About a year ago, Michael Lopp joined Pinterest as the company’s head of engineering — filling in the leadership of the engineering side next to co-founder Evan Sharp and CEO Ben Silbermann. Much of his role, since joining, has been to help teams at Pinterest, which consist of units of engineers, designers and product managers, mesh and work well together. Lopp comes from both… Read More
http://ift.tt/1JDrLGD A Conversation With Michael Lopp, Pinterest’s Head Of Engineering http://ift.tt/1KHHW4w
On the heels of Homejoy’s failure, the fundamental “on-demand marketplace” model has come into question by investors, the media and even consumers. That questioning is very relevant, as there has been an overload of VC money that has been injected in the on-demand service platform space over the past few years ($4 billion-plus in 2014). 
The FDA is currently considering clinical trials for a drug that would delay aging. The idea of extending human longevity is a controversial one, with some arguing for immortality and others arguing that a lifespan into the mid-70s is perfectly adequate. So is the drug good or bad? As an investor in science and technology, this is a non-trivial question for me. 
Yahoo just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire style-focused community Polyvore. In a blog post about the deal, Yahoo’s senior vice president of publisher products Simon Khalaf highlighted “Polyvore’s expertise on community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce” and wrote that the deal “will accelerate Yahoo’s digital… 
We’ve been promised a flying car for as long as I can remember. From The Jetsons to Back To The Future, we’ve been sold this dream for years and years. Owning something that starts out on the ground and ends up flying through the air is something I want to experience before I kick the bucket. 
Launching out of the Summer 2015 Y Combinator batch, Locent is an e-commerce platform powered entirely by text messages. One of the biggest challenges for online retailers is shepherding customers through a lengthy checkout process. By providing businesses with a custom, text-enabled phone number, Locent turns the checkout process into just a text message. 
August is nearly upon us, which means news is slowing. But that hasn’t stopped car companies from racing away with the news, including Tesla’s introduction of Ludicrous Mode (which we haven’t stopped talking about), and the old Top Gear crew signing with Amazon for a new show. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched Windows 10, and Razer bought OUYA out in an all-cash deal. This… 
Partner programs can be a big source of revenue — for example, channel sales account for 80 percent of Cisco’s revenue. Now a startup called GrowSumo is working to make those programs easier to manage, particularly for businesses that don’t have Cisco’s resources. GrowSumo is part of the current batch of startups at incubator Y Combinator. Co-founder Bryn Jones told me… 
As part of Y Combinator’s push into computational biology and bioinformatics, the early-stage firm is backing a team that used to work on the Human Genome Project and is now experimenting with RNA testing through a startup called Cofactor Genomics. They argue RNA, which is the intermediate step between a person’s DNA and the proteins their bodies make, is a much more accurate… 
Kim Dotcom revealed in an interview on Slashdot that he is no longer involved with Mega — he isn’t working for the company anymore, but he also doesn’t own any share of Mega. Dotcom also said that you shouldn’t trust Mega to host sensitive files anymore, and that he is planning to build yet another file storage service in the coming months. 
Meet MyTape, a brand new social app for iOS centered around video. On MyTape, you follow people, shoot videos and watch stuff around you. It’s a sort of mash-up between Periscope and Frontback, and it will be interesting to see whether this new social app can find its audience. 
Susan Kare, an early Apple designer behind some of the company’s early typefaces and icons, has joined Pinterest. She’ll be part of Pinterest’s creative team as a product design lead, according to the company. Kare designed many of Apple’s famous original icons, like the Lasso and Paint Bucket, and worked for Steve Jobs at NeXT as creative director. She’s… 
Should Apple be concerned that a number of popular app makers like Facebook, Google and Snapchat have yet to embrace its Apple Watch platform with apps of their own? That’s a question raised by a recent New York Times piece detailing how many developers are taking “wait-and-see” approach when it comes to Apple’s new wearable. But maybe the right question to ask is… 
In rural West Africa, 150 million people are currently living without electricity. Oolu, a Y Combinator company launching today, aims to reduce this number by delivering affordable solar energy to West Africa’s off-grid population, beginning in Senegal. Despite the surge of innovation in solar storage and panel technology, Oolu founder Daniel Rosa says that many people living in… 
Saida, an app that helps people get approved for short-term loans based on their activity on their phones, launched out of Y Combinator today. Saida can see how a person, for example, uses their prepaid cellphone plan, such as how often they recharge that plan and what proportion of the plan is spent on data services, voice or text messaging. Users give Saida some information that helps… 
When it comes to regulating bitcoin companies, it’s still mostly a work in progress. Some governments want to restrict bitcoin quite a lot, while others are adopting a more favorable stance. The U.K. has been the financial hub of Europe for decades now, and it looks like it plans to do the same thing with bitcoin. British Prime Minister David Cameron is currently wrapping up his first… 
Klarismo, which takes existing MRIs and other kinds of body scans to build a 3D model of a person, has raised $2.1 million and launched out of Y Combinator. Klarismo is an online service where users are able to take a much deeper look at their body’s internal structure. It takes MRI scans and other kinds of scans that people are getting already and then uses that to build a 3D model of… 
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