Here's How Likely Each Poker Hand Is | ||
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Poker is a fantastic game, particularly alluring to competitive, creative types who love numbers. Business Insider's Eugene Kim has profiled some of Silicon Valley's biggest poker fans, and the game is also huge draw with the Wall Street crowd. While I'm far from a serious, professional poker player, I do occasionally get a chance to enjoy a game with friends. And I also love math and statistics. So I decided to look at some of the basic mathematics of the game. Here, I go through the probabilities of drawing each five-card poker hand from a deck of cards. These probabilities are handy to have in the back of your head in a poker game, and they are the reason why hands are ranked the way they are: a straight flush is way less likely than a pair, so this is why the straight flush wins. SEE ALSO: Why Silicon Valley's Elites Are Obsessed With Poker How To Find Probabilities Finding The Number Of Hands Order Doesn't Matter See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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It's Insanely Expensive, But There's A Secret Benefit Of Living In San Francisco That Makes It Worth It | ||
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Earlier this week, New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote a column about an app called "Luxe" that helps people park their cars. The way it works is simple: You punch your driving destination in to Luxe. It estimates when you're going to arrive. Then, a Luxe employee greets you. The Luxe employee takes your car and finds somewhere to park it. In San Francisco, where Manjoo lives, parking is a giant pain. Luxe only charges $5 per hour, or $15 per day. The daily rate is half the price it normally costs to park in the city all day. The hourly rate isn't too bad if you value your time properly. Still! This seems like a silly, frivolous app. Manjoo and I do a weekly podcast, and we talked about the app. He thoroughly defended it. He says it's not frivolous, and that it is in fact one of the great, hidden benefits of living in San Francisco. Here's what he said about living in San Francisco. He's being slightly jokey, but only slightly: "San Francisco is this amazing place where there are many, many kinds of services that are enabled by smartphones and they just do stuff for you like this. But it's not like they're 1%-er apps, they're cheaper than previous models, and they're cheaper in some way because they are being funded by VCs. We in San Francisco get to — first of all, we have to pay higher real estate prices, but the benefit is that we get all these services at cut rate. So you get all these services that aren't making a profit, you're not paying for them to make a profit, VCs are funding them. But, on the other hand you have to pay real estate prices." He also said, that there are going to be competitors to this, so they are going to collectively lower the price of parking in San Francisco, which solves a huge dilemma in San Francisco. Lots of people drive to work in the city, and they used to have to pay $30 a day, so Luxe has cut the price of parking in half. This is a small hidden benefit to living in San Francisco. It's super duper expensive to live there, but new mobile services are cutting down slightly on other costs, and making life better. I doubt people who are protesting rising rents really care, but it's an interesting counter view. Here's the podcast. We talk about this around the 17:18 mark. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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REVEALED: The Top Demographic Trends For Every Major Social Network | ||
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The demographics of who's on what social network are shifting — older social networks are reaching maturity, while newer social messaging apps are gaining younger users fast. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we unpack data from over a dozen sources to understand how social media demographics are still shifting. Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Trial >> Here are a few of the key takeaways from the BI Intelligence report:
The report is full of charts (over 20 charts) and data that can be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the digital media industry, sign up for a two week trial. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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What Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, And 11 Other Tech Visionaries Were Like In College | ||
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The technology industry is known for having been created by college dropouts like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison, but that doesn't mean these innovators didn't have meaningful undergraduate experiences. Bill Gates became friends with Steve Ballmer at Harvard, Larry Ellison learned he was a pretty good computer programmer at the University of Illinois, and Steve Jobs considered his time at Reed College among the most valuable experiences of his life. Meanwhile, Peter Thiel actually graduated from Stanford, but today he thinks college is such a waste of time that he offers $100,000 scholarships to students who want to drop out. What can we say, everyone's experience is different. Larry Page, University of Michigan Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page had been a quiet child growing up in East Lansing, Michigan, but he began to find his footing socially while attending the University of Michigan during the early 90s. There, he made friends with other students who loved technology and became editor of a newsletter put out by Eta Kappa Nu, an electrical and computer engineering honor society, according to a Business Insider story earlier this year. BI's Nicholas Carlson reports that Page also developed a reputation for prescient predictions about the future — such as when he realized that cheaper hard drives would make PCs a lot more useful — and a desire to solve big problems regardless of whether the technology existed to do so. Elon Musk, University of Pennsylvania PayPal cofounder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk studied physics and business at the University of Pennsylvania, transferring from Queen's University in Canada following his sophomore year. Musk's housemate at the University of Pennsylvania, Adeo Ressi, recalls at a 2010 event held by TheFunded.com that Musk did not drink and was "the biggest dork I've ever met." Meanwhile, The New Yorker reports Musk loved first-person shooter video games, and he was so focused on his schoolwork that his mother would check on him to make sure he was eating and changing his socks every day, according to a 2012 Forbes story. But in addition to all that studying and gaming, Penn's alumni magazine reports that Musk and Ressi made money by charging other students to attend parties they threw at their house. Marissa Mayer, Stanford University Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer was already an overachiever by the time she enrolled at Stanford in 1993, having served as president of her high school's Spanish club, treasurer of its Key Club, and captain of both the debate team and pom-pom squad. This intense focus on achievement continued in Palo Alto, where a former classmate describes her as having been "very smart and very serious," according to Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson. Carlson reports that Mayer wavered from her initial plan to become a doctor, finding that she preferred the problem-solving skills used in computer programming to the rote memorization needed to succeed in pre-med classes. As an upperclassmen, Mayer excelled teaching younger students in her symbolic systems major, a course of study that combines linguistics, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and computer science classes. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Don't Be Afraid To Cancel Cable — Here's How To Get All The Programs You Love | ||
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How to cancel cable and stream all your content for a lot less money. Produced by Matt Johnston Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 13 Best Custom iPhones Money Can Buy (AAPL) | ||
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iPhones aren't the status symbol they once were. These days the real way to show off is with a custom iPhone. Custom iPhones are a great way to express your personality. They also tend to cost more, if that's of concern to you. We've rounded up the best custom iPhones so you'll know what to ask to ask for during the holidays. Feld & Volk makes some of the best custom iPhones out there. This "pure gold" iPhone 5S will run you $ 8,990. If that's too much gold plating for you Feld & Volk also makes this graphite iPhone 6 for $4,799. It has a birch wood exterior (and some gold as well). Feld & Volk also makes country specific iPhones. This China themed iPhone 5S will run you $2,600. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Microsoft: Compared To Apple And Yahoo, We Are NOT Overpaying Our New CEO (MSFT) | ||
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Investor watchdog organization Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) caused a stir last week by telling Microsoft investors that Satya Nadella's pay package was too high. It advocated that they vote no on the "say on pay" advisory vote during Microsoft's shareholder meeting December 3. As part of his promotion, Nadella was granted a starter kit of stock valued at about $65 million which won't begin to vest until 2019. Plus, he got another one-time stock grant worth $13.5 million in August 2013 to keep him around during the CEO search process. It vests over seven years. In 2014, his base salary is $918,917 for a role he assumed in February. (ISS calculates his full year base at $1.2 million) and a cash bonus of $3.6 million. But Nadella isn't like the two previous CEOs. Both Bill Gates, the founder, and Steve Ballmer, one of Microsoft's earliest employees, owned massive stakes from the get-go. With Nadella, Microsoft has crafted a brand new pay-for-performance model. So Nadella will be eligible for an annual $13.2 million stock award, with a complicated vesting schedule, that he'll unlock if he hits certain performance targets. "Over 80% of the reward opportunity is performance-based measured by our total shareholder return (“TSR”) relative to the S&P 500. To earn the target value of this award, Microsoft’s TSR must exceed the 60th percentile of the S&P 500 over each of three overlapping five-year performance periods that extend to 2021," chairman John Thompson wrote in a letter to shareholders about the pay plan. ISS calculates the whole starter package to be worth $90 million and complains that the performance targets he's supposed to hit are too vague ("lacks a strong connection to objectively measured company performance"). That's why they think his pay is too high, according a report shared with Business Insider. A Microsoft spokesperson tells us this is misleading because a good chunk of that stock won't begin to available to him for five years. Plus, the value of another chunk is based on performance targets and isn't known yet. It depends on how well the company is doing. By Microsoft's calculation, Nadella is being paid $25.1 million for 2014 (without his one-time $65 million stock grant that he can't touch until 2019.) Microsoft tells investors they are aiming for his annual pay to be $18 million, $13 million of it as stock awarded based on performance. (This excludes that $65 million as it vests and the $13 million chunk issued in 2014 as it vests). By the way, Microsoft also agreed to a $17.4 million golden parachute. How does that compare to others?
A Microsoft spokesperson tells us that when adding in their one-time stock chunks, Tim Cook’s annualized pay is $40.4 million, Eric Schmidt’s annualized pay is $32.9 million, and Marissa Mayer’s annualized pay is $24.3 million. When looking at it that way, Microsoft feels that Nadella isn't overpaid at all. Of course, if all of this goes as planned, and Microsoft's stock continues to rise, his pay will be much higher in the next seven years. On the other hand, we doubt that any investor advocacy group will complain about that. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Meet The Startup Building Drones That Could Save Lives | ||
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When Andreas Raptopoulos and his team got stuck in a 20-truck convoy completely marooned in mud while navigating between villages in Papua New Guinea, it was incredibly frustrating. It was also a validation of his work. Raptopoulos is the cofounder and CEO of a startup called Matternet, which makes drones, though he refuses to use that word. He prefers to call them small unmanned aerial delivery vehicles, or UAVs. He started the company after having a "eureka moment" three years ago. He realized one billion people around the world live in areas lacking reliable road systems and that drones could provide a more reliable way to deliver critical supplies, like medicine. That's why Raptopoulos was in tuberculosis-ravaged Papua New Guinea in September, entrenched in mud. Matternet had connected with the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders to test whether its aerial vehicles could provide a good way to transfer TB diagnostics between villages. During the two weeks Matternet conducted its trials, multiple trucks got trapped. "We had to do that trip four times and every time there was an element of fear," Raptopoulos tells Business Insider. "We thought, 'Will we make it?' We talk a lot about the problem, but it became very real for us. What it really means, and all the emotions that go with it." Matternet's trucks may have gotten lodged in mud between launch sites, but its drones navigated their routes without a hitch. Controlled completely via an app, a UAV bearing a spittle sample would take off, fly through the air, and land at a hospital as far as 25 kilometers away.
"Most of these people have never seen one of these things, at least in the flesh," Raptopoulos says, "But it’s amazing, the amount of joy it generates. It basically breaks with all your assumptions." That's one of the underlying principles that Matternet builds upon: that its drones be so dead-simple to operate, that someone without significant technological training could instinctively figure out how to send one on a flight. That someone who had even the most minimal knowledge of how to operate a smartphone could direct the drone to deliver medicine, food, or other supplies from one location to another.
For that reason, Raptopoulos likes to describe Matternet's UAVs as the Apple products of the drone space. "We want this company to be at the intersection of the best technology and excellence in design," he says. "We want to sell a vehicle to you that you can operate with an unprecedented ease of use."
Today, they're being used to deliver medicine in Germany and the Federal Aviation Administration recently approved them for use in shooting movie and TV scenes in the US. "Things are changing fast in this space," Raptopoulos says. "A year ago, there was no Amazon drone announcement. A month ago there was no Google drone coming out." Matternet's early start combined with its powerhouse-team has it poised to take the drone space by storm and become one of "the next billion-dollar businesses," according to Matternet investor Ravi Belani, managing director of Alchemist, the startup accelerator Matternet graduated from. Raptopoulos' vision for Matternet first hit him when he was attending Singularity University, a non-traditional, future-focused school that aims to empower its students to apply "exponential technologies to address humanity's grand challenges." Working as part of a larger team, Raptopoulos got hung up on the fact that one-seventh of the Earth's population lacked access to all-seasons roads and that developing a traditional, reliable transportation infrastructure in those places would take crazy amounts of money and upwards of 50 years. He took a map of Africa and overlaid an internet-like network onto it. If he could build machines that could carry cargo short distances, each trip would be small, but the scale could be incredible. He says he got chills:
Raptopoulos says when he and co-founder Paola Santana, previously a lawyer in the Dominican Republic, first started pitching the idea around, he got a lot of polite but confused responses. A lot of people thought they was crazy, Raptopoulos says. But the founders of Singularity University — futurist Ray Kurzweil and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis — loved the idea. After graduating from the University, they accepted Matternet into SU Labs, the school's innovation accelerator.
Matternet's plan is to create a full stack product, handling both the hardware and the software themselves, while simultaneously making sure to stay abreast of every new legal hurdle in the drone space. Right now, the FAA bans the use of commercial drones, but it is supposed to release rules for small drones under 55 pounds later this year, in line with its complete plan for “safe integration” of commercial drones by September 2015. Meanwhile, a team at NASA led by Dr. Parimal Kopardekar is developing a drone traffic management program of its own to advise the FAA. Matternet is one of the many UAV-focused companies that has met with Kopardekar's NexGen technology team to discuss different ways to provide a structure to drone traffic. The startup plans to announce its first product in the first quarter of 2015, and start shipping a few months later. The goal is to have concrete agreements with the likes of Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization, which it tested with in Bhutan, by the time Matternet's UAVs get launched. Raptopolous couldn't name a concrete price point, but guesses that the Matternet system will go for between $2,000 and $5,000. By launching in areas like Papua New Guinea and Bhutan — where its drones are sometimes flying over swaths of jungle or sparsely populated desert and where there isn't a strict existing aerial infrastructure — Matternet has fewer barriers to entry. "The risk needs to be low if the UAV falls," NASA's Kopardekar tells Business Insider, noting that low-density areas make the most sense for drone testing and operations. "You need to be able to demonstrate the risk is very low and the benefits are high: That's where you will see implementation happening." Although Raptopoulos landed upon the idea for Matternet because of a motivation to provide a transportation solution to parts of the world that lack access to all-season roads, the company has its sights set beyond humanitarian causes. After all, Matternet isn't a service company; it's a product company. "We are pioneering this technology by helping partners find ways to put it in the field now, but our vision is that we should be putting this type of technology into everybody's hands," he says, "Whether their purpose is in Papua New Guinea or Rio or Istanbul or Mexico City or in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and LA."
"Sometimes mission-driven entrepreneurs get so hung up on their mission that they're missing the commercial opportunity, which they probably don't emotionally care that much about," Pascal Finette, who heads SU Labs, explains. "I think this duality — the dance between these two worlds — is something social entrepreneurs sometimes get wrong. But Andreas is just perfect. He's phenomenal because he understands, 'Hey, if we get this at scale and we can do this in the US and we become a big company, we can use all this as a force of good to do even more in the world.'" Raptopoulos sees Walgreens using Matternet's drones to deliver prescriptions, or grocery stores using them to deliver milk. Because the startup is small, lean, and fast-moving, he thinks it has a leg up on giants like Google or Amazon. "I think Andreas is a beautiful, bi-focal CEO," says Belani from Alchemist. "He is a true visionary who is always motivated by fundamentally changing the world. But he's very practical in the near term what's required to get things done. He's not a head-in-the-clouds type of visionary. He's incredibly practical with a strong street sense of business." Finette agrees: Raptopoulos and Santana dream big, but know how to actually move steadily forward. He laughs recalling how nonchalantly the team will talk about passing amazing, major milestones. "They talk about it as if it's nothing," he says. That speaks to their capacity as entrepreneurs, he says, because they understand that every achievement is just a small stepping stone towards the big idea.
Raptopoulos calls it the "Apple II" of the drone industry: the "most easy to use, desirable, and safest personal flying vehicle" out there. Not that Matternet is the only company trying to achieve that. Besides giants like Amazon and Google, there are other delivery drone companies out there, like Bizzby and Aria. "A drone delivery network will be the most disruptive thing to hit the delivery space," says Brody Buhler, partner at consulting firm Accenture, who focuses on postal issues. "If you don’t have drones on your five-year roadmap, you’re probably too far out." Talking to Raptopoulos, that future feels even closer. He gets almost electrically bright-eyed when he talks about the moments he's had on trials in the Himalayas or Papua New Guinea. But his passion really radiates off him when he talks about what's yet to come. "I’m going to keep on having these 'pinch me' moments," he says. "When we see our first big deployment in a city. When I’m able to see 20-30 crafts doing routine missions. When I’m able to actually see our drones in the sky and nobody will be paying attention, because they’re just an establishment. And we can't wait." SEE ALSO: Why The Guy Behind The Most Popular Smartwatch In The World Isn't Scared Of Apple Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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For Raptopoulos, it felt like a series of "pinch me" moments. Every time the team prepped a drone for a take-off, anywhere from 50 to 70 people would surround them. These were often people who live without running water or reliable electricity in their homes, and yet the drones seemed to make sense to them almost immediately. 
Right now, drones — and delivery drones in particular — are a buzzy topic, but when Matternet first got started, people mainly thought of them in terms of the military or security. 
Since then, Raptopoulos and Santana have built a lean team of 10 people who specialize in skills ranging from rocket science and engineering to law and regulation. The company has raised $2 million to date from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Alchemist Accelerator, and even the rapper Nas, but is eyeing a more significant Series A round in the near future. 
Right now, Matternet's drones weigh well under 5 kilograms, can carry cargo over 0.5 kilograms, and fly over 25 kilometers on a battery charge. Their geo-fenced routes take into consideration weather data and terrain. They are equipped with cameras to help them navigate onto landing pads at their destinations. The entire system gets controlled by a smartphone app. The ‘Freemium’ Model Is Brilliant, But It’s Ruining My Life | ||
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Three years ago, I downloaded "The Simpsons: Tapped Out." One of my favorite shows of all time is “The Simpsons,” and as a proud owner of a new iPhone 4S at the time, I wanted to own this game. In the end, it ended up owning me. The gist of the game is that Homer Simpson caused the town of Springfield to blow up, and now you, the "Sky Finger," must recreate the town and bring back all its residents. You make money by collecting rent from buildings and making characters do various jobs, which all take time to complete. I have witnessed how this game has grown through the years, with the load times and overall quality improving with each new iPhone release. I’ve been there for every new character, new building, holiday and special promotion. My Springfield is immaculate. It's gorgeous. You wish you lived there.
I want to quit. I do. I'm maxed out at Level 47, as high as Electronic Arts will allow me to go, and have all the current characters and buildings you can own through normal gameplay. But I don't have it all. And I'll never have it all. That's what makes this a "freemium" game and not a "free" game. (Also why Apple needed to subtly change the App Store recently.)
Getting the premium items requires a special kind of currency, which can only be attained through either time or money. In the case of “The Simpsons: Tapped Out,” donuts are your “premium” currency, which you can collect by leveling up, or simply when the Electronic Arts developers feel charitable. I've saved — no, hoarded — donuts for years, but my 458 donuts will only get me two or three quality items. I’m not kidding: I can’t even afford all four of these characters.
And there’s the rub: Even after spending three years collecting donuts, I would still have to spend money to achieve “100% completion.” But in mobile games like “The Simpsons: Tapped Out,” 100% completion doesn’t even exist; EA regularly adds new characters and premium items each month. If you truly want to own everything, you’ll need to shell out money regularly. The idea that you can get all the items through time and patience is just a red herring. The freemium model has gained momentum on mobile, thanks to early popular games like “Angry Birds,” but now it’s spreading elsewhere. While watching a review of “LittleBigPlanet 3,” a new game for the PlayStation 4, I learned that in order to collect some really fun costumes for your characters, you need to spend money in addition to the $60-plus you’ve already spent on the game.
These gaming companies are smart to implement freemium into their titles: The game teases you with its best rewards, which can only be attained by a spending an inordinate amount of time in the game — each day, and consistently over time — or by spending money. And there are plenty of people who will spend thousands of dollars to progress through their favorite games, just ask the lead singer of the Sex Pistols. So freemium works out great for these gaming companies. But for the consumer, it’s downright cruel. And yet, I can’t stop playing. SEE ALSO: How Flip Phones Could Return In A Big Way Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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I have a confession to make: I have an embarrassing addiction to a freemium game.
Legendary Investor Ben Horowitz On How To Handle Raises And Demotions | ||
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He played a major role in creating Netscape in the 90s, and was the CEO of Opsware, a company that was later sold to HP for $1.6 billion in 2003. His VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in some of the hottest startups, including Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, and Lyft. With so much experience, Horowitz has many interesting stories to tell, which he often shares through his personal blog. He even published a book titled, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” based on his own experience. Last week, Horowitz spoke at Stanford for “How to Start a Startup,” a course run by Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, and explained the importance of having “one management concept.” We pulled out some of the slides from Horowitz’s presentation and put together his advice on how to deal with employee demotion and what to do when someone asks for a raise. “This management concept is the thing I see CEOs mess up more consistently than anything else…It’s the easiest thing to say and the most difficult to master.” “When making critical decisions, you have to be able to see the decisions through the eyes of the company as a whole…Otherwise, your management decisions could have potentially dangerous consequences.” For example: How do you whether to demote or fire someone? See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Ben Horowitz, the co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, is one of the most experienced tech leaders in Silicon Valley. Why Silicon Valley's Elites Are Obsessed With Poker | ||
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Every month, some of Silicon Valley’s biggest power players meet at the Palo Alto home of Chamath Palihapitiya, an early Facebook executive who now runs his own venture capital firm Social+Capital. The guest list reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley’s true elites: from Yammer founder David Sacks, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Inside.com’s Jason Calacanis to professional athletes and poker players, including the World Series of Poker champion Phil Hellmuth.
“It was meant to basically put together 9 or 10 of the most competitive people in Silicon Valley and play poker,” Palihapitiya, who’s been hosting home poker nights for a few years now, told Business Insider. “Once you get this competitive group of people together on the same table, it’s super fun.” The level of play is far beyond regular amateur tables. For example, Palihapitiya, who often walks off with the most chips, has played in some of the highest stake poker tournaments, including the World Series of Poker, where he finished 101st out of more than 7,000 contestants in 2011. In fact, according to Hellmuth, a 12-time world champion in Texas Hold’em, the skill level is so high that he was only able to hit break-even in the first three years he played there. “In general, great businessmen are great poker players. There’s a reason these guys made so much money in the real world. Those skills translate to poker,” Hellmuth tells us. “In general, great businessmen are great poker players. There’s a reason these guys made so much money in the real world. Those skills translate to poker,” Phil Hellmuth says. Once the game starts, the intensity could easily turn up in a matter of seconds. They play for hours, well past 2AM on some occasions. And while the stakes remain relatively modest, $10,000 bluffs do happen in the most heated moments. But Palihapitiya says the cash part of the game is mostly irrelevant. It’s rather about the thrill of playing and winning against highly competitive people, and just trying to master every nuance of a game that, he says, “you can learn so easily, but never master.” Poker has relatively simple rules. In traditional Texas Hold’em poker, each player is first dealt a set of two cards, which are not shown to others, and then a shared pile of five cards on the table. The first three of the five shared cards are dealt at once, and after a round of betting, the fourth card is shown. The fifth card is uncovered after another round of betting. But, in between each round of betting, there’s intense strategy and mind-games involved that requires a lot of intellect and discipline throughout the game. That’s what makes poker such a complex — and fascinating — game, Palihapitiya says. There’s a chance of overcoming a poor hand, if you play it smart. Or you could lose everything with a single mistake, just when you thought you were going to win a big hand. In that sense, Palihapitiya says, there’s a certain element of poker that almost “mirrors life and running a startup.” It’s why so many entrepreneurs love the game. He sums up the similarities in six distinct points:
Overcoming adversity:Depending on how you play each round of betting, you could completely change the outcome of the game — regardless of what cards you are dealt at first. It’s just like being born into terrible circumstances in life but finding ways to overcome that and succeed. Palihapitiya relates to it personally, as he is a classic “rags-to-riches” story, having grown up on welfare as an immigrant in Canada to become one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs around. “That’s a characteristic of this game that very few games have,” he says.
Learning from mistakes:You make plenty of mistakes in poker. The point is learning from those mistakes and fixing it in the future. “When you misplay your cards and lose a big hand, it’s an unbelievable moment of learning,” Palihapitiya says. It’s one thing not to repeat the same mistake, but it’s also important to know when you win by sheer luck. “Sometimes you just do something and it completely works, and you think to yourself, ‘I must be really good.’ The takeaway should be the exact opposite — you may have just gotten really lucky,” Palihapitiya says.
Knowing how to fake it:Pretending like you have a strong hand, or “bluffing,” is a huge part of poker; all good players know how and when to use it properly. Palihapitiya says he doesn’t even look at his hand 90% of the time before placing his first bet. Similarly, in startups, it’s important to act confident at all times and believe in your product/vision, as he says, “In a startup, you have to fake it 'till you make it.” This is the same point Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff says in his book, “Behind the Cloud”: “You have to act confident, even when you’re not.”
Being a "good loser":There are moments in poker when you lose big just when you thought you were going to win. It often causes huge emotional tilt and impacts your subsequent decision-making power. “If you can’t keep a clear head, you’re going to start making worse decisions and those decisions will compound,” Palihapitiya says. “Poker’s great because it teaches you how to be mentally disciplined in the face of adversity.”
Getting a better read of people:The best poker players have an exceptional ability to sense others’ emotional energy. They can read how people feel or think by just looking at their reactions to certain moves or body gestures. Palihapitiya says that ability can help you in everyday life, too, as you become “more emotionally attuned to the people around you.” In other words, you can start understanding others better, coaching people better, and even negotiating better.
Making quick decisions and taking risks:An average person’s life spans 80 to 90 years. Most startups are on a five-to-seven-year trajectory. A single round of poker, however, happens in a matter of just a few minutes. “Every hand in poker is a microcosm of that entire struggle (of life or a startup),” Palihapitiya says. You have to make quick decisions — and take risks — in a short period of time, with very limited information, and those decisions could have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. It’s why good poker players know how to make the right decisions quickly and take risks when needed.
“It’s really not about trying to make money - it’s about ‘Can you beat this guy?” Palihapitiya says. “Poker’s just a fascinating game of skill that’s exceptionally difficult to master. It really helps you disambiguate a lot of skills.” What Are The Odds Of Drawing Each Hand In Poker? We Did The Math:
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But this isn’t for some networking or investment opportunity of a hot startup. They meet for something much more fun: a game of poker.
Palihapitiya, who at age 26 was the youngest VP in AOL’s history, says he doesn’t have enough time to play poker as much as he used to anymore. But he still tries to tell others how great the game is through charity events, which many of his Silicon Valley friends join in together. For example, he donated all of his winnings from the World Series of Poker to the Boys and Girls Club, while he’s been hosting a number of different charity poker games that generate roughly $6 million a year.
Former ZocDoc Employee Says She Is Suing The Company Following Sexual Harassment | ||
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A former ZocDoc employee says the company is a "frat house" where men casually discuss their female co-workers' body parts, women sleep with upper-management, and there is a rodent infestation. She says she is suing the company. ZocDoc provided Business Insider with the following statement: "As a company, we pride ourselves on being a great place to work, and we have a long-standing policy against any forms of unlawful harassment or discrimination." ZocDoc is a site you can use to find and make appointments with doctors. It's based in New York and Arizona. This summer, reports said the company was seeking to raise $152 million at a $1.6 billion valuation. The former employee alleges:
The employee says she has documents to prove her allegations, but that her lawyer is saving them for trial. The former ZocDoc employee published an anonymous rant about the company on Kinja and forwarded the link to Business Insider this morning. Business Insider has since learned the former employee's name and confirmed her employment. The former employee asked us to keep her anonymous because of the "shame" she has been made to feel by ZocDoc. She says the company is aware of her identity because of her pending lawsuit. Here is the former ZocDoc employee's allegation in full: Weeks prior to working at ZocDoc I was excited by the prospect of working for an amazing company called ZocDoc who prides itself on hiring " great people", who has an image of being one of the "best places to work in NYC" voted by Crains NYC three times in a row. The company boasts an image of being seen as a company where employees were valued, and the success of those around you would aid the overall success of the company. After doing research for the first time I was impressed. I saw a nurturing, growing, and fantastic opportunity to be a part of a team that was like none other. So I starting at ZocDoc and took an entry level position as a Sales Origination Associate and I was thrilled. I was soon quickly disillusioned: The following is an example of some of the things I was subject to while working at ZocDoc: I was subject to sexual harassment by members of my training class on a daily basis via the company's internal communication system "HipChat", and immediately felt thrust into a very "frat house" like atmosphere where there were things the men who worked there could get away with saying like "you aren't bubbly enough", "you look hot today", "That secretary is a c---" etc. It was just accepted. Mostly because most of the people who work there are fresh out of college and have never had a real job, and do not know how to behave in the work place. There was a distinct difference between the way upper management talked to and treated the women in the company. Many employees expressed concerns that were ignored. Some were told "this a sales floor", it was brushed it off as just being part of the job. The male employees were at a great advantage and very buddy buddy with each other and the women (who weren't sleeping with someone in upper management) were on their own. I would often overhear managers say some of the girls dressed slutty, when I brought it up one gentleman even jokingly saying "there's nothing wrong with that" while laughing it off. Words like "tits", and "pussy", were common phrases heard on the sales floor. Coworkers would explicitly talk about sexual encounters out loud on the sales floor management would hear it and not say anything. After bringing this to the attention of upper management I was assured they would talk to him, but instead he took him out for drinks after work. People were constantly cheated out of sales, and for a company who has a core policy to "Speak up" when anyone brought up anything they were labeled as a "complainer" To "Speak up" was the worst thing you could do if you cared about your job.Even bringing concerns to the attention of Human resources was pointless as they told you to talk to someone else about it. Um what is their role? The company had a in house happy hour with wine and beer every Friday. Which was an awesome perk. Except for the fact that employees fresh out of college snuck in their friends who were still in college around 20 year old (even sneaking in dates) to partake in the company's complimentary beverages. The most interesting part of working there was as a health company who compares itself to hospitals like Kaiser Permanente they are disgusting. They have several mice who run around the office during the day and late at night, defecate in mugs kept in the kitchen. Cleaning mice feces out of your desk was a daily routine. There were even mice in the the snack room, where they served us free and loose nuts, dried fruit, and other treats that mice love. All of this was just accepted. As a sales representative I was told to blatantly lie to Dr.'s and I overheard people around me lie to them on a consistent basis. ZocDoc was even recently sued by a bund of doctors in a class action lawsuit brought forth by a group of Doctors. I would like to point out that I am not a malicious person, I have numerous years of work experience. I have never been treated so disrespectfully, improperly, and unprofessionally by someone I was working for. I am certain that I am not the first person to experience these things by the hand of ZocDoc. This is evident by the fact that the people who did this to me believed that they could get away with what they did. And, ZocDoc as a company allowed them to by ignoring their actions. ZocDoc does not care. This speaks volumes about who they truly are. You may view this as a letter coming from a disgruntled employee, but I assure you that I am not disgruntled, I just believe that for a company whose motto is "Patients First" I am a bit baffled by how they can treat their employees that way. Where do the employees come in? I wasn't asking to be 2nd 3rd 4th or 5th, I was merely hoping that I could have been acknowledge as a human being whose sole intentions were to help a potentially great startup find success. Not to mention the constant workplace bullying I was subject to creating a toxic work environment. ZocDoc prides itself on being a company that is dedicated to improving the health of millions of people around the world, what about the health of their employees? What about their employees to are subject to draws full of mice excrement? What about your employees who are subject to running into at least 24 mice on a daily basis who defecate everywhere, and carry disease? Cyrus stated in an interview that he has "a really high bar." when it comes to the type of people who are employed by ZocDoc. By what is this measured? Please define this, because in the simplest sense I was Bamboozled. When I initially went to Human Resources (or People Ops) with my concerns instead of expressing concern or interest in what I was saying about my ongoing treatment they asked "Do you have proof?". This taught me that no one cares about what happened to you, not your manager, not the director of the department, not the company you work for, not your lawyer, not your significant other, not the judge, not the press, not even Jesusunless you can prove it. ZocDoc taught me to be prepared, so to answer that question: Yes I do. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here Are Some New Details On The Sequel To The Hottest Android Phone Of The Year | ||
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OnePlus, the Chinese tech startup that created the super hard-to-find OnePlus One, is already planning to launch a new phone next year. The company's global director Carl Pei confirmed as much in a thread on Reddit in September, but now we've learned a few small details about the phone, rumored to be called the OnePlus 2. A source familiar with the situation told Business Insider the following about OnePlus' next phone:
OnePlus launched its One smartphone in April, and it turned out to be one of the most highly regarded phones of 2014 by both reviewers and consumers. There are two main reasons everyone's been talking about the OnePlus One: it's super cheap and extremely hard to find. The OnePlus One costs $350 off contract, which is a pretty unheard of price. Without a carrier subsidy, phones like the Galaxy S5 usually cost around $600 off contract. With its OnePlus One, the company was able to include some of the best components, an attractive design, and a bright, sharp screen for about half the price of your standard Android flagship. Since demand has been so high, you can only order the One if you have an invite from someone who already owns the phone. OnePlus also rolls out preorders to the general public in limited time blocks, and the most recent one took place on Nov. 17. SEE ALSO: A Chinese Startup Just Made The Thinnest Phone In The World, And It Looks Gorgeous Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 9 Weirdest Thanksgiving Items Being Sold On eBay | ||
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But you don't have to wait until Black Friday to get started. The market research company Terapeak helped us round up some of the strangest Thanksgiving-themed things people are selling on eBay. There's a startling number of different turkey costume options on eBay, but this one is probably our favorite. If that's not cute enough for you, you could be a sexy pilgrim. If a full costume is too extreme, you can get a simple turkey hat: See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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With Thanksgiving around the corner, we're about to enter the busies Here's What It Will Feel Like To Ride The World's Tallest Roller Coaster | ||
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Developers David and Joshua Wallack are set to build a 570-foot vertical coaster, which will be the tallest in the world, at International Drive and Sand Lake Road in Orlando. The ride will be known as "The Skyscraper" and will be built on 12 acres around a Skyplex, which will feature other entertainment and shops. The coaster is scheduled to open in 2017. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Stocks Are Now So Fantastically Expensive That They Will Likely Have Negative Returns For Years | ||
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As regular readers know, I am increasingly worried about the level of stock prices. So far, this concern has seemed unwarranted. And I hope it will remain so. (I own stocks, and I'm not selling them.) But my concern has not diminished. On the contrary, it grows by the day. I've discussed the logic behind my concern in detail here. Today, I'll just focus on the primary element of it: Price. Stocks are now more expensive than at any time in history, with the brief (and very temporary) exceptions of 1929 and 2000. Importantly, today's high prices do not mean that stock prices can't go even higher. They can. And they might. What it does mean is that, at some point, unless it is truly "different this time," stock prices are likely to come crashing back down, likely well below today's levels. Just as they did after those two historic market peaks. (I unfortunately know this especially well. Because I was one of the people hoping it was "different this time" in 1999 and 2000. For many years, it did seem different — and stocks just kept going up. But then they crashed all the way back down, erasing three whole years of gains. This was a searing lesson for me, as it was for many other people. It was also a lesson that cost me and others a boatload of money.) Anyway, here are three charts for you... First, a look at price-earnings ratios over 130 years. The man who created this chart, Professor Robert Shiller of Yale, uses an unusual but historically predictive method to calculate P/Es, one that attempts to mute the impact of the business cycle. Importantly, this method is consistent over the whole 130 years. As you can see, today's P/E, 27X, is higher than any P/E in history except for the ones in 1929 and 2000. And you can also see how quickly and violently those P/Es reverted toward the mean:
Second, a chart from fund manager John Hussman showing the performance predictions for 7 different historically predictive valuation measures, including the "Shiller P/E" shown above. Those who want to remain bullish often attack the Shiller P/E measure, pointing out that it is useless as a timing tool (which it is). Those folks may also want to note that the 6 other measures in the chart below, including Warren Buffett's favorite measure, same almost exactly the same thing.
Third, a table from the fund management firm GMO showing predictions for the annual returns of various asset classes over the next 7 years. As you can see, the outlook for all stocks, but especially U.S. stocks, is bleak. Specifically, GMO foresees negative real returns for U.S. stocks for the next 7 years. Even after adding back the firm's inflation assumption of 2.2% per year, the returns for most stocks are expected to be flat or negative. The lone bright(er) spot is "high quality" stocks — the stocks of companies that have high cash flow and low debt. Those are expected to return only a couple of percent per year. (Returns for international stocks are expected to be modestly better, but still far below average).
The real bummer for investors, as GMO's chart also makes clear, is that no other major class offers compelling returns, either. The outlook for bonds and cash is lousy, too. This puts investors in a real predicament. The only asset class forecasted to provide compelling returns over the next 7 years is... timber. And most of us can't go out and buy trees. To be crystal clear: There is only one way that stocks will keep rising from this level and stay permanently above this level. That is if it really is "different this time," and all the historically valid valuation measures described above are no longer relevant. It is possible that it is different this time. It is not likely, however. And one thing to keep in mind as you listen to everyone explain why it's different this time is that one of the things everyone does when stocks get this expensive is attempt to explain the high prices (and justify even higher ones) by looking for reasons why it's different this time. That's what most of us did in 1999 and 2000. For a while, we seemed "right," and we were heroes because of it. But then, suddenly, without much warning, we were drastically, violently wrong. And we — or me, at least — learned that searing lesson that I referred to above: That it's almost never "different this time." SEE ALSO: People Get Mad When I Say Stocks Might "Crash," So I Won't Use That Word, But... Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Sleek Panther Drone Is The Perfect Way To Start Flying [55% Off] | ||
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Drones have been one of the most popular topics this year, and the Panther Spy Drone is a great way to start flying. It comes with a camera for photos and video, so you can take a family portrait, or film that backyard football game before Thanksgiving dinner.
The drone is lightweight and the blades are encased so you don't have to worry about inflicting damage as you learn to fly. It's powered by 4 AA batteries and it comes with a 1GB micro SD. Get 55% off The Panther Drone ($110). Full specs below:
Get 55% off The Panther Drone ($110). SEE ALSO: This Smartphone Breathalyzer Will Keep You From Embarrassing Yourself At The Company Party [14% Off] Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Why 'Arrogant Jerks' Become Rich And Successful In Silicon Valley | ||
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The DNA is comprised of characteristics like "resilience" and "ability to accept risk." Another characteristic many top entrepreneurs share is arrogance. Or worse, just being a huge jerk. While reporting a long profile of Travis Kalanick last winter, Business Insider found a lot of people who thought Kalanick was a legendary CEO. Friends compared him to Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison. But some who were in awe of Kalanick also said he was a jerk. "Sometimes," one acquaintance said of Kalanick, "a--holes create great businesses." Inside Silicon Valley, arrogance runs rampant and investors seem to reward ruthless behavior with piles of cash. There are numerous examples of founders who have had moments of terrible behavior that later became infamous. The founders might not be jerks all the time, of course. Everyone has moments when they behave boorishly. But sometimes the stories are so unbelievable, it can leave a lasting negative impressive of the person — that whether criticism is deserved or not. For instance, Mark Zuckerberg, who is now worth tens of billions, famously ousted his friend Eduardo Saverin from Facebook. He also stole his business idea from the Winklevoss twins. "Yah, I'm going to fuck them," he told a friend over IM about the pair. "Probably in the ear." Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wrote a number of misogynistic-sounding emails when he was in college to his fraternity brothers. Once, Spiegel was so angry with his parents, he reportedly cut himself out of family photos. Twitter's co-founders back-stabbed each other repeatedly: Founder Noah Glass was booted out of the company. Ev Williams and Jack Dorsey were both given, and then stripped of, the CEO title. And Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon, wreaks havoc in his organization by sending a single-character email: "?" Even Steve Jobs, one of the world's most-praised entrepreneurs, was said to have two sides. Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, portrayed the late Apple CEO as "Good Steve" and "Bad Steve." An example: Jobs once stormed into a meeting and called everyone "f---ing dickless a--holes." Robert Sutton spent a lot of time conducting research for his book, "No a--hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't," What he found was disappointing. "Even people who worked with Jobs told me that they'd seen him make people cry many times, but that 80 percent of the time he was right, " Sutton said. "It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an a--hole." It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an a--hole. The Atlantic's Tom McNichol agrees. He wrote an article titled: "Be a Jerk: The Worst Business Lesson from the Steve Jobs biography." Here's an excerpt: The ease with which people can possess astonishingly contradictory qualities is one of the mysteries of human nature; indeed, it's one of the things that separates humans from, say, an Apple computer. Every one of the components that makes up an iPad is essential to the work it produces. Remove one part and the machine no longer performs its job, and not even the Genius Bar can fix it. But humans are full of qualities that are in no way integral to their functioning in the world. Some aspects of personality have little or no bearing on whether a person performs well, and not a few people succeed in spite of their darker qualities. So, is it possible to be nice and to be wildly successful in business? And in Silicon Valley, where people praise Steve Jobs' bad habits and founders rag on the homeless, can you be financially rewarded if you're nice? One venture capitalist whose firm implemented a "no a--holes policy" passed on an investment in Uber. This person said Kalanick didn't click with any of the partners and that he acted like he was "God's gift." Other investors struggle with the decision to invest in personalities over returns. "I want not to invest in jerks," says former Silicon Valley investor, Eileen Burbidge. Burbidge is now a VC at London's Passion Capital, which has invested in startups like Lulu and Go Cardless. "Personally I believe life is too short. [But] I have wondered if this is actually a bad philosophy as an investor. I'd like to think not but I'm supposed to back founders for the best ROI, not personality." I want not to invest in jerks ...But I have wondered if this is actually a bad philosophy as an investor. I'm supposed to back founders for the best ROI. Mark Suster, a Los Angeles-based investor, also isn't sure what to make of jerks in business. He lists "integrity" as a bonus characteristic when it comes to top entrepreneurs' DNA. "I believe that integrity and honesty are very important to most venture capital investors," he wrote on his blog, Both Sides of the Table. " Unfortunately, I don’t believe that they are required to make a lot of money." Many agree that being an overly-aggressive entrepreneur tends to pan out. "As much as [Travis] is inspirational, he is controversial," a former colleague of Kalanick's said. "If he were less brash, I don't think he would get half as far as he did." Adds another Kalanick acquaintance: "There is absolutely no way [Uber] would have gotten where it is without Travis and his arrogance. Not without him being like, 'I'm going to take over the world.' He has the Steve Jobs mentality that 'It's my way or the highway.'" One person who firmly believes you can be nice and succeed is Paul Graham. He runs top startup accelerator Y Combinator and he's made Sutton's "no a--hole" rule popular in tech. He has backed billion-dollar startups such as Dropbox and Airbnb.
Graham chooses not to invest in jerks because he doesn't want to be around them. Investors and founders end up spending a lot of time together. Getting rid of one or the other can be more difficult than getting a divorce from a spouse. "The reason we tried not to invest in jerks initially was sheer self-indulgence," says Graham. "We were going to have to spend a lot of time with whoever we funded, and we didn't want to have to spend time with people we couldn't stand. Later we realized it had been a clever move to filter out jerks, because it made the alumni network really tight. We've funded over 630 startups now, and when founders of different startups meet there is an automatic level of trust and willingness to help one another. Much more than alumni of the same college for example." His take: Be nice and you can find success. "It's certainly possible to build a multi-billion dollar startup without being a jerk," Graham says. "We've funded several, and the founders are all good people. In fact, based on what I've seen so far, the good people have the advantage over the jerks. Probably because to get really big, a company has to have a sense of mission, and the good people are more likely to have an authentic one, rather than just being motivated by money or power." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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There's a notion that some people become successful company founders because they have the right "Startup DNA."
Graham says well-known founders like Jobs and Bezos can't be judged by their terror tales. "F Scientists Just Figured Out How To Serve Espresso In Space | ||
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Coffee giant Lavazza has teamed up with the Italian Space Agency and a Turin-based engineering company, Argotech, to design the ISSpresso machine – a space espresso machine that will brew better coffee for astronauts in orbit. Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Narrated by Alana Kakoyiannis. Video courtesy of Associated Press. Follow BI Video: On YouTube Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Apple Watch Will Have One Key Advantage Over Other Smartwatches (AAPL) | ||
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I've tested several smartwatches over the last year and change. I don't think any of them are must buys for most people. A lot of that is because they share a common theme. They only act as mirrors of what's already happening on your smartphone. That means every new notification — a new email, tweet, Facebook message, whatever — translates to a buzz and a flash on your wrist. It's annoying and completely ruins the concept that a wearable computer should be an extension of the smartphone that adds to the experience, not mimics it. While we still don't know for sure how much control the Apple Watch will give you over notifications, Apple gave a promising hint on Wednesday with the release of Watchkit, the tool developers will use to bring their apps to the Apple Watch when it launches early next year. By default, the Apple Watch will be able to deliver the same kind of app notifications you get on your phone. But developers have the opportunity to change that with two new notification types instead. Take a look:
The above screenshot shows the American Airlines app running on the Apple Watch. The left screen shows an incoming notification called Short Look. The right shows screen shows another type of notification called Long Look. If developers use these tools, they can quickly display bite-sized notifications designed specifically for the Apple Watch's smaller screen. In this case, it's an alert that the user's flight is boarding. But if the user keeps her arm raised, the notification shifts to Long Look and provides more details like the gate number and original boarding time. That may sound like a small feature, but it has big implications in the grand scheme of things. It gives developers the opportunity to make notifications on the wrist much smarter than what we've seen on other smartwatches. Keep in mind you're spending at least $350 for the Apple Watch, which needs a $650+ iPhone to work. It'll need to do a lot more than just display the same notifications you're getting on your phone. And that's probably going to be one of the key differentiators between the Apple Watch and rival platforms like Google's Android Wear. Developers have the opportunity to make notifications smart and unique to the watch form factor. Rivals can't do that yet. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Stewart Butterfield Says His Insanely Popular App Slack Is 'Terrible' Today | ||
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Slack an app that lets coworkers chat with one another has been taking the enterprise world by storm. Launched to the public in February, Slack has nabbed more 300,000 people as users, 73,000 of them paid users, and recently raised $120 million in investment, making the startup worth $1.12 billion. You'd think that its popularity would be validating to the man responsible for it, Stewart Butterfield who, prior to Slack, was best known as a cofounder of Flickr. Not so. In an interview with MIT Technology Review, when asked about if he was working to improve Slack, he answered with refreshing honesty: Oh, God, yeah. I try to instill this into the rest of the team but certainly I feel that what we have right now is just a giant piece of shit. Like, it’s just terrible and we should be humiliated that we offer this to the public. Not everyone finds that motivational, though. Disclosure: The Business Insider tech team uses Slack every day. We probably wouldn't describe the app in quite so salty of terms, but he's right that it's just a basic chat room that could be improved a lot. We have to warn him, though, the basic-ness of it is what we like. Too many layers would turn Slack into something like a Yammer (in other words, spoil it). Still, Butterfield tells MIT the Slack folks are working on some things that could be awesome: the ability to "favorite" comments, and something that helps you manage chat overload (too many comments and missing the important ones). The fact that Slack emerged almost by accident might protect it. Butterfield and his then-company Tiny Speck invented Slack when they were working on a game called Glitch. Glitch was a flop, but the tool the team built to talk to each other became winner. So if the team continues to use Slack to communicate about building Slack, that would be a winning combination. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Elon Musk On Tesla's Gigafactory: We Didn't Trick Nevada Into Anything (TSLA) | ||
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has responded to critics of his plans to build a battery "gigafactory" in Nevada. And he's not pulling any punches. Musk defended his company's plans in a blog post entitled "The House Always Wins," a reference to casino gambling. "There have been several articles recently implying that Tesla, through clever machinations, maneuvered Nevada into providing an overly large incentive package for the Gigafactory," said Musk. "I love backhanded compliments as much as the next person, but this is untrue." Musk was presumably referring to an investigative report in Fortune that detailed how several states competed to build the factory by offering various incentives. Musk noted that the state incentives for Tesla's factory were approved unanimously by Nevada's legislature. "The deal is not merely slightly good for the people of Nevada, it is extremely good," said Musk. The Tesla CEO denied receiving any cash from the state, but did acknowledge that his company had recieved a parcel of land from the deal. "If you have been to Nevada, you will notice that there is quite a lot of extra land with nobody on it," he said. "This is not in short supply." Musk said Nevada's contributions would only cover a small portion of the Gigafactory's cost. "Of the $5 billion investment needed to bring the Gigafactory to full production in five years, state incentives will cover about 5%," he said. That would value Nevada's contribution at about $250 million. The Fortune article said the "tally" for Nevada was $1.4 billion. Musk also revealed that Nevada didn't write Tesla a blank check, so to speak. "All of the incentives approved by the legislature are performance based," he said. "We must execute according to plan to receive them, meaning that, while the state and Tesla both share the upside, only Tesla suffers the downside." Tesla has huge plans for this enormous facility in Nevada, and the company is making some major "forward-looking" claims about what it will be able to do. Tesla put together a pdf with its future plans for the facility, claiming some major figures by 2020, including a vehicle volume of around half a million per year.
The company also provided this telling chart of where it thinks it will be in relationship to the competition. It says that "The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs much faster than the status quo and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013."
Here's Musk's entire blog post responding to his critics:
SEE ALSO: How Elon Musk Cleverly Manipulated 7 States To Compete For Tesla's Huge Factory Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Netflix Steals Tina Fey's New Comedy From NBC | ||
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Tina Fey's newest show has a new home before it even aired. "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" was set to air on NBC in as a midseason show but has been sold to Netflix, according to Deadline. In an unprecedented move, the streaming service picked up the series for two seasons. The comedy will debut in March on Netflix, which is around the same time it was supposed to air on NBC. “The very construct of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt — its offbeat premise, hilarious and rich characters and serialized storytelling — make it a perfect Netflix comedy series,” Cindy Holland, VP of Original Content at Netflix told Deadline. “Tina and Robert’s unique comic voice and sensibility come through in this series and we could not be more excited to present Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt exclusively to Netflix members around the world.” Deadline describes the series: "After living in a cult for fifteen years, Kimmy decides to reclaim her life and start over in New York City. Armed with just a backpack, light-up sneakers, and a couple of way-past-due library books, she’s ready to take on a world she didn’t even think existed anymore. Wide-eyed but resilient, nothing is going to stand in her way. She quickly finds a new job (working for 30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski), a new roommate (Tituss Burgess, 30 Rock), and a new beginning. The cast also includes Lauren Adams, Sara Chase, Sol Miranda and Emmy winner Carol Kane (Taxi, The Princess Bride)." Tina Fey and Robert Carlock created the series. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Europe Can't Split Google In Two Anyway, These Antitrust Experts Say (GOOG) | ||
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The European parliament is thinking about making a ruling that Google split off its search engine from other parts of its business, according to a report today in the Financial Times. But we were wondering: how can Europe order an American company to break apart? How would that even work? "I don't know," answered Herbert Hovenkamp, a law professor at the University of Iowa who is considered one of the leading American experts on European antitrust law. "I think it’d be very difficult for Google to disaggregate all its own assets and interests from Google Search just in Europe. I'm not saying it couldn’t do it, but it would be costly. You’d get a lot of squawking from European consumers because it would deteriorate the quality of Google search quite a bit." That's because Google uses its own products to provide quick answers to certain kinds of queries. (It must be noted that Hovenkamp did some work for Google in 2010 during its dispute with the American Federal Trade Commission, but hasn't worked for them since.) Keith Hylton, an law professor at Boston University, agrees. "The European Parliament has no authority to break up Google – and I’m surprised that this sort of legislation isn’t considered unfair, since it targets one entity for punishment." However, Hylton thinks Google would be wise to take the threat seriously. "Expect a much harsher deal than Google worked out earlier with the previous EC competition commissioner Almunia. That earlier deal was a laughable outcome in which Google was poised to make more money from the remedy than it would have made without EC intervention." Regulators in Europe have been looking at Google closely for a few years now, concerned that the company is using its search dominance to guide users to its own products and away from competing products, as well as generally playing unfair in the advertising market. But both professors think that the American Federal Trade Commission had the right idea when it looked at Google, found no wrongdoing, and closed its investigation. The reason? Unlike the case with Microsoft in the 1990s, where consumers paid for Windows on new PCs and faced some technical barriers in switching to a new operating system, using Google search is free and it's easy for people to switch search engines. "If a customer doesn’t like a particular search engine they can switch to different one," says Hovenkamp. "The thing about bias with respect to Google assets or interests, that problem can be addressed by requiring Google to post a note or symbol" — for instance, YouTube results could be clearly marked as coming from Google. "My view is this is problem that can be addressed with something much more modest and less reactionary," he added.
SEE ALSO: Here's Why Europe Is Thinking Of Splitting Google Up Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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You Can Sleep In A Giant Dog For $98 A Night On Airbnb | ||
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"Stay in a giant dog!" the listing says. "That's right, it's a beagle-shaped one-unit inn where being in this doghouse is a GOOD thing and comfortable to boot!" The structure was built by two artists who got their big break selling wooden dog carvings on QVC. They used the money they made to build the Dog Bark Park, where they continue to make dog carvings. The inn sleeps four and includes a continental breakfast and free parking. One night's lodging costs $98 — a small price to pay for a stay in the belly of a giant beagle. Dogs are welcome. Once you go inside, you'll see dog memorabilia everywhere.
SEE ALSO: Airbnb Is Releasing Its Own Print Magazine — Here's What It Looks Like Inside WE'RE ON INSTAGRAM: Click Here To Follow Us Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Airbnb prides itself on offering an alternative experience for travelers, and 
You can catch up on some reading in this cozy nook.
There's even a giant red fire hydrant in the front yard.
Don't forget to stop by the gift shop on the way out.
Albania opens Hoxha's top secret Cold War nuclear bunker to public | ||
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Tirana (AFP) - The massive, top secret Cold War nuclear bunker of former Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha was opened to the public on Saturday, decades after it was built by the paranoid communist regime fearing an attack by the West that never came. The ex-dictator's bed, covered with a red mattress, is still in place in his bunker bedroom, with a Soviet-era radio placed on his bedside table. During Hoxha's 40-year rule, Albania was one of the world's most isolated countries, obsessed about an attack by the West. Now, 24 years after the fall of the regime, its countryside is still dotted by the remains of some 700,000 bunkers. Officials have said the structures, referred to as "mushrooms" by locals, were built to be indestructible and defend against an army of millions. According to informed sources, Hoxha, who died in 1985, had at least four secret refuges built for him and his family around Tirana. Built into the side of a mountain just east of the capital Tirana, the 2,685 square metre (28,900 square foot) underground shelter opened Saturday sprawls over five levels and contains 106 rooms, including a cinema. Built covertly between 1972-1978, it was designed to serve as the headquarters of the central committee and the communist assembly in the event of war. A guide at the opening described it as a "real five-star" complex. "We have decided to open everything up," Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama after visiting the site. "The idea to build it arose after a visit (by Hoxha) to North Korea in 1964," said defence ministry spokesperson Edlira Prendi. Until recently the giant bunker still featured on an Albanian army "top secret" list, she added. The bunker will be placed under the care of the tourism and culture ministry, and will also host a museum and an exhibition space for artists.
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Pacquiao beats Algieri to retain WBO welterweight title | ||
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Macau (Macau) (AFP) - Filipino ring icon Manny Pacquiao comprehensively dismantled American Chris Algieri to retain his World Boxing Organization welterweight title at Cotai Arena, Macau, Sunday. Pacquiao dropped Algieri to the canvas six times during the 12-round contest in the southern Chinese city to win an overwhelming unanimous decision, 119-103, 119-103, 120-102 on the judges' cards.
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Hamilton, Rosberg set for title duel in desert | ||
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Abu Dhabi (AFP) - Lewis Hamilton targets the 2014 Formula One world title on Sunday despite starting the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix behind pole-sitting team-mate Nico Rosberg, the only man who can deny him a second championship. The British driver, who won his first world title in 2008, has a 17-point lead over fellow-Mercedes man Rosberg, but the concluding event of the season offers double points, a factor adding extra spice to the mix. Hamilton is still the overwhelming favourite, having captured 10 of the races this season which has seen Mercedes monopolise the championship. Hamilton and Rosberg, childhood friends and rivals, have been waging a war of words ahead of Sunday's showdown (1300GMT) after a season which has seen them clash on the track, most notably in Monaco and Belgium. On Saturday, Hamilton rejected Rosberg’s jibe that he may crack under pressure in the desert duel. Rosberg, who snatched pole from Hamilton in the final seconds of a tense qualifying session, said his team-mate's recent spin in Brazil and failure to take pole at the Yas Marina circuit showed he had reason to hope for another slip-up. But 29-year-old Hamilton is in no mood to allow the German, whose father Keke was world champion in 1982, to place doubts in his mind. “I don't really pay much attention to him,” he said. “Today, I think in mistakes I made the same amount as him. He actually had to do an extra lap on the actual race tyre, which hopefully will have an effect tomorrow. “There have been very, very few mistakes during the year so I am not worried. Of course Nico is trying everything possible in his head to come up with some kind of way of dealing with things -- that is how he deals with it. “Me? I just keep it to myself and do my talking on the track."
- 'Everything to lose' -
Rosberg explained why he felt he should have faith in believing he can win and that Hamilton will face problems in a race where double points are to be awarded for the first time. “Lewis has everything to lose,” he said. “I have everything to gain. So, for sure, the pressure is on him. That's my opportunity, to keep the pressure on him as much as possible and maybe he will make the mistake, which we saw today for example, and in Brazil also. “In Brazil, I tried to keep the level as high as possible and push him into that mistake. If there is a Williams a bit closer it could be enough. Who knows?" The 29-year-old Rosberg produced his best lap of the weekend when he most needed it, clocking 1min 40.480sec to finish ahead of Hamilton with Valtteri Bottas third for Williams in Saturday's qualifying. "It's only one step, a very small step," said Rosberg after claiming his 11th pole of the season and 14th of his career. "This weekend is about the championship, not about pole position. It would have been great if there was a Williams in between us, but that can always happen Sunday." Rosberg can only beat Hamilton to the title by winning the race, or come second, and hope that the Briton suffers a major setback. Whatever the result, Mercedes are already celebrating. The team have a record-equalling 18th pole of the year and their 12th front row lock-out, their eighth in succession. The German firm are also the first engine supplier to take every pole position in a season since Ford in 1969. Sunday’s 55-lap race will be outgoing world champion Sebastian Vettel’s 113th and final one with the Red Bull team after winning four world titles. However, he will start at the back of the grid after the Red Bull cars were found to have illegal parts.
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Vargas retains WBA super lightweight crown in Macau | ||
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Macao (AFP) - American Jessie Vargas outpointed his Mexican rival Antonio DeMarco Sunday to retain his World Boxing Association super lightweight title in a pulsating fight in Macau. The champion from Las Vegas, with legendary fighter Roy Jones Jr making his debut as a trainer in his corner, got the better of his valiant opponent in a fight which exploded into life from the fifth round onwards. Both men were heavily marked at the end of a toe-to-toe 12-round battle, in which the unbeaten Vargas (26-0) consistently landed the better shots to take a unanimous decision 116-112 on all three judges' scorecards. DeMarco (31-3-2) had many moments when he seemed to be getting on top, particularly in the ninth when he wobbled Vargas with a fierce straight left which sent him reeling back into DeMarco's own corner. But Vargas showed enough craft to step it back up when he needed to with combinations of his own, even trying a Jones Jr-style wind-up right "bolo punch" and the verdict was never in doubt. It was the first big fight on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri clash and Pacman's trainer Freddie Roach was in DeMarco's corner "DeMarco was just too patient," Roach told reporters after the decision was announced. "Too many times he was just throwing one punch at a time. I begged him to get busy."
- Lomachenko masterclass -
In the second world title fight, Ukraine's double Olympic gold medallist Vasyl Lomachenko handed out a boxing lesson to the experienced Thai Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo. The man from Odessa easily retained his World Boxing Organization featherweight title, which he won in only his third professional fight earlier this year after one of the greatest amateur careers in history -- one defeat in 397 bouts. Piriyapinyo had only lost once in his 52 fights before Sunday and was dropped to the canvas for the first time in his career in the fourth round, after a vicious series of half-a-dozen head-snapping punches culminated in a ring-shaking left hand. But the bell sounded before Lomachenko could finish the job and the tough Thai recovered enough to see out the contest to the full 12-round distance despite being picked off at will by the lightning quick Lomachenko. So hard were Lomachenko's shots that he suffered a broken left hand in the 10th round. "You can show the left and feint with the left hand -- but don't throw it," his corner were heard to caution. All three judges gave it to the Ukrainian by an overwhelming margin of 120-107. Lomachenko declared after that he has designs on becoming the undisputed featherweight champion. "From this point on, I only want to fight champions, starting with (WBA champion Nicholas) Walters in the summer," he told reporters. Earlier Hong Kong super flyweight Rex Tso was given a tougher than expected workout over eight rounds against Espinos Sabu of Indonesia but came through on a unanimous points decision. And KK Ng -- the up and coming "Macau Kid" -- thrilled his home town fans by battling through a six-round super welterweight contest against Australia's Stephen Attard to win on a unanimous decision despite suffering an ugly gash to his forehead. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Facebook 'newspaper' spells trouble for media | ||
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Washington (AFP) - Facebook's move to fulfill its ambition to be the personal "newspaper" for its billion-plus members is likely to mean more woes for the ailing news media. The huge social network has become a key source of news for many users, as part of a dramatic shift in how people get information in the digital age. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg told a forum in early November that his goal is to make Facebook's news feed "the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world." Zuckerberg said that while a newspaper provides the same information to every reader, Facebook can tailor its feed to the interests of the individual, delivering a mix of world news, community events and updates about friends or family. "It's a different approach to newspapering," said Ken Paulson, a former editor of USA Today who is now dean of communications at Middle Tennessee State University. "It's neither good nor bad, but it's something a traditional newspaper can't do." With Facebook, editorial decisions about what members see are made not by a journalist, but an algorithm that determines which items are likely to be of greatest interest to each person. This may concern the traditional journalism community, but even some media experts acknowledge that Facebook appears to be able to deliver more of what people want to see, in an efficient way. "It's intimate, it's relevant, it's extraordinarily timely and it's about you. That's more than any newspaper can do," said Alan Mutter, a former Chicago daily newspaper editor who is now a consultant for digital media ventures. Mutter said that as newspapers cling to their "ancient" business model, organizations like Facebook are making the news more personal. And he said the trend will continue as younger readers shun print in favor of digital and mobile platforms.
- Algorithm as editor? -
Nikki Usher, a George Washington University journalism professor specializing in new media, said Facebook configures its news feed using an algorithm taking into account tens of thousands of factors. "Facebook has all the data to tell you what all of your friends are reading, so you have a better chance of seeing things that you are interested in," she said. "The reason Facebook has so many engineers and data scientists is to continually make the algorithm better. The algorithm gets stronger as more people use it." Facebook is a source of news for at least 30 percent of Americans, and a major driver of traffic to news websites, according to a Pew Research Center study. This gives the social network enormous power over the news media, which is increasingly dependent on traffic from Facebook and other social platforms. Even though Facebook is known for its computer coding, it still must make editorial decisions, Usher points out. "What's scary is how reactive a position it puts news organizations, which are trying to guess Facebook's next move," she said. "That's a lot of power to put in a single organization." Facebook, Google and other tech firms jealously guard their algorithmic formulas. But observers note that a single tweak of that formula can have important consequences for news organizations. "News organizations are trying to build their strategy around trying to guess the algorithm, and ultimately that's a losing strategy," Usher said.
- Getting 'soul' -
But with traditional news media hurting, it remains unclear how the industry can support the kind of journalism needed to keep people informed as it has in the past. Mutter said what people read may change -- it may be sponsored or subsidized in a way that may or may not be transparent. "It won't necessarily be real journalism, but it will be content," he said. Paulson said that while Facebook can deliver much of the information from newspapers, "it would be hard pressed to capture the soul" of traditional print news. "Freedom of the press was established to keep an eye on people in power and inform the community," he added. "There's a tremendous public spirit component that you can't address with an algorithm." Paulson said that while Facebook is a useful platform for sharing, it will not underwrite the kind of investigative journalism upon which newspapers often pride themselves. With journalism retrenching, that weakens the entire democratic process. "We get the kind of news we deserve and are willing to pay for," Paulson added. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Tunisians elect president for first time | ||
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Tunis (AFP) - Tunisians vote Sunday in their first presidential election since the 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, a ballot set to round off an often fraught transition to democracy. Among the 27 candidates, the hot favourite is former premier Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran whose anti-Islamist Nidaa Tounes party won parliamentary elections last month. Others vying for the presidency include outgoing President Moncef Marzouki, several ministers who served under former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, leftwinger Hamma Hammami, business magnate Slim Riahi and a lone woman, magistrate Kalthoum Kannou. Some 5.3 million people are eligible to cast ballots, with tens of thousands of police and troops deployed to guarantee security amid fears Islamist militants might seek to disrupt voting. In most of the country, polls open at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) and close 10 hours later. However, voting will be limited to only five hours in some 50 localities close to the Algerian border, where armed groups are active. A run-off vote will be held at the end of December if no one secures an absolute majority. Until the revolution, Tunisia knew only two heads of state -- Habib Bourguiba, the "father of independence" from France in 1956, and Ben Ali, who deposed him in a 1987 coup. To prevent another dictatorship, presidential powers have been restricted under a new constitution, with executive prerogatives transferred to a premier drawn from parliament's top party. Essebsi has run on a campaign of "state prestige", a slogan with wide appeal to Tunisians anxious for an end to instability. Supporters argue only he can stand up to the Islamists who first held power in the post-Ben Ali era, but critics charge he is out to restore the old regime, having served under both former presidents. Marzouki has been hammering home the argument that he is the only leader capable of preserving the gains of the uprising, and has said Sunday's vote is the "last stand" for the old guard. Moderate Islamist party Ennahda, which came second in the legislative election, has not put up a candidate and has invited its members "to elect a president who will guarantee democracy". Speculation has been rife on the make-up of a new government and the possibility of a coalition between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda in spite of their fundamental differences. Tunisia has won international plaudits, despite security and economic setbacks, for having largely steered clear of the violence, repression and lawlessness of fellow Arab Spring countries such as neighbouring Libya. Whoever wins, tackling the faltering economy will be a top priority, with unemployment, a leading cause of the revolution, running at 15 percent. Jean-Luc Bernasconi, the World Bank's chief economist in Tunis, said "the economy... must be tackled head-on because the economic challenges are there and are getting worse in some cases." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Jameis Winston Avoids A Huge Disaster When He Shoves A Ref And Doesn't Get Ejected | ||
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Third-ranked Florida State avoided an upset at home when Jameis Winston led a 4th quarter drive that culminated with a game-winning field goal with just three seconds remaining. But Winston probably should have never been given the opportunity as he should have been ejected earlier in the game. The incident occurred late in the third quarter when Florida State had the ball with the score tied 17-17. As Winston came to the line of the scrimmage, the umpire told Winston to wait. Instead of waiting, Winston shoved the official out of the way and ran the play anyway.
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Gay singers test country music's appeal | ||
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New York (AFP) - Church, pickup trucks and dive bars -- the imagery of classic country songs evokes "traditional" small-town American life. Now a rising number of openly gay crooners are testing just how inclusive that vision can be. Two prominent singers came out of the closet within hours of each other on Thursday. Ty Herndon, who rose to stardom in the 1990s with both love ballads and Christian songs, declared himself to be an "out, proud and happy gay man." Herndon, who at 52 has been married twice to women, said that he had struggled since his childhood to come to terms with his sexuality. He said he was now in a relationship with a man and has reconciled his Christianity and sexual orientation. "I sit on the tailgate of my pickup truck, and I meditate, and I talk to God," he told celebrity magazine People. Soon after the article appeared, another major name in country music said he was inspired by Herndon to come out -- Billy Gilman, who first entered the country charts in 2000 at age 11. Compared with Herndon's choreographed coming out, Gilman's was rawly personal. He released an emotional video on YouTube, saying he was "scared to death" to go public but had been hurt by gossip about his life. "Being a gay male country artist is not the best thing," Gilman said of the Nashville-based industry. "If people don't like your music, that's one thing. But after having sold over five million records, having a wonderful life in the music industry, I knew something was wrong when no major label wanted to sit down and have a meeting and listen to the new stuff," he said. The former child star said he was not ashamed to be gay but voiced dismay that he was "in a genre and in an industry that is ashamed of me for being me."
- More gay themes -
Openly gay artists have historically faced obstacles across genres. Pop giants such as Elton John and George Michael waited until well after they made it big before being public about their sexuality. Boy George, when his band Culture Club was topping pop charts in the 1980s and his androgynous look faced scrutiny, famously told an interviewer that he preferred a "cup of tea" to sex. The political and cultural climate has shifted rapidly in recent years, with same-sex couples now able to marry in 35 of the 50 US states -- most recently, through a court decision, in conservative and country music-loving South Carolina. Country music is not uniform and Dolly Parton, one of biggest names in Nashville, has an avid gay following that she has embraced. Two female country stars, Chely Wright and k.d. lang, are both out of the closet, although they have pursued careers out of the Nashville mainstream. The winner for Song of the Year at this year's Country Music Association awards was Kacey Musgraves' "Follow Your Arrow," whose message of not caring about outsiders' judgment alludes both to same-sex love and marijuana-smoking. "Do you guys realize what this means for country music?" Musgraves said as she accepted the award. She co-wrote the song with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, who are both openly gay but whose lyrics tend to stay gender-neutral. The country industry's struggles with gay acceptance have also featured prominently on the television soap opera "Nashville," in which one of the main characters is gay, but remains in the closet and even marries a rising female star as he tries to maintain his heartthrob image with women.
- Insular world of Nashville -
Besides country music, hip hop -- whose stars often vie in their macho bravado -- also has relatively few openly gay stars. But Frank Ocean came out in 2012, and received words of support from the genre's titans such as Jay Z. Gilman said that he has received encouragement from fellow country stars. But it remains to be seen how far Nashville will go. Country music's popularity has grown rapidly in recent years, with country stars repeatedly topping the mainstream Billboard charts. But country decision-makers are close-knit and see their key audience as 30- 35-year-old women, said Joseph Brant, managing digital editor of Out & About Nashville, a monthly newspaper aimed at the LGBT community. "It's not like the industry is anti-gay. They are just trying to guess what they know about their core audience -- that there will be a disconnect, that these women, even if they are suburban moms, they still won't find that relatability," Brant said. And while Herndon and Gilman are both big names, both already established themselves as stars years ago. "If you had your number one this week and you come out this week, that's what's going to blow up the whole machine," said Brant. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Flooding fears mount in snowed-in area of New York state | ||
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Washington (AFP) - Record-breaking snowfall that buried towns near Buffalo, New York, and killed at least 14 people posed a major flooding threat with temperatures forecast to rise. Areas of western New York that got socked with more than six feet (two meters) of snow this week are now are under a flood warning, the National Weather Service said. The zone was previously under a flood watch, which urges people to prepare for a possibility, while a more serious flood warning is issued when flooding is imminent or occurring. The warning was in effect in northern Erie, Genessee, Wyoming, Chatauqua, Cattaraugus, southern Erie counties, including the cities of Buffalo, Batavia, Warsaw, Jamestown, Olean, Orchard Park and Springville. More than 600,000 people live in the area, where thousands particularly in towns south of Buffalo have been trapped in their homes for nearly a week -- unable to emerge from doors they cannot open due to heavy snowpack. Authorities urged people to clear storm drains in front of their homes, and to get any valuables out of their basements. In Lackawanna, National Guard troops were out enforcing the travel ban, officials said. "Only the city of Buffalo south of Seneca Street, the city of Lackawanna and the town of Eden have driving bans now," tweeted Erie county executive Mark Poloncarz. Snowfall roughly equivalent to a year's supply of snow in two days saw the National Guard called up and could yet prompt a federal disaster declaration, local officials said. Many of those who died lost their lives while clearing mounds of heavy snow from their cars and homes. And the massive weight of the snow was a key worry for many. Those who could shoveled flat and low-angled roofs, but many older residents were not physically able to do so. The roof at the Flexovit machinery plant in Evans "collapsed" Friday, Erie county authorities said. The plant appeared to have major structural damage, and a roof that has fallen in almost completely. But the same county authorities have not yet addressed if people were inside, or whether people were evacuated at a time when many roads were blocked, and authorities' manpower stretched to the breaking point. Evans police declined requests for comment. The rock band Interpol said they were stranded more than 50 hours on their tour bus by the storm outside Buffalo, forcing them to cancel two consecutive nights of concerts in Montreal and Toronto. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here's How Likely Each Poker Hand Is | ||
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Poker is a fantastic game, particularly alluring to competitive, creative types who love numbers. Business Insider's Eugene Kim has profiled some of Silicon Valley's biggest poker fans, and the game is also huge draw with the Wall Street crowd. While I'm far from a serious, professional poker player, I do occasionally get a chance to enjoy a game with friends. And I also love math and statistics. So I decided to look at some of the basic mathematics of the game. Here, I go through the probabilities of drawing each five-card poker hand from a deck of cards. These probabilities are handy to have in the back of your head in a poker game, and they are the reason why hands are ranked the way they are: a straight flush is way less likely than a pair, so this is why the straight flush wins. SEE ALSO: Why Silicon Valley's Elites Are Obsessed With Poker How To Find Probabilities Finding The Number Of Hands Order Doesn't Matter See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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It's Insanely Expensive, But There's A Secret Benefit Of Living In San Francisco That Makes It Worth It | ||
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Earlier this week, New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote a column about an app called "Luxe" that helps people park their cars. The way it works is simple: You punch your driving destination in to Luxe. It estimates when you're going to arrive. Then, a Luxe employee greets you. The Luxe employee takes your car and finds somewhere to park it. In San Francisco, where Manjoo lives, parking is a giant pain. Luxe only charges $5 per hour, or $15 per day. The daily rate is half the price it normally costs to park in the city all day. The hourly rate isn't too bad if you value your time properly. Still! This seems like a silly, frivolous app. Manjoo and I do a weekly podcast, and we talked about the app. He thoroughly defended it. He says it's not frivolous, and that it is in fact one of the great, hidden benefits of living in San Francisco. Here's what he said about living in San Francisco. He's being slightly jokey, but only slightly: "San Francisco is this amazing place where there are many, many kinds of services that are enabled by smartphones and they just do stuff for you like this. But it's not like they're 1%-er apps, they're cheaper than previous models, and they're cheaper in some way because they are being funded by VCs. We in San Francisco get to — first of all, we have to pay higher real estate prices, but the benefit is that we get all these services at cut rate. So you get all these services that aren't making a profit, you're not paying for them to make a profit, VCs are funding them. But, on the other hand you have to pay real estate prices." He also said, that there are going to be competitors to this, so they are going to collectively lower the price of parking in San Francisco, which solves a huge dilemma in San Francisco. Lots of people drive to work in the city, and they used to have to pay $30 a day, so Luxe has cut the price of parking in half. This is a small hidden benefit to living in San Francisco. It's super duper expensive to live there, but new mobile services are cutting down slightly on other costs, and making life better. I doubt people who are protesting rising rents really care, but it's an interesting counter view. Here's the podcast. We talk about this around the 17:18 mark. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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REVEALED: The Top Demographic Trends For Every Major Social Network | ||
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The demographics of who's on what social network are shifting — older social networks are reaching maturity, while newer social messaging apps are gaining younger users fast. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we unpack data from over a dozen sources to understand how social media demographics are still shifting. Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Trial >> Here are a few of the key takeaways from the BI Intelligence report:
The report is full of charts (over 20 charts) and data that can be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the digital media industry, sign up for a two week trial. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Check Out These Insane, Ridiculously Fast Volkswagen Concept Cars | ||
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Brazil slams media 'manipulation' on Petrobras scandal | ||
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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazilian authorities Saturday blasted a news magazine for media "manipulation" as the government of President Dilma Rousseff battles an escalating kickbacks scandal at state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Rousseff's press service lambasted Veja magazine for alleging that jailed former Petrobras director and whistleblower Paulo Roberto Costa had sent her email alluding to the payments in 2009. Veja did not reproduce any evidence to back its claim but alleged Costa wrote to Rousseff as he sought to blindside attempts by the federal accountability office (TCU) to halt three Petrobras refinery projects, thereby preventing any possibility of kickbacks from those schemes. Rousseff's press service slammed Veja's interpretation as "another episode of journalistic manipulation." A statement read: "After trying to interfere in the results of the presidential election ... Veja is now trying to fool its readers by insinuating that, in 2009, the siphoning off of money by Paulo Roberto Costa, Petrobras director fired in March 2012 by President Dilma's government, was already known about. "(But) the illegal practices of Paulo Roberto Costa only came to light in 2014, thanks to investigations carried out by the federal police and justice ministry. "Once again, Veja is misinforming its readers and trying to manipulate the facts," the statement concluded. Rousseff, a former Petrobras board chair, has vowed not to interfere in the investigation into Brazil's biggest company. But Ronaldo Caiado, leader of Brazil's opposition Democrats, urged Rousseff and predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to appear themselves before the congressional investigation. On the eve of last month's presidential election which saw Rousseff secure a second term, Veja quoted detained money dealer Alberto Youssef as testifying that Rousseff knew about a kickbacks scheme which saw government allies scoop huge sums of cash creamed from overcharged Petrobras contracts. Nobody has been convicted in the case but Costa and Yousseff are both in detention seeking a plea bargain whereby investigators would give them an eventual reduced sentence in exchange for telling all they know. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Don't Be Afraid To Cancel Cable — Here's How To Get All The Programs You Love | ||
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How to cancel cable and stream all your content for a lot less money. Produced by Matt Johnston Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 13 Best Custom iPhones Money Can Buy (AAPL) | ||
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iPhones aren't the status symbol they once were. These days the real way to show off is with a custom iPhone. Custom iPhones are a great way to express your personality. They also tend to cost more, if that's of concern to you. We've rounded up the best custom iPhones so you'll know what to ask to ask for during the holidays. Feld & Volk makes some of the best custom iPhones out there. This "pure gold" iPhone 5S will run you $ 8,990. If that's too much gold plating for you Feld & Volk also makes this graphite iPhone 6 for $4,799. It has a birch wood exterior (and some gold as well). Feld & Volk also makes country specific iPhones. This China themed iPhone 5S will run you $2,600. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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These Abandoned Rocket Bases Tell The Story Of The Cold War Space Race | ||
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Athens' Abandoned Airport Looks Incredibly Eerie In These Photos | ||
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Messi breaks Liga record with hat-trick as Barca romp | ||
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Madrid (AFP) - Lionel Messi became the all-time top goalscorer in La Liga history with a hat-trick as Barcelona swept aside Sevilla 5-1 on Saturday to remain two points adrift of league leaders Real Madrid. Messi moved level with legendary Basque striker Telmo Zarra when he opened the scoring with a trademark free-kick to register his 251st goal in his 289th appearance in the Spanish top flight. A Jordi Alba own goal briefly brought Sevilla level early in the second-half, but Neymar swiftly restored Barca's advantage before Ivan Rakitic made the game safe when he headed home Luis Suarez's enticing cross against his old club. Messi then took over as he slid in to convert Neymar's low cross to set a new record mark and extended it moments later with a precise low finish to seal and round off a fine evening for Luis Enrique's men against a side that started the evening just two points adrift of the Catalans. Earlier, Real Madrid saw off Basque minnows Eibar's dreams of a giant-killing thanks to a Cristiano Ronaldo double to register their 14th consecutive win in all competitions with a 4-0 victory. And champions Atletico Madrid remain four points off the top as they overcame Malaga 3-1 at the Vicente Calderon thanks to goals from Tiago, Antoine Griezmann and Diego Godin. Sevilla were expected to pose a serious threat to a Barca side that has struggled in recent La Liga outings. However, the hosts had complete control of the game in the first-half and could have been in front before Messi's historic strike as the Argentine's first effort of the match was smothered by Beto and the Portuguese 'keeper then flew off his line to deny Luis Suarez from a narrow angle. Messi's moment came midway through the first-half as his free-kick curled perfectly into Beto's top right-hand corner to register his 12th goal of the season. Only some frantic defending kept the Andalusians in the game as Barca ended the half strongly as Nico Pareja slid in to prevent Suarez his first Barca goal after Alba had nutmegged Beto and the Portuguese 'keeper showed smart reactions to deny Neymar from the resulting corner with an outstretched leg. All of Barca's good work in the first 45 minutes was undone just over 60 seconds after the restart, though, as Vitolo eased past Gerard Pique down Sevilla's left and his low cross was bundled into his own net by the unfortunate Alba. It took the hosts just two minutes to make amends, however, as Xavi's free-kick was headed low into the far corner by Neymar. Suarez's search for his first Barca goal will stretch into a fifth game, but the Uruguayan did provide his fourth assist in four outings with a great run and cross which left Rakitic with a simple task to make it 3-1. Neymar unselfishly squared for Messi to move out on his own ahead of Zarra when he tapped home the Brazilian's low cross and the 28-year-old was then thrown into the air by his teammates in celebration. However, the four-time World Player of the Year wasn't finished as he sealed his 27th Barcelona hat-trick from Neymar's pass 13 minutes from time. Real Madrid also enjoyed a comfortable afternoon in unfamiliar surroundings on their first league visit at the 5,000 capacity Ipurua stadium in Eibar. The European champions had more than a touch of fortune in the first half as James Rodriguez headed home the opener despite Ronaldo and Karim Benzema appearing to be in an offside position in the build-up to the goal. Ronaldo then doubled the lead himself with a mishit shot that looped beyond Xabi Irureta just before the break. Benzema smashed home the third 20 minutes from time before Ronaldo rounded off the scoring from the penalty spot. "The objective is to continue with this run because the team is playing well and the players are motivated," said Real boss Carlo Ancelotti. "But the season is very long and we need to continue with this type of attitude." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Microsoft: Compared To Apple And Yahoo, We Are NOT Overpaying Our New CEO (MSFT) | ||
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Investor watchdog organization Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) caused a stir last week by telling Microsoft investors that Satya Nadella's pay package was too high. It advocated that they vote no on the "say on pay" advisory vote during Microsoft's shareholder meeting December 3. As part of his promotion, Nadella was granted a starter kit of stock valued at about $65 million which won't begin to vest until 2019. Plus, he got another one-time stock grant worth $13.5 million in August 2013 to keep him around during the CEO search process. It vests over seven years. In 2014, his base salary is $918,917 for a role he assumed in February. (ISS calculates his full year base at $1.2 million) and a cash bonus of $3.6 million. But Nadella isn't like the two previous CEOs. Both Bill Gates, the founder, and Steve Ballmer, one of Microsoft's earliest employees, owned massive stakes from the get-go. With Nadella, Microsoft has crafted a brand new pay-for-performance model. So Nadella will be eligible for an annual $13.2 million stock award, with a complicated vesting schedule, that he'll unlock if he hits certain performance targets. "Over 80% of the reward opportunity is performance-based measured by our total shareholder return (“TSR”) relative to the S&P 500. To earn the target value of this award, Microsoft’s TSR must exceed the 60th percentile of the S&P 500 over each of three overlapping five-year performance periods that extend to 2021," chairman John Thompson wrote in a letter to shareholders about the pay plan. ISS calculates the whole starter package to be worth $90 million and complains that the performance targets he's supposed to hit are too vague ("lacks a strong connection to objectively measured company performance"). That's why they think his pay is too high, according a report shared with Business Insider. A Microsoft spokesperson tells us this is misleading because a good chunk of that stock won't begin to available to him for five years. Plus, the value of another chunk is based on performance targets and isn't known yet. It depends on how well the company is doing. By Microsoft's calculation, Nadella is being paid $25.1 million for 2014 (without his one-time $65 million stock grant that he can't touch until 2019.) Microsoft tells investors they are aiming for his annual pay to be $18 million, $13 million of it as stock awarded based on performance. (This excludes that $65 million as it vests and the $13 million chunk issued in 2014 as it vests). By the way, Microsoft also agreed to a $17.4 million golden parachute. How does that compare to others?
A Microsoft spokesperson tells us that when adding in their one-time stock chunks, Tim Cook’s annualized pay is $40.4 million, Eric Schmidt’s annualized pay is $32.9 million, and Marissa Mayer’s annualized pay is $24.3 million. When looking at it that way, Microsoft feels that Nadella isn't overpaid at all. Of course, if all of this goes as planned, and Microsoft's stock continues to rise, his pay will be much higher in the next seven years. On the other hand, we doubt that any investor advocacy group will complain about that. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Meet The Startup Building Drones That Could Save Lives | ||
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When Andreas Raptopoulos and his team got stuck in a 20-truck convoy completely marooned in mud while navigating between villages in Papua New Guinea, it was incredibly frustrating. It was also a validation of his work. Raptopoulos is the cofounder and CEO of a startup called Matternet, which makes drones, though he refuses to use that word. He prefers to call them small unmanned aerial delivery vehicles, or UAVs. He started the company after having a "eureka moment" three years ago. He realized one billion people around the world live in areas lacking reliable road systems and that drones could provide a more reliable way to deliver critical supplies, like medicine. That's why Raptopoulos was in tuberculosis-ravaged Papua New Guinea in September, entrenched in mud. Matternet had connected with the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders to test whether its aerial vehicles could provide a good way to transfer TB diagnostics between villages. During the two weeks Matternet conducted its trials, multiple trucks got trapped. "We had to do that trip four times and every time there was an element of fear," Raptopoulos tells Business Insider. "We thought, 'Will we make it?' We talk a lot about the problem, but it became very real for us. What it really means, and all the emotions that go with it." Matternet's trucks may have gotten lodged in mud between launch sites, but its drones navigated their routes without a hitch. Controlled completely via an app, a UAV bearing a spittle sample would take off, fly through the air, and land at a hospital as far as 25 kilometers away.
"Most of these people have never seen one of these things, at least in the flesh," Raptopoulos says, "But it’s amazing, the amount of joy it generates. It basically breaks with all your assumptions." That's one of the underlying principles that Matternet builds upon: that its drones be so dead-simple to operate, that someone without significant technological training could instinctively figure out how to send one on a flight. That someone who had even the most minimal knowledge of how to operate a smartphone could direct the drone to deliver medicine, food, or other supplies from one location to another.
For that reason, Raptopoulos likes to describe Matternet's UAVs as the Apple products of the drone space. "We want this company to be at the intersection of the best technology and excellence in design," he says. "We want to sell a vehicle to you that you can operate with an unprecedented ease of use."
Today, they're being used to deliver medicine in Germany and the Federal Aviation Administration recently approved them for use in shooting movie and TV scenes in the US. "Things are changing fast in this space," Raptopoulos says. "A year ago, there was no Amazon drone announcement. A month ago there was no Google drone coming out." Matternet's early start combined with its powerhouse-team has it poised to take the drone space by storm and become one of "the next billion-dollar businesses," according to Matternet investor Ravi Belani, managing director of Alchemist, the startup accelerator Matternet graduated from. Raptopoulos' vision for Matternet first hit him when he was attending Singularity University, a non-traditional, future-focused school that aims to empower its students to apply "exponential technologies to address humanity's grand challenges." Working as part of a larger team, Raptopoulos got hung up on the fact that one-seventh of the Earth's population lacked access to all-seasons roads and that developing a traditional, reliable transportation infrastructure in those places would take crazy amounts of money and upwards of 50 years. He took a map of Africa and overlaid an internet-like network onto it. If he could build machines that could carry cargo short distances, each trip would be small, but the scale could be incredible. He says he got chills:
Raptopoulos says when he and co-founder Paola Santana, previously a lawyer in the Dominican Republic, first started pitching the idea around, he got a lot of polite but confused responses. A lot of people thought they was crazy, Raptopoulos says. But the founders of Singularity University — futurist Ray Kurzweil and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis — loved the idea. After graduating from the University, they accepted Matternet into SU Labs, the school's innovation accelerator.
Matternet's plan is to create a full stack product, handling both the hardware and the software themselves, while simultaneously making sure to stay abreast of every new legal hurdle in the drone space. Right now, the FAA bans the use of commercial drones, but it is supposed to release rules for small drones under 55 pounds later this year, in line with its complete plan for “safe integration” of commercial drones by September 2015. Meanwhile, a team at NASA led by Dr. Parimal Kopardekar is developing a drone traffic management program of its own to advise the FAA. Matternet is one of the many UAV-focused companies that has met with Kopardekar's NexGen technology team to discuss different ways to provide a structure to drone traffic. The startup plans to announce its first product in the first quarter of 2015, and start shipping a few months later. The goal is to have concrete agreements with the likes of Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization, which it tested with in Bhutan, by the time Matternet's UAVs get launched. Raptopolous couldn't name a concrete price point, but guesses that the Matternet system will go for between $2,000 and $5,000. By launching in areas like Papua New Guinea and Bhutan — where its drones are sometimes flying over swaths of jungle or sparsely populated desert and where there isn't a strict existing aerial infrastructure — Matternet has fewer barriers to entry. "The risk needs to be low if the UAV falls," NASA's Kopardekar tells Business Insider, noting that low-density areas make the most sense for drone testing and operations. "You need to be able to demonstrate the risk is very low and the benefits are high: That's where you will see implementation happening." Although Raptopoulos landed upon the idea for Matternet because of a motivation to provide a transportation solution to parts of the world that lack access to all-season roads, the company has its sights set beyond humanitarian causes. After all, Matternet isn't a service company; it's a product company. "We are pioneering this technology by helping partners find ways to put it in the field now, but our vision is that we should be putting this type of technology into everybody's hands," he says, "Whether their purpose is in Papua New Guinea or Rio or Istanbul or Mexico City or in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and LA."
"Sometimes mission-driven entrepreneurs get so hung up on their mission that they're missing the commercial opportunity, which they probably don't emotionally care that much about," Pascal Finette, who heads SU Labs, explains. "I think this duality — the dance between these two worlds — is something social entrepreneurs sometimes get wrong. But Andreas is just perfect. He's phenomenal because he understands, 'Hey, if we get this at scale and we can do this in the US and we become a big company, we can use all this as a force of good to do even more in the world.'" Raptopoulos sees Walgreens using Matternet's drones to deliver prescriptions, or grocery stores using them to deliver milk. Because the startup is small, lean, and fast-moving, he thinks it has a leg up on giants like Google or Amazon. "I think Andreas is a beautiful, bi-focal CEO," says Belani from Alchemist. "He is a true visionary who is always motivated by fundamentally changing the world. But he's very practical in the near term what's required to get things done. He's not a head-in-the-clouds type of visionary. He's incredibly practical with a strong street sense of business." Finette agrees: Raptopoulos and Santana dream big, but know how to actually move steadily forward. He laughs recalling how nonchalantly the team will talk about passing amazing, major milestones. "They talk about it as if it's nothing," he says. That speaks to their capacity as entrepreneurs, he says, because they understand that every achievement is just a small stepping stone towards the big idea.
Raptopoulos calls it the "Apple II" of the drone industry: the "most easy to use, desirable, and safest personal flying vehicle" out there. Not that Matternet is the only company trying to achieve that. Besides giants like Amazon and Google, there are other delivery drone companies out there, like Bizzby and Aria. "A drone delivery network will be the most disruptive thing to hit the delivery space," says Brody Buhler, partner at consulting firm Accenture, who focuses on postal issues. "If you don’t have drones on your five-year roadmap, you’re probably too far out." Talking to Raptopoulos, that future feels even closer. He gets almost electrically bright-eyed when he talks about the moments he's had on trials in the Himalayas or Papua New Guinea. But his passion really radiates off him when he talks about what's yet to come. "I’m going to keep on having these 'pinch me' moments," he says. "When we see our first big deployment in a city. When I’m able to see 20-30 crafts doing routine missions. When I’m able to actually see our drones in the sky and nobody will be paying attention, because they’re just an establishment. And we can't wait." SEE ALSO: Why The Guy Behind The Most Popular Smartwatch In The World Isn't Scared Of Apple Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Ferguson on edge ahead of grand jury decision | ||
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Ferguson (United States) (AFP) - The father of a black teenager shot dead by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson met residents Saturday in a bid to quell tensions ahead of a grand jury decision on whether to prosecute the white officer. US President Barack Obama has called for calm, Missouri's governor declared a state of emergency and activated the state National Guard, and the FBI has deployed an extra 100 personnel to the area. Michael Brown Sr. and his wife Cal distributed Thanksgiving turkeys and canned goods in the neighborhood where his 18-year-old son, also Michael, was shot dead by policeman Darren Wilson on August 9, sparking weeks of protests in Ferguson, some of them violent. "I feel like I just had to do this," Brown Sr. told AFP, wearing a T-shirt with a picture of his son on the front and the caption, "Gone to Soon." Brown Sr., who looked visibly upset, embraced journalists and community members, but did not want to talk about the grand jury decision which has put Ferguson on edge. CNN, quoting federal and local officials, reported that the grand jury had not reached a conclusion and it was unclear when it would reconvene. "Everyone is suffering over this. This is painful for everyone, especially this community. I just feel this was needed so I came to do that, to make sure that people have a nice Thanksgiving," added Brown Sr. Brown's killing inflamed racial tensions in the St. Louis suburb of 21,000 which has an African American majority and an overwhelmingly white police force and town government. - Appeal for restraint -
On Friday, Brown Sr. had appealed for restraint in a somber video plea. "Hurting others or destroying property is not the answer," he said. His wife Cal, the dead teenager's stepmom, said they gave out at least 62 turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving next week, some bought by the family and the rest donated. "Hopefully we'll have big things come out of this," she told AFP, adding the family would particularly miss Michael during the holiday season. "Of course we'll miss him, his wittiness, his pranks. Him with his big plate of food sitting there like a king. We'll miss all of that, but despite all we have to try to have the normal for the other children." In the United States, grand juries meet in secret to review some cases before deciding whether criminal charges should be brought. The jury could indict Wilson, meaning he could face trial, or it could determine there is no case for him to answer. St. Louis County prosecutors said they were making arrangements for a press conference to announce the decision, but no date or time has yet been confirmed. Schools in the area announced they would close Monday and Tuesday due to potential unrest. Thanksgiving will keep them closed for the rest of next week.
- 'Angry people' -
A small gaggle of protesters braved the cold late Friday to demand that Wilson stand trial for shooting Brown dead. "I'm here for justice. If we don't get justice, aint nobody gonna get no peace," said 22-year-old Ebony, who works in security and refused to give a second name. "We're going to keep protesting until we know what's right gets done," she told AFP. "I want to see Darren Wilson go to jail." Brown, a high-school graduate planning on attending technical college, was shot at least six times by Wilson. His body was left in the street for hours. Wilson reportedly told the grand jury he acted in self-defense after tussling with the youth. Others say Brown had his hands in the air when he was shot. Few of Friday's protesters believed the jury would indict Wilson. "There's going to be violence, I do believe," said Jo Ann Davis, a government employee who said she would not take part if rallies turn ugly. Some demonstrators in August complained that police used undue force during peaceful protests. There was widespread criticism of military-style weapons and protective gear deployed by local officers. "If protesters are not violent, police will not be aggressive. But if some protesters turn violent or threatening, police will respond to keep everyone safe," St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The ‘Freemium’ Model Is Brilliant, But It’s Ruining My Life | ||
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Three years ago, I downloaded "The Simpsons: Tapped Out." One of my favorite shows of all time is “The Simpsons,” and as a proud owner of a new iPhone 4S at the time, I wanted to own this game. In the end, it ended up owning me. The gist of the game is that Homer Simpson caused the town of Springfield to blow up, and now you, the "Sky Finger," must recreate the town and bring back all its residents. You make money by collecting rent from buildings and making characters do various jobs, which all take time to complete. I have witnessed how this game has grown through the years, with the load times and overall quality improving with each new iPhone release. I’ve been there for every new character, new building, holiday and special promotion. My Springfield is immaculate. It's gorgeous. You wish you lived there.
I want to quit. I do. I'm maxed out at Level 47, as high as Electronic Arts will allow me to go, and have all the current characters and buildings you can own through normal gameplay. But I don't have it all. And I'll never have it all. That's what makes this a "freemium" game and not a "free" game. (Also why Apple needed to subtly change the App Store recently.)
Getting the premium items requires a special kind of currency, which can only be attained through either time or money. In the case of “The Simpsons: Tapped Out,” donuts are your “premium” currency, which you can collect by leveling up, or simply when the Electronic Arts developers feel charitable. I've saved — no, hoarded — donuts for years, but my 458 donuts will only get me two or three quality items. I’m not kidding: I can’t even afford all four of these characters.
And there’s the rub: Even after spending three years collecting donuts, I would still have to spend money to achieve “100% completion.” But in mobile games like “The Simpsons: Tapped Out,” 100% completion doesn’t even exist; EA regularly adds new characters and premium items each month. If you truly want to own everything, you’ll need to shell out money regularly. The idea that you can get all the items through time and patience is just a red herring. The freemium model has gained momentum on mobile, thanks to early popular games like “Angry Birds,” but now it’s spreading elsewhere. While watching a review of “LittleBigPlanet 3,” a new game for the PlayStation 4, I learned that in order to collect some really fun costumes for your characters, you need to spend money in addition to the $60-plus you’ve already spent on the game.
These gaming companies are smart to implement freemium into their titles: The game teases you with its best rewards, which can only be attained by a spending an inordinate amount of time in the game — each day, and consistently over time — or by spending money. And there are plenty of people who will spend thousands of dollars to progress through their favorite games, just ask the lead singer of the Sex Pistols. So freemium works out great for these gaming companies. But for the consumer, it’s downright cruel. And yet, I can’t stop playing. SEE ALSO: How Flip Phones Could Return In A Big Way Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Legendary Investor Ben Horowitz On How To Handle Raises And Demotions | ||
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He played a major role in creating Netscape in the 90s, and was the CEO of Opsware, a company that was later sold to HP for $1.6 billion in 2003. His VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in some of the hottest startups, including Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, and Lyft. With so much experience, Horowitz has many interesting stories to tell, which he often shares through his personal blog. He even published a book titled, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” based on his own experience. Last week, Horowitz spoke at Stanford for “How to Start a Startup,” a course run by Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, and explained the importance of having “one management concept.” We pulled out some of the slides from Horowitz’s presentation and put together his advice on how to deal with employee demotion and what to do when someone asks for a raise. “This management concept is the thing I see CEOs mess up more consistently than anything else…It’s the easiest thing to say and the most difficult to master.” “When making critical decisions, you have to be able to see the decisions through the eyes of the company as a whole…Otherwise, your management decisions could have potentially dangerous consequences.” For example: How do you whether to demote or fire someone? See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Why Silicon Valley's Elites Are Obsessed With Poker | ||
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Every month, some of Silicon Valley’s biggest power players meet at the Palo Alto home of Chamath Palihapitiya, an early Facebook executive who now runs his own venture capital firm Social+Capital. The guest list reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley’s true elites: from Yammer founder David Sacks, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Inside.com’s Jason Calacanis to professional athletes and poker players, including the World Series of Poker champion Phil Hellmuth.
“It was meant to basically put together 9 or 10 of the most competitive people in Silicon Valley and play poker,” Palihapitiya, who’s been hosting home poker nights for a few years now, told Business Insider. “Once you get this competitive group of people together on the same table, it’s super fun.” The level of play is far beyond regular amateur tables. For example, Palihapitiya, who often walks off with the most chips, has played in some of the highest stake poker tournaments, including the World Series of Poker, where he finished 101st out of more than 7,000 contestants in 2011. In fact, according to Hellmuth, a 12-time world champion in Texas Hold’em, the skill level is so high that he was only able to hit break-even in the first three years he played there. “In general, great businessmen are great poker players. There’s a reason these guys made so much money in the real world. Those skills translate to poker,” Hellmuth tells us. “In general, great businessmen are great poker players. There’s a reason these guys made so much money in the real world. Those skills translate to poker,” Phil Hellmuth says. Once the game starts, the intensity could easily turn up in a matter of seconds. They play for hours, well past 2AM on some occasions. And while the stakes remain relatively modest, $10,000 bluffs do happen in the most heated moments. But Palihapitiya says the cash part of the game is mostly irrelevant. It’s rather about the thrill of playing and winning against highly competitive people, and just trying to master every nuance of a game that, he says, “you can learn so easily, but never master.” Poker has relatively simple rules. In traditional Texas Hold’em poker, each player is first dealt a set of two cards, which are not shown to others, and then a shared pile of five cards on the table. The first three of the five shared cards are dealt at once, and after a round of betting, the fourth card is shown. The fifth card is uncovered after another round of betting. But, in between each round of betting, there’s intense strategy and mind-games involved that requires a lot of intellect and discipline throughout the game. That’s what makes poker such a complex — and fascinating — game, Palihapitiya says. There’s a chance of overcoming a poor hand, if you play it smart. Or you could lose everything with a single mistake, just when you thought you were going to win a big hand. In that sense, Palihapitiya says, there’s a certain element of poker that almost “mirrors life and running a startup.” It’s why so many entrepreneurs love the game. He sums up the similarities in six distinct points:
Overcoming adversity:Depending on how you play each round of betting, you could completely change the outcome of the game — regardless of what cards you are dealt at first. It’s just like being born into terrible circumstances in life but finding ways to overcome that and succeed. Palihapitiya relates to it personally, as he is a classic “rags-to-riches” story, having grown up on welfare as an immigrant in Canada to become one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs around. “That’s a characteristic of this game that very few games have,” he says.
Learning from mistakes:You make plenty of mistakes in poker. The point is learning from those mistakes and fixing it in the future. “When you misplay your cards and lose a big hand, it’s an unbelievable moment of learning,” Palihapitiya says. It’s one thing not to repeat the same mistake, but it’s also important to know when you win by sheer luck. “Sometimes you just do something and it completely works, and you think to yourself, ‘I must be really good.’ The takeaway should be the exact opposite — you may have just gotten really lucky,” Palihapitiya says.
Knowing how to fake it:Pretending like you have a strong hand, or “bluffing,” is a huge part of poker; all good players know how and when to use it properly. Palihapitiya says he doesn’t even look at his hand 90% of the time before placing his first bet. Similarly, in startups, it’s important to act confident at all times and believe in your product/vision, as he says, “In a startup, you have to fake it 'till you make it.” This is the same point Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff says in his book, “Behind the Cloud”: “You have to act confident, even when you’re not.”
Being a "good loser":There are moments in poker when you lose big just when you thought you were going to win. It often causes huge emotional tilt and impacts your subsequent decision-making power. “If you can’t keep a clear head, you’re going to start making worse decisions and those decisions will compound,” Palihapitiya says. “Poker’s great because it teaches you how to be mentally disciplined in the face of adversity.”
Getting a better read of people:The best poker players have an exceptional ability to sense others’ emotional energy. They can read how people feel or think by just looking at their reactions to certain moves or body gestures. Palihapitiya says that ability can help you in everyday life, too, as you become “more emotionally attuned to the people around you.” In other words, you can start understanding others better, coaching people better, and even negotiating better.
Making quick decisions and taking risks:An average person’s life spans 80 to 90 years. Most startups are on a five-to-seven-year trajectory. A single round of poker, however, happens in a matter of just a few minutes. “Every hand in poker is a microcosm of that entire struggle (of life or a startup),” Palihapitiya says. You have to make quick decisions — and take risks — in a short period of time, with very limited information, and those decisions could have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. It’s why good poker players know how to make the right decisions quickly and take risks when needed.
“It’s really not about trying to make money - it’s about ‘Can you beat this guy?” Palihapitiya says. “Poker’s just a fascinating game of skill that’s exceptionally difficult to master. It really helps you disambiguate a lot of skills.” What Are The Odds Of Drawing Each Hand In Poker? We Did The Math:
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