Mystalic

It's so easy for people to figure out when you copy language or basic code. It never ends well.

And Y Combinator.

You'd be wrong. Ask second-time founders. While you don't repeat some of your past mistakes, the expectations get jacked up and the stakes are higher. It doesn't get easier.

I don't think there's a conspiracy here. Just bad decisions.

This is a lesson in the power of language. The companies involved and their denials of knowledge of PRISM were not lies, but clearly they were making it easier for the government to extract data for surveillance, under an unnamed program with specific point people in each company who were only allowed to talk to the government and not talk to their CEOs about the extent in which the government was extracting data. It may go even deeper. We just don't know.

The thing that upsets me most is that I suspect nobody except for the whistleblower will take any real heat. I hope more will come forward with more details in the coming weeks, before the government makes an example of the whisteblower.

Will this incident change user behavior? I doubt it. We're too dependent on these companies to cut them off en masse.

If Tesla drives that money into development of the economy vehicle, they're going to scare a lot of car manufacturers.

I don't think Instagram/Systrom had any intention to sell user photos or do anything as drastic as the blogosphere made its TOS changes sound.

It did the right thing responding so quickly to user feedback. Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without infringing on the privacy of its users.

Congrats to Alex, Boris and the team! You guys are disrupting venture capital in a way that's been needed for years.

#Dominate

This group presented at the Angelhack SF hackathon (I'm a judge).

It's simple and only works in certain use cases where you need more immediate feedback, esp. the polling stuff. However, it definitely has its uses.

Good job, guys!

For context: this group just presented at the AngelHack SF Hackathon (I'm one of the judges).

It's funny, but Twitter will clearly drop the hammer on this. It's bad for the ecosystem overall.

As a former journalist, there is one simple way to press: get introductions.

If you don't know people who know journalists, meet them.

A strong network is essential to the success of any startup.

Ryan's a smart guy, but he has got this one wrong.

Product launches ARE news, no matter how you slice it. News is simply a product of what people want to know about, plus what people SHOULD know about.

So people want to know about new Apple products. So the news media delivers.

But they also SHOULD know about things like the failure of iOS 6 maps, which has been roundly slammed by the media. If the media were truly in bed with Apple, would it be writing this kind of negative portrayal?

Is there symbiotic relationship between the marketing departments of companies and journalists? Absolutely. Do journalists give them free passes? Hell no.

It's important to note that this isn't a complete reversal -- Quora's still going to display views from "in the feed". They're also blocking all "adult" content from the Views feature as well.

The changes should alleviate most of the pressure that was being placed on Quora. I'm glad they rolled back the most egregious parts of Views.

#1 way to get an interview: recommendations from other YC founders. Not just tepid "I know this person" but "I'm putting $100k down on this team."

This is a fantastic article with a lot of in-depth interviews and analysis. This is an example of what tech journalism should be.

Another note: the beauty of YC isn't that Paul & co. pick home runs every time -- they don't -- it's that they pick teams that eventually hit home runs. Justin.tv is doing okay, but YC's investment in Justin in 2005 has netted it Socialcam (acquired for $60M) and Exec. YC's investment in Reddit also netted them Hipmunk.

And I'm only scratching the surface here -- YC founders always recruit great people into the YC program.

Regardless of the politics, the ridiculous lengths that BMG and the other labels are willing to go to in order to take down content that clearly falls under fair use simply boggles my mind.

You often have to seed a social site in order for it to be compelling for people to consume. Once they're hooked, then they start submitting.

As long as the quality is good, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

Most likely both.

I suspect Facebook has bigger plans for Face.com's technology than auto-tagging. I bet they integrate facial recognition technology into the Facebook Platform.

Tagging every face... everywhere... and sending that data back to Facebook. That could be monumental.

Via SF Examiner:

"A spokesman for the lieutenant governor’s office said in a phone interview that the show will be for Newsom to promote California, which Newsom has been doing since talking office in January 2011. The show, his office said, will be separate from his political office, and no state funds will be used for the show."

There must be a better use of his time as the second-in-command of the largest state in the U.S. and one of the world's largest economies.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2012/04/gavin-newsom-host-sh...

The same can be said for the cost of manufacturing and delivering solar panels.

Andreessen Horowitz did the only ethical and logical thing it could do. It was in a tough spot, so it did the thing that wouldn't violate its implicit agreements with Kevin and Dalton.

I don't think either side is complaining, and I doubt Andreessen's LPs are either.

Can we put this matter to bed now?

Something like that. Facebook saw that Instagram was adding users fast and dominating mobile (a weakness of Facebook's). The plurality, if not the majority, of Facebook activity revolves around photo sharing and photo interactions (photos get way more engagement than the sharing of links).

So Zuck decided to take them out of the competitive landscape now, while it could still afford to, rather than risk Systrom turning Instagram into a major social network that siphoned away significant amounts of activity from Facebook.com

Things people seem to keep forgetting through this entire affair:

1) Zuck, with his 57% voting proxy, has absolute control over the company. He doesn't need to consult anybody for his decisions, even Sandberg or the board.

2) With that said, he made sure they voted. The board still needs to vote for it to be legal, but if they were to vote it down, Zuck could simply remove the dissident board members with his 57% share.

3) This acquisition was defensive, not offensive, in nature. Yes, Facebook could have created its own filters, but it was worried that Instagram could become THE social network for sharing images. That would be bad for Facebook, since that's it's the undisputed leader in that space. Zuck knew it would be more expensive to leave Instagram independent than to take it out now for a high price.

4) No matter who acquired Instagram, there were going to be conflicts of interest. Twitter's CoI is actually worse -- it's Executive Chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an angel investor in Instagram. This is why Zuck doesn't make investments, I suspect.

Congratulations on the book, Jason!

I don't have any freaking clue how you did this AND OnSwipe, but somehow you managed to pull it off. Thanks for giving back to the community.

A few months ago, I ran into the Bump team on Castro street in Mountain View. They were grabbing random people walking by their table, testing the user flow of this product with a demo.

Two lessons from that:

1) Gather user feedback all the time, at any stage. Meet customers, send out surveys, interview users, whatever it takes to get the data.

2) Simplify! Your product needs to be as frictionless as possible (I think I repeated this like 7 times when I tried the demo). It's two steps to use the new Bump photo app -- that's easy for a user to understand.

I disagree. Despite the high valuations, a lot of the companies in YC rise past their seed stage valuations. You may overpay a bit, but you're essentially paying for more security. Most seed stage startups flame out before they even hit Series A -- YC startups are far less susceptible to this problem.

I think wireless power -- rather than more efficient batteries -- is the long-term solution.

I wish Loic and his team the best of luck. It's never easy to lay friends and colleagues off, and I know that it's taken an emotional toll on Loic.

This is a reminder that even somebody of Loic's stature (he created LeWeb and is a very successful angel investor) can fail. Hard work, great product, good timing and luck -- you need them all to succeed.

It's going to allow for three types of permissions: Mac Store apps only, all apps, and Mac Store Apps + identified developers. That last one is the default.