Snap’s IPO Made Its Employees Millionaires—Why Not DJ Khaled?

Snap’s IPO last week was good to investors, but it was even better to the company’s employees. Cofounders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy each walked away with $272 million, in addition to each owning at least $5 billion worth of stock, and other early employees likely made themselves an extra comma in their bank account. But despite the influx of newly minted HNWIs, there’s one name that’s missing from the list of Snapchat millionaires–and that’s DJ Khaled.

If you’re not a fan of hip hop or Snapchat (or TurboTax commercials), you may not be familiar with the producer, but Khaled has long been a savvy ambassador of the now publicly traded platform. His snaps get 3 million to 4 million views each; that’s more average viewers than HBO’s Westworld. He posts virtually every waking moment of his life, from his morning showers to his child’s birth. His Snapchat schtick—part motivational speaker, part rap video luxury showcase—has brought phrases like “major key” and “they don’t want you to” into the mainstream. In a Business Week cover story last year, a Coca-Cola executive called him the “king of Snapchat.”

Certainly, much of that kingly activity falls under the category of personal brand building. Since Khaled started using Snapchat in 2015, his own profile has risen considerably. “His effectiveness and addictiveness in the medium have elevated him from carnival barker to transcendent public figure,” wrote the The New York Times. He has traded on his Snapchat prowess not just to become a pitchman for TurboTax but also to ink deals for Snapchat endorsements of everything from soymilk to Ford.
 
Social-media monetization isn’t a new play by any stretch. But DJ Khaled (born Khaled Khaled) isn’t just a celebrity making money on the platform—he’s become inextricably associated with Snapchat’s growth as a company. Since he started using the app in 2015, Snapchat’s daily active users grew from 107 million to 158 million. The company’s annual revenue increased 600 percent in that same time. Meanwhile, Khaled meets regularly with Spiegel to pitch new ideas. Harvard Business School hosted Khaled for a Get Schooled on Snapchat college tour. Clearly, he has helped the company along its startup journey. Yet he hasn’t reaped any of the rewards that someone in his role would normally get.
 
Imagine that he started as an employee in 2015, when the company had only 330 employees. A compensation package for a manager-level position at a then–Series E startup could have included 50,000 stock options. Based on Monday’s closing trade price of $23.77, those shares would be valued at $1.18 million.
 
Not bad for a kid fresh out of Stanford, sure, but a package like that undersells Khaled’s position. Given that he meets occasionally with the CEO and advocates ceaselessly for the company, DJ Khaled is more like a board member or strategic adviser—like, say, former Procter & Gamble chairman A. G. Lafley, who joined Snap’s board in July 2016 and earned a whopping $2.6 million. (Lafley also received more than 160,000 shares and a $200,000 annual retainer for his services.) In fact, all but one of Snap’s nine board directors each earned over a million dollars in 2016, and they all surely earned even more after last week’s IPO.
 
Did Khaled invest in Snap early, like one high school in Silicon Valley that made $24 million from the IPO? No. Is he hurting financially? Definitely not: His net worth is reportedly more than $16 million. But wealth isn’t the point. Khaled helped make Snapchat a destination for users and brands alike, and while his role at the company was unofficial, it was still undeniable.
 
Then again, Khaled might be diversifying his portfolio as we speak: He’s using Instagram Stories more and more. It’s never a bad idea to hedge your bets, and the move only looks wiser after yesterday, when Snap saw sell-offs and analyst downgrades less than a week after its IPO. Besides, he’s betting on himself—and that’s a major 🔑 anyone can get behind.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/snap-ipo-dj-khaled/.

Photos of the 11ft-diameter Hyperloop test track under construction in Nevada

Los Angeles-based startup Hyperloop One has made it its mission to build a rail system that levitates pods on magnetic skis and sends them through a low-pressure tube at 760mph. At a railway conference in Dubai on Tuesday, the startup showed the first images of the test track it has started building in southern Nevada, north of Las Vegas.

The test track is going to be 500m (or about a third of a mile) long and 3.3m (almost 11ft) wide. A press release from the startup said that it hopes to do a public test in the track in the first half of 2017.

Hyperloop One demonstrated its propulsion system at the Nevada site at a press event last May, where it sent a 10ft sled 116mph on some open-air tracks until the sled hit some sand and slowed down. But since that May press event, the company has faced a number of scandals and lawsuits that ended in several senior members of the company, including lead engineer Brogan BamBrogan, leaving the company.

In the latter half of the year, however, Hyperloop One closed some major deals with rail authorities in the United Arab Emirates, which will allow the company to conduct feasibility studies for its futuristic technology around a major population center. The startup has been contracted to build a cargo offloader for Dubai’s port operator, and the feasibility studies will likely target both human and cargo transportation. In November, Hyperloop One released an artist’s rendering of a system that queued up autonomously driving pods and shipping containers, which are loaded into a Hyperloop tube for express travel to their desired destination.

The concept of the Hyperloop was formalized in 2013 by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who released a white paper on what he thought a super-fast rail system would look like. At the time, Musk said he was too busy with his two companies and urged research institutions and startups to take up the idea and run with it.

Hyperloop One has been the most audacious of the companies and research groups attempting to build the system. At the Middle East Rail conference, the startup’s press release said that a Hyperloop pod would offer a 30-minute reach between UAE cities Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Al Ain, with the journey between Abu Dhabi and Dubai taking a mere 12 minutes.

There are, of course, real technical hurdles for Hyperloop One to overcome if it hopes to ease the traffic between those major cities, and it will be interesting to see how the company engineers around them.

A recent Hyperloop competition hosted by SpaceX offered some interesting real-world perspective. The company allowed research institutions and student teams to test their model pods on a three-quarter mile, 6ft-diameter test track built by the private space company. Only three teams actually got to run their pods the full length of the track in the low-pressure environment because depressurizing and then re-pressurizing the length of the track was so time-consuming, so airlocks on a real Hyperloop track would obviously be necessary. Several of the teams weren’t able to get up to the speed they needed to make their pods levitate magnetically, and a “pusher” was needed on the track to help the teams reduce the weight of their pods.

While little additional information is available on Hyperloop One’s nascent test track, Ars will be following for more details.

Listing image by Hyperloop One

This article originally appeared at: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/hyperloop-one-shows-photos-of-its-test-track-being-built-in-nevada/.

Circus training for dogs

This Oakland California man has set up his backyard to be a dog school with a circus emphasis

Francis Metcalf is the ringmaster of Oakland’s California Canine Circus School, a reward-based dog training course that encourages all dogs, and their two-legged sidekicks, to run off to the circus, or at least dream about it.

Tricks like”around the cone’, spin, bow and sit pretty are all executed by the dogs and their handlers, under Metcalf’s watchful eye.

Amazon’s Alexa Takes 88% Of Global Intelligent Home Speaker Market

Over four million Intelligent Home Speakers were sold globally in Q4 2016 and the report finds that Google’s Assistant achieved ten percent share in the quarter following the launch of its”Home’ speaker in November.

“Amazon has had a near two year head start over its rivals and has done an excellent job of building out an ecosystem of compatible devices and services or skills” says David Watkins, Director, within the Intelligent Home Group at Strategy Analytics. “However, Google is hot on Amazon’s heels and the search giant should be able to significantly cut Amazon’s lead over the coming year thanks to its superior AI platform and well-established technology licensing model which has proved successful through its Chromecast built-in program.”

Bill Ablondi, Director of Strategy Analytics’ Smart Home Strategies research program comments that “Amazon and Google are not the only players in town of course and we expect that Intelligent Speakers that incorporate Microsoft’s Cortana and possibly even Apple’s Siri AI assistant will emerge over the next twelve months. We may also see US or European service operators take the lead from South Korea’s SK Telekom and LG Uplus in launching their own Intelligent Home Speakers to help advance their Smart Home efforts”.

Facebook Messenger bots are going to get a lot more verbose

Facebook announced a change to 640 characters, from 320, to allow longer responses. 

Will longer answer be better answers?

Extra bits for the platform are mostly about letting others know that a bit of text originated from. That means from a shared bit of bot text will allow you to start a conversation with said bot from your existing conversation window. 

Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up on its computers

If you ask anyone who knows me, I’m probably the biggest Apple fan they know. Ask for a suggestion of what computer to get, and I’ll almost certainly either tell you the MacBook Pro, or to wait, because Apple is about to update its hardware finally.

But recently, I realized I’d gotten tired of Apple’s attitude toward the desktop. The progress in macOS land has basically been dead since Yosemite, two years ago, and Apple’s updates to the platform have been incredibly small. I’m a developer, and it seems to me Apple doesn’t pay any attention to its software or care about the hundreds of thousands of developers that have embraced the Mac as their go-to platform.

Take a look at Sierra: the only feature of note is Siri, which is half-baked as it is, and the things that did get ported over from iOS are half-done too. On the developer side? Nothing, unless you use XCode — the same story it’s been for years.

The only reason it’s still even viable as a platform for web developers at all is because of the incredible work the open source community does on the Mac toolchain (take a look at how easy it is to use Node, npm, Yarn or any of the other relatively new tools out there).

Bloomberg reported in late 2016 that Apple had dismantled the Mac team, rolling it into the iOS team, and it shows. The new MacBook Pros, released in late 2016 were interesting, but something of a half-hearted shrug in the direction of long-time users: they’re okay machines, but they sure aren’t interesting at all. Their hardware is underpowered, focusing on thinness and a gimmicky touch bar rather than power or functionality, the previous tentpoles of the Mac.

“In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there’s no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team.”

To tell the truth, I’m a life-long Windows user that grew to be disillusioned by Microsoft after Windows Vista. It was obvious the company had no strategy or vision, and while Windows 7 smoothed things over a little, Apple’s side had something I wanted: everything worked together nicely.

You could send iMessages from your computer or phone, answer calls wherever you were, and throw files to other devices with ease — and so I was tempted away in early 2013 when Apple released its second-generation 15″ Retina MacBook Pro.

That machine was my first real taste of Apple’s world, and I loved it. Everything was designed nicely, and worked well together. Apple’s deep roots in Unix meant I actually finally picked up web development for the first time, learnt how to use the terminal deeply, and even gave back to some open-source projects.

But, about the time I joined Apple’s world, the company’s attention pivoted. The Mac was no longer important, as the iPhone, iPad and then the iPad Pro became the focus of the company. The message was simple: why do you even need a computer when a tablet and phone can do it all anyway?

As a result, Apple’s focus on the Mac waned: the hardware didn’t receive an update for over four years, and then OS X, once regularly updated with interesting features, now only receives the scraps from iOS. If you want to see this in action, check out iMessage on Mac: the flagship feature of iOS, iMessage stickers, barely works on Mac.

You started seeing this in almost everything: Airdrop, Apple’s much-touted feature that lets you easily beam files between computer and phone was my first taste of the company’s “just works” mentality — about 30% of the time it worked every time, and the rest of the time you couldn’t connect at all. Then there was handoff, the heralded feature that let you work on one device, then seamlessly move to another. I don’t know if I ever got it to work with any sense of reliability.

I’m out of apologia juice for defending Apple going with 4 USB-C ports on the new MacBook over a useful mix and keeping the MagSafe. 🍎👎

— DHH (@dhh) October 28, 2016

Meanwhile, Microsoft had licked its wounds inflicted by Windows 8, found a passionate new CEO in Satya Nadella, and started doing something interesting with Windows 10: it actually started listening, and implementing, features people wanted.

I mostly ignored the Windows world until late last year when Microsoft introduced the Windows Linux Subsystem — basically a way to use a Linux terminal natively in Windows — which made me realize that development on Windows might actually be pleasant eventually. I wrote back then that even this was enough to tempt me back to Windows, and it was a game changer:

“At its core, Bash support on Windows is both exciting and an incredible feat of engineering. As a front-end developer, I’d now consider buying a Windows machine to replace my Macbook, where I wouldn’t have in the past.”

After waiting eagerly for the MacBook Pro refresh, then being utterly disappointed by what Apple actually shipped — a high-end priced laptop with poor performance — I started wondering if I could go back to Windows. Gaming on Mac, which initially showed promising signs of life had started dying in 2015, since Apple hadn’t shipped any meaningful hardware bumps in years, and I was increasingly interested in Virtual Reality… but Oculus dropped support for the Mac in 2016 for the same reasons.

Then, in October 2016, Microsoft unveiled the next version of Windows: Creators Update out of nowhere. It brings dedicated gaming features, full OS-level VR support, color customization, a people bar for quick chat and a lot more in a free update.

I watched the event with my mouth open (it was the first time I’d tuned in to any Microsoft event in years), wondering how Microsoft was suddenly shipping awesome features out of nowhere.

This, and seeing all the progress Microsoft was making with the Linux subsystem, as well as Apple’s lack of any meaningful progress, made me decide to make the jump back. I’m not a hater, I’m just tired of not being able to get a machine worth using.

“Those complaining about Apple’s current Mac lineup are not haters, they’re lovers. They’ve spent 10+ years and 5+ figures on Macs.”

It took me months to convince myself to do it, but I spent weeks poring over forum posts about computer specs and new hardware before realizing how far ahead the PC really is now: the NVIDIA GTX 1080 graphics card is an insane work-horse that can play any game — VR or otherwise — you can throw at it without breaking a sweat.

I realized I’m so damn tired of Apple’s sheer mediocrity in both laptops and desktops, and started actually considering trying Windows again.

So, in February 2017, I found myself building a computer from scratch. I sold my 15″ MacBook Pro (I now use a 12″ MacBook for on-the-go productivity), and invested in building a desktop workhorse that would fit my needs and last for a long time.

I’ll spare you too much detail, but if you’re interested in my build you can see what parts I ordered here – the machine is a bit of overkill, but given I want to learn how to develop for VR, it seemed to be a good balance of power and price for the long haul.

Jekyll and Gulp living in harmony

Now I’ve been on Windows for about six weeks, and while I was expecting to hate it, I’ve found myself impressed. It’s not perfect, but it’s clear Microsoft is sweating the details for the first time in recent memory. I’ve got my development environment set up just the way I liked it on Mac, thanks to the Linux subsystem — everything from Jekyll to Gulp works exactly how I’d expect.

I’d been worried about Microsoft’s high-density display support, since it was unusable in Windows 8 and even the original release of Windows 10, but Creator’s Update seems to be able to finally handle 4K displays without things just getting weird.

On top of that? I can play recent games without the PC breaking a sweat, and I’ve started experimenting with VR. The HTC Vive is an incredible device, and I’m just at the start of figuring out Unity so I can actually create my own things for it.

The experience hasn’t been all roses — I had forgotten drivers were a thing, and the quality of apps on Windows, while far better than I remember, is sorely lacking. This seems to be getting addressed quickly thanks to Electron apps: Slack, Nylas, Hyper and Visual Studio Code are awesome, and stand out in the Windows world for being fantastic.

It seems small, but this is a big deal

I don’t say this lightly, but Windows is back, and Microsoft is doing a great job. Microsoft is getting better, faster at making Windows good than Apple is getting better at doing anything to OS X.

There’s a few things I sorely miss: Sketch, which I use a lot for quick design work, iMessage so I don’t need to keep pulling out my phone and a handful of other things… but it’s easy enough to live without them.

It’s clear to me from Apple’s language and sheer focus — cough killing the Airport cough — that all Apple cares about is iOS, and the iPhone. Maybe they’ll ship something awesome out of nowhere that really brings back its “productivity” play, but the company is busy trying to convince people that its ham-fisted iPad Pro is good for work.

Over the coming weeks I plan to write about the great parts of Windows, how I got my development environment set up, the apps I use, and, of course, the bad parts. I’ll be honest, I can’t bring myself to leave Mac at work yet, because I’m not convinced there’s a good enough Windows laptop yet… but maybe that will change over time.

If you’re a Mac user sitting, waiting for Apple to maybe release a real workhorse computer so you can actually do your work, stop what you’re doing and take another look at Windows. It’s awesome, and now you’ll be able to get something with incredible power for a great price that’s actually worth using.

This article originally appeared at: http://char.gd/microsoft/why-i-left-mac-for-windows/.