saisi

Auto's a great thought. It would really kill a class of numerical operations that lead to overflow with type mixing. On the other hand, I once had to get to terms with a code base with the most generous amount of autos. The class hierarchy was maybe was maybe 20 levels with an adequate amount of branching. At any point, I had no idea what particular object I was dealing with and always had to go follow a labyrinthine chain of predecessor function calls to determine the object type actually assigned to an object.

Absolutely brutal. There are a few inferences or projections made by Eric Jackson that seem a wee bit uninformed, but generally it is a thorough shredding of Marissa's tenure. Particularly, I was amazed at how many acquisitions Yahoo's made. Trying to stimulate product lines growth through rapid-fire successive acquisitions is testament of how nebulous or illformed the mobile strategy was. I remember at some point Marissa declaring Yahoo as a 'mobile' or 'mobile-first' company, that's all well and good but you need clear signaling on what kind of mobile engagements should be fostered. Looking at the haphazard consumption, it's hard to argue a case for talent acquisition. Rather she was trying to widen Yahoo's net as quick as possible. If deliberate and engaged, her acquisitions would've matured splendidly under the Yahoo umbrella , but Yahoo chewed more than it could handle (Too much influx creates a bit of tumult and drains resources/managerial harmony. Interesting what impact on company culture these potential fiefdoms had). Looking at individual acquisitions themselves, I really am surprised Yahoo bought: Summly (an app that had no ip at all and basically licensed the core technology. Perhaps she bought it out of hype it had garnered?) or Polyvore (a startup that seemed quite dead in the water as Eric attests with no evident means of fruitful integration into Yahoo. Seems a wee bit nepotic desire influenced the acquisition). Tumblr, on the other hand, was an excellent purchase. Still I wonder, what is the long-term plan of integrating it or expanding on its success?

I believe they occupy different, but slightly overlapping niches in the chain of causation. Theranos' claim to fame is a method of blood testing that requires drawing of significantly smaller amounts compared to traditional/ contemporary methods of blood testing. The claim is that Theranos' method can produce satisfactory blood test results with smaller vials of blood. Google's patent however is specifically on the means of drawing. Therefore, a medical care provider could reasonably combine Google+Theranos' methods, unless of course Theranos' method has a strictly incompatible means of drawing blood. Hopefully someone more versed can shed more light on this

Never heard of Bluestacks till now, I'll give it a spin. Thanks for the recommendation!

Monument Valley was a phenomenal game for me. I'm just really sad that with the iOS age some really great games are easily rendered inaccessible by succeeding iOS updates, iDevice obsolescence, or developer account shutdowns. In sharp contrast to traditional gaming, I can easily delve through my stack for particlar cartridges, GameCube disc or comb through eBay for a particular PlayStation One disc. The great old days of 'Published Once. Play Plenty'.

> if I hand $1 to my brother, and he hands it back to me right away, and we do this 100000 trillion times on a digital money system we designed

Incredibly facetious. Blatantly false.

I hate Hacker News for comments such as yours that do little to further the discussion. You do little to explicate on what makes the statement wrong. It's about constructive dialogue, not notching points. I should have been more explicit. The total volume of transactions through M-PESA is comparable equivalent in worth to half the GDP.

A lot of debate's going round over what is M-Pesa and what it isn't. Yes, M-Pesa is the specific variant of mobile money transfer introduced by Vodacom. However, M-Pesa in Kenya is what pushed mobile money transfers to light in Africa. For the longest while it wasn't just successful, but also the only large scale deployment of such a service (At least Half of GDP flows through the service!). Unlike other countries that had continual relaunches, rebrands, and failures, M-Pesa just bloomed. All that led to this brand genericide where it's much easier to talk of M-Pesa rather than account for Tigo, Airtel money, and all other fledgling counterparts. M-Pesa is the 'kleenex' / 'xerox' of mobile money transfers. (African Telecos are always being acquired, renamed, or merged leading to rebooting/relaunching of their mobile money brands. Contrastingly, Safaricom, the telecommunications company that deploys M-Pesa, is remarkably stable and is the biggest earning corporate entity in Eastern & Central Africa)

Interesting, never heard of Wish before. Notwithstanding, pretty much a of fan of startups are built as a 'traditional' business (built with a view to longevity, little hype, not looking for a quick cash out or acquisition). It's a pretty bold move turning down Amazon. Amazon has the technical, market, and financial capital to squeeze them out [1]. The pinterest-like page dotted with curated items is a key differentiator, but seems to offer little advantage at best and an actual impediment to online shopping. It seems their main advantage will be relying on great curation channels and a close knit community with huge repeat purchasing.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/10/amazon_bo...

I wonder where unicorn(s) would rank if included

It seems his plan of operation is to expand into as many possibly nouveau/profitable industries as possible. If successful, he might end up with something akin to a Samsung conglomeration of diverse product lines. Interested in how the established tech giants like Alibaba will respond to this. He certainly has an uphill battle

Using Facebook for comparison, a retweet is similar to the 'share' button. Heart parallels the 'like' button. Retweeting explicitly draws your followers' attention to the tweet. While a heart seems to have a multitude of purposes: right from expressing sentiment to bookmarking. Twitter in this case wishes to make it clear to new users that Heart is how they express sentiment. Behaviorally, retweets tend to be expression of public endorsement. While hearts(previously favorites) are a semi-private invocation of approval or interest

Pretty cool.

Does anyone have recommendations on great books that cover advanced C internals (other than K&R) and/or GNU extensions for C?

'Things like focus groups, market fit, etc. are not recipes to build amazing products, but rather ways to avoid making really bad product'

Never thought of it that way. I like this