> "Based on ... about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number ... is zero."
This statement made me think about reports of successful people wherein one supposed factor to their success was ability to "function" on less sleep (Marissa Mayer 4 hours, Jon Gruden 4 hours, Tom Ford 3 hours)
Some of those successful people are just faking it, or fooling themselves. But there are at least two "short sleep" genes which allow people to be rested in about 6 hours instead of 8.
> The streaming service also noted that it has “thought long and hard about how to handle content that is not hate content itself, but is principally made by artists or other creators who have demonstrated hateful conduct personally.”
So do platforms such as Netflix or Hulu have a responsibility to pull content created or backed by Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby? Do art museums pull pieces from artist who may have had reprehensible conduct?
Secondary markets. Both SharesPost and Nasdaq Private Market (Second Market Solutions was acquired by Nasdaq) offer this service. Pre IPO, FB shares were floating around secondary markets. Note investors are usually looking for household name unicorns on these markets.
So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?
- Additional capital will add to the war chest to fend of competitors such as Microsoft Teams, HipChat and Google Hangouts Chat. With the deep pockets of Microsoft and Google, more cash can aid in innovation, R&D, marketing, etc.
> So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?
- dilution
- possible obligation to pay dividends
- although probably not here, giving a board seat / some control
I think the basic question here is, how can Slack productively spend $250MM over the next couple of years--do they have a vision that exists in some proportion to that kind of capital? Slack is a nice platform, yet it's hard to imagine _hundreds_ of good developers toiling away on mobile apps, desktop apps, webhook integrations, etc.
> So if the VC money is there for the taking, why not?
Disclaimer: I am not a startup founder. I am not an investor. I have zero knowledge about how these things work besides from what I've read here. That being said, I thought the meta for raising money was (is?) that you don't raise money if you don't need it or don't anticipate you will need it?
I mean if you're Dropbox, you have massive infrastructure spending even in your early years that means as you get people to learn to embrace "the cloud" in early 2009, success is you have tons of users who use your product for free with a small fraction converting to a paid account and a smaller fraction using it at work (fancier paid account) I can understand the need to raise money. However, I thought raising money means the founders lose control of the majority of shares. My understanding is if you don't need the money, don't raise it because it is a liability. I can't imagine slack's infrastructure spending being anything near dropbox's (or maybe I am wrong?)
Now that I think about it again, I am sure I have made a mistake somewhere in my assumptions. I'd love to be corrected. Thanks
Edit: How did Snapchat and Uber founders manage to retain control even after many rounds of funding? Is that applicable here? Can I use the same thing if I ever become a founder?
- This goes way beyond the supply chain leaks that power Ming-Chi Kuo's analyst reports. Perhaps an Apple QA engineer or contractor? Disgruntled SWE? In any case leaker is in a world of hurt if Apple identifies him/her
- Wonder if 9 to 5 Mac and MacRumors get limited access from Apple now that they published these leaks. I'd say yes.
- "As best I've been able to ascertain, these builds were available to download by anyone, but they were obscured by long, unguessable URLs [web addresses]," wrote John Gruber, a blogger known for his coverage of Apple.
It would be ironic if some third-party connected to Apple tested iOS 11 and used Internet Explorer to download the release which causes the visited URL to be indexed by Bing. Maybe the download URL pops up in Bing if you find the right keywords.
I can’t find the recent news article but this story[1] is the same in essence: Bing starts indexing web pages it impossibly can know about unless some Microsoft software sends visited URLs to Bing. In the news I remembered it caused some sensitive leaks because company secrets, only obscured by unguessable URLs, were suddenly listed on Bing.
"We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand
inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse
the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online
services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on
Microsoft report, June 15, 2009)."
> Indeed, the statement that Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, emailed me yesterday as I worked on this article seems to confirm the allegation:
As you might imagine, we use multiple signals and approaches when we think about ranking...
Opt-in programs like the [Bing] toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites.
Also (same link):
> Microsoft does disclose that Suggested Sites collects information about sites you visit. From the privacy policy:
When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information.
To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included."
And (refering to Bing toolbar):
> The install page highlights some of what will be collected and how it will be used:
improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will also use this information to help improve our products and services."
From the same article (at the time, in 2011) Google deny using their services to index search results, FWIW. But AFAIK Microsoft never made such a clear denial - do you have a reason to be so confident in your claim?
> Bing says it does NOT do this. It says there is no Google specific search signal that it being used, no list of all the popular pages as selected just by Google users. Instead, it has a “search signal” based on searching activity observed across a range of sites.
For example, if you did a search on Amazon, Bing might detect that. A search on eBay might get spotted. A search on Yahoo, that also might get extracted. Any number of searches might be identified. Bing would associate the next page you went to after doing those searches as being a possible “answer” to those searches.
> “We aggregate the information,” Shum said. “The entire clickstream gets weighted along with different signals,” he explained. “For head queries, we have more signals. For tail queries, we have less. For the Google ‘synthetic’ queries [done for the Google sting operation], we have nothing.”
---
So Bing seem to, as a ranking signal, capture URLs that look like searches, and then the next page - which is pretty clever. If that next page is not already indexed (or alternatively perhaps if they have no other ranking signals for the search they spotted) they seem to index that site as part of ranking that signal. And that was 2011, who knows how much cleverer Google and Bing have got since then.
Microsoft OneDrive for Business is moving in that direction. Online collaboration of Office files, couple of clicks sharing and security controls that Enterprise IT departments love. I'd still say Dropbox is easier to use with a cleaner interface. However with so many Fortune 500 Enterprises already in bed with Microsoft, OneDrive for Business has a leg up.
Housecleaning indeed, though some departures were voluntary. 8 top level execs and two board members so far. Link contains a visual of who has left the building, 2 incoming execs and vacant C Suite spots.
https://www.recode.net/2017/6/14/15794816/uber-charge-leader...
I'm surprised Thuan Pham (CTO) survived the carnage since he was mentioned in Susan Fowler's post.
As an aside my dark horse candidates for CEO or COO are Thomas Staggs former Disney COO and Susan Wojcicki (Current YouTube CEO)
Why on Earth would Susan leave Alphabet to go to Uber? Serious question...I think she probably has more money than she needs now, why would anyone subject themselves to what running Uber is going to be like?
Staggs I can see, he's made it pretty clear he's looking for a big job -- and as a former I-banker and public company corp fin / M&A guy, he very well may have an itch to prove he can hack it in startup-land (a la Anthony Noto).
This statement made me think about reports of successful people wherein one supposed factor to their success was ability to "function" on less sleep (Marissa Mayer 4 hours, Jon Gruden 4 hours, Tom Ford 3 hours)