threats. WhatsApp had been adding ~1 million people a day, and if FB's mission is to connect people in the world, then WhatsApp could have become a serious competitor in a few years. The Motorola patent portfolio has been discussed, but there's a lot of potential for simple expertise in consumer goods that was acquired as well. Us outsiders will never really really know.

Since we're talking about tech companies and not airlines, the value of an acq is a lot more difficult than discounted future revenue. YouTube was much derided as a terrible acquisition for YouTube in 2006 -- a bandwidth money pit and a copyright nightmare. But it looks like it was a smart move.

What you describe does happen, though. Microsoft paid $6B to acquire aQuantive in 2007 and then wrote if all off in 2012.

In these situations, I believe there are two types people:

A: "Wow, things are really messed up. I'm out of here." B: "Wow, things are really messed up. There's opportunity everywhere."

Either can be right, depending on the person and situation.

It's worth noting that this ~$40B is just for broadcast TV ads. This excludes cable TV ads (~$30B) and subscription TV fees (~$80B). There is an ongoing non-zero sum shift in attention and dollars to online, but TV is far from dead.

Indeed. It's an organizational relief valve that doesn't rock the boat much from a UI or product perspective. This is less of a problem at a small company, but a big problem at large companies. Standardizing the creative unit also makes it much easier to manage, and can be changed quickly by a semi-technical person if they are given a tool.

FTE = Full Time Equivalent = "a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person" (Wikipedia). Perhaps you were thinking E = employee?

SwissAir 111 impacted at an estimated 350g.

I think it's worth having the discussion of having a permanent locator on aircraft that can't be disabled, remotely-triggered hot mikes, and longer CVRs. But I downvoted you for falling into the "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ____" argument trap, which is more or less the straw man.

> just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply

Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?

This reminds me of an article I read about the Space Shuttle's flight control system. Five computers on board, with 4 running redundantly and the fifth on backup.

> Q. How are actuators controlled?

> A. For the aerosurface actuators, each of the four computers sends out an independent command on an independent bus. With no failures, the commands should be identical. The voting is done at the actuator using a hydraulic voting mechanism, called a force-fight voter. In it, there are four hydraulic ports called secondary ports, each commanded by one of the four GPCs. The secondary ports go into the primary ports, which are heavy-duty actuators that connect to what's called a "summing bar," which is no more than a massive steel rod. If there are three good computers and one bad one, the three good commands physically out-muscle the fourth. This limits the control authority a little bit--we don't get the total force we'd like to get, but there's still enough power to control the vehicle. If you have a large enough pressure differential for a large enough time, the port is hydraulically bypassed, which relieves the pressure in that one port. The remaining three ports then regain their full authority.

The whole article is worth a read: http://klabs.org/DEI/Processor/shuttle/shuttle_primary_compu...

Related, wrt to romanticization of long rail journeys -- NPR reporter traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/143016679/russia-by-rai...

Also, this guy documented his trip from Vienna to Pyongyang, North Korea: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

It's satire.

  12. People’s names are case sensitive.
  13. People’s names are case insensitive.

Edit: Let me explain ... I was responding to the parent post, and that it wasn't meant to be a logic list of rules. Individual points may be true, but the overall tone of the list and post uses humor to explain the complexity of names.

  32. People’s names are assigned at birth.
  33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
  34. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
  35. Five years?
  36. You’re kidding me, right?

Relevant here: "I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s." By throwing out a "wrong answer," better suggestions are made.

https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/9216e1c9da7d

All companies expect to get more value from the employee than what they are paying the employee. Knowledge workers tend to have high -- sometimes very high -- switching costs. I have no bakery experience, but I bet I can hire a replacement baker with less disruption than a replacement tech worker.

I think that's true at smaller organizations where the head of IT isn't on the exec team. But at large companies, the head of IT is a pretty serious role (Jacob was CIO/EVP), with a very large budget, mission-critical systems, and a big team. Someone who successfully runs IT at a company like Target can pretty much get hired into a similar role at any other Fortune 500 company.

> Are they actually talking to me? Unbelievable. I can’t talk, Dan; can’t you see? I’m hanging to this idea by a thread as it is

My problem with this story is that it makes it sounds like it's Dan's fault for walking up to the author at a party/social event. We've all been there -- an all-consuming problem or an unexpected moment of clarity. Or maybe you realize something that puts you into a sour mood. We can't expect those around us to be mind readers.

I think the difference is that you're reading it as practical word problem, when the intent is to present a math problem.

I first heard about this problem in a politically incorrect variation: a tribe chief is given the opportunity to choose a wife from a pool of n women, presented in a random order, one at a time. He can choose any woman, but can't choose a woman who he has already passed up. What's the strategy for the chief to choose the most beautiful wife?

Or what they don't want to be money losers. When the support link is in the top nav, it's an indicator of a customer-focused company. Bonus points for a toll-free number at the top. If it's buried in a tiny font at the bottom, you might want to walk away.

Yes, which is why they give you hard buttons for presets and up/down scan.

It depends on each manufacturer's implementation. The ever-growing complexity needs to be managed, both in learning curve as well as overall placement and design of features.

For one, BMW does this right. The large screen is controlled by the iDrive knob in the middle, which rotates with haptic detents, is pushable, and has 4-directions on it. All of the major controls are still present with physical controls: radio volume, presets, dual temp control, fan speed, vents, cruise control, phone, etc. The only time you would regularly use the iDrive is for navigation, which is always going to be kludgy because of the complexity of putting in addresses. I welcome voice and touch here.

http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg