ebspelman

I really appreciate this comment, even though I personally don't agree with it.

You can't take drugs 100% safely, but their safety level does vary, and it definitely varies with wealth.

Amphetamines, for example. Rich Americans get prescriptions for Adderall. Poor Americans make meth. Or take opiates. Vicodin vs. heroin.

This is straight out of House of Leaves.

Amazing write-up! Those animations are fantastic. Did you really make all of them using Keynote?

And the portfolio site in general is really something else. You should definitely be more than an intern!

Really enjoyed the relationship between this paper's title and the graph of its citation frequency:

http://i.imgur.com/RO6BVRx.png

Agreed - Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe deserve their own category.

Go Priceonomics! I really enjoy their approach to journalism.

If you have an hour and this topic really interests you, I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" - http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag....

He covers (very fairly and entertainingly, IMO) the major divide between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists, and why both camps have a point.

For those interested in a longer analysis of what Amazon's relationship with publishers looks like, I'd recommend George Packer's article from the New Yorker earlier this year:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_...

I haven't seen the Google/YouTube comparison on here yet. SoundCloud seems like the default place for audio uploads, similar (but not perfectly analogous) to YouTube for video circa 2006. Youtube has maintained a huge amount of independence from Google, to the point where the Twitch rumors from last week were all titled as, "YouTube to buy Twitch," or something close to that[1]. A similar partnership between Twitter/SoundCloud could work well.

[1] http://www.gamespot.com/articles/youtube-to-buy-twitch-for-1...

Google Glass shows you an augmented view of reality. Facebook Glass shows you a reflected vision of yourself.

This is really beautiful. It's an amazing amount of information to be borne (almost) purely visually.

My favorite is 117. They are the Devon Sawa in Final Destination of Bitcoin.

Same exact thing here.

As someone who took (and really benefited from) Srinivasan's MOOC course, I definitely enjoy his written style. I like the links-as-evidence, and I think he does a great job of weaving a narrative out of seemingly disconnected parts.

That being said, I think he goes a little too far here. It seems like there's a fundamental disconnect between his two most important contentions, namely that:

"The future of technology is not really location-based apps; it is about making location completely unimportant."

"We are rapidly approaching a future characterized by a totally new phenomenon, the reverse diaspora: one that starts out internationally distributed, finds each other online, and ends up physically concentrated."

If location is increasingly unimportant, why would the natural next step be for people to coalesce geographically? Why do people that share common interests online necessarily need to live close together?

Personally, I'm not super hot on the phrase 'necessary credentials.' As a pretty early, non-technical YC hire I think the idea of a required background is intimidating for a lot of people who could really add value. Sometimes the best employees are the ones who feel the least entitled - I wish they were easier to find!

And listen to it (while reading the transcript) here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1227012...

The actual map is an amazing piece of work, but let's give credit where credit is due!

Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496....

I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.

These guys did an amazing job with the interactive element, but a lot of this is borrowed work! Let's give credit where credit is due:

Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496...

I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.

Elliott from WePay here - don't mean to turn these comments into a corporate stick-measuring contest, but our API has been able to support this use case since August of 2011.

It's interesting that the article never compares explicit reviews with the implicit reviews that Quora already generates. Consensus (upvotes/point scores) can review things the same way that a starring system can.

I can scroll through comparative star values of different movies, or I can compare the upvote scores for different movies that are answers to the question "What are the best 'twist' movies?" (http://www.quora.com/Movie-Story-and-Plot-Themes/What-are-th...). Both are relative scales, but I'd be interested see what differences the two scales would produce in terms of ordering and favoritism.