Bonus Bananas February 22, 2013
My dad would've been 82 today. Happy birthday, Dad. Now let's get to it:
1) Paulson Leads Funds to Bermuda Tax Dodge Aiding Billionaires (Bloomberg) - If you're a hedgie looking for a reason to vacation in Bermuda, now you have one. Send your money on vacation and skip paying all those pesky taxes. Lord knows it's hard enough to keep food on the table if you're only making 2 and 20.
2) The 20 biggest private exits of 2012 (for the top 20 VC firms of the year) (Venture Beat) - Can I get a resounding "BOO-YAH" from my VC homies? I think one of the coolest things about this list is that most people have never heard of the majority of these companies.
3) Former U.S. bailout cop says another crash is inevitable (CNN) - Remember Neil Barofsky? Here's an interesting interview he did with Chritiane Amanpour where he points out that moral hazard is even worse now than it was in 2008, and it's going to have a predictable end.
4) “Money, Power & Wall St.” Wins Writers Guild and Polk Awards (PBS) - A well-deserved award for a fantastically written mini-series. No matter your political bent, everyone has to agree that some of the best analysis on the crisis has come out of PBS's Frontline. Just great stuff. Here's a link to this award winning documentary.
5) Silicon Valley Investors Launch Firm To Cash In On $50 Billion Pot Industry (420 Magazine) - Okay, this piece originally published on Business Insider, but how cool is it to link to 420 Magazine? Investing in the upcoming pot boom is a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. Boulder is already trying to brand itself as the Rocky Mountain Amsterdam.
6) Best Buy Says It Has Killed 'Showrooming' For Good (Business Insider) - That's it, kids. No more need to go check out electronics at Best Buy and then buy them for less on Amazon. From now on, Best Buy is going to match any online pricing. Not sure how they're able to do this with their overhead, but it'll be cool until they go out of business.
7) Video Released Of Shadowy Chinese Army Hacker Unit In Action (TechCrunch) - It's scary how good these guys are. And with this level of sophistication you'd have to know they were state sponsored. Still, it's kinda shocking (to me, anyway) that this corps of hackers is an actual Chinese Army unit.
8) How I Went From 1,000 Emails to Inbox Zero (and Stayed There) with Mailstrom (LifeHacker) - Inbox Zero is a distant fantasy for so many of us, but it doesn't have to be. I used to take the week between Christmas and New Years to get to Inbox Zero each year, but this app makes it a lot easier. Just the ability to robo-unsubscribe from mailing lists is HUGE.
9) Starbucks’ most expensive drink has 40 shots of espresso (My Fox DC) - Think your pump can handle this $47.30 jolt? I'm thinking you could cruise through back-to-back all-nighters with just one of these things. You might have to wear a diaper, though.
10) Jason Clarke Set To Witness 'Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes' (MTV) - So it was announced this week that Jason Clarke (of current Zero Dark Thirty fame) is set to star in the next installment of Planet of the Apes, and I'm pretty stoked about that. I really enjoyed the last one and I think Clarke brings a sort of dark, everyman gravitas, so I've got high hopes for the next one.
Video of the Week:
One of the biggest announcements this week was that Google is ready to release their Google Glass project to a small segment of the public. I'm going to be doing an entire post next week on how Augmented Reality is going to change the way our business works, but in the meantime I wanted to share the latest Glass video with you and show you how you can become one of the first beta testers of these too-cool-for-school specs. Click here to find out how to become an early adopter, and enjoy the video:
That's it for this week, guys. Have a great weekend and let me know what you think of this week's Bananas in the comments.
1 almost all hf managers are base out Bermuda or the Caymans now.
6 best buy got that strategy from target. Lets just say Target's online sales are shit, but they're still number 2 in b&m retail. Personally, I cant believe the great deals you can get at best buy. Obvi that's not a good thing for them.
Aren't they moving from the Caymans to Bermuda? I thought the Caymans had a policy change.
Holy shit, I held off on watching the Glass video until now. That is pretty wild. Only issue is that it's fairly nerdy looking, and it will probably take some used to having a permanent Heads-Up Display, but still really cool. We're going to be walking around as pretend cyborgs before long.
What will be really cool is when the Google Glass tech can be formed into standard sunglasses, etc with just a chip you place into the lens and go. Hell, how much longer honestly until we just interface directly into our eye through a chip into our head. Doesn't seem that far off anymore.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/20/google-reportedly-in-talk-with-warby-p…~
A lasik-esque surgery, where they flip up your cornea, then insert a contact-like lens with the integrated device. An idea a little more attainable than sticking a chip in your brain, eh?
7 - Yeah, pretty nutty, right? Luckily, here in the US, we don't have an army unit charged with hacking, we have entire DEPARTMENTS devoted to it :). Thank you, NSA!
(Note to NSA if you're reading this: Big fan, I think you guys do great work, and please don't hack my world and blow my life to pieces. I know you can do it, but please don't, you've got a friend in me! Totes gotcha back!)
Google is actually the shit
Sure glad I sold it all to buy more AAPL.
FML.
Saw this (http://www.googleventures.com/) while looking through the VC article... what doesn't google do?
Only recognized Meebo, Instagram, and ancestry.com out of the VC exits.
6: I haven't done any analysis on it, but now might be a good time to short Best Buy.
Why would anyone ever want "inbox 0"? Most mailboxes let you search by just about anything (sender, title, body, attachment). I'd rather have too much email than realize 5 years from now that I deleted something I need.
"for a long time I just assumed that piles of email would rule my life."
What a joke.
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