chaseideas

yeah, seriously

Wow.... nice one...

Definitely seems like there was some creative liberty in the submission title.

I suppose a "refusal" could be inferred by the lack of their acceptance on the initial buyout offer and their (apparent) rebuttal of a $2.5bil valuation.

For instance, if I offered you a million dollars cash for your house and you came back to me with an appraisal saying it was valued at $20mil... I think it would be clear (or at least strongly insinuated) that you refused my offer of a million dollars.

Thinking that's kinda what happened here? Seems like Elon didn't take to their method of countering and called the whole thing off.

Just my $0.02 and I'm not privy to all the inside-details. Could've gone down entirely different than any of us know.

Plus, it seems like there's a LOT of infighting among the co-founders and previous team. Will be curious to see if more information emerges.

Like they say... hindsight is 20/20...

Finding this piece really interesting though for other reasons. Had a similar idea for a project based in that area a couple years back. Imperial Valley (in general) strikes me as a HUGELY under-capitalized opportunity at the moment.

As a San Diego native, grew up familiar with it as the cesspool and stink-puddle that it is... but, if you look into the history of Imperial Valley and Salton Sea (and the abundance of mineral-rich 'dust' and other waste) it's actually an extremely fascinating tale.

Anyone want to put a few million into helping establish a similar project? Seems like there's way more than just Lithium to be monetized out there.

I'm pretty sure his wife had it, last I spoke with her shortly after his death. Nowadays, it's likely his daughter might have it.

Have a lot of great memories thoroughly enjoying that book as a kid. Used to flip through it and test him through-out our sessions. Loved every minute of it.

Please email me traffic details and more info. Would be very interested in taking over, or working with you, on this project to grow it to that next level.

Hey Ron, interested in the site details and seeing if we can work out a deal. Please email me traffic stats and revenue info

Interested in talking about how we can get this one back online, or perhaps I can take over the project? Email me.

Very interested as well, can you email me details?

Speaking of altcoins/cryptocurrency…

Has anyone heard much about MazaCoin?

It just became the official currency for the Lakota nation. Wanted to hear what fellow HN'ers think about this.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/5/5469510/native-americans-as...

Out of all the altcoins, seems like this one has strong real-world application and brings a lot of value to these Indian tribes. Similar to what Bitcoin has done in other nations that lack a strong national currency.

MazaCoin is also the "official national currency" of a Sovereign Nation, so it can't "technically" be outlawed. Huge step forward for crypto currencies? Outright scam? What do you guys think?

Thoughts on this coin in specific? Altcoins/cryptocurrency in general?

Lol… never thought I'd see a WickedFire link on HN. My life is now complete. -__-

"Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple."

What did anyone really expect? Sounds like a typical government contract.

I can only imagine how these conversations go...

"We need more QA! STAT! It's going to take at least $50 million to test this system... it's awfully broken!" chuckle

face/palm

That said, I think there should be a lot more concern about the security of this site if there's been such a mishandling of the basic functions and operational flow.

Seems only reasonable to suspect this will be leading to a horrible leak of many people's private records at some near point in the future.

As someone who's spent several years researching and working within the online advertising industry, I can attest to this being quite common on a lot of the larger Alexa-ranked sites and traffic sources.

There are many highly ranked sources that will simply burn through your ad spends as quickly as you can deposit funds to the account. People often times spend thousands throwing away money on "testing" these sources, only to usually find they don't pan out.

That's why one of the most important things in online advertising is constant optimization and watching the conversion rates from different sources and adjusting bids as necessary. Drop the sources that don't pan out.

It's similar to stock trading, mitigate your losses quickly and don't bleed your ROI or throw away excess money on "testing" what works. Prune the sources that aren't doing anything for you, and watch your ad spends become much more productive.

The only thing the traffic described in this article is good for is vanity metrics and pumping up numbers like it sounds several of these large brand sites are doing.

If you're looking to inflate your numbers, sure... waste a bunch of money on a ton of bot hits, it's still 1999 right? Just don't expect any sales or conversions from that type of traffic... ever. It just simply won't happen.

This comment was completely tongue in cheek; in all seriousness it was great to see them fix this so quickly.

Tell me that blog post didn't read like a security exploit announcement...

Anyways, as discussed, it never should've happened in the first place, but it sounds like from the comment threads that it was likely Framework related, so.... yeah, still prettty bad.

Mannnnnnn, this exploit is SO 4 hours ago... ;D

A better mousetrap.

Yeah, either way it's spun... seems like a pretty good arrangement for their platform, and should work out well for all involved. Seems to solve the problem of ad exchanges having heavily-manual interfaces, or having to setup a 3rd party tracking system for helping optimize spends.

The system sounds pretty slick, and if does what it says it will, I think their UI will go a long way towards helping them gain traction with the smaller firms.

If it truly makes things as easy as it wants/claims to, it should find a pretty solid base of users fairly quick.

Sounds great! Looking forward to checking it out. Very curious to see how the auto-optimization does compared to our current systems.

Sounds like a cool new platform to check out!

I've contacted them about starting some campaigns for both myself and clients, and looking forward to seeing how the system delivers on its promises.

Like kposehn said, if it is really that good I'll be moving a lot more of my budget to it. Would really take a lot of the time and effort out of large-scale media buying.

It's ridiculously fun! I highly suggest at least checking out a friend's quadcopter; you'll want one after the first few seconds of being behind the controls.

I bought my AR 1.0 used, but like-new, for $200 with the factory battery which lasts about 10 minutes or so, as well as a MaxAmps upgraded battery for extended flight time. I get about 20-25 minutes out of the aftermarket battery under normal wind conditions. It's plenty of time to have a lot of fun with, but I'd highly suggest having at least one spare battery to follow-up with for max flight time. On the flip-side, you don't want to run your equipment for too long without giving it some time for cool-down, so it's kinda a silver lining in regards to longevity.

If you're on the fence, I'd say spring for it and go for the AR Drone first, it's a great starting platform for people new to quadcopters and RC flying. If it's something you can see yourself getting more into, then debate pursuing more of a hobby-grade setup as you go.

There are a ton of nuances to the RC hobby alone, flying doesn't make it much easier for newcomers unfortunately. Start with something polished and make your life a lot easier, you'll no doubt be hooked. Either way, it's so worth it!!

Drones are awesome!

I've currently got the AR Parrot Drone 1.0 and looking to pickup the 2.0 soon, and maybe a hobbyist grade quad-copter later this year or next. They're way too much geeky fun!!

Highly recommend anyone on here who hasn't played with a drone/quad-copter to have a go at it. You won't regret it.

"Only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Business is ultimately managing risk and figuring out how to make it both profitable and (sometimes) fun.

If you're hung-up on and/or scared of the risks of starting a business rather than earnestly evaluating each bit of information for it's situational value, and moving agilely ahead... you're probably going to run into issues.

Keep risk in mind, but be courageous enough to act/execute without having it pull you down. Be an opportunistic and optimistic realist, with a cynic's backup plan.

To put it simply:

"Scared money don't make no money."

Ahhh EPROMs, so much fun to be had with these lil guys. They're everywhere!

It really is a lot of fun to dump old chips and see what they contain. I have a few devices here at the office that I like to update configs on just to hyper-terminal in on and play around with once in a while. EEPROM's are a similar sort of fun, but always feels just that much more nostalgically "legacy."

I've got a USB based EPROM burner which makes easy work of the burning and flashing.

Got my start with this type of thing when I used it to burn EPROM's for my friends and modify their ECU's to accept EPROMS vs the factory read-only chips that came in them.

We'd dump the original EPROM values, adjust things, burn it all back to an EEPROM and pop it in the freshly added ZIF socket. Voila, new fuel/timing maps. :)

This year has been an exciting one from the very start!

I've had several successful (read: awesomely profitable) new ventures this year, such as an ad network that I established and sold to a private party for a solid 5 figure amount within a month.

On one of my more established networks, I was able to grow the unique impressions by over 100k a day within 2 weeks of focusing on it. I also established a domain parking system that already has over 500+ domains parked on it and growing quickly.

During a random latenight coding session, I created a unique new channel/model of selling category related emails to advertisers bidding on a CPM basis real-time, and lining up another venture to integrate with this platform.

These are but a few of the cool things currently being worked on by myself and my growing staff. Hoping to be hiring on more talent on soon and probably getting a swanky office in La Jolla, CA soon.

Have some pretty exciting plans for the year!

Haha! Excellent quote. Are we talking about life or juggling, or wait, business? ;)

Never gave much thought to my early interest in juggling or the juggling books I read when I was young and how it could possibly be later related to my approach to life and career.

I'm a modest juggler at best, and still young in my professional career in the tech world, but that quote and general sentiment gives me new perspective on how my opinion of failure was shaped growing up.

Strongly agreed, and great insight on the everyday struggle of a research heavy life or career!

It can be a heavy burden at times, but being prepared mentally helps a lot.

As my dad always taught me growing up, "attitude is everything."

Plus, tackling a large stack of problems, and iterating until successful feels so rewarding. Both during and after the fact.

Failure is key to success.

Cool idea! Here's a product my ad network manages the promotion for that is quite similar: http://go.chaseclicks.net/SHHK

There isn't as large of a variety of woods, but there is good flexibility in pricing, size, and it's more for photographs and keepsakes than a map of an area.

Also, not trying to detract from your post by sharing this other product, just thought it was very similar and thought I'd share. Looks like a well thought out system and business model! Best of luck!!

19/20 posts I checked from my personal blog, I got Cory Doctorow.

For my professional copywriting and various web service blog posts I got overwhelmingly HP Lovecraft and Cory Doctorow.

Following up on this, the "sound" was actually horrible during the presentation. Less than "awesome," after the fact.

Useful nuggets of advice in there though, despite the audio issues I experienced on the stream. Would be interested to re-watch it without the constant screeching from the camera.