Never-Before-Seen Photos From the Early Days of Space Exploration
The Gemini astronauts also took some of the most memorable photos in NASA history. You’d think we would have seen them all by now. But with Nasa’s help and funding, a team of researchers at Arizona State University led by lunar scientist Mark Robinson has retrieved from the archives dozens of outtakes that never made it into wide circulation.
Photos: NASA
Ed note: Check out our friends at Air & Space for more stunning photos from the Gemini mission.
I want the top image in a 6’ x 6’ print on my wall.
The term “depressive realism” was coined by researchers back at the end of the 1980s as a way of describing the surprising phenomenon that claims that people with depression have a more accurate perception of reality, especially in terms of their own place in the world and their ability to influence events. How true it is that the sadder you are, the wiser you are.
File under: sad but true.
E&Y has stepped into the void, proposing three different models for social gaming companies to pick from: game-based, in which revenue is recognized very slowly, over the life of the game; user-based, a faster scheme that lasts over the time a typical user sticks with the game; and speedy item-based, rooted on the properties of specific virtual goods. Using the last method, Zynga recognizes revenues from “consumable” virtual items like energy immediately and revenues from “durable” ones like tractors over the time a player is projected to stick with a game.
Audra Mae - Here I Go Again
Pretty solid cover. Her other stuff is excellent as well.
Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean.
Apple’s Tax Strategy Aims at Low-Tax States and Nations - NYTimes.com
“Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich” is the sexiest accounting term I’ve ever heard.
Camp Tamakwa, 1981.
I can provide you a really great experience at ~$100/yr and a really great experience with VIP at 45k/yr. That is a huge gap (I know!) but at our core Automattic is a technology company, and very small given the market we’re addressing, and so it’s just as important what we choose not to do as what we do. I want to laser-focus our smartest folks on just a few areas, and do those areas better than anyone else in the world.
WordPress Is Now A ~$50 Million Business, But It Still Won’t Take My Money - SplatF
From a comment by Matt Mullenweg (WP CEO)
President Barack Obama and Jimmy Fallon slow jam the news on student loan interest hikes.
At first glance, the company’s wackiness factor seems high. “In principle it makes sense, but it’s a long-term project for sure,” says Esther Dyson, herself an avid space entrepreneur.
Jerry Neumann did a fantastic job building this Venture Capital Family Tree
In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.
All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person — and you obviously are — then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.
If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.
Andrea Donderi - Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture
(via)
Pebble’s Kickstarter success isn’t an anomoly; that they didn’t raise money isn’t a mistake on the part of investors. Pebble is the first example of what will soon be a common occurrence: a startup raises seed capital to build the software platform that powers a prototype physical product; it then pre-sells the first run of production goods, and uses the traction established to raise a venture round to fund the growth of the platform and the team.
But crowdfunding equity stock purchases for risky startups — the target of the JOBS act — cannot work for four main reasons:
- It is based on inappropriate extrapolations from other similar-appearing activities, such as donation crowdfunding (Kickstarter).
- Purchasing equity (stock) in early stage ventures is too innately complex to standardize.
- The conduct of due diligence in the ventures raising money will render crowdfunding prohibitively expensive and thus impractical.
- Crowds are stupid as often as not, or worse.
HBR - The Road to Crowdfunding Hell
More or less agree. I don’t think that due diligence will be impracticably expensive, but that’s only because I don’t think anything more than “check the box” diligence will be performed. Hell, it’s not unusual to see experienced VCs go through the motions when it comes to diligence—they’ll make plenty of calls, sure, but true diligence aims to identify latent assumptions and seek disconfirming evidence for those assumptions. The psychological truth is that when an investor’s excitement depends on accepting the premise of an idea, they will tend to do exactly that, at least until the weight of past experience provides sufficient counter to the excitements of the present.
Pictured is the Super-Kamiokande, a giant neutrino detector, buried 1000m underground in Japan. Usually filled with 50,000 tonnes of pure water, the observatory detects neutrinos by watching for interactions with the subatomic particles in the water. These interactions are extremely rare, which is why the detector needed to be built to the scale it is.
Breathtaking
Highlights:
- MiniDisc the Magnificent
- “We ain’t lion: this adorable Goliath Backpack Pal is a grrreat way to scare away those first-day-of-school jitters.”
- Auctions
- Harry Potter
- Free E-Cards
- More VHS Top Sellers
- Page 20 of 58
- Next »
- « Previous
Ephemera
See more-
“The emphasis upon entrepreneurship as the crucial factor in capitalistic evolution involves both theorist and historian in considerations that go far...”
-
-
When is it time to close your startup and try something new?
You are most productive when you can focus. Don’t kid yourself, the hobby startup that...
-
The curious economics of the "sharing economy"
Venkatesh Rao published a thought-provoking piece on Ribbonfarm today, comparing the deal-seeking...
