Silicon Valley Tech Exec Popped for Allegedly Stealing Huge Cache of LEGO Bricks →
“In his house, we found hundreds of boxes of unopened LEGO sets,” said Liz Wylie, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View police. “He sold 2,100 items in just over a year on eBay.
And here I thought I liked LEGOs…
Why Shutting Airports Is Not the Best Way to Halt a Global Flu Pandemic →
Ignoring problems with the article’s writeup, this is actually an interesting finding, and my public health friends are about to get an email.
The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man →
A great article from New York Magazine on the ways in which Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has matured (and some of the ways he hasn’t).
Facebook’s Business Model →
If there is one consistent theme in both online and offline advertising, it’s that ads work dramatically better when consumers have purchasing intent. Google makes the vast majority of their revenues when people search for something to buy or hire. They don’t have to stoke demand – they simply harvest it. When people use Facebook, they are generally socializing with friends.
Chris Dixon wrote something I was formulating in the draft stage, and it’s better. Search engines benefit from users’ intent. Just go read his post.
Amanda Cox and countrymen chart the Facebook I.P.O. →
A look behind the scenes at the making of the print and web versions of the Facebook IPO infographic I posted yesterday.
The Imagination Engine: Why Next-Gen Video Games Will Rock Your World →
Unreal Engine 4 represents nothing less than the foundation for the next decade of gaming. It may make Microsoft and Sony rethink how much horsepower they’ll need for their new hardware. It will streamline game development, allowing studios to do in 12 months what can take two years or more today. And most important, it will make the videogames that have defined the past decade look like puppet shows.
High expectations, but I can’t wait to see how it does. Time for a new computer, I suppose.
The Facebook Offering: How It Compares →
Great interactive visualization of other tech IPOs, their first-day gains, and their 3-year returns. For example, if you had held Amazon’s IPO for 3 years, you would have a 2,763% return.
How Pixar Almost Deleted Toy Story 2 →
“rm -r -f *” just should not exist.
Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Markets, Movers, Monopolies →
The usual narrative is that capitalism and perfect competition are synonyms. No one is a monopoly. Firms compete and profits are competed away. But that’s a curious narrative. A better one frames capitalism and perfect competition as opposites; capitalism is about the accumulation of capital, whereas the world of perfect competition is one in which you can’t make any money. Why people tend to view capitalism and perfect competition as interchangeable is thus an interesting question that’s worth exploring from several different angles.
Lots of great points in here about competition, whether in business or academics, monopolies, and markets.
Poll Shows Low Opinion of Facebook →
In the poll of U.S. adults published Tuesday, only 13 percent said they trust Facebook “completely” or “a lot” when it comes to keeping their personal information private. A majority, or 59 percent, said they trust Facebook “only a little,” or “not at all.”
Surprised?
