wysiwirs

yogiadityanathdoingthings:Yogi Adityanath regretting lying to...

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 13:02:24 +0530

yogiadityanathdoingthings:

Yogi Adityanath regretting lying to Narendra Modi about his Mangalvaar ka Vrat.

Photo

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 18:10:06 +0530

interesting-maps: The earliest proposed map of the Pakistan, c....

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 01:38:09 +0530

interesting-maps:

The earliest proposed map of the Pakistan, c. 1940.

From Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin, by Akbar Ahmed.

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Tue, 22 Dec 2015 01:35:06 +0530

😍

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 20:48:14 +0530

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baawri: Barkha Dutt, of NDTV, shuts down white feminism at the...

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:51:37 +0530

baawri:

Barkha Dutt, of NDTV, shuts down white feminism at the Women in the World summit in New York City. [X]

10 points to Slytherin for this

the-kellephant:david-tennants-little-fangirl: I still laugh at...

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 07:30:07 +0530

the-kellephant:

david-tennants-little-fangirl:

I still laugh at this every single time I see it.

mapsontheweb: Unpaid annual New York City parking violations...

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 23:36:34 +0530

mapsontheweb:

Unpaid annual New York City parking violations by diplomats.

From Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets

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betterdatethannever: beauty, hair & makeup...

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:18:35 +0530

betterdatethannever:

beauty, hair & makeup hairstylesbeauty.tumblr.com

Why bar code tattoos are a bad idea.

this is what happens when you put a highlighter in the microwave in case you were wondering

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 23:32:58 +0530

Credits:this is what happens when you put a highlighter in the microwave in case you were wondering was originally published in imgur: the simple image sharer on April 01, 2014 at 03:47PM. This was shared via Feedly

Mughal-E-Azam: Fit For Royalty

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 23:04:21 +0530

A TV channel has recently been scaling high TRPs with the story of Jodha Akbar. It has a cost-effective set design that uses a few stock locations for every scene and uses wind-blown curtains, outdoor shots, ambient lighting and expensive furnishings to convey opulence. A few years ago, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s film of the same name […]

Credits:Mughal-E-Azam: Fit For Royalty was originally published in Unboxed Writers on March 31, 2014 at 11:53AM. This was shared via Feedly

Maximizing the value of worry: Snowden's new project

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:35:51 +0530

At a recent conference, I was talking with Ed Snowden about the range of data that’s now available, not just to the government, but by extension, to servers in the cloud. We got to thinking about just how much worry…

Credits:Maximizing the value of worry: Snowden’s new project was originally published in Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect on April 01, 2014 at 02:25PM. This was shared via Feedly

Domesticating Rules

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:07:53 +0530

We want a society where everyone is genuine and authentic and rule-following. An ideal society. But such a society we will also find boring.

Credits:Domesticating Rules was originally published in Devdutt on March 15, 2014 at 02:20AM. This was shared via Feedly

Why Do App Developers Still Live with Their Moms?

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:39:24 +0530

With the virtual disappearance of major white-collar employers like Eastman Kodak and Westinghouse — once fairly reliable career on-ramps — young talent is focusing on entrepreneurship as a path forward. Some kids are skipping college entirely and heading straight into business, pointing to the success of dropouts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. But unschooled entrepreneurship is unlikely to end happily for most.

A recent story in the New York Times highlighted a pair of high school students who had experienced considerable success as app developers. Their product, a program designed to combat procrastination, quickly became the best-selling productivity app on iTunes. They received acclaim and took meetings with heavyweights at industry conferences. The money was not exactly life-changing, though: after Apple’s cut, they split $30,000, some of which went to business expenses. Not bad, but hardly Zuckerbergian.

Unfortunately, app development came at the expense of schoolwork, resulting in a sharp decline in one developer’s grades as the pair headed into the college application season. As a fallback, he’s applying for a Thiel Fellowship, which pays 20 lucky winners $100,000 to skip college and start a business instead.

There are certainly some high-profile entrepreneurial success stories out there. Facebook’s recent purchase of WhatsApp for $19 billion instantly created fantastic wealth for many of its 55 employees. Kids might understandably dream of retiring rich before they reach drinking age. Yet like most apps, WhatsApp is hardly unique as a product: Line, Kik Messenger, Viber, WeChat, and others do much the same thing.

This is not uncommon. The Apple Store lists more than one million apps and claims that there are 275,000 registered app developers in the U.S. A fair number of apps are indistinguishable from one another, and the vast majority will not yield riches, or even a reasonable income. It is hard to dominate a product category where a pair of self-taught high school kids can create a bestseller; success in this situation is more a matter of luck than of merit.

The reward system for app developers follows a familiar “winner take all” pattern described by Cornell economist Robert Frank, where a few outstanding successes capture huge returns while those not lucky enough to reach the top see very little. In this way, the industry parallels drug dealing. Hear me out.

In a chapter of their best-selling book Freakonomics, “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?,” Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner note that most street-level drug dealers earn modest wages at best — they may neglect their schoolwork, and some take straight jobs in addition to make ends meet. But a few drug dealers become fantastically wealthy, and the chance to play this lottery keeps many lower-level dealers in the game.

The Thiel Foundation president points out that “the safe career track is totally broken.” Lawyers can be laid off; janitors have PhDs. This is true. But encouraging kids to blow off schoolwork to write apps, or skip college to become entrepreneurs, is like advising them to take their college money and invest it in PowerBall. A few may win big; many or most will end up living with their moms.

There is a possible consolation prize: perhaps these kids can parlay their programming skill into jobs at Facebook or Google. Unfortunately, the odds there are only slightly better. Facebook had 2,400 employees in 2011; 3,500 in 2012; 4,900 in 2013; and 6,300 today. With about 1,400 net hires per year, getting a job at Facebook is only slightly more likely than getting drafted into the NFL. Twitter has 2,700 employees; Dropbox has 550; Snapchat has 21. The combined global workforces of Groupon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Yelp, Pandora, and Zillow is smaller than the number that Circuit City fired in January 2009 when it was liquidated. (Hey, it could be worse: the computer and electronics hardware industry has shed 750,000 jobs since the turn of the 21^st century.)

I’ve looked up every company that did an IPO in the U.S. since 2000. Even the best-known employers of knowledge workers often have fewer people than a local car dealer or Walmart store. For instance, real estate site Zillow has 812 employees, and travel site Kayak has only 205.

The message for aspiring entrepreneurs? Stay in school, and resist the lure of quick success. In introductory economics courses in college, kids learn about “opportunity costs” and the “time value of money.” Though $15,000 seems like a lot to a high school senior, it’s hardly a great choice for entrepreneurs or anyone else if it comes at the expense of an education that yields a far higher lifetime income, a more agile mind, and a more rewarding life.

Credits:Why Do App Developers Still Live with Their Moms? was originally published in HarvardBusiness.org on March 26, 2014 at 07:30PM. This was shared via Feedly

Centuries of European border changes

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:11:01 +0530

The Centennia Historical Atlas is a program that shows you border changes in Europe and the Middle East, from the …

Credits:Centuries of European border changes was originally published in FlowingData on March 28, 2014 at 02:08PM. This was shared via Feedly

Early adopters

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:43:10 +0530

Early adopters may seem crazy.

Credits:Early adopters was originally published in Fredo and Pidjin. The Webcomic. » Fredo & Pid’Jin on March 28, 2014 at 12:33AM. This was shared via Feedly

Before the Internet

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:14:33 +0530

Credits:Before the Internet was originally published in xkcd.com on March 28, 2014 at 09:30AM. This was shared via Feedly

Best Web Browser Extension

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:46:21 +0530

Best Web Browser Extension Editor’s Note The image may be downloaded in higher resolutions: 2340 x 1200, 300 dpi 4679 x 2400, 600 dpi 9358 x 4800, 1200 dpi

Credits:Best Web Browser Extension was originally published in I Can Barely Draw on March 31, 2014 at 12:31PM. This was shared via Feedly

A Giant World Globe Made Entirely of Matches

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:18:38 +0530

American artist Andy Yoder created this incredible world globe made entirely of matches. Completed in 2014 after two years of work, the sculpture, entitled Early One Morning, measures an impressive 42″ in diameter. The frame is made from cardboard and foam inside a plywood skeleton. Each match is glued at the bottom to the…

Credits:A Giant World Globe Made Entirely of Matches was originally published in TwistedSifter on April 01, 2014 at 12:59AM. This was shared via Feedly

Every girl when I start to show interest

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 18:49:53 +0530

Credits:Every girl when I start to show interest was originally published in imgur: the simple image sharer on March 31, 2014 at 08:50PM. This was shared via Feedly