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The most confusing thing in this whole mess for me is this: How was it possible for Pebble to turn down the 740 million that Citizen offered them last year? How does a company with Draper and Y Combinator as their angels, who then raised an A round with Charles River, still structure itself so the dumbfuck CEO can make a unilateral decision like that? If I had put any capital into that company, I wouldn't even be mad at the management, I would be mad at myself for structuring the deal in a way that lets the CEO gently caress me out of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:05
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I'd take that number with a huge grain of salt. Citizen isn't a tech company, they probably aren't used to making quick deals. It may have been something like: "We might make a conditional offer of $750 million, but it will take a year or more to close and we might pull out at any time for any number of reasons, plus you can't take any more investments until we decide."
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Dec 8, 2016 02:30
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:The most confusing thing in this whole mess for me is this: e: Also this. JawnV6 posted:What makes you think they made bank? A post-IPO company is picking over the smoldering crater while loudly commenting which bits they won't even touch. It's a bad exit for most.
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Dec 8, 2016 03:28
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wateroverfire posted:You can definitely see how more investment (like, adding 10 more metro lines) would improve the situation. But that is true of so many things - if only they received more money, higher priority, etc, things could be better. The public health system needs more money desperately (that trainwreck deserves its own thread, omg). Education needs more money. Transportation needs more money. There are so many priorities but there is only so much money to go around. Yeah, the "no bus for an hour and then 4 in succession" issue was very common in Israel when I was living there. I think some real-time tracking of buses may have allowed some pressure on that to resolve things, and there are realtime apps for consumers, as well.
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Dec 8, 2016 03:34
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wateroverfire posted:I think technology could actually help a lot here, appropos to the unicorn thread. One of the big problems with bus crowding here in Santiago is that there is no adherence to scheduling. Waiting at a stop where a bus is supposed to pass every 5 minutes, for instance, you might see 1 in 20 minutes and it's so full that people are falling out the doors. Then a little later, 4 arrive stacked up at the stop and one is packed, one is sparse, and the other two are almost empty. If people had access to an app that tracked the buses on a route as they moved, with an indicator of fullness, they could feel confident waiting a bit and crowding wouldn't be as bad. And if managers had access to the same data, they might be able to (though they wouldn't, because culture is a hell of a thing) lean on the drivers and dispatchers to keep things on schedule. Wallet posted:There is an app that tracks buses, sort of like this, where I live. There is no capacity indicator, but all of the buses have GPS and are tracked on something that looks like Google maps. As far as I can tell, it has done absolutely nothing to make them more timely, except let me know how late they will be, or occasionally how inexplicably early they left. The Snoo posted:our bus system has a number you can text to get updates on the schedule and it's supposed to have real-time info on where buses are, but it's almost never right or useful. the bus seems to only be on time when it first starts running at 5am Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, the "no bus for an hour and then 4 in succession" issue was very common in Israel when I was living there. I think some real-time tracking of buses may have allowed some pressure on that to resolve things, and there are realtime apps for consumers, as well. In West LA they had this problem like crazy. The problem (as far as I can tell as a rider) was rush hour traffic snarling the buses up at the start of traffic (specific locations AND times where cars jam up) and then "collecting" buses as jerks in cars cut them off constantly. Then, a procession of 2-4 buses would crawl to the end of the line. They'd all get a break and then jump on the road at the same time. They significantly improved on the situation by mandating bus-only lanes in the heavy traffic areas, starting half (?) the buses at the end of the line so they could drive any path to get to their start and rearranged some routes. My bus went through the 3rd busiest intersection in the USA until they moved the route over 1 block and shaved the travel time from 1:15 to 0:25. As to the apps that show the bus arrival time, here they started out as obvious schedule replicas and at some point they actually started being accurate to the ~5 minute level, I guess they were upgrading the buses?
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Dec 8, 2016 03:49
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Bus bunching is an almost universal phenomenon and is very heavily studied. Something causes a first bus to get slightly delayed (a bit of unusual traffic, some old lady who counts out her fare a dime at a time, etc) and from then on that bus is picking up not only the people that it normally would but also people who would have normally missed that bus and taken the next bus. More people getting on and off delays the bus even more and eventually the next bus, which is making great time due to not picking up as many people as it normally would, gets right behind the bus in front of it. It is especially bad on heavily traveled corridors with multiple routes sharing the same stops for a while because people don't bother to try and make a particular bus but instead just show up at the stop whenever and take the first bus that gets there.
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Dec 8, 2016 04:08
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Shifty Pony posted:Bus bunching is an almost universal phenomenon and is very heavily studied. In Israel, at least, it would happen late at night with very low traffic. Drivers would just straight up leave late for no good reason. I'd see three empty buses passing by me as I was waiting for a really bad pedestrian light to turn.
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Dec 8, 2016 04:22
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JawnV6 posted:It's at the Computer History Museum. That is where I have seen it! Thanks.
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Dec 8, 2016 05:34
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Shifty Pony posted:Bus bunching is an almost universal phenomenon and is very heavily studied.
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Dec 8, 2016 06:15
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Arsenic Lupin posted:All the people in manufacturing and physical design are out on the street, with only the smoke from their burning options to keep them warm.  I hope Fitbit is paying those software guys enough to assuage their guilt/forget that they're not getting the payout they were promised.
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Dec 8, 2016 08:17
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ultramiraculous posted:
They're likely paying something comparable to what Pebble was. Many also probably don't have much guilt about what happened to the manufacturing wing because: 1. They didn't have any real control or say in the matter and 2. A very common mindset is seen in my peers that actively want to work for a startup is "I'll work there from the beginning then once we're acquired I'll either have a big payout or be working for an industry leader."
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Dec 8, 2016 17:16
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JawnV6 posted:What makes you think they made bank? A post-IPO company is picking over the smoldering crater while loudly commenting which bits they won't even touch. It's a bad exit for most.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:20
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Konstantin posted:I'd take that number with a huge grain of salt. Citizen isn't a tech company, they probably aren't used to making quick deals. It may have been something like: "We might make a conditional offer of $750 million, but it will take a year or more to close and we might pull out at any time for any number of reasons, plus you can't take any more investments until we decide." companies like pebble are also very new, and valuing them is quite difficult, and in some ways revolves around quantifying things like "hype" and "potential" without a lot of real info to back it up I think that a company in a highly conservative industry (watches) from a conservative country (japan) would've probably backed out of the deal
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Dec 8, 2016 18:23
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Wallet posted:There is an app that tracks buses, sort of like this, where I live. There is no capacity indicator, but all of the buses have GPS and are tracked on something that looks like Google maps. As far as I can tell, it has done absolutely nothing to make them more timely, except let me know how late they will be, or occasionally how inexplicably early they left. Local governments website and app has GPS tracking for every bus. I think I have used it only once when I had to hunt down the correct bus where my gf had left her handbag. Busses arrive on schedule nearly always. I think they are allowed to be 2-3 minutes late maximum. Some buses used to be bit more late, but it was solved by creating bus only lanes thru the congestion points(taxis with passengers also count as public transportation). What makes it so hard to follow a schedule for public transportation? Shifty Pony posted:Bus bunching is an almost universal phenomenon and is very heavily studied. I´m slightly confused. Why would the next bus speed up and try to arrive into the stops faster than the schedule says? Whats there to gain? If he is moving too fast, then he can spend more time in bus stops or simply drive slower, so that the stops would all be according to the schedule. Why wuld he want to arrive faster.  On a interesting note for the mass transit chat, making all public transit free to ride had a very small effect in increasing ridership
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Dec 8, 2016 19:40
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the heat goes wrong posted:I´m slightly confused. Why would the next bus speed up and try to arrive into the stops faster than the schedule says? Whats there to gain? If he is moving too fast, then he can spend more time in bus stops or simply drive slower, so that the stops would all be according to the schedule. Why wuld he want to arrive faster. The driver will try and compensate but there is only so much they can do if the stops are significantly shorter than planned. They don't want to wait at every stop because that clogs the road so they usually go with the flow of traffic until they reach particular time point stops (normally off the main road or with a pull-off) where they will wait for a scheduled time to leave. Between those they can run fast or slow although the driver will usually try and compensate a bit. Even if the second bus just manages to maintain schedule, the first bus can be slowed down enough that the second catches up, especially if the spacing wasn't much to begin with.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:08
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Ah okay.. Didn´t think of that. Most of the bus stops around here have their little bus stop pockets a bit off the road.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:14
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if I see two (or more!!) buses together, they often pass each other several times.  I like the idea of bus-only lanes, that'll definitely be great in baltimore city, but is there ever a problem with people in cars using them on purpose?
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Dec 8, 2016 20:18
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I mean, it's not like the bus driver constantly aware of what's happening with all the other busses in real time, and if he just sits at the stop for 5 minutes or something it creates a traffic blockage and pisses his passengers off. It's easier to do that kind of micromanaging with trains.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:27
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The Snoo posted:if I see two (or more!!) buses together, they often pass each other several times. Depends on how they are done. Here in Santiago there are many that are regular traffic lanes that were just repainted and marked bus only. That works as well as you'd expect - when people need to turn right they use the lanes, and when traffic is heavy it's a free for all. In other places there are lanes that are physically blocked off so they can't be merged into and drivers usually don't use them, but they cause other issues like being unable to turn left or right off a main street for a long stretch downtown. I think you really have to design everything around dedicated bus lanes from the start or they can be a mess.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:58
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sump_buster Helpful and a rich vein of schadenfreude!
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Dec 9, 2016 01:48
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Arsenic Lupin posted:It is at least possible that Draper and Y Combinator were hoping for a bigger unicorn and wouldn't let them waste valuable time and brainspace negotiating an exit. They took a lovely term sheet if YC could still veto a sale at that stage. Does YC have that provision even when they're the only money in?
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Dec 9, 2016 01:54
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The rule for running a unicorn should be to always take the first offer because there might not be a second. Hell, you're lucky if you get a first offer the way things are going.
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Dec 9, 2016 02:53
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who else remembers when rupert murdoch offered zuckerberg 5 billion in 2006/7?
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Dec 9, 2016 05:59
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The children in this waiting room are watching a video about a game called "Guess the fake Kickstarter." It saddens me that this is entertaining to children.
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Dec 9, 2016 15:36
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Halloween Jack posted:The children in this waiting room are watching a video about a game called "Guess the fake Kickstarter." It saddens me that this is entertaining to children. How else are the capitalists of the next generation supposed to properly be able to read a term sheet, understand the dangers of a down round, and focus on a MVP? I'm shocked we still have art classes when they would be far better off learning how to sit on each other's boards and do fluff interviews on the local school closed-circuit TV channel.
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Dec 9, 2016 17:20
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namaste faggots posted:who else remembers when rupert murdoch offered zuckerberg 5 billion in 2006/7? or Jerry Yang offering 1 billion for Google
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Dec 9, 2016 18:49
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There are a lot of factors in what makes buses late, and how technology can improve this. In a lot of transit agencies, drivers are not pressured to stay on schedule, because they don't want drivers to compromise passenger safety just to nail their timpoints; most preventable collisions and passenger injuries occurred on buses that were 5 minutes late or more. Of course they'll come down on drivers that are chronically dicking around on their schedule, but note that it'll be their follower getting pissed as well because once they're a schedule behind the follower is doing 2x the work. When buses are 'leapfrogging' each other depending on the agency one of them can skip picking up passengers to get a bit of distance so they're not constantly blocking each other.
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Dec 9, 2016 20:48
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Welcome to the Theranos of AR http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13894000/magic-leap-ar-microsoft-hololens-way-behind quote:The company has repeatedly used YouTube videos to demonstrate its version of AR, showing tiny elephants in the palms of people’s hands and a life-sized whale jumping out of a virtual ocean on a gymnasium floor. But at least one of these videos — showing an alien invader video game that let the wearer of the supposed headset or glasses make use of real-world objects — was created by visual effects studio Weta Workshop. Prior to today, it was believed Weta had simply created the visual assets for the game. However, The Information reveals the entire video was created by the studio. Magic Leap nonetheless used it to recruit employees to work at its South Florida headquarters. “This is a game we’re playing around the office right now,” reads the video’s description — an assertion that could not have been true. Their CEO is the special kind of delusional techbro who posts on twitter constantly and had this to say http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-ceo-rony-abovitz-tweetstorm-response-to-information-report-2016-12 quote:Tech startups are hard and intense - but it takes a different breed of awesome to strap yourself into a rocket
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Dec 9, 2016 21:35
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pentyne posted:Their CEO is the special kind of delusional techbro who posts on twitter constantly and had this to say Didn't John Glenn die kinda recently?
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Dec 9, 2016 21:41
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moebius2778 posted:Didn't John Glenn die kinda recently? Yeah he is basically saying "one might think that startup bros have it rough, but actually astronauts are the real heroes"
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Dec 9, 2016 21:43
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withak posted:Yeah he is basically saying "one might think that startup bros have it rough, but actually astronauts are the real heroes" I think that stands up. A former coworker of mine is at Magic Leap now, I should check in with him.
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Dec 9, 2016 22:02
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namaste faggots posted:who else remembers when rupert murdoch offered zuckerberg 5 billion in 2006/7? Probably should've taken it. Look how well Elon Musk did with a fraction of that after ebay bought paypal.
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Dec 9, 2016 23:16
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super sweet best pal posted:Probably should've taken it. Look how well Elon Musk did with a fraction of that after ebay bought paypal. TBH its more like look how well Musk did with $28,000 from his father, which was turned into $22M from a sale to Compaq, of which $10M was plowed into X.com which was merged with PayPal, etc etc
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Dec 10, 2016 00:05
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Subjunctive posted:or Jerry Yang offering 1 billion for Google
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Dec 10, 2016 04:38
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Arsenic Lupin posted:My memory sucks, but I could have sworn it was the other way around; Google got desperate and offered themselves to Yahoo, but Yahoo didn't bite. Widely reported as the single biggest mistake Yahoo ever made, although of course that assumes Google under Yahoo would have been as successful as Google alone turned out to be. Was there ever any reason why Yahoo just suddenly tanked over time? I remember the catchy commercials but a few years later nothing like that and no one gave a poo poo about Yahoo.
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Dec 10, 2016 20:07
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yahoo were an ad platform powerhouse in the early days of the commercialized web. adwords absolutely destroyed them
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Dec 10, 2016 21:12
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pentyne posted:Was there ever any reason why Yahoo just suddenly tanked over time? I remember the catchy commercials but a few years later nothing like that and no one gave a poo poo about Yahoo. Their home page was a big flashy mess back when that mattered because it took a long time to load. Google's sparse webpage loaded fast. Google's algorithm returned much better search results.
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Dec 10, 2016 21:18
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the talent deficit posted:yahoo were an ad platform powerhouse in the early days of the commercialized web. adwords absolutely destroyed them yeah, part of the reason google has been incredibly successful is adtech innovation, which you really don't notice unless you work in the industry or buy ads from google
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Dec 10, 2016 22:47
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pentyne posted:Was there ever any reason why Yahoo just suddenly tanked over time? I remember the catchy commercials but a few years later nothing like that and no one gave a poo poo about Yahoo. Do you remember how yahoo's search used to work? Things were in a usenet style hierarchy and sites used to be literally hand categorized by a guy. Like you submitted a site and they would get a guy to put it in the correct folder. It was a model that worked way better than anything else when the internet was small and search algorithms sucked so you could rely on yahoo to have everything organized but it was a model with zero scalability. Google automated them out of a job.
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Dec 10, 2016 23:55
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Yahoo did go on to have a pretty good search, competitive with Lycos and so on. The problem was that Google came along and the difference was night and day. You didn't have to contort your search phrase and use Booleans to get the right answer.
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Dec 11, 2016 00:48
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