Facebook's Out On Free Internet Could Be A Mobile Browser

The second logo for AOL, used from 2006–2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facebook’s First Effort at Free Internet Is Just Another Walled Garden

With its Aquila unmanned aircraft and laser technologies, Facebook has demonstrated the ability to deliver data at a rate of tens of gigabytes per second to a target the size of a coin — from 10 miles away. This is 10 times faster than existing land-based technologies. With interconnected drones, it will, within two or three years, most likely be able to provide Internet access to the most remote regions of the world....... And then there are low-orbit microsatellites, which Oneweb, SpaceX, and now Samsung are building. These beam Internet signals by laser to ground stations. In June, Oneweb announced that it had raised $500 million to develop and launch several hundred satellites that will provide global broadband coverage. ...... Google is launching Loons in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. It was also supposed to launch them in India, but India’s defense, aviation, and telecommunications ministries raised technical and security concerns and stopped the project. When the telecom providers figure out that with unlimited, inexpensive, Internet access, their cell and data businesses will be decimated, they too will place obstacles in the way of these technologies.

Free Basics protects net neutrality

To connect a billion people, India must choose facts over fiction ..... We have collections of free basic books. They’re called libraries. They don’t contain every book, but they still provide a world of good. ..... We have free basic healthcare. Public hospitals don’t offer every treatment, but they still save lives. ..... That’s why everyone also deserves access to free basic internet services. ..... We know that for every 10 people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty. We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet. ...... in India and more than 30 other countries. We launched Free Basics, a set of basic internet services for things like education, healthcare, jobs and communication that people can use without paying for data. ...... More than 35 operators have launched Free Basics and 15 million people have come online. And half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full internet within 30 days. ....... Free Basics is a bridge to the full internet and digital equality. .....

more than 30 countries have recognized Free Basics as a program consistent with net neutrality

and good for consumers. ........

Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim – falsely – that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.

..... Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim – falsely – the exact opposite. ...... This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests – there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics.

I am confused. What's free basics? What does it do? How? Is it restricted? Is it like AOL? AOL was not restricted. You could go all over the Internet through AOL. Most people didn't. They spent most of their time in AOL Messenger, but that's another story. Is Zuck's Free Basics like AOL? I don't get the impression he is using drones for the purpose.

I think the solution is two-fold. One, beam high speed internet from the sky straight to the smartphone. And have a Facebook browser on that phone that has code that communicates to the Facebook Internet beam from the Gods, and lets you go online, but the browser is customized for a Facebook experience. You still can go everywhere, but it looks and feels like Facebook. And Facebook serves ads.

That way Google could be competing to provide free internet from the high and above to the same smartphone. Next thing you know they are competing on speed. My broadband is faster than yours. The next logical step after that would be free smartphones. Sundar Pichai is so smart I think he could build $20 phones. Google could earn 20 bucks from ads in, like, 20 weeks flat.

Facebook should build a mobile browser.

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In The Tech News (1)

Thyroid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

10 Most Exciting SciTech Advances of 2015

"Teixobactin shows how we can adopt an alternative strategy and develop compounds to which bacteria are not resistant." .... Advances in exponential technologies like synthetic biology and genomics are reinforcing the notion that previously unresolvable diseases (cancer, heart disease, Alzeimer's) are in fact resolvable. We are developing solutions to these problems at an accelerating rate, and as we usher in an era of personalized medicine, we will see a dramatic increase in the healthy human lifespan. At my company Human Longevity Inc, our mission is to

make 100 the new 60

. ...... we will soon have the tools to eliminate diseases, create hardier plants, wipe out pathogens and much, much more. ...... Making the first stage of Falcon-9 reusable is a step towards major demonetization of the space industry.

Technologies We’re Excited to See Bloom in 2016 and Beyond

Even high-speed rail systems already seem costly and cumbersome compared to the ability to summon an electric self-driving car on my phone and just be on my way. ...... It’s the idea that any contractual agreement—such as jobs, loans, insurance, and even marriage—could potentially be securely stored and automatically verified by the same technology (blockchain) that makes bitcoin work. This could eliminate the slew of people, businesses, and institutions positioned as financial and legal middlemen, along with their associated red tape. ........ The camera captures light field data simultaneously from all directions and when used for VR, viewers can move around in captured ‘real world’ space, as opposed to recreated computer-generated environments.

Printable Organs Are Closer Than Ever Thanks to Three Bioprinting Breakthroughs

You know what’s even sexier than organ donation? Bioprinting organs. ...... a world in which organ shortages will be a thing of the past....... In March of 2015, 3D Bioprinting Solutions became the first group to successfully bioprint a thyroid gland for a mouse with the intention of transplanting into living mice. Months later, the group announced they had successfully transplanted the bioprinted thyroid and reported that after 11 weeks of monitoring the subjects’ 3D printed thyroid glands, they were in working order with completely restored function. ........ Last week, Vladimir Mironov, head of 3D Bioprinting Solutions, announced his laboratory is ready to start printing a human thyroid gland after their successful experiments on mice. They also have plans to bioprint a human kidney. ...... The team used the company’s own patented bio-printing process to construct the thyroid. They began by extracting stem cells from the living organism via its fat cells. These cells are then mixed with a hydrogel and extruded layer by layer. Once the cells take shape, the hydrogel dissolves. ...... a day when new organs will be readily available for everyone.

Singularity Hub’s Most Viral Hits in Tech and Futurism From 2015

Why 3D Printing Will Be a Key Technology in the Next Space Race

Although in many industries mass production techniques still make economic sense—for the ultra-precise, almost bespoke parts in rockets? 3D printing is a great fit. ...... NASA’s latest trial shows 3D printing is set to become an even bigger part of rocket engine manufacturing ..... 3D printed components typically have fewer parts in need of joining and assembling ..... 3D printing also speeds up research and development. Engineers can design a part, print it, test it, find flaws, fix them, and repeat. It takes less time to get from initial design to final part than using traditional casting and the quality is often better. ..... Ceramics are tough materials with a high melting point. They’ve been used as heat shielding on the outside of spacecraft ..... 3D printed ceramics may be used in jet engines or to skin entire jets to withstand the high temperatures of hypersonic flight. ........

3D printing's real value to space exploration may only become clear once we leave Earth.

...... Lacking the luxury of sprawling factory assembly lines in space, 3D printers designed specially for space travel may be one of the pillars of off-Earth manufacturing. Some dream of mining raw materials on asteroids, moons, or planets and converting them into useful things like habitats, machines, and tools. For future explorers to be self-sufficient on the final frontier, they'll need to live off the land.

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DARPA's Future

1 – Human-Machine Interface ..... for true communication and machine autonomy, Artificial Intelligence must reach a level equal to or surpassing that of humans. ..... technologies that would enable machines to collaborate with humans as partners on tasks far more complex than those we can tackle today.

2 – Mind Control ...... a world where neurotechnologies could enable users to interact with their environment and other people by thought alone.

3 – Nanotech Materials .... Artificial skin, spray-on solar cells, self-repairing architecture, invisibility cloaks, and a host of DNA-level medical applications will be able to build and re-build human beings and the environment...... building substances from the atomic or molecular level up to create “impossible” materials with previously unattainable capabilities.



DARPA’s Top 3 Predictions For The Future

Reading Up On FourSquare

Foursquare's Valuation Is Getting Chopped in Half

Once the heir apparent to Facebook and Twitter, the location app is raising a "down" funding round after years of slow growth.

If ever there was a startup that seemed like a can't-miss bet to build the next billion-dollar app, it was Foursquare. From the beginning, it was social, local, and mobile, that holy trinity of totem words parodied on Silicon Valley for being a mandatory part of every pitch deck. Its launch at SxSW in 2009 set the bar for a buzzy debut. It had the backing of blue-chip VC firms like Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz; a pedigreed founder, Dennis Crowley, who had sold his previous startup to Google; and the love of early-adopter types and journalists, the same constituencies that helped make Slack a breakout hit. ...... Foursquare will take between $20 million and $40 million at a valuation of $250 million, a haircut of more than 50 percent from the one attached to its last round of funding, in December 2013. ...... Down rounds are typically punishing for founders, reducing both the value and the size of their stakes in concert. Frequently, doing one triggers "anti-dilution" mechanisms designed to protect early investors by carving up founders' equity still more. ....... Foursquare's move primes it for an acquisition, with Microsoft, current investor, and Apple being the most likely buyers. ..... grew steadily, and now claims 55 million users, several obstacles prevented it from attaining the kind of mass popularity enjoyed by Instagram or Twitter. ...... Expecting users to "check in" everywhere they went turned out to be asking too much of them, but making check-ins an automatic process raised privacy concerns. ...... while it never escaped its early-adopter niche, Foursquare did manage to amass an enviable trove of location data.

Foursquare's location data is way more powerful than people realize

The technology that makes Crowley’s magic trick possible is a computer brain the company has been building since the early days of the iPhone called Pilgrim. According to Crowley, Pilgrim “is the thing” that separates Foursquare from not just competitors like Yelp but every other app in the App Store. And now he wants it powering every other app on your phone. .......

Foursquare is in a period of crucial transition. Since basically inventing the location check-in concept on mobile phones in 2009, the app has slowly faded into relative obscurity.

...... To date, Foursquare has raised over $120 million dollars in venture capital and reportedly turned down acquisition offers from the likes of Facebook and Yahoo. ..... A feature like Trending this Week, which collects aggregated and anonymized foot traffic data from Foursquare’s users, wouldn’t have been possible without Pilgrim. “We have this real pulse of a city now,” Foursquare head of engineering Andrew Hogue told Tech Insider in a recent interview. "We know where people are going.” ....... Since Pilgrim went online in early 2014, the company has started “finding interesting things to do with the data” it collects, Crowley says. It already licenses data to Twitter, Pinterest, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others to enhance their location features (Foursquare used to power location tagging in Instagram before it was replaced by Facebook’s own tool.) In the last year, Foursquare has started offering business analytics with its foot traffic data, which Crowley describes as “an incredibly lucrative market." ........ banks that give small business loans pay Foursquare to know if a business actually exists and isn’t a scam. .....

In September, Foursquare accurately predicted Apple would sell 13 million iPhones during the iPhone 6S opening weekend based on its foot traffic data around Apple stores.

....... “We had all these people from financial institutions saying, ‘What data do you have that we don’t have?’” Crowley says. The answer is Pilgrim. ...... “We have this superpower,” he tells me from across a conference room table in Foursquare’s New York City headquarters. "We have this awesome thing that we built, and it only lives in two apps — Foursquare and Swarm." ...... It’s an engine that runs in the background and records every time a phone with Foursquare or Swarm installed stops moving. When it stops moving, Pilgrim tries to figure out where exactly you are, if you’ve been there before, or if there’s anything going on in the area you might be interested in, like a happy hour at an oyster bar. It has to decide if you're stopped at a traffic light, walking down the street, or entering a coffee shop. Pilgrim makes these decisions millions of times per day. ..........

The biggest misconception, he says, that still exists about Foursquare is that it’s reliant on manual check-ins. Pilgrim has made it possible to check in without taking your phone out of your pocket. And Foursquare knows more about where its users are going than ever before.

........ "Can you make a game that’s different if you’re playing it in a coffee shop versus if you’re playing it in a bookstore or a bus station?” Crowley asks. "Can your exercise app be different if you went to a burger place for dinner yesterday or if you’ve been going to salad places for the last three weeks? Can the app that you use to hail a car be different if it can recognize that you’re in an unfamiliar city?" ........ Crowley says that it's this hyper-contextualized, location-aware approach that makes Foursquare different from competitors like Yelp, which still feels very much like a digital phonebook. ..... With Pilgrim, Crowley thinks Foursquare has technology that’s applicable in nearly any app. ..... "If we fast forward five years into the future, this is how apps talk to you,” he says. "The app will recognize when it’s time to tell you something about the world and it will wake up and tell you that.”

Foursquare has an amazing 'superpower' called Pilgrim that could finally let it take over your phone

Foursquare accurately predicted iPhone sales by analyzing foot traffic to Apple stores around the country.

Foursquare’s Value Will Be Cut by More Than Half in a New Funding Round

Foursquare is close to finalizing a funding round that will value the company at about $250 million — less than half of what investors thought the company was worth two years ago. .... at least one new investor will participate in this round; previous investors include DFJ Growth, Microsoft, Silver Lake Partners, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. ........

In 2013, Foursquare raised $35 million in a round that valued the company at about $650 million.

..... a “down round,” which will reduce the value of stakes held by previous investors, as well as employees with equity. ...... last summer Crowley said the company had 50 million active users. ..... Crowley has also spent the past few years talking up the company’s data assets, accumulated via its users’ travels. That data could theoretically be valuable to a big platform company like Microsoft, which has already invested in Foursquare, or Twitter, which is already using Foursquare to power its location function. And if Foursquare forges ahead as a standalone company, it will try using that data to build up new revenue streams.

7 tech giants most likely to buy Foursquare

With word that Foursquare is reportedly raising another down round of financing, it seems logical to bet that the company is reaching some kind of end game.

..... We can assume its attempt to monetize all its location data hasn’t progressed very well, so profitability is likely a fantasy. And its IPO dreams probably died long ago. ..... Foursquare “has also talked to potential buyers” and that a deal might happen in place of a new round. ...... Microsoft uses Foursquare to power some of its location features. Microsoft has to be right at the top of any acquisition talks. ...... in the case of Google, there’s a bit of a delicious twist. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley sold his previous location-based startup, Dodgeball, to Google in 2005. Google shut it down in 2009, and Foursquare was, in part, an attempt to show Google what an opportunity it had bungled. ....... If Facebook did make a play, it would really be for the employees. ...... The main debate around Mayer is how long she will be sticking around. And as for Yahoo, many investors would like to see it sold for parts. Even if Mayer wanted Foursquare, it seems unlikely the board would let her spend any more money on an acquisition that might create a little buzz but do nothing to enhance the bottom line. ...... Back in October, Apple Maps started pulling in Foursquare data. ... Buying Foursquare for less than $500 million would seem reasonable for a company that shelled out $3 billion to buy Beats. ...... Amazon buying Foursquare would probably make about as much sense as Jeff Bezos buying a newspaper. ...... Twitter probably has the shallowest pockets of the group.

Foursquare CEO Crowley: “We Do Location Better Than Anybody Else”

Company has evolved from a social "check-in" app to a location intelligence platform for enterprises.

Foursquare has come a long way from its early days as a social “check-in” app. Along the way, the company repositioned its app as a Yelp competitor; now the company is substantially focused on

“place insights” and “location intelligence” for enterprises

. ....... Earlier this year, Foursquare introduced its advertising platform, “Pinpoint.” Foursquare works directly with advertisers and makes media buys through exchanges (on both the desktop and mobile) and then measures offline actions (e.g., store visits) after ad exposures. This model is radically different from selling ads to local restaurants and bars — even check-in ads to brands — which is where the company began. ...... banks can use the data to determine business credit-worthiness based on foot traffic patterns. ..... Foursquare’s data is much more accurate than its competitors’ because the company has first-party data from 50+ million global users, whereas most of the location data many of Foursquare’s mobile marketing “location intelligence” platform competitors rely on comes from ad calls, which are often inaccurate. ...... “Everyone is drafting off someone else’s data,” except Foursquare. ..... the company disregards and discards “about 80 percent of the location data” it sees from exchanges because of inaccuracy and poor quality. ..... Crowley asserts that many mobile marketing companies are unable to disambiguate business locations in malls or areas of high population density (e.g., urban centers). “We’ve spent years figuring out where people are; and we can do this quickly at a high degree of precision and speed.”

Foursquare Raising Round To Capitalize On Data Business

The current investment environment has led many startups to pack on the pounds to prepare for leaner days potentially ahead. At this juncture, the rewards of getting the money you need to grow outweigh the optics of a decrease in valuation. ..... the fact that Foursquare — once one of New York’s hottest startups — is raising another financing round at a lower valuation than its previous one is significant. Down rounds tend to show both a more conservative interest in the company’s core business, and potentially slowing growth for the startup.

Foursquare, essentially, has to find a new way to impress investors with strong growth — which requires some rejiggering.

........ This isn’t the first “down round” for Foursquare. The team raised capital at a reported $650 million valuation in 2013, beneath the $760 million price tag it had in 2012. In total, the company has raised $162 million in venture financing and debt. ...... For the most part, the split appears to have been unsuccessful. ...... its Pinpoint mobile advertising service ...... it has more than 55 million people registered for its service, with more than 2 million businesses claiming locations. It has more than 170 employees based in New York, San Francisco and London ...... If it wants to spin up the data side of its business into a full-fledged empire, it’s going to take cash to craft sales teams, build products and, yes, pave runway enough to get it flying. ....... over 40% of its total revenue comes from powering other platforms’ location services. ...... Foursquare’s data contributing to the Bing platform’s location and context layers on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone. ...... any company that wants to translate GPS coordinates into an actual venue could pay Foursquare for its data. ...... Foursquare’s data could power hyperlocal advertising or marketing pointing to businesses just a few feet away. Search results, news feeds, and more could be personalized through an understanding of location. ....... As Foursquare spent its time splitting its app in two, other social networks replaced Foursquare, by making it easier to share what you’re doing in the moment. Foursquare originally powered Instagram’s location engine, but Facebook eventually made the shift to handling that itself, with locations essentially ending up a feature — not a separate application. It also removed its playful Mayor feature, and later had to re-add it to appease its user base in June this year. .......

All this distills down to a missed opportunity for Foursquare, which found itself experimenting with new kinds of social networking tools while new networks slowly chipped away at its user base. While the company was certainly experimenting, it apparently was not enough as the app slowly lost popularity. So, inevitably, Foursquare had to find a new way to show the company is valuable and get financing to grow — even if it has to shave off its valuation in the process.

Former FourSquare COO Evan Cohen Checks Into Lyft As New Director Of East Coast Operations

Cohen left his position as chief operations officer at Foursquare in June of 2014. He was one of a number of executives to exit the company over the past year and a half and did so shortly after Foursquare split its product asunder and launched the check-in app Swarm. ...... Cohen brings more than 20 years of operations experience to Lyft, according to a company blog post out today. He was the VP of strategy and operations for the social networking site Bebo (and then AOL after the acquisition) prior to his position at Foursquare. ...... Lyft recently announced it had a projected $1 billion gross run rate and said it was growing by 20 percent month-over-month – including a reported “triple market share” growth in New York City.

Foursquare dives deeper into data with new ad platform

When Foursquare decided to split its apps a year ago, followers of the location-based service scratched their collective heads. ...... A year later, with revenue growing at triple-digit growth, the privately held company knows it made the "absolutely right decision," Crowley says. ...... The split was necessitated by Pilgrim, technology introduced in August 2013 that makes it possible to "check-in" to a location without taking a smartphone out of one's pocket. The functionality was made possible when 6-year-old Foursquare passed 6 billion check-ins, allowing Foursquare software to determine the exact shapes of more than 60 million venues. ...... Pinpoint, a social-advertising platform unfurled in April 2015, took things even more forward. The platform combines Foursquare's location-intelligence technology tracking 7 billion check-ins and 55 million customers with GPS information from apps and publishers to sketch an accurate digital portrait of consumer behavior — from how often they frequent a store to affinity for certain brands. Samsung, Coors, AT&T, Jaquar Land Rover and FedEx are among Foursquare's business partners. ..... Pinpoint is available through both of Foursquare's apps, as well as 100 million other mobile users in the U.S. with non-Foursquare apps. ....... "Foursquare was ahead of its time (with location-based services), but Yelp and others came along and stole its thunder," says Hyoun Park, chief research officer at Blue Hill Research. "It has found a new niche with the combination of location and data analytics." ...... Foursquare used such an approach to accurately predict initial sales of iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, as well as revenue from Black Friday and all-day breakfast sales at a select McDonald's.

Paul Graham Asks For Disqus 2.0 Or A Disqus Disruptor

@paulg I think you are asking for Disqus 2.0 ----- Or a Disqus disruptor? What would it be? What could it be?

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 4, 2016

Or how to listen when everyone is talking? This is like the email inbox problem. What is the solution? There is only solution for those who get manageable amounts of email. If you get a HUGE (Trump word) amount of email, I am not sure there is a solution. Similarly online, forget teaching people etiquette. You can restrict membership, or you can restrict comments to people who are willing to reveal their real ID, but if you are opening up the floodgates, I am sorry but we are not talking technology, we are talking human nature and human behavior. After DARPA (or Tim Berners-Lee or whoever, or maybe Paul Graham, Al Gore) invented the Internet, Julia Roberts discovered people hated her! We can improve upon it. Like Gmail has become so much better with five inboxes. But I don't see a "cure" to online flaming. Except, maybe, ignore what you don't like. See no evil, hear no evil.

Artificial Intelligence: The Fears

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A car moves faster than a human being, but that is not threat to humanity. Why is the same idea taken to artificial intelligence such a bad idea? Maybe some of our most confounding problems do need artificial intelligence help. That is Ray Kurzweil.

Whereas people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates are alarmist. They think artificial intelligence is more like a nuclear weapon. You don't want to go beyond a point. Stephen Hawking is also in this camp. You can split an atom, but do you want to?

These concerns go to other areas like gene editing.

Coming to the car itself, it has been a culprit that has us now facing what we call global warming. It is a real problem.

These are some existential debates.

Most human beings will be beat by a computer playing chess. What if that computer also had limbs? What if it could replicate? It could figure out all your moves before you made them. And then where are you?

There is obviously need for robust debate and global regulation, so do produce the nuclear energy, but keep the bombs at bay.

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FourSquare: What Has Become Of You

English: Dennis Crowley in Foursquare's New York office, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

English: Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of the social networking site Foursquare, delivering a briefing on "How Companies and Small Business are Using Social Media and Mobile Platforms to Bolster Business". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just read about FourSquare yesterday after a long gap. It popped up somewhere because it seems to have had a major haircut. Dennis The Person was not exactly known for haircuts. It is having to raise money at a seriously lower valuation, and it is even seeking to sell itself. It did not have to be this way. At one point it refused to be sold at a billion. I believe Yahoo came knocking.

Location is almost as central to the mobile lifestyle as the search box was to the web when it emerged. At some point I guess FourSquare stopped growing. Granted location has become much more crowded. But there is something to be said of the first mover advantage.

Location is multi-dimensional. FourSquare has hardly gone into the more interesting dimensions. Hardly.

I never have doubted Dennis Crowley was by and large the dominant person behind the idea. He is more the guy who discovered the location space. Naveen was a sidekick. And I have actually spent more in person time with Dennis than Naveen (primarily one long dinner). I have spent more in person time with Crowley's now wife than Naveen. She and I both moved to NYC from the same state! Believe it or not. I guess the Indian thing can be stretched a little too much. One thing that struck me a few years after I moved to NYC was, I was not meeting swarms of Indians I expected to meet. I guess I was going to events strictly following my interests, as opposed to going to Indian evens, and so I was only meeting a few here and there.

Dennis is this charismatic, visionary guy. The cheerleader who gets the big picture. The glue who keeps the team together. The face that the media can hang onto. As in, he does not mind attention. He does not crave it, but he does not mind it. He has that down to earth thing down. Almost like a suave politician.

FourSquare was supposed to put New York City on the map. The tech map.

I am on record at this blog saying Naveen parting ways with FourSquare was a mistake. Not because he was equal to Dennis in contribution, I never thought that. But it's a DNA thing. Sometimes later round VCs can mess up a bit. You don't mess something up just because it's delicate. DNA is delicate. Don't put your fork to it.

You can argue it's the market, it's not Dennis, it's not FourSquare. But the market always swings. Always. We all know that.

FourSquare needs to add a layer to the location space. And rejuvenate itself. I don't know why, but I believe I could help. The new layer has to feel like a new dimension, a dimension that none of the copycats have gone into.

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Elon Musk Tesla Speech

Some Strange Reactions To Zuck's Good Move

A lot of people seem to struggle with the fact that this really is Mark's money, and he may do as he pleases, and he is choosing to serve the needy. The fact that this LLC might invest and grow the money only means it will have more money to give away. Also, I hope he makes smart investments in some of the next big things. The companies getting the investments will also flourish. How is that bad news?

Also, if he is smart enough to create Facebook, he is perhaps smart enough to do good, maybe smarter than most. I read his manifesto, if it can be called that, and I found it mind blowing in its breadth and directness. Senators don't talk like that. And they seldom even talk about global problems.

1% of 50 billion is still a neat 500 million. It is not like Zuck will be starving.

I was never a big fan of Gates until he put forth his foundation. I am also really liking Zuck's move. I hope he starts giving at least 20% of his time to his foundation. There is much to do. Think of it this way. He created this 200 billion dollar company working full time. If he puts 20% of his time now into charity work, is that like him giving a few tens of billions just in time, not money? I think so. I mean, not literally. But his time is still worth billions. Time is money, as the adage goes. In this case it is worth billions.

I like Zuck. He is a good guy. His heart is in the right place. Maybe people should gripe about billionaires who DON'T give money! There are too many of those. Most we don't even hear about because, well, they don't show up in the news because they gave money to a good cause. Tell them it is a way to avoid taxes, and they might line up and down the street. That would be Mark's THIRD way of gifting!

I am personally appreciating 100% what Mark has done. Zuck is the talk. Zuck walks the walk. May his billions grow further so he can do even more. Has anyone ever given his newborn daughter a better gift? I doubt.

Zuck's Giveaway





How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself

Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle. ..... Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His P.R. return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Mr. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having,

in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other

. ........ The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the L.L.C. donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax. ...... he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. ...... The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes. ..... What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. ....... Of course, nobody thinks our government representatives do a good job of allocating resources. ..... They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense.

Mark Zuckerberg and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism

Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was founded in 2000, dispensed almost four billion dollars in grants. A big slug of this money went toward fighting diseases like H.I.V., malaria, polio, and tuberculosis, which kill millions of people in poor countries. Zuckerberg and Chan have also already donated hundreds of millions of dollars to various causes, including eradicating the Ebola virus. ....... Charitable giving on this scale makes modern capitalism, with all of its inequalities and injustices, seem somewhat more defensible. Having created hugely successful companies that have generated almost unimaginable wealth, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett are sending a powerful message to Wall Street hedge-fund managers, Russian oligarchs, European industrialists, Arab oil sheiks, and anybody else who has accumulated a vast fortune: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” ....... In 2010, Gates and Buffett challenged fellow members of the ultra-rich club to give away at least half of their wealth. Since then, more than a hundred billionaires have signed the “Giving Pledge.” ...... all of this charitable giving comes at a cost to the taxpayer and, arguably, to the broader democratic process ...... If Zuckerberg and Chan were to cash in their Facebook stock, rather than setting it aside for charity, they would have to pay capital-gains tax on the proceeds, money that could be used to fund government programs. If they willed their wealth to their descendants, then sizable estate taxes would become due on their deaths. By making charitable donations in the form of stock, they, and their heirs, will escape both of these levies. ......

the richest 0.01 per cent of American households—there are only about sixteen thousand of them—owned 11.2 per cent of all the wealth in the country, which is the highest share since 1916

..... (The richest 0.1 per cent of households owned twenty-two per cent of the total, which is more than the bottom ninety per cent of households combined.) ..... By transferring almost all of their fortunes to philanthropic organizations, billionaires like Zuckerberg and Gates are placing some very large chunks of wealth permanently outside the reaches of the Internal Revenue Service. As tax-exempt entities, these charitable enterprises won’t face any liabilities when they eventually sell the stock they receive. That means the country’s tax base shrinks. ....... The Gates Foundation, for example, has been a big financial supporter of charter schools, standardized testing, and the Common Core. ...... The more money billionaires give to their charitable foundations, which in most cases remain under their personal control, the more influence they will accumulate. And relatively speaking, anyway, the less influence everybody else will have.

Facebook CEO's donation is a game-changer

Philanthropy surged by 5.4 percent in 2014 to a record $358 billion ..... eight-figure donations are now so routine, they barely generate publicity ...... leading private banks now offer philanthropy support along with investments. ..... The amount of the Zuckerberg-Chan pledge is truly spectacular, but the way they're planning to use the money is just as important. .... Just as the printing press made it possible for an enormous portion of society to get access to information without all the cost and time of hand-written manuscripts, online learning could bring billions of people into the information age without our needing to put up lots and lots of buildings. ......

This could be the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2015 — and it could unleash not millions but billions.

Zuck's Giveaway

A letter to our daughter

While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. ..... Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we've already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others. As technology accelerates, we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing all or most of the rest in the next 100 years. .... Today, most people die from five things -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases -- and we can make faster progress on these and other problems...... Once we recognize that your generation and your children's generation may not have to suffer from disease, we collectively have a responsibility to tilt our investments a bit more towards the future to make this reality. ...... one day, you or your children will see what we can only imagine: a world without suffering from disease....... Can we connect the world so you have access to every idea, person and opportunity? ..... We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but

most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation

. ...... Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs. ..... Your generation will set goals for what you want to become -- like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader. You'll have technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. You'll advance quickly in subjects that interest you most, and get as much help as you need in your most challenging areas. You'll explore topics that aren't even offered in schools today. Your teachers will also have better tools and data to help you achieve your goals. .......

students around the world will be able to use personalized learning tools over the internet, even if they don't live near good schools.

..... personalized learning will not only help students in good schools, it will help provide more equal opportunity to anyone with an internet connection. ...... Many of the greatest opportunities for your generation will come from giving everyone access to the internet. ...... for the majority of people in the world, the internet can be a lifeline...... personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities ..... We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission.

Stunned and grateful for @finkd's foundation announcement today. What a beautiful and unprecedented way to welcome a child into the world.

— Chris Sacca (@sacca) December 1, 2015

When I'm a billionaire I'm not giving away a dime. Not worth the bad press.

— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) December 2, 2015

How to look at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

American tax code so aggressively encourages the formation of these kinds of foundations by the ultra-rich, but some such foundations have been effective. ..... the default dispensation of the money will be to waste it. For example, Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark schools to almost no effect, in a gift that was revealed to have been explicitly managed by Sheryl Sandberg to be timed to offset the negative publicity surrounding the release of the movie The Social Network. ...... the greatest threat to those intentions: The culture of Silicon Valley. Many of the loudest, most prominent voices within the tech industry, people who have Zuckerberg’s ear, are already thoughtlessly describing smart critique of the Initiative as “hating”, absurdly dismissing legitimate concerns as jealousy. ...... No matter how good their intentions, the net result of most such efforts has typically been neutral at best, and can sometimes be deeply destructive. The most valuable path may well be to simply invest this enormous pool of resources in the people and institutions that are already doing this work (including, yes, public institutions funded by tax dollars) and trust that they know their domains better than someone who’s already got a pretty demanding day job.

People are inexplicably upset about Mark Zuckerberg's decision to give away 99% of his fortune

setting up the organization as an LLC allows it to spend money on lobbying, earn money to reinvest in the organization, do joint ventures with fewer restrictions, and lets them give away money at a pace they determine rather than the mandatory 5% per year for non-profits. ...... billionaires in the U.S. who give their money away are implicitly saying that they know better how to help society than government does ..... What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? ....... the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture.

@sama I think the reason you're surprised is that not being a loser yourself you underestimate the power of envy.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 2, 2015

@paulg @sama All those zeros at the end are scaring some people --- not me. Zuck, what's up with that final 1%! That's my gripe! ;)

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) December 2, 2015

Sheryl Sandberg




No, Mark Zuckerberg is not donating 99% of his Facebook stock to charity

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has a mission of "advancing human potential and promoting equality," will indeed be able to donate to nonprofit organizations. But it will also be able to make investments in private companies. ....... profits it makes from any investments it makes "will be used to fund additional work to advance the mission."

'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father

there’s also 1.6 billion people on the planet who don’t have access to electricity, while 2.8 billion people rely on smelly and noxious biomass for cooking and fuel. How about we get them modern electricity grids and cheap reliable energy first?

Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would commit 95 percent of their wealth to charitable work. Together with Warren Buffett, they also created the Giving Pledge, which asks the richest people in the world to devote half or more of their fortunes to philanthropy. ...... Taking a page from the Gates family, they will use the money to pump up their nonprofit ...... The private foundation is an especially American style of charitable giving. Nonprofit groups in the United States play a disproportionately large role in public life, in part because American tax laws make it attractive for the rich to donate. Much of their wealth could otherwise be captured by capital gains and estate taxes. ...... Private spending on social welfare in the United States is four times the average in advanced economies ...... German shipping magnate Peter Krämer is one of the most vocal detractors of the pledge, and the American tradition of government-sponsored charity. ...... I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable. ...... It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? ....... On average in well-off countries, private social spending accounts for 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, private social spending is 11 percent. ..... Americans are some of the most charitable people in the world in part because there is a centuries-old tradition of private nonprofit groups helping people in lieu of the government. ........ Even Alexis de Tocqueville observed the trend in the 1830s, writing: “In every case, at the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association." ...... He wrote that when the government taxes and gives to the poor, people feel slighted. When people voluntarily give to the poor, they feel better about themselves. ...... "One of the most significant consequences of this tax treatment of charitable giving is to give to the wealthiest taxpayers a disproportionate role in allocating public resources and influencing the direction that institutions will take." ....... In his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," economist Thomas Piketty proposed a wealth tax as one way to address rising inequality — and transfer wealth from individuals to the state. In the United States, estate and gift taxes achieve some of that function by prodding people to donate their wealth instead of bequeathing it to their children. (Economists like Piketty tend to regard those measures as too modest.)

Mark Zuckerberg Will Donate Massive Fortune to Own Blinkered Worldview

It sounds angelic, but it will probably end up being, mostly, a big waste. ..... In other words, this multi-billion dollar estate will go to Zuck’s own organization, rather than, say, OxFam International or something. .... What does advancing human potential mean? What does promoting equality mean, exactly? Your guess is as good as mine, because Zuckerberg doesn’t really say, despite providing many bullet points ..... Some of this is just patently hellish—does anyone really want to experience “100 times more than we do today,” whatever that entails? Do you want to be “connected” to literally every “idea” and “person” in the world? This is a technocrat’s dream and an actual normal human being’s nightmare. But what do you expect from the man who made his fortune creating humankind’s greatest repository for racist memes and life-commodification? ...... Bill Gates, at least, has devoted his post-Microsoft life to the more tangible goal of eradicating Malaria. But Mark Zuckerberg, who struggles to grasp the basics of humanity and has become unfathomably rich by commodifying his deeply weird theories of social interaction, has a different idea of charity. ..... “Micro-schools”? Putting Facebook software in public schools? Software, software, more software. If you have a headache, take a software. Jimmy can’t read? Give him software. The conceit that code can solve all social ills and free the species from the chains of aging, illness, and flatulence is the height of Silicon Valley bullshit, and Zuckerberg’s massive giveaway will clearly be predicated on that conceit. ...... And perhaps we should also wonder whether instead of letting the mega-rich put their estates into “charities” of their own design, and thanking them profusely for it, we wouldn’t be better served by just taking it from their corpses...... With a 99% estate tax, would our public schools need saving from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg? ...... Update: BuzzFeed’s Alex Kantrowitz confirmed with Facebook PR that The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not even an actual charitable organization, but rather structured as an LLC. Unlike a charitable trust, which is compelled to spend its money on charity, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC will be able to spend its money on whatever it wants, including private, profit-generating investment.