As you can see here - http://www.zetterberg.org/Lectures/l96bTab/doubling.htm. More industrialized regions have slower growth rates. Africa will double in just over 20 years while North America will double after over 100 years, for example.
Many countries, like japan and Italy are finding their population is actually shrinking, this tends to be bad for economic reasons. The US gets a lot of population growth from immigrants which keeps the country growing despite having only about 2.0 children per family (2.1 is optimal for maintaining a steady population.)
Asimov was working off a population model proposed by Malthus in 1798 [0], which has long been known to be flawed. It's not just industrial human populations that have slowing growth rates; most populations creatures have slowing growth rates as they near the population level the environment supports. The most common model for this is called "logistic growth" [1].
The "current doubling time" is kind of a misnomer -- it's how long it would take the population to double given the current growth rate, but the rate itself is also shrinking. Human population growth reached its peak (percentage-wise) in the early 1960s [2] and most credible estimates now have the world population leveling off in the 9-12 billion range (less than a full doubling from current levels) [3].
I'm curious about this too, because once the visa is up do they have to go back? How hard is it to get a permanent or semi-permanent status? I'm assuming an H1 B or similar would not apply here since the founders would be immigrants..
actually new H1-b rules allow you to get a visa using a company you founded as long as there is another party that you "report to" or has a controlling share like a board or a cofounder. But this would apply more if you were already in the country.
Interesting point, write a controversial article, get love link love then link out to your money page (ranking lyrics for Bieber must be a goldmine...)
This seems like a good SEO method - point out that you were doing something extremely minor in violation of Google's guidelines, then point out that everyone else breaks most of the guidelines. All the same time do this in a niche that is known for spam, all the while hoping that Google will read it and manually slap everyone else, giving you a better overall ranking.
What they did doesn't seem "extremely minor" to me. It's about as textbook as you can get as an example of something that will piss off google. Reminds me of all the grey/black methods "facebook apps" (remember them?) would use to trick people into spamming their friends with invites. In my experience, this stuff can work in the short-run of maybe two or three years... and maybe that's all that a lot of startups really care about... flipping a company in a couple years. But if you want to build a lasting business (not sure that's the goal of RapGenius), you build a service that provides real value to people that they gladly talk about to their friends. And you approach SEO by providing interesting, fresh, rich, easily-indexable, accessible content. Not by seeding thousands of Bieber links back to your site.
In my experience the people who do these grey/black things just can't seem to flip that switch to producing value... they look for the angle, how they can parse the terms to their advantage and claim ignorance, and they cannot get out of "lawyer-think." You'll have a hard time convincing them they did anything wrong.
As for calling out their competitors, I actually don't have a problem with that. They're going to be under a microscope from now on and will otherwise be at a disadvantage. Their only reasonable course is to try to level the playing field.
Anyway, forgive the rant. I find these types of tactics gross and I'm glad they're getting penalized.
I agree, I think it will, at least somewhat, impact snapchat because the products are similar.
I'm sure that was the aim here, to create a product that took inspiration from snapchat. Given that it's one of the most popular apps out there with an insane amount of users, and we know that facebook already tried to buy it. I'm sure they didn't want to copy it outright, but if they can integrate some of it's features into their existing products, they may be able to steal some users.
Uber has been making huge strides. I think it is a much better company that lyft. With lyft you're supposed to talk to the driver, keep them entertained so that you get a good rating. Uberx is not that much more expensive and the drivers are much nicer and have much better manners.
I'd much rather pay the extra few bucks on an Uber.
Lyft is more fun. I took 50+ rides in the summer. Unlike Uber, Lyft hires for personality. I became friends with some of my drives, had crazy city tours (including a walking tour!) and just generally had much more pleasant experiences versus the many Uber trips I've had in multiple cities.
That's a perverse analogy. You're still paying for the ride, not for the conversation. An enjoyable conversation as oppose to silence, is icing on the cake.
Consider this: We don't pay for the barber to talk to us but would we go back to a barber if he wasn't socially adept?
I'm probably not the only one that'd say: Yes, I'd prefer if the barber doesn't talk. Unless I'm in a particularly outgoing mood I'm probably not really interested in talking to a stranger. I'd pick the barber based on how smooth the transaction and service was. Perhaps I'm in an odd minority.
Tough to say whether you're in odd minority. As I suggested above, I think market is splitting between riders who want a quiet/professional ride, and a fun/engaging ride. Uber is clearly leader in first, and Lyft is clearly leader in second.
UberX has some soul searching to do. Are they going to be the Lyft competitor (fun/engaging), or the cheaper Uber black (quiet/professional)? So far I see them in the second bucket, but this ad makes me ponder.
I actually prefer a balance between silence and a bit of chatter. I can't stand it when the barber tries to talk about bullshit I don't care about like sports. It's definitely a delicate thing to get right. My original point was that silence can be somewhat disconcerting and it's always good if the service worker has a bit of personality and grace to make for an enjoyable rather than awkward experience.
I think that Lyft sells the experience, and Uber sells the transparency. A perfect Lyft experience is fun and social. A perfect Uber experience is subtle and seamless.
Has anyone noticed that they give you gigantic bags for free? Our office (LA not SF) orders fresh all the time for basic food and they always give us enormous re-usable bags.
I'm trying to figure out, are they doing this on purpose (paper bags would be cheaper)? I'm assuming they are, hoping that you'll go shopping and use their cool bags and using this as a method of free advertising.
I agree completely. Google apps have already come a long way. Even right out of the box, I liked the spreadsheet functionality. Excel is great for complex projects but for simple data storage, I find docs to be easier to use.
I believe they were the first to auto sum columns in the bottom right hand corner, a feature which excel later added (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong). Something simple like this can be great for quick projects. I also like the ability to share within a group and allow multiple people to edit it. Imagine how much longer it takes to pass an excel sheet to 10 people and have them edit things.. I like the new update to edit without making instant changes that others will see.
More to your point, I would say that the spreadsheet app is definitely "good enough" for basic use but the word copy in docs needs some work. I like the share-ability feature, but I think word is better in almost every way.
As you can see here - http://www.zetterberg.org/Lectures/l96bTab/doubling.htm. More industrialized regions have slower growth rates. Africa will double in just over 20 years while North America will double after over 100 years, for example.
Many countries, like japan and Italy are finding their population is actually shrinking, this tends to be bad for economic reasons. The US gets a lot of population growth from immigrants which keeps the country growing despite having only about 2.0 children per family (2.1 is optimal for maintaining a steady population.)