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Don't know- but I did buy some this morning the second I realized that Steve Job's announcement was coming right before earnings. If nothing else, Apple knows how to time things. Also, Tim Cook has been speaking more publicly and being put in a higher profile ever since Steve's last leave in 2009.

Lenore Skenazy is actually the leader of an entire movement around kids being able to do more of what they want (hence the book: Free Range Kids). You can check out the blog here: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

Also, she caused quite a stir a few years ago for letting her 9 year old kid ride the subway alone. Her story about it is here: http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subwa...

You know- Groupon offers an incredible service to many small businesses. Particular to those with high-margins or where the marketing of lifetime value of customers makes up for the potential loss in revenue. It seems like they have put together a top notch salesforce and technical team to bring their business model to market.

But, they really need a better team helping clients make their decisions on whether to use Groupon. While this article I thought offered little in the way of a "dirty secret" and wasn't particularly different than others on the topic, it shows a PR problem endemic to Groupon. This definitely needs to be fixed to ensure the long term success of Groupon, which I guess will be include a Yelplike/Yellow Book service.

This is exactly why I think Groupon is way more than just another group-buying site. They not only have people on the ground in so many places (in a product where first to market seems to have a huge advantage), but they also are savvy enough to understand social norms in the various countries. Really cool.

Thanks for posting this! I can actually read it. If you compare it to the google translate it's almost funny. Goes to show while natural language processing is definitely improving humans still are significantly better.

Millions of people love using Mint.com, and they had a huge exit and it didn't even have any of the bank-ish features that BankSimple is offering. BankSimple revenue model could easily include the same types of things as Mint: Credit Card Offerings, Life Insurance plans, even car insurance. And, they even earn additional, perhaps lower margin, revenue from their banking features. Think of the banking money as the long term huge opportunity to disrupt banks, and the Mint type offering as the short term profit that will allow them to grow.

For the consumer, if they can offer some of the analytic capabilities of Mint combined with the ability to make cash withdrawals from ATMs, deposit checks from your phone, and even get (some) interest it's an incredible product. It can roll most of your online financial needs into one company with a dedication to customer service. Sure, they may provide slightly worse interest rate. But how many people actually know their exact interest rate right now? Compare that with the number that have been adversely affected by overdraft fees and who would appreciate real customer service.

I wish them the best of luck! I hope they become the Zappo's of banking

In a similar vein- I thought the interview really showed how much they like each other and worked well together. They have been friends for years, been struggling together throughout, and even finish each others sentences. Helps show how they had the energy to get it done, and also the logic of funding teams with great relationships.

It certainly isn't specifically tech, but it does show how much treating a customer properly can have a huge effect on that customer and thus your business. Because of that pilot, Southwest is now getting a ton of great free press. Seems like a great lesson for any startup. Also, the article mentions that the flyer who was delayed was a repeat customer (as he had a number of free flights). You should treat your loyal customers well.

Incredible story. So happy this pilot got the proper recognition and appreciate he deserved, instead of scolding him for making the plane late. Southwest really is just far and away the best run airline of its class. They don't treat the people who fly on the airline like crap, and they are rewarded for it.

Maybe, but this is in stark contrast to the courage of Pixar's bosses in saving their employees that recently was on the front page. Easy to be cynical about life in BigCorp and the vicissitudes of your bosses, but doesn't make it any less wrong to treat people who trust you this way.

I don't understand how this gets dropped in every single article on this. They don't differentiate between different types of education. Patio wrote a great blog post about this recently, and there was a ton of HN discussion about it. The shortest answer is that not all the degrees are the same. All these studies really show that a lot of engineers, doctors, lawyers, and yes people in finance, make a good salary and are less likely to be unemployed. That does not mean that college is a good value for everyone. Many people would more likely benefit greatly from learning to be a plumber, mechanic, or other trade than getting a degree in american history. Sure, if you have the money to burn on the experience, fine. But, the idea that a degree in a non-professional field (especially if financed via loans) is worth it should be over.

Link to discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2074044

I definitely get this viewpoint- but I would like to add that per gp comment, you should be satisfied with your lot. Which for some people may mean spending money on some things. I've noticed on HN and other sites a fascination with acquiring wealth. I understand why, but in the end you acquire wealth for the utility you can gain from using it.

Obviously, this doesn't need to mean spending 5k on the biggest TV, and doesn't mean outstretching yourself on a huge mortgage for a McMansion. But, if you save a little less and tactically spend on things that will make you happier I think that is definitely worth it. This isn't a huge defense of "stuff," but I think it's also okay to lose some wealth to gain happiness. I personally like spending money on travel/experiences. There was a lifehacker article about that yielding increased happiness.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/5608980/spend-on-experiences-instead-o...

Very interesting that the Andreessen and Horowitz are on both boards. Typical incestuous nature of the tech/startup world I guess. Does that make people question the value of the deal for Skype? Or possibly is the original thought in investing in Qik that it could be acquired by Skype? Seems like sitting on these two boards could have been a huge conflict of interest.

You are right of course, but you should remember that when governments try to spur innovation and entrepreneurship they have to sell the idea to their constituents and to their talented people. It helps to at least have a great cluster to describe to people what innovation could mean. A sort of crazy end goal to consider. But yes, for most direct comparisons smaller countries should like Steve Blank said be looking at Israel, Singapore and Finland.

Honestly, I think the most challenging thing will be to change Chile's cultural fear of failure. That is probably the single best asset that Israeli culture has in spurring innovation. It is just considered the norm.

While I really enjoy reading Quora and think that it has enormous potential, this type of comment shows me why I don't think it can reach the mainstream. Simply, the community is not meant for everyone. While Twitter also has a small portion of people tweeting, Quora goes even further- towards generally discouraging people outside of a small group of technically inclined giants in the startup world. I don't know how they are going to spread that into other fields in a way that continues to interest people when so much interaction with the site is frowned upon.

While this is a pretty cool story, I share the author's reservations about what this actually means.

First, Stumbleupon could get more traffic, but less actual interaction. As an example, my personal blog posts recently got about the same number of page views from a post on HN and from a status on Facebook. But, the HN users were on my site for an average of 42 seconds, as opposed to 3.5 minutes for Facebook.

Second, the type of traffic could be different. I have no personal example of this- but it may be that Stumbleupon has more generalist viral content and Facebook could have more tailored content, possibly better for small businesses to monetize.

Either way, really cool for Stumbleupon, I totally did not realize how huge it was.

I also didn't notice this until today, but this is a great feature to prevent spam and malware. Usually I feel like my Twitter feed is filled with people and links that are moderately trustworthy, but that leaves everyone vulnerable to someone hijacking a twitter account using firesheep or something else.

Not at all- it's similar to the Real Estate Agent problem that is described in detail in Freakonomics. The bank has some slightly higher interest in raising the price and getting more money- but a much higher interest in offloading as much security as possible. This has led to problems like banks selling to specific IPO turnaround firms that can grab huge share volume early on, sending the IPO up in value before selling out right near close of trading, sometimes trashing hot IPOs on day 1.

You can read about this: http://antisocialmedia.net/ipo-probe-of-wall-street-ties-ton...

More than that- this type of deal could potentially greatly harm current Facebook equity holders, or much more likely potential buyers of the IPO. If Goldman Sachs is both an investor and the bank that eventually takes them public this deal is rife with conflicts of interest.

Ex: In order to invest at this "low" valuation Goldman had to promise to set the initial price of the IPO to be artificially high. People buy the IPO in Facebook excitement, and right when insiders are legally allowed to sell they dump stock and exercise options and later investors are screwed. Goldman makes huge profit in this situation- on both fees and their sale of stock.

For many things there is utility to social content finding. Sites like HN work for news/discussion, and Twitter and Facebook work for a random amalgam of things. I'm interested in the future of social search startups that somehow curate content from friends. In the articles example- asking friends if they liked their Dishwasher, and if yes what brand it is. That's the most like how people IRL make these decisions. I know there are some startups in this space as well, hope they do well!

Yeah- the threat is very real for people underwater on their mortages, with huge student loans, or about to put kids through college. It definitely is an awful position to be in, but a lot of people are forced to do this to make ends meet. It's not just psychological disorder.

Can you specify a little further? Are you interviewing for a job, or interviewing a candidate for a job? What level position is this junior/senior/VP Eng? I will assume interviewing and likely for a junior position...

If you are interviewing for a junior level position, I would mostly be prepared to describe applications you have created, included side projects. You will likely be given some application and work with the interviewer to design/implement it. Usually you can and should ask them questions and make it as much of a dialogue as possible. Many companies will expect you to actually write code in an interview, so be prepared for that. Usually this is in the language of your choice, but I would at least be prepared to do things in javascript as this is a front end position, and every front end person should understand javascript.

I don't really know for more senior roles, but I would imagine you'd be asked more "big picture" questions like what are the advantages/disadvantages to various web frameworks, why you would use one over another in various example applications. Also, perhaps how you would work to architect/possibly design some front end application.

Also, obviously know your resume- make sure that any languages/skills/frameworks on there you actually know and be prepared to talk about all your experience on there.

Interesting piece, I definitely think that there is a wussification of America, but I think that it is political wussiness. I see stories of entrepreneur after entrepreneur risking all to attempt to innovate, change the world, and succeed. I see people dropping out of school to create the next billion dollar companies.

What I don't see is a leader from either political party willing to possibly address the long term debt problems, job losses, or general solvency by making the hard choices to cut something somewhere! Instead, we have pathetic politicians pandering to one group or another afraid to make the hard choice and say "No" to something. I hope the Ed Randel can use his position to address that wussification, not just people who don't want to play football in the snow.

You are completely right- I think the general feeling is that Google needs to do a better job of communicating that to content creators. This guy clearly didn't realize the extent of the damage, and said he would return adsense revenue from the website. They could fairly disable adsense on the website, but knocking the YouTube revenue just seems unnecessary after giving a very stern warning. People find it troubling that a monolithic algorithmic arbiter makes these decision that change people's lives

I understand your point, but have you ever actually tried to read the terms is service of any multi-thousand line legal document written in legalese. You are obviously in a way right, but for Google (and other companies) to purposely obfuscate the process does more harm.

I completely agree with your sentiment.

The winning quote from this article is: "His courtroom foes contend that Balsam is one of many sole practitioners unfairly exploiting anti-spam sentiments and laws. They accuse him of filing lawsuits against out-of-state companies that would rather pay a small settlement than expend the resources to fight the legal claims."

Finally, a consumer is using the same tactics that big companies with big budgets use to get startups and individuals to give up their claims. This obviously only works because Balsam is a lawyer and doesn't need to pay his legal fees. But, I am happy to see someone fighting back!

I don't get it? Are you being derogatory here? If he is investing in the obvious and it's working so well either others find it not so obvious or maybe it only looks so obvious after the fact.

Have you read Startup Nation?(1) It talks about why Israel is the country with the most startups per capita in the world. Israel also has the more companies on NASDAQ than all of Europe combined. One of the main reasons the authors cite is Israeli teenagers all go to the army. The entire Israeli military culture is based on individual resourcefulness and improvisation. They get experience in leadership and technical skills that almost no American teenager gets at their age. Further, instead of being saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for this training they come away with no debt.

tl;dr I think the Israeli army if anything is a massive contribution to the success of their innovation economy.

(1) http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Mirac...

While people sometimes knock the Reddit community on here this is an impressive example of Redditors really helping people. Great job to the founders and everyone who put Reddit together, for all the sarcasm and jokes about it it's really cool to see stories like this.

Most importantly, good luck to this kid!

Interesting point- I was about to comment that I loved this recent trend in intriguing data posts by Facebook. While I do understand the PR concerns in these sorts of posts, I believe Facebook should do more. They have so much rich information, it's incredible to consider the psychological and sociological research that could be done with it.