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IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

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Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#141
post #85

Investors in Bending Spoons include musician The Weekend, tennis player Andre Agassi, movie star Bradley Cooper, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and director/actor Taika Waititi, among many other famous people: https://bendingspoons.com/people (scroll to the bottom to see all names). I wonder if any of these illustrious backers are aware of the true business model of Bending Spoons, which can only be described as sca…

Wow, even that /people page screams "douchebags".....

Well, the compensation is not that bad for a company headquartered in Milan (Italy) and remote-friendly

> Competitive salary and stock options. Our compensation packages are designed to attract and retain the best talent in the industry. Individuals just starting their career joining on a full-time contract are offered a salary of €63,965 along with a €1,200 welfare bonus. If you already have a few years of relevant work experience, you can expect to earn between €105,737 and €143,330, depending on your expertise

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#142

Is there an app that monitors your apps to see if any have been sold to such unethical companies to alert you to delete your accounts with those apps? That would seem like a useful app. Frankly Apple and Alphabet should offer such a service but I don't have much confidence that they will.

can apps see what other apps are installed?

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#143
post #5

They recently acquired Meetup as well [1]. This doesn't bode well for its future. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953242

Speaking of, is there a good replacement for Meetup if you just want to organize some informal activities, like a user group or going biking?

Anyone know of a simple badge printing setup that could work with things like Meetup, etc? Just an iPad app that can take a CSV of names and companies, say, that can connect to a Zebra printer. Everything I'm finding wants to rent you the software and the printer, I just want to scrounge them up once and for all.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#144

Is there an app that monitors your apps to see if any have been sold to such unethical companies to alert you to delete your accounts with those apps? That would seem like a useful app. Frankly Apple and Alphabet should offer such a service but I don't have much confidence that they will.

can apps see what other apps are installed?

At least on iOS, only with MDM profiles for managed devices tagged as company owned I believe.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#145
post #5

They recently acquired Meetup as well [1]. This doesn't bode well for its future. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953242

Speaking of, is there a good replacement for Meetup if you just want to organize some informal activities, like a user group or going biking?

I have a friend who is building https://rsvpstreet.com/

He doesn't have the discoverability of Meetup, of course, but handles the RSVPs and organizing. Pricing is on the website.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think I'm part of the editor cabal? If so, what qualified me? If not, do you expect my changes to this article to be reverted?

I have no idea if you are or not. I'm challenging your claim about anyone being able to make edits as that's what Wiki wants people to think since most people will take that at face value. The reality is, that if you are not an accepted member of the cabal, then your edits will be reverted. So yes, if you are not part of the cabal, I would expect your edits to be reverted...at some point in time. I have very little f…

I don't know what it means to be a member of the cabal. I just showed up one day and started writing edits.

I have about a thousand edits now. Some of them were reverted, but most weren't. I think the reason people perceive there to be a "cabal" is that they edit articles that are either very contentious to begin with (national identity, gender, politics) or are high traffic and most of the content has already been discussed at length.

Even in those areas, I think there is not a cabal, just lots of angry individual people who oftentimes end up being banned if they get angry enough.

But I don't generally edit in high traffic areas generally because I don't like long litigations on talk pages. The last time I saw the "cabal" in effect on Wikipedia was when I tried to rephrase some things on a page related to a controversial topic. There were two users working together to load the page with some very biased terms. I tried to remove them but was swiftly reverted. I think that's what you mean when you say the cabal.

I gave up editing that article because a long fight didn't interest me. Since then, both of the users trying to guard that article against edits have since been banned from editing in the area that article was in. The "cabal" as you see it is usually just a small number of very interested editors with a strong opinion. If their opinions are too strong, then they're usually in violation of Wikipedia policy and they get cleaned out eventually. I don't like to fight with those people though.

My favourite thing to do on Wikipedia is clean up around the edges.

If you follow this link, you'll be taken to a random article which is tagged as being written in a promotional tone. There are around 25,000 articles like this on Wikipedia at the moment.

https://randomincategory.toolforge.org/All_articles_with_a_p...

These articles could use attention from an average, unbiased person to help tidy them up and read more neutrally. I see fixing Wikipedia articles like a kind of gardening. There is a lot to do in areas which are not trafficked so highly.

I hope you would consider contributing one day.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#147
post #85

Investors in Bending Spoons include musician The Weekend, tennis player Andre Agassi, movie star Bradley Cooper, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and director/actor Taika Waititi, among many other famous people: https://bendingspoons.com/people (scroll to the bottom to see all names). I wonder if any of these illustrious backers are aware of the true business model of Bending Spoons, which can only be described as sca…

Private equity playbook

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really joining a company whose mission is to make the world a better place, or at least just create a nice product. You're joining a team of jackals trying to squeeze any money out of users that depend/love a specific product while putting these applications on minimal support. I just think that at the end of the day it's nicer if you can think you contributed to the world, or even just one user making his…

> You're not really joining a company whose mission is to make the world a better place cringe

You can cringe all you want but "Will I be proud of the work I do here?" and "Do I think the work I do is a net benefit or drain to the world?" are pretty damn low bars for screening potential employers.

You have to really try to put in 40 hours of work a week and create negative value but by god they seem like they're best in class.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#149
post #85

Investors in Bending Spoons include musician The Weekend, tennis player Andre Agassi, movie star Bradley Cooper, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and director/actor Taika Waititi, among many other famous people: https://bendingspoons.com/people (scroll to the bottom to see all names). I wonder if any of these illustrious backers are aware of the true business model of Bending Spoons, which can only be described as sca…

If Apple enables it (by being sloppy with the App Store quality controls for years now) why not?

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#150

I feel if an app changes ownership, all users should automatically be notified by the app store.

This should be a law really. Any subscribers to any service should promptly be notified about the change in parent company and clear language changes (like ads and new permissions etc.)
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