"But nothing is sacred on the Internet, not even a wedding." — Sean Parker on his $10 million wedding ceremony that caused a bit of controversy.
Silicon Valley VC Chamath Palihapitiya thinks Silicon Valley is the only place the creates value.
"We're in this really interesting shift. The center of power is here, make no mistake. I think we've known it now for probably four or five years. But it's becoming excruciatingly, obviously clear to everyone else that where value is created is no longer in New York, it's no longer in Washington, it's no longer in LA. It's in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And when you look at sort of, like, how markets react to things like that, and when there's no reaction, it should be taken as a very subtle signal that the power dynamics have changed. Because markets value meaningful events, markets discount meaningless events. And so the functional value of the government is effectively discounted to zero ..."
A Rap Genius founder told Mark Zuckerberg to, um, yeah...
"Alright so I told you the New York Times is Carlos Slim’s ho, I told you Zuck can suck my d---, what else is there? You know it’s all about the love, I don’t know why I’m being this aggressive."
Rap Genius also had an interesting take on Snapchat turning down money from Facebook.
"I would not sell Rap Genius at ANY PRICE because Rap Genius is a cathedral - but if I had built some fad dickpic app and somebody offered me $3 billion for it I'd sell that shit in a heartbeat (LIKE IF YOU FEEL ME!)"
"Welcome to the future," Pranav Mistry, head of think team, Samsung America research, upon introducing the Galaxy Gear smart watch.
Maybe this is the really distant future?
Steve Ballmer on one of his crowning achievements.
"In the last five years, probably Apple has made more money than we have. But in the last 13 years, I bet we've made more money than almost anybody on the planet. And that, frankly, is a great source of pride to me."
The problem is that Microsoft's maniacal focus on money was partially responsible for Apple and Google taking over the mobile market while Microsoft trailed behind.
"Abel, you're fired.”
Tim Armstrong fired a Patch employee in front of everyone and the story quickly mushroomed on him.
“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Blackberry's ex-CEO Thorsten Heins.
If Larry Page invites you out to an island, be wary.
"I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society, what's the effect on people, without having to deploy kind of into the normal world. And people like those kind of things can go there and experience that and we don't have mechanisms for that."
"As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.”
Did you forget about Dongle-gate? A guy got fired for making some dumb dongle jokes to a friend.
Some people in Silicon Valley had some really nasty things to say.
"49ers: No, not the football team, they’re great. I’m referring to all the girls who are obviously 4's and behave like they are 9's. Just because San Francisco has the worst Female to Male ratio in the known universe doesn’t give you the right to be a bitch all the time."
This was from a list posted by startup founder Peter Shih on Medium. It was a bad list.
When we say bad, we mean really bad...
"Just got back to SF. I've traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco. Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little.
The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that's okay. "In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city. Like it's their place of leisure...
In actuality it's the business district for one of the wealthiest cities in the USA. It a disgrace. I don't even feel safe walking down the sidewalk without planning out my walking path."
Mark Zuckerberg tried his best to justify why it's okay to look at your phone when you're having dinner with someone.
We wish this one was a little more airtight, it would have helped us in certain situations this year.
"That comes up a lot. Whether or not communicating online disconnects you from people offline. [...]. I think that’s overblown. There’s this idea; technology is a tool. Glasses augment your vision, your reality. Steve Jobs said that computers augment your mind. With Facebook and other tools, you can stay connected and get more context from more people. People often think of staying connected as frivolous — it’s not. It’s powerful."