After years of saying it wouldn't happen Brace yourselves: the Facebook “Dislike” button is coming.
Despite telling the public for a long time that the social network wasn’t planning to build a “dislike” button, a counter to its iconic “like” button, Facebook has apparently changed its mind. During a Q&A session Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed his company has indeed been working on one.
“I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years. Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on it and shipping it,” he said.
Image: Time
Zuckerberg has admitted in the past that the company has considered building a Dislike button, but ultimately decided against it. Presumably, it had to do with the fact that at the time it didn’t want to integrate a way to express negativity toward other users, or create a system of upvoting or downvoting, as online news forum Reddit does.
“That isn’t what we’re here to build in the world,” Zuckerberg said on Tuesday.
However, Facebook does recognize that people sometimes want to express something other than “liking,” but are currently left with no truly good option.
“What they really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment,” said Zuckerberg.
As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have.
We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. And we haven’t stopped there. We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about.
We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.
Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet (http://abc.xyz). I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.
What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.
This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I’ve been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations. I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that. Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation -- continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world's information. Recent launches like Google Photos and Google Now using machine learning are amazing progress. Google also has some services that are run with their own identity, like YouTube. Susan is doing a great job as CEO, running a strong brand and driving incredible growth.
Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure.
Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.
For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google -- the birth of Alphabet. We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity's most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products--the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands.
We are excited about…
Getting more ambitious things done.
Taking the long-term view.
Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish.
Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see.
Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.
Making Google even better through greater focus.
And hopefully...as a result of all this, improving the lives of as many people as we can.
What could be better? No wonder we are excited to get to work with everyone in the Alphabet family. Don’t worry, we’re still getting used to the name too!
Bengaluru, April 19: This could be the first time on a cricket field what Mumbai Indians' (MI) West Indian all-rounder Kieron Pollard did during their Indian Premier League 2015 (IPL 8) match against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) here tonight. Match Scorecard; Match Report; IPL Special Pollard, who was seen trying to upset RCB opener Chris Gayle's rhythm with few words, was warned by one of the one-field umpires to stay away from any banter.
And the response from the tall West Indies was hilarious. He was quick to plaster his mouth and lot of players and fans saw the funny side of it. Even though his mouth was plastered, Pollard was seen mumbling. And Gayle too had a bit of a laugh. RCB were chasing a target of 210 at M Chinnaswamy Stadium. MI scored 209/7 in 20 overs after half centuries from Lendl Simmons and Unmukt Chand.
It's not often that Stephanie gets to communicate with her distant father. Make no mistake that when I say "distant," I really mean distant. While her dad's career only puts him 200 miles away from her, those 200 miles seem much more extreme when you learn that they are straight up in the sky. He's an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS), which according to Nasa is the size of a football field and was launched on Nov. 20, 1998.
Hyundai teamed up with Stephanie to try and send her dad a message of love in a very unique way. They sent 11 cars to the desert to carve a message in the crusted earth so large that it could be seen from space, and ultimately, by her father. The video depicts Stephanie's obvious admiration for her dad, and shows the beautiful dance across the desert these cars perform in order to write him one very special message. In the process, they officially entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the "largest tire track image" on earth. Once the message is written, they anxiously wait until the ISS passes over their location. Then, it happens.
Her father captures the massively (in both gesture and sheer size) sweet message of "Steph (Heart)'s You" on camera and replies sweetly with "I love you, and, thank you." Their message mission was a resounding success, and though the space station has over an acre of solar panels on it, I bet his stay was just a bit sunnier on this day.
The event was banned by the local police which said communal tension could be inflamed: Pic-NDTV
Chennai: Terming the "thali" or "mangalsutra", traditionally worn around the neck by married Hindu women as long as their spouses are alive, a symbol of slavery or oppression, 21 married women discarded it at a function organised by Tamil outfit DK here on Tuesday.
In a statement issued here DK said 21 married women removed their "thali" on the 124th birth anniversary of B.R.Ambedkar, the father of the Indian constitution.
According to DK, the event got over even before a division bench of the Madras High Court issued a stay order on the function.
The DK announced the "thali" removal programme after protests by Hindu Munnani against television channel Puthiya Thalaimurai over its proposed programme on women wearing "thali".
The Tamil TV channel later cancelled the programme but two tiffin box bombs of low intensity were thrown at the channel's office.
Several Hindu organisations had opposed the DK's "thali" removal programme.
Tying a "thali" or "mangalsutra" by the groom around the brides neck is a major custom in Hindu weddings. A woman removes the "thali" only on the death of her husband.
A Seattle-based company will pay a $70,000 minimum wage to all employees, regardless of their job title, after the CEO read a studythat found pay hikes up to that threshold led to significant improvements in emotional well-being.
Dan Price, founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processing firm, stunned his employees with the generous minimum wage plan, which will ratchet up salaries over the next three years, the New York Times reports.
Thirty of Gravity Payment’s 120 employees will see their salaries double over the next three years, while Price himself will take a pay cut from $1 million down to $70,000 a year, or minimum wage by his standards.
Dan Price, C.E.O. of Gravity Payments, announcing the new base salary. “Is anyone else freaking out right now?” he said. “I’m kind of freaking out.”CreditMatthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times
Owner of a Credit Card Processor Is Setting a New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year By PATRICIA COHEN APRIL 13, 2015 The idea began percolating, said Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, after he read an article on happiness. It showed that, for people who earn less than about $70,000, extra money makes a big difference in their lives. His idea bubbled into reality on Monday afternoon, when Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000. “Is anyone else freaking out right now?” Mr. Price asked after the clapping and whooping died down into a few moments of stunned silence. “I’m kind of freaking out.” If it’s a publicity stunt, it’s a costly one. Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year. The paychecks of about 70 employees will grow, with 30 ultimately doubling their salaries, according to Ryan Pirkle, a company spokesman.
Employees reacting to the news. The average salary at Gravity Payments had been $48,000 year.CreditMatthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times
Mr. Price’s small, privately owned company is by no means a bellwether, but his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees. The United States has one of the world’s largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists’ estimates. That is much higher than the 20- to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker. “The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. He drives a 12-year-old Audi, which he received in a barter for service from the local dealer. “As much as I’m a capitalist, there is nothing in the market that is making me do it,” he said, referring to paying wages that make it possible for his employees to go after the American dream, buy a house and pay for their children’s education. Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement. Mr. Price started the company, which processed $6.5 billion in transactions for more than 12,000 businesses last year, in his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University with seed money from his older brother. The idea struck him a few years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The owner started having trouble with the company that was processing credit card payments and felt ground down by the large fees charged. When Mr. Price looked into it for her, he realized he could do it more cheaply and efficiently with better customer service.
The entrepreneurial spirit was omnipresent where he grew up in rural southwestern Idaho, where his family lived 30 miles from the closest grocery store and he was home-schooled until the age of 12. When one of Mr. Price’s four brothers started a make-your-own baseball card business, 9-year-old Dan went on a local radio station to make a pitch: “Hi. I’m Dan Price. I’d like to tell you about my brother’s business, Personality Plus.” His father, Ron Price, is a consultant and motivational speaker who has written his own book on business leadership. Dan Price came close to closing up shop himself in 2008 when the recession sent two of his biggest clients into bankruptcy, eliminating 20 percent of his revenue in the space of two weeks. He said the firm managed to struggle through without layoffs or raising prices. His staff, most of them young, stuck with him. Mr. Price said he wasn’t seeking to score political points with his plan. From his friends, he heard stories of how tough it was to make ends meet even on salaries that were still well-above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. “They were walking me through the math of making 40 grand a year,” he said, then describing a surprise rent increase or nagging credit card debt. “I hear that every single week,” he added. “That just eats at me inside.” Mr. Price said he wanted to do something to address the issue of inequality, although his proposal “made me really nervous” because he wanted to do it without raising prices for his customers or cutting back on service. Of all the social issues that he felt he was in a position to do something about as a business leader, “that one seemed like a more worthy issue to go after.” He said he planned to keep his own salary low until the company earned back the profit it had before the new wage scale went into effect. Hayley Vogt, a 24-year-old communications coordinator at Gravity who earns $45,000, said, “I’m completely blown away right now.” She said she has worried about covering rent increases and a recent emergency room bill.
Aryn Higgins at work at Gravity Payments in Seattle. She and her co-workers are going to receive significant pay raises.CreditMatthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times
“Everyone is talking about this $15 minimum wage in Seattle and it’s nice to work someplace where someone is actually doing something about it and not just talking about it,” she said. The happiness research behind Mr. Price’s announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as “the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant” — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year. Of course, money above that level brings pleasures — there’s no denying the delights of a Caribbean cruise or a pair of diamond earrings — but no further gains on the emotional well-being scale. As Mr. Kahneman has explained it, income above the threshold doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money can deprive you of it. Phillip Akhavan, 29, earns $43,000 working on the company’s merchant relations team. “My jaw just dropped,” he said. “This is going to make a difference to everyone around me.” At that moment, no Princeton researchers were needed to figure out he was feeling very happy.
Email: patcohen@nytimes.com; Twitter: @patcohennyt Original Article: Click Here
If you want a free Uber
ride in India, all you have to do is get a code (t2w3q) from anyone using Uber App,
burn some of your data and download Uber App (available on iOS, Android
and Windows
Store) because this the magic wand you need to call you free taxi at your
door step.
Register for Uber App by
providing your name, e-mail id and mobile number (Only the three essential data
just for communication, no DOB, Address and other info). Now just register a
payment option as Uber is known for NoCash services, register with your Credit
Card or with PayTM wallet.
Now it’s time to invoke
your free ride. Go to Menu, where you will find a tab “Promotions”. Click on
that, now enter the code (t2w3q)
given.
That’s it!!!!
Hurray!!! Now you are
eligible for a free ride. You can check the same in payment option. Now it’s
time to book a free ride with Uber
App will now show your
current location (depending on permissions set in your phone, for accuracy you
should set your GPS on for this particular app) from where you can start your journey.
Set the pickup location and then select the destination like office to home and
Uber is on the way to take you home.
The best part of this app
is the complete information you need is on your finger tips. Like details of
the driver and the cab including his/her contact details, the map showing your
moving cab live, and after reaching your destination your bill on your phone.
Last but not the least,
best part of the Deal!!!
After registering first
time with Uber, it will give you unlimited chances to take free rides. How????
Simple!!! Go to the share section and you will find your own promotional code.
Share it with friends and when they take a free ride you will get a free ride.
So start earning free rides.
Indian
cities where Uber and the free ride offer is available.
"When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape" said Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus in which Nirbhaya was raped. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy. The death penalty will make things even more dangerous for girls. Now when they rape, they won’t leave the girl like we did. They will kill her. Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her, she won’t tell anyone.’ Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl. Death."
Here are seven other politicians who share similar views on rape but aren't in jail.
1. Yogi Adityanath's supporters
Adityanath on stage speaker asks to rape muslim women by taking them out of graves- Hate Speech
Yogi Adityanath's supporters tells Hindus to rape dead Muslim women
"If you keep petrol and fire together then it will burn. There should be a law to ensure that there should be no ‘nangapan’ (nudity). Those who wear less clothes should also be banned. Fashion and nudity are responsible for the current situation in India."
"I don’t feel any hesitation in saying that 90 per cent of the girls want to have sex intentionally but they don’t know that they would be gang raped."
“Boys and girls love each other, later they have differences, and the girl goes and gives a statement that she has been raped. And then the poor fellows are sentenced to death. Should rape cases lead to hanging? Boys are boys, they make mistakes.”
"If any rival touches any Trinamool woman, father or child, then I will ruin their generations. I will let loose my boys, they will commit rape. Yes, they will commit rape"
“Rape is a social crime which depends on men and women. Sometimes it is right, sometimes it is wrong. Until there is a complaint, nothing can happen. Unless the person wants, no one can dare touch her. The item numbers in films create a bad environment. Also foreign culture is not good for India. Women in foreign countries wear jeans and t-shirts, dance with other men and even drink liquor, but that is their culture."
