Although i don't personally think that this project (nor the way it was presented here) is worth much, we have to agree that we are now in a place where limiting search results is relevant and filtering content will be more and more important as years go by and the information continues to increase at this rate.
This might be considered off-topic, but i find the VentureBeat post about Cheddar's sale (http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/05/cheddar-for-sale/) really sad . The app is called a "cult classic" among "hackers and mac fans" and there's a disclosure at the end: it was written by the wife of Seesaw's founder (where Soffes currently works).
Would love to go, but i have tickets to the Teatro Colón at that time (being wanting to go for years and there is a Wagner's opera this weekend), so it's going to be the next time for me.
Not that you asked me, but living here i wanted to share my two cents. Buenos Aires is not tragic at all, it's... just a little melancholic. A tiny London with poor people and too much humidity, but with great people, lovely architecture, and well, there's insecurity, no way to deny it, but it all depends on where you go. You can walk, travel, go out, party, do whatever you want and you won't feel paranoid or anything. Oh, and there aren't as many escaped nazis here as in the movies, either.
Thanks :-) Comparison to London makes me feel better about Buenos Aires. Puts thing into a context. I actually used to live in North London, in a semi-rough area. Even though London was an expensive mess and certain areas gave the feeling of insecurity, I still liked it...at least it was an interesting mess.
Living in Buenos Aires, i have to said that the article is a big rant. Sure, let's make a complete insight about the economy of a complicated, third world country by well, touring a little bit and talking with a couple of entrepreneurs.
This country has lots and lots of issues, corruption, you name it, but is not that bad at all. In fact, it has improved a little bit since 2001. And what is even more important to this place, it has a little but important entrepreneur community (Pallermo Valley, for instance).
Perhaps, constant adversity helps people to sail agains the wind or any other cliché you might love. And don't start talking about politics without knowing, we were never one of the richest nations of the world, just a couple of very rich people that thought we did and made a couple of history books about it ;).
I can understand the "it's not that bad at all" sentiment from a personal perspective but it doesn't mean that things aren't bad on a rational, comparative basis.
I grew up in Poland, a country at the time under communist regime. It would take a book to describe all the ways the economy and life was fucked up compared to west countries.
It really was a terrible country to live in. But at the same time 40 million people did and on some level our lives weren't all that different from people in richer, cleaner countries where people could buy toilet paper every day. People have amazing ability to adapt to very adverse environments.
From reading the article I get the impression that Argentina is truly, factually fucked up country, compared to other countries, just like Poland was under communism.
While your reassurance that "it's not bad at all" is a testament to adaptive power of humans, unless you challenge the facts described in the article you're not very convincing.
As to your claim challenging the notion that Argentina was a rich nation, well, the rich people you speak of were very successful at rewriting the history. According to Wikipedia:
"Argentina increased in prosperity and prominence between 1880 and 1929 and emerged as one of the ten richest countries in the world, benefiting from an agricultural export-led economy as well as British and French investment. Driven by immigration and decreasing mortality the Argentine population grew fivefold and the economy 15-fold."
"Argentina increased in prosperity and prominence between 1880 and 1929 and emerged as one of the ten richest countries in the world, benefiting from an agricultural export-led economy as well as British and French investment. Driven by immigration and decreasing mortality the Argentine population grew fivefold and the economy 15-fold."
Sure, if you consider the top upper class as the whole country.
The people never saw that kind of wealth and prosperity in those days. Field workers lived in the most absolute poverty while the owners of those fields lived in luxury and traveling abroad for vacations. North of Argentina still remains one of the poorest regions in Latin America, as it was those days. Sure, we were exporting goods everywhere. Not much was being invested on improving the well being of workers everywhere. At least, not until Peron grew to power.
Wealth was more unequally distributed back then in all the rich countries, at least compared to say the 1970s which were the recent equality peak. The US had Getty and Rockerfeller and JP Morgan and also mass poverty, look at the Great Depression. Was Argentina that different back then?
