Tell me about a time you hacked a system.

I think you should realize that pinboard's very nature and existence is a wonderful hack of the SV and "web 2.0" mindset and ecosystem.

You'd be surprised to learn than hackers are more than computer guys (even in the original e.g. MIT sense), and systems are far more than computer systems.

What neighborhoods in Chicago are becoming more dense like this? I don't recall seeing this being too common.

You keep saying Bezos used to work at McKinsey, but I don't see that info anywhere else? He used to work at the trading firm D.E. Shaw, and Amazon seems to operate in a very un-McKinsey way in many ways (i.e. they don't use PowerPoint), so this is confusing...

Maybe he's confused since Jeff Bezos's wife is named Mackenzie? Mostly joking..

Yeah you're right - I guess I got Bezos mixed up with someone else.

Google has consistently operated as "do as I say, not as I do". They've rolled out these 4 ads above the fold off and on, in addition to Product Ads, and Hotel/Insurance comparison ads. Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

I would agree - however, it seems like Google is in a position where their algorithm doesn't necessarily have to be good, just good enough. And good enough basically means they don't torch any high-profile sites that would begin to make the public question whether or not Google is still the best search engine. Unfortunately, this means that many smaller businesses might get thrown out with the bathwater :(

He didn't? Steve Jobs attended Reed College (and according to his biography, it was the only college he applied to)

The media certainly is not glorifying this enterprise. I read the New Yorker article as a massive, massive indictment of Spartz's business model.

Part of me thinks it was my own disgust in the model that made the New Yorker article feel it was a negative take on the clickbait industry. That was an ironic feeling, given the context. The portions of the story where it discusses his family life, and the glorification of this person's intelligence... they felt borderline satirical but probably only because I want it to be pointed satire. The 22 year-old former Syracuse student, for instance, quoting Uncle Ben rather than a more auspicious figure (Jesus, Roosevelt) with the same basic quote... It just felt like the Twilight Zone.

I hope that this parasitic method of generating ad revenue with meaningless content languishes rather than flourishes.

I think it's safe to say that's the answer - SpotHero is doing quite well and just raised a $4.5M series A, GiveForward as mentioned has crowdfunded a good amount of money for people's medical bills, and FeeFighters sold to groupon relatively early on. None of these are "breakout successes" to the tune of a 100M valuation, however.

Ask.com & AOL are large chunks of change for the "google search network" syndication partners. This is probably most of the $3B+ in traffic buying.

It has tripled in the past three years, so that seems unlikely given there is no Ask / AOL growth.

Maybe it is YouTube payments. There is talk about YouTube Revenue being $3.5B and I assume that started from nothing about three years ago. I assume about 1/2 of YouTube revenue goes to the content creators.

I think the usage of girls here is likely intentional and is a very important and much better word choice than "women" IMO - it shows the power differential common in many of these situations.