Why the Economics of The Aardvark Acquisition Make Sense - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/02/12/aardvark-google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tecosystems+%28tecosystems%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> "It's interesting that the founders left Google, spent 2.5 years building something, then get acquired by their former company for $50 million. What is going wrong at Google that is costing them this kind of 'innovation premium'?" \- David Lifson, Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

Perhaps it's simply because Google doesn't give $50 million dollar bonuses, and never will?

<comment><USER3> Ha! They say that you have to leave your job to be compensated fairly, but that's the most extreme example I can think of ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article seems to assume that the company is worth it. According to TechCrunch they have more than 90000 users and process 3000 queries per day. Their FAQ says that they have 20 employees.

I can see that there is some value in knowing where and when people are asking a question related to a product. And I guess this kind of service could help Google to expand in the third world where most people only use mobiles to access the internet

But $50 million still is a lot of money for 20 employees, 90000 users, and about a Gigabyte of data.

<comment><USER3> Surely the value of the data can't be measured by its size, can it? The content must have some reading on its value, no? The $140 million Picasso canvas that woman tore a couple of weeks back is worth more than a 60 inch square of cloth and paint, right?

To be honest, I have no idea whether the data itself is worth it. But I'm betting Google does, and that very specific answers to very specific questions have substantial value for them, both from an algorithmic input perspective as well as on a pure content basis.

$50M worth? Probably not. But throw in the people, the user community (and remember, that 90K figure was as of October of last year), and the mechanism of getting people to answer other people's questions and I can see the math working.

My concern wouldn't be the price. I'd be more worried that Google will mismanage its acquired asset, as they have with other acquisitions.

<comment><USER4> The fact that somebody paid $140 million for a Picasso makes it expensive but not necessarily valuable ;)

Nokia's CES2010 keynote video is quite interesting if you think about mobiles. Apparently they have implemented mobile applications for local businesses in India for ordering and advertising products. I still think the acquisition is about Google on mobiles.

<comment><USER3> If someone's going to pay that, I'd say that's a fair proxy of its value.

But point taken on the mobile front; I think there's definitely a case to be made there. Will try and track down the Nokia keynote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice promise in the title, but the article doesn't really try to estimate anything. Almost no content.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I wrote it.

That said, looking at the economics doesn't require, in my view, actual numbers. Because mostly when we look at the economics of private companies we don't have the actual numbers, or the ones that we have are very imperfect.

In this case, to estimate would have been nothing but pure speculation. With so many variables unknown, it didn't seem to make sense.

That said, if you or anyone else has those numbers and can build a model, I'd love to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the founding team wants a fair price, they need the option to sell to a non-Google company. I don't think Google would be happy selling its internal projects to Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> Precisely, which is the risk Google assumes. That said, at scale, the premium paid to buy them on an open market likely compares favorably to the expense of internally managing dozens if not hundreds of smaller projects.</comment></comment>


What happens when you randomize every parameter of the Google Maps API - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7lifao/what_happens_when_you_randomize_every_parameter/ <comment><AUTHOR> original article: [http://www.shaunutter.com/coding/random-google- maps/](http://www.shaunutter.com/coding/random-google-maps/) loads only a couple now..

See these for snapshots:

* [https://imgur.com/a/JVvzb](https://imgur.com/a/JVvzb)

* [https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/637346435520827392](https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/637346435520827392)</comment>


The Ultimate Irony of Groupon - <AUTHOR> http://attorneyfee.com/ultimate-irony-groupon/2012

<comment><USER2> I wonder what Groupon's Spokescat ([http://www.quora.com/Groupon/Whats-the- story-behind-the-Grou...](http://www.quora.com/Groupon/Whats-the-story-behind- the-Groupon-bling-cat)) has to say about this fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hilarious irony aside, what particularly is it that investors believe the company misrepresented about their financials? For people who didn't follow this too closely?

<comment><USER4> According to [http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/31/why-groupon-is-poised- for-...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/31/why-groupon-is-poised-for- collapse/) it's how liabilities related to refunds have been reported

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea. Basically a ton of accounting stuff that, in the eyes of the plaintiffs and the class action lawyers, Groupon had a duty to disclose before the IPO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imgur screencap because the website is down:

<http://i.imgur.com/YpkNp.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Traffic jam. Looks like it's back up...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't wait to see what happens to their stock in the morning...</comment>


Vungle CEO charged with attempted murder, sexual abuse - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-startup-CEO-charged-with-attempted-12294490.php?utm_content=sfg_hp_zonec_hold_v1&ipid=sfghpholdreccos <comment><USER2> Title is not accurate any more, attempted murder charge has been dropped.

<comment><USER3> I guess it should be "sexual abuse of two children under three years old" now?</comment></comment>


Spiders that have formed armies 50,000 strong - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160122-meet-the-spiders-that-have-formed-armies-50000-strong <comment><USER2> That is interesting - one of the postulated prerequisites for sociality in insects is haplo-diploidy, where one gender is haploid and the other is diploid, like it happens in bees and ants.

This leads to the curious outcome where sisters are closer related to their sisters than to their daughters: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_rati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy)

I assume these spiders are all diploid?

Wikipedia says that part of the social behaviors in these spiders is that they don't discriminate towards foreign offspring. I'm reminded of Argentine super- colonies, which are ant species which form enormous colonies stretching several hundred kilometers but which may or may not be genetically distinct - one hypothesis as to why they cooperate and not fight is this:

>the reason ants in the Mediterranean don't fight is that, although they are genetically diverse, they have lost the diversity in the genes that are involved in recognition and thus don't recognize each other as different.

Source, 2004: [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/april7/antstudies-47.html](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/april7/antstudies-47.html)

Wonder whether these spiders have the same thing!

</comment><comment><USER3> Along similar lines. Anyone with a shark phobia has something new to fear: Great whites also hunt in packs.

>At Seal Island, white sharks arrive and depart year after year in stable "clans" of two to six individuals. Whether clan members are related is unknown, but they get along peacefully enough. In fact, the social structure of a clan is probably most aptly compared to that of a wolf pack.

[http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the- past/191391/...](http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the- past/191391/sociable-killers?page=4)

<comment><USER4> Hmmm... so white sharks can be trained.

Excellent

I need a jet ski

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> John Wyndham's SF novel 'Web' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_\(novel\))) was an interesting exploration of spider cooperation - uncannily close to the observations detailed in this article, but written in the 1960s!

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone would like to revel in the goosebumps this awesome article elicits, I found a sweet list of spiders in film up to 2007:

[http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/spider.films.html](http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/spider.films.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Natures own social network.

<comment><USER8> Let's hope it doesn't turn into a World Wide Web

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You don't get to 50,000 friends without eating a few enemies.</comment>


Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self. - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, I built a site to solve a couple of my problems regarding sleep, and thought you guys might like it too. It's called WakeMyself, and here's the URL: http://www.wakemyself.com
Have you ever overslept despite the alarm and wished "Damn, I wish I could go back in time and tell my stupid sleeping self to snap out of it." That's the basic idea behind WakeMyself. It lets you receive a wakeup call from your yesterday's self. Just leave a message, set an alarm, and you get a call from yesterday's self.
Another problem I had: I really wanted to remember my dreams but always forget to remember. So I added a recording feature to WakeMyself. You just say something after the beep and it will record your voice, and the recording is available on the website when you come back. This way you can capture all your dreams while you still have them in your memory.
Hope you guys like it. I would love lots of feedback. Thanks! <comment><USER3> Very cool, congrats on shipping!

Are you using Twilio to power the calls?

Some quick feedback:

1\. I'd recommend having a clock selector for the "wake up time" -- right now it's not clear whether I'm setting an alarm for minutes from now, or for a specific time in the future, and what time zone it will be in.

2\. Signing up initially is a friction point -- you might want to just let people set an alarm with a phone number, and then after they set a few alarms, send them a text prompting them to create an online account where they can manage all their alarms. You can use the phone number as a unique identifier before they create an account to store all the different reminders.

Congrats again on launching!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks for the feedback! Yes I used Twilio API. I went to a hackathon last weekend and built this using Twilio API, and it was cool so I decided to refine it some more and release it.

1\. Yeah currently it's alarm for hours and minutes "from now" rather than actual time, because you know, time zone conversion thing is really annoying and takes up too much time. But you're right I gotta make that more clear.

2\. Yeah I'm concerned about that too. I think I might actually think about doing it that way too. Thanks for the idea!

<comment><USER3> Re: 1, you can set it in the database as a UTC record and then have it visually change in the HTML (using javascript) with several options.

Eg: If I select 7am on 6/15 from your dropdown list, you render some inline HTML that shows some/all of the following:

"7am EST" "4am PST" "6am CST"

etc

Timezones are definitely tricky, but if you search StackOverflow or other sites there might be some good recommended approaches.

<comment><USER4> I've worked in a lot of time/timezone related apps and Moment (Javascript) has treated me the best so far.

<http://momentjs.com/>

<comment><USER5> <http://www.datejs.com/> has been my goto js lib for handling frontend date/time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! My only complaint - I copied your URL without the "www." and thought the site was broken, but apparently it's just a subdomain issue. Other than that I like the clean design and usability. Also I imagine you did the hours until time instead of time itself because of tricky time zone issues, but if you had both options it'd be even easier to use. Good luck.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious about that. Does every major website typically have two access points, one with "www." and one without, where one is redirected to the other?

<comment><USER8> Yes, I believe this is pretty much standard practice. Keeps Google from getting confused by duplicate content and sends all the juice from links to one url rather than two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just a few things:

1\. Doesn't make much sense to have a link to home page on the home page - WakeMyself is a link.

2\. It'd be nice to make step 1, 2 and 3 boxes to be same height, as well as vertically align the controls in those boxes, so they are on one visual line. Currently it's a bit too "jumpy" (look at big text field, then look a bit up to see time entry, then down on "wake myself" button).

3\. I'd be nice to have "sign in" as either popup or just sliding area on the frontpage, without having to navigate to a separate page.

4\. "remember me" does not align with actual checkbox (osx, latest chrome)

5\. No error messages seems to be displayed when logging in with non-existing account.

6\. When signing up, on "Fill out profile" page there seems to be a bit too much of the whitespace between the actual title ("Fiil out profile") and controls panel.

7\. "Sign up" text on button on "Fill out profile" is a bit misleading - <USER2> I already signed up or not? If yes, than it should read something else. If no, then it should reflect that as well.

8\. Is service US-only? It probably should say that straight away, so people from other countries don't waste their time signing up. (Actually you do already, but only on the front page - needs to be on sign up page as well I guess).

9\. "Sign out" should probably mention user name somewhere, that's just a common UI convention.

That's just a cursory glance.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Really cool. To me though they should be apps and 2 separate ones at that, even if the functionality can be used in both ways. If you were to just market one app as a 'dream catcher' that is synced to an alarm that allows people to record their dreams, I think that would clarify your value proposition. Separate from that is the app that wakes you up with a previous recording you set.

They offer different things even if they both occur when someone is waking up..

Either way, well done!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is brilliant. I would seriously pay for this service if it could use translation (edit: transcription) to keep my dreams sorted - I never remember dreaming after a few moments after waking up and this would fascinating for me.

An important request: make entries deletable, I just tried a test and the sound quality wasn't sufficient (mobile issues).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Yeah the reason that I've made this available for free currently is because I thought if I started out charging I would be fixed with that business model, and I don't even yet know what this can be used for other than my own cases. So I just decided to release it as beta and learn from people. Please do try out and let me know if you have any feedback :)

And about translation, did you mean transcription? or translation as in language translation?

<comment><USER11> Right, transcription. I think Twilio has speech-to-text?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that would not be difficult, it will be added soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome app! I used it to wake myself up while taking a nap at a hackathon. Keep up the work!

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice. I did something like this (tho MUCH more limited!) back in the 80s. I created a little Turbo Pascal program that let you enter the wake-up time, and at that time it would make my home phone ring, which was guaranteed to always wake me up.

It used the AT commands of the modem to do a little onhook/offhook toggling and then dialing my own number and then going back onhook. The local phone company would interpret the sequence as a ring-test request and call my number.

It was fun to write and I used it for years.

Good luck!

<comment><USER14> "it would make my home phone ring, which was guaranteed to always wake me up."

That would work for me the first 5 times, maybe. After that I'll have built up an ironclad immunity to the sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have this same thing as an app on my phone (that I wrote myself and is not polished but who cares, it works).

I think the idea is awesome, and it does work well to hear yourself when in that just-5-more-minutes-mom half awake state of mind.

Why a service rather than an alarm app? That strikes me as pushing the user into a less effective/usable solution to the problem that gives other parties access to personal information in order to ... I'm not even sure why, but I can't think of any reason the customer would prefer this.

<comment><AUTHOR> How does your app do text-to-speech, if you don't mind me asking?

The reason for building this as a service is because I thought there's more to this than just a single player alarm system if enough people want to use this. I just wanted to test it out and see enough people will like this. Hope this makes sense? :)

<comment><USER15> The phone app only replays a recorded message from yourself. I have one that runs on a laptop that does text to speech (it plays my music getting gradually louder with the time spoken every minute along with any other messages you want read out (either every minute or at specific times)).

I didn't have much experience with text to speech before this so I just used the open source stuff I knew about (espeak and the mbrola voices). I want to find a good way to do this in the app because I like the functionality so much that I use the laptop app more than the phone app. I'm talking about android so there are a few options I'll look at when I get back to this project.

I can see doing it as a service if you plan to add all sorts of magic on the back end (text to speech, read news/headlines/weather to you). All stuff you could do in an app but when you have that many features you can charge a monthly fee instead of a one time app sale and you can probably monetize the user data as well somehow. So yes, it does make sense.

For some reason this kind of thing trips my privacy alarm, I would be uncomfortable sharing the messages with a third party (even if the most personal message would be something like "get your lazy ass up on time today, you haven't gone for a run in three days"). On reflection this is probably just me and wouldn't apply to most people, I have a strong bias against storing private data or messages in the cloud because I work in those industries and am aware of how common it is to trawl the user data for funny stuff to share with coworkers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I agree that privacy is a valid issue. I will think about it some more. Thank you for the feedback!

<comment><USER15> No problem, it's cool to find someone else who thinks this type of alarm is something worth doing.

I'll be following your progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apparently I'm already using this for something slightly different than the intended purpose and loving it.

This may be an excellent tool for me to send myself reminders for tasks I'm doing later in the day. I often write a task list in one moment, then forget it in the midst of the day's work. It's the use of the "Call yourself after" section being a timer, rather than a clock that makes that easy to think about.

I've currently got it set to remind me to leave work on time for an evening appointment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear that! Can you elaborate on how it being a timer rather than a clock makes it easy to think about? That might be very useful feedback for me. Thanks!

<comment><USER16> When I go to sleep, I usually end up thinking about how long I'm going to be out (usually not enough) so I'd just set the timer for 6 hours from now rather than for 6:00 AM. That's the way my brain works anyway. The best feature on my phone's alarm clock is that it says how far in the future the alarm will go of once it's set. That's also saved me a couple of times when I accidentally set the alarm for the next day.

During the day, it's not too hard to do the math (if I need to know something at 3:00 and it's 11:30, for example).

I haven't tested this yet, but I also imagine myself just setting it two hours ahead, for a time I'd likely need the reminder, but am pretty sure I'd have completely forgotten. As an example, my first message was set for 5 minutes in the future. Then I realized I was late for a meeting and got a call. I had completely forgotten that I had set the set message until I answered.

Also, I noticed that the message started to quickly that I missed the first part as I answered. A second pause or possibly a bumper "This is a message you left on WakeMyself" would help avoid that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! And that totally makes sense. I will add that header message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've tried services likes this before but it's too easy to know what it is and ignore it and then fall back asleep. Maybe I'm just more stubborn than everyone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever tried something that tells you what to do? I've tried things that wakes me up with music or all kinds of things, but the key here I think is the message you can write to yourself. If you could tell yourself all the things you need to do for the day, that would be a really good way to start the day. Because I find that even when I do wake up most of the times I just do nothing productive. I think it's great to hear a todo list when waking up.

<comment><USER14> There's still the issue that you have to answer your phone with this service (provided you don't write an Android app that automatically answers calls from this number and puts them on the loudspeaker). Once I get used to knowing the phone call will happen every day, I'll just start holding the pillow around my head until the ringing stops and return to sleep.

I'm much more tempted to write something for a Raspberry Pi with speakers attached that will immediately begin yelling at me at the proper time. More configurable, and less prone to weird phone-related issues. (The only vulnerability would be if I started unplugging the device or speakers in my sleep, but there are ways to mitigate that.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The recording feature seems like a neat way to differentiate this from alarms, but I think I'm getting the wrong idea from your second paragraph.

I've got an alarm on my phone already. The tone is the same as my ringtone. The slide required to shut it off is identical to the slide required to answer. If it weren't for the record feature, would this really be adding anything? If not, why not emphasise the record as the primary feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking.

I think it's more about the message than the alarm itself. The problem I saw with alarms is not that I never hear them, but most of the times I do hear them but just turn it off because that's the only thing you can do with an alarm, right?

But if I can hear a message containing meaningful content, I _will_ listen to it, because that's the intended action. And if that content tells me my todo list for today and helps me realize how busy I am and gives me the sense of urgency, it would be easier to wake up. Because as I mentioned, there are countless times where I regret not waking up and think "Damn if I was able to think rationally while I was sleeping, I would have totally waken up."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be cool if you could record tomorrow's message by responding to the current wakeup call - I find something like talking involves waking up more than just listening.

Although judging by my mood in the mornings, my message would be along the lines of "Don't wake up, don't do it. It's too late for me now, go back to sleep whilst you still can!"

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the dream idea a lot. In a similar vein, I made <http://keepdream.me/> to help people record dreams via email when you wake up. I can definitely see how people might prefer voice recording though. Another option to consider is SMS, as a phone call requires you to know when you're waking up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Well I think the whole point of WakeMyself is it functions both as an alarm AND as a dream capturing tool, which means, you _do_ know when you wake up--it's the time you set the alarm at. It's quite tricky, but I think there's a subtle but crucial difference between synchronous capturing (phone call) and asynchronous capturing (sms) and that's what makes it work. But maybe it's just me, so please try it out tonight :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have developed a similar app before. Users can set up reminders through a message to a bot on AIM, gchat, MSN ... Then later they will receive a reminder message from the bot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it call you?

<comment><USER21> That was part of the plan. User send a message "8:30PM call me: You look handsome today." to the bot then later you will receive a call from the bot. It is like a command-line alarm on IM.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think in my case the "calling" part is the most important part. It's not even about the calling itself but more about the message. If I get a call from myself and it says "Hey man you have a test today in 3 hours, you can't be sleeping! Snap out of it!" that's pretty effective for me :)

Plus my favorite part is you can respond to yourself and it will be recorded-- the dream capturing part. Please try it, would love to hear your feedback on these. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really interesting. It promises to help bridge the gap between conscious periods, while allowing us to capture bits of our unconscious and dream state musings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! I actually had these two separate ideas, and they came together while I was trying to build the first idea. What was awesome was I was actually able to capture my dream on my first usage. You should try too! Would love feedback :)

<comment><USER22> I am going to try it in the next few days!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is a similar website. It was listed as a best website of 2010 by Time magazine. I think you'll need a different unique selling proposition. (such as the record yourself feature)

<https://wakerupper.com/>

</comment><comment><USER24> It's really awesome, but please, Europe exists...

</comment><comment><USER25> about, time

</comment><comment><USER26> clickable: <http://www.wakemyself.com></comment>


Did You Fall for a Coronavirus Hoax? Facebook Will Let You Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/04/16/835579533/did-you-fall-for-a-coronavirus-hoax-facebook-will-let-you-know <comment><USER2> But will they take this to the next step and do the same for fake political posts?

THAT would be of tremendous help. Let people see, on their own, that they've been misled. Let them come to terms with it, on their own. Let them decide if they want to steer themselves back from the brainwashing.</comment>


Driverless trucks move all iron ore at Rio Tinto's Pilbara mines, in world first - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-worlds-first-automated-mine/6863814 <comment> ju-st It makes sense to replace the highest paid vehicle drivers first. Especially when they are only driving on private roads.</comment>


India's Y Combinator Clone - <AUTHOR> http://www.morpheusventure.com/

<comment><USER2> Just because someone provides an initial round for <10% equity and mimics the YC model, doesn't make them one.

1\. Their application form is doc not a web based one 2\. They ask for Lines of Code

<comment><USER3> That is insubstantial. The part that really sets them apart from YC is that they are only investing their time, not their money.</comment></comment>


VPN Hunter discovers any organization's remote access services - <AUTHOR> http://www.vpnhunter.com/

<comment><USER2> I know I'm not doing anything wrong by searching through all these domains, but it certainly feels wrong.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it feels even more wrong when they give your the ability to Tweet about your findings!

I wonder how long this service will stay up :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> took me by surprise when it even found my RDP connection.</comment>