4-yr stock portfolio

After some heated discussions with some friends of mine we made the following bet.

If you were to put a fix amount of $ and you can spread it as you want buing amazon, apple, google and facebook, knowing that your stock will be illiquid til 4 yrs from now at which point all shares would be sold at the the then price... how exactly would you spread your money?

Here are the choices:
ot
AMZN - 64%
GOOG - 27%
FB - 9%
AAPL - 0%

sk (amzn:aapl 6:1)
AMZN : 85%
AAPL : 15%

ia
AAPL: 50%
FB: 20%
GOOG: 20%
AMZN: 10%

pp
GOOG :50%
AMZN : 50%

Since this is my blog let me add my own explanations for my choices:
I think amzn at about $150B is still has lots of room to grow within the retail segment. walmarts and targets etc.. hold comparable valuations and in my view amzn has a more efficient model which means that it can produce more profits (in spite of its profitless history) when it it will end up devouring these companies. So I can easily see amzn being > $500B  within 4yrs and being the worlds mega retailer (as opposed to the worlds biggest etailer). I think that its profitless history is related to its 10+ yr bets (see its efforts into content, into infrastructiure (aws), content delivery and such. I think these efforts while aspirational they are mired with tremendous competition so it may very well be the case that another company would be the leader in (content delivery infrastructure enablement (aws) etc.. , ie I wouldn't bet on these. Nobody comes even close to challenge amzn status as the worlds best retailer.

Google is a much less clear story. (Unfortunately I don't seem to have captured somewhere my thoughts of what is the achilles tendon of each one of these 4 companies... should do so shortly..)
I see its ads dominance having reached a plateau and I see it being challenges in two very different ways from platforms that own the transcaction (amzn) and social platforms that know the user (facebook). The reason that I believe however that google is with us to stay in the long term (as a $300-$500B company) - is because it has attracted 10s of thousands of great engineers and has created a an extremely efficient software generating machine - probably one of the most efficient such "machines". The only comparable company is Microsoft.... so I think that Google is with us to stay for the same reason that I would (should) have said the same for microsoft. 10yrs ago when Bill Gates was about to leave.

The reason I put Apple at the bottom, is because I think that Apple at $650B is currently the most overvalued company in spite of its rock bottom p/e. My primary concern with Apple is that they have trained the market to expect a high profit margin company - which ties their hands. All it takes is one market timing miscalculation and their still great-selling products can become low margin ones.
I-watch is an example. In smartphones, Apple has 40% of the market and 90% if the profits (I am not being accurate). In smartwatches, msft's Band and LG's G may very well tilt the market and force apple to sell its watch at a price point that is consumer success but not a wall street one. And for manufacturing companies the value diff between DELL and APPLE (or GM v TESLA  etc etc) can be orders of magnitude..

FB is where it is because I don't really understand it. While it seems that FB eventually should be able to become a consumer decision influenter comparable to Google.. so a comparable valuation is meaningful, On the other hand the internal culture of FB is in from my few interactions with them less healthy than google. And looking at its consumers, it appears to be losing the youth audience (and the early adopter one) (and gets it back with increasingly expensive acquisitions...). So I really can't tell what is the future for FB..

Oil, feeling vindicated

Even though the current price swing is not related to the long term decline of the demand side in developed countries... the fact that I was bearish at oil 3 months ago

when oil was doing pretty well (at around $95) makes me feel vindicated.

I also find it surprising that most of the discussion in the article is centered around short term issues (like what russia does, what iran does etc). You can even make the case the even the shale oil boom is short term. The only true macro trends are: 

1. There will be many more people that consume lots of energy going forward (e.g. china/india becoming developed countries)

2. Oil is going to become increasingly more expensive to get at ( colorary : there is much more oil at higher prices)
3. The energy consumption of the avg person in developed countries is (contrary to what was expected 10 yrs) going to decline (mostly due to transportation efficiencies related to hybrid/electric cars)
3. Battery technology is going to improve (price and efficiencies) enabling more and more uses of electric power instead of gas.

Of course to be accurate I should mention that I was bearish on the oil companies - not the oil prices...and the stock price of oil companies have dropped much less (just 5%) since when the article was published..

On minimum wage jobs

The last couple weeks I have found myself defending a seemingly impossible to defend position.
That a person earning a minimum wage can be a happy person that actually enjoys their life.
I found that in almost every case I am surrounded by people (typically my friends) that
- assume that everyone wants a highly rewarding day-job that makes a difference, challenges them, gives them the opportuinity to use their creativity etc etc.  However, I have found (typically outside my highly selected circle of friends that there are many people that actually want a job that is steady, not really challenging, that they can put aside at 5 or 6 oclock and live a rewarding life by investing in their lifestyle, be it friends, hobbies, vacations outside of a job. (I bet they also sit with their own friends talking about the soul-less (my new favorite word from this) work-aholics... and possibly just one person there is hopelessly trying to persuade for the opposite... just to make things symmetric)
- they assume that when someone doesn't follow the latest trends in organics, anti-carb (essentially what a constant diet) from farmers markets and whole foods would get you) is living a rather unhealthy life style.
- they assume that unless someone has true variety in their daily "joys" be it food or evenning entertainment.. they are practically zobbies. (a good chunk of the teenagers I know would belong in this category, "they can eat safeway or chipotle or panda express or in an out every single day and play xbox every evenning/weekend and spend all their "free" moments looking at funny vines and snapchats.

All the above drives down hard their conclusion that living on a minimum wage is a life that nobody would enjoy living.
I disagree. Against all the tear-breaking stories of all the media and all the congressmen that take the minimum-wage challenge.
Lets first clear a few points.
1. You obviously cannot support a family - not even a single dependent as a single parent making minimum wage.
2. Starting from nothing, ie no savings, no car, no bank account, no credit card, no support system, no friends to live with, to carpool with, to hang around with would make for a very unpleasant and harsh and probably impossible life.

But thats not what is the norm is.

and 3. You probably need to work in multiple places. Most of the minimum wage employers prefer part time relationships which means that you cannot do 40hrs @ a safeway or a mcdonalds easily. You need to have multiple jobs - which does add some complexity and/or variety in your life




Here is what is my typical argument for the life of a $10/hr 40hr/week person.
First lets build the profile:
This is a person that lives together with their friends, possibly sharing a room in an appartment.
Think 4 people in a 2 bedroom home. Thats the privacy level my daughter has at her dorm and I had for 40 of my 49 years leaving in a 2 bedroom appt and growing up in a 5-member family, then with the family of my own again 5 member and until recently living in a 3 bedroom home.
When I said thats a $300/person housing costs in the bay area everybody considered me crazy...
but the truth is that $1200/mo is rather typical rent for low end of san jose appt.

This person either takes the bus or commutes to their job carpooling with friends that go in similar places. At worse (bus) this would mean $70/mo for the pass - at best , it can be less than that if carpooling etc.

So thats about housing and transportation. Now lets move to the most contentious topic : eating.

Lets add a bit to our profile. Like my daughter in her dorm, lets assume that in the appt, possibly room you have 1) a mini fridge and 2) a microwave.

Now I won't go into details but I would like to argue that today you can live with a healthy diet @ $10/day, while still getting your 2K calories and the recommended food pyramid - by just taking the typical economy meals from fast food places, be it the $1 mcdonald menues, $5 footlongs @ subway etc. My simple calculation is based on a combination diet - [1K calorie - $5 footlong from subway 

and assortment of $1 McDonald items, a venti morning home-prepared iced latte) . (would probably avoid buying drinks in fast foods and get iced water and pour in brought-from-home country-lemonade powder) (The above diet would make me happy ( and with the right choice of dollar menus, sandwich choices .. healthy as well) diff people would make diff choices.

So, that adds another $300 (30x10) cost per month. 

To see where we are so far (we have spent $700 for housing, food and transportation out of a budget of 176hrs x $10/hr => 1760. Lets chop 15% of the salary for taxes/ => thats $1500 left over.

Ok... we are not doing that bad :-).

Let me jump now :

a $10/hr person working 40hrs a week makes 20K/yr (thats the person we assumed above)

a person that works 60hrs a week (like most people I know do) woud make $30K/yr

a person that moves up the minimum wage rank (let say after years of having the job and showing 

responsibility/reliability etc, e.g. moving from $10->$15/hr woul make $45K

And yes that implies a hardworking person shuffling multiple jobs to rake in 60 hrs of work every week.  But thats a life that I and most people in my circle have followed and they are happy with that.

And we have assumed an appt -=> minimum maintainance, eating out every day no cooking cleaning.

Now a couple, ie 2 married people with the profile above would make $90K/yr!!!

More than enough to save a for a few years and buy a home create savings and then switch to a

more part-time life to allow them to grow a family.

....

ok ... need to go to my job now

And before that a link to employers like chipottle that build their org from  their "minimally educated " minimum wage folks 

(I think that enterprise rent a car is similar too)

allowing individuals that start as $9/hr crew member to grow into 6-figure salaries.

When do we really want marketplaces

I had a realization this morning.
Marketplaces only make sense when humans (the customer) really need/want the variety.
Examples of cases where we want variety
 - when we are looking for someone to date
 - when we are looking for book to read
 - when we looking for a fun thing to buy
 - when we are looking to hire our next great engineer in our team
 - when we are looking where to go to dine-out.
 - when we are looking for where to go for our vacation

These are cases where we want to experience the variety, and we believe that we have a rather unique (as opposed to commoditized) need that we want to personally spend time looking and choosing for.
Now what are examples of cases where we don't want marketplaces
 - Need to find a driver to take me somewhere
 - Need to fix sth broken in the house
 - Need to eat
 - Need to make reservations for my  business trip
 - Need to hire 5 more agents to make our support team 24x7
 - Need to buy my sons textbooks
All these are examples where I would be happier not spend any time in the selection process and someone else would do it for me. well, healthy,cheaply fast.
I go to in n out or panda express for lunch - I don't go to anjie list ... hoping that one day some property mgmt like service will fix my broken thing in the house for me, I am really happy when someone else in the company makes the reservations for me and I am upset when I have to spend 1hr in an error prone process every year copying titles from teachers syllabus and pasting them in amzn...

In the definition I use above for "marketplace" the amzn bookstore is a marketplace, it exposes 100s of 100s of "vendors" (the authors) that sell their stories and yelp is a marketoplace (even though no trx happen in it) and uber is not a marketplace for me (even though it runs internally one to allow internally to select the right driver for me)

Related articles I read.. the perils of care.com 

Shouldn't Uber and Lyft be employers of the drivers

I was surpised to find out that UPS pays its drivers about $28/hr + excellent benefits . Looking around in forums to understand the rate, given that it would appear to me that the requirements for a UPS driver aren't very different from a Lyft $15/hr driver (and the lyft has to pay his car out of that...) ... and the only good explanation I found what that UPS is an employer of  300K drivers the drivers have union-ized and the union has significant leverage to negotiate a great package for what appears to me (based on the Lyft comparison) a profession that someone with minimal training (like the uberx/lyft drivers can do). (I may be doing a mistake here : even though lyft driver carries a human (with all the responsibilities that this entails while UPS carries "boxes".... the issue here is that the UPS driver carries 100s or 1000s of boxes... which multiplies the responsibility in the same sense a bus driver should be paid more than a taxi driver and a train driver should be paid more than the bus driver even his role on the train is much simpler than the bus driver..... ).
Anyway my realization here is that Lyft and Uber have a significant challenge in the future to avoid having their drivers be independent contractors as opposed to employees (which could result in the potential union-effects...). The problem here is that uber and lyft want/need to control the experience , ie how the work is performed. They are telling the drivers when to work, where to go, they are training the drivers, they are training drivers to become trainers they are giving them tools ( apps , mustaches for now, maybe more later) the provide insurrance for them... and with each one of these efforts they check more and more of the checkboxes that when checked risk making a relationship be considered employee-one instead of a contractor one...

My view about the unions is that (in todays world and in US) they are not bad and they are not good either just like a company is not good or bad. There is nothing wrong with a group of vendors or customers or contractors or employees group together to create an new entity to create economies of skale, share risk obtain negotiation leverage. What is questionable (p.c. word for wrong) is that most countries/states have laws consider unions as "good" and they protect them. These laws were meant for the time that unions played an essential"good" role as an equalizing force (against all-too-powerfull employers) to fill the gap of then missing or unenforced laws and govermental protection.

Someone (not me :-) ) could make the more militant argument that we need to start thinking of applying anti-monopoly laws to limit the power of unions.
If all the fork-lift operators in a country unite into a union (think company) and goverment requires fork-operator licenses to operate a fork lift then the fork-lift operators inc has a monopoly ... and will most probably abuse it to benefit its members/owners so the goverment has to intervene and "regulate" that union or break it up all together, and if the broken up unions talk among thesmelves to keep rates up , the price fixing laws can be applied.

On collaborative consumption

As I am trying to figure out which sector is ripe to be disrupted i go back and forth in circles around the essence of collaborative consumption (c.c.) ..
I typically use airbnb and lyft as prime examples of companies that leveraged c.c. Airbnb people share their "underutilized" home, in lyft share their under utilized car. Of course other people even throw in taskrabbit or etsy or fiverr (people sharing their under utilized time or skill or hobby etc..).

However,  looking at these example in more detail I don't see c.c. as being the primary lever.
Lets take airbnb for example. I would make the case that their business model is (and will be more and more) supported primarily by independent-unit rentals and even more independent unit rentals that are primarily used for renting out. (This was the evolution of the "rooms to let" industry in the greek islands were locals in the 80s would undercut hotels by renting out rooms with rooms--to-let signs placed practically outside most homes and rooms to let sign holders awaiting the arriving tourists in every port. The problem there was that the majority of the tourists wanted their own bathroom (as opposed to a shared one) so rooms with own bathroom used would get much better prices/utilization - by the 1990s in most islands most locals had expanded their main house with extra units that were custom fit the tourist industry. Soon after that regulation came in allowing this new sector (which became the primary way to stay at an greek island) to exist while paying taxes as well as obeying certain rules.. So for most greeks, airbnb was "first invented in greece"... but forgeting that the point here is that for airbnb the model of enabling people to rent out rooms of their home (or their full home ) when they are out in vacation is very different than the model of someone that lists their vrbo, their a vacation property for rent and also a bit different from someone that creates multiple independent units that are exclusively used for renting. The latter has no c.c. in it - and I would argue that even the second has very little c.c. in it.

The case for lyft is different: If we were to look in classifieds for the last decades we would find tons of people wanted ads that require someone to have own car or bicycle or motorcycle.
Why is this different? Is it the part-time aspect? But part time by itself is the default for most of the youth-employment options today be it safeway and mcdonalds - they can make extra money by leveraging some extra time in evennings, weekends or vacation time...

I would make the case that in all the above cases the primary element is (will be) sth different than c.c.

It is about replacing relatively higher paid self employed/small business owners with a small crew/staff with.. a mega corporation that is able to provide cheaper/better/faster/more reliable local service relying (excluding HQ) on a minimum wage workforce, automation, replicable processes, consolidated vendor relationships and global marketing.
And that is not collaborative consumption. It is what every big (primarily retail) chain does, has been doing for decades be it walmart or starbucks or mcdonalds. The primary cost benefit is not in uber/lyft the avoidance of an exclusive commercial car that stays unused most of the day (this does have a ~$5/hr benefit). It is the fact that we eliminate all the money made by
 - taxi drivers that make $20/hr or more
 - taxi owners that make $30/hr or more owning a taxi and having other people driving it
 - taxi business that own multiple taxis have an operator and do some local yellow page marketing
 - local-towns/cities that make money selling medalions/licenses
Most of the above ecosystem is being replaced with a few global companies + essentially unexperienced minimum-hourly paid workers that via scalable processes and computer-aided operation provide better/cheaper/more reliable service  that the whole ecosystem used to do before. Again this is more like walmart replacing downtown local shops than collaborative consumption.

Airbnb and regulations - one year later

This is a continuation to this post from last November.

So it seems that time has run out for airbnb.

The last couple quarters have shown a swell of cases where cities and various municipalities have actually started issuing citations against airbnb tenants.
Even cases that have been celebrated as wins for Airbnb like Amsterdam and Portland are actually major losses for airbnb.
The problem is that the highest growth most lucrative and representing the biggest market rents are those renting an independent unit - something that gives to the visitors the equivalent of a hotel room or suite. For example in NY  more than 60% of all airbnb rentals in for full appartment units.
Airbnb's 10B valuation has been predicated in its ability to disrupt the hotel industry.

At this point even the most liberal city is staying away from allowing full unit airbnb round the year rentals. I think it is clear that within residential zones at best what may be expected is occassional rent of probably just a room or two.

Even though I am huge proponent of the "sharing/collaborative" economy, I feel a bit vindicated about this. Not because I was predicting that it would happen but because in my view Airbnb, even though it is one of the earliest success stories it is one of the last ones to attempt to find a balance between disrupting and (possibly violating) antiquated laws and regulations while going above and beyond those regulations that make sense - and by doing so have a defensible line.
There are many ways that highway motels regulatory discipline is inadequate - be it cleaning-ness or safety or noise or false advertising of amenities not there. Airbnb could come up with innovative ways to bring these elements of quality (and process and self regulation) in the marketplace similar to the way it practically forced "professional photos" for its listings and did its breakthrough.
Airbnb could have put efforts in tax-collection on behalf of it listers - even though it would imply a 10-20% increase in the cost of its listings and would definitely affect its total volume.
Today lyft and uber (in much less time since launched) have done more than any taxi/medalion licensing union or regulation has done to make sure that all the safety rules are obeyed and they bring better service (in all aspects of quality and safety) than typical taxis do - they are not just cheaper.

If airbnb had done the things I mentioned I believe it would end up having a thiner gross margin,  but it would have a better chance to fight the eventual regulatory battle for its true target big market - for the hearts of the hotel-staying customers. My guess about what happens next is that an increasing # of cities will start enforcing the zoning rules, airbnb would have to add 10% hotel taxes in most remaining listings and the company will need to accept a future that is not valuing it as a $10-20B company but something much less exciting than that.

Square's end

After reading the http://localregister.amazon.com/ announcement and the related article on techcrunch 
It appears that the end is near at Square.

So:
- The wsj article last april ( you need to come from google to see it)  reported that according to insiders the company had 9 months runway in Q1 of 2014. They did 100M debt financing in April. This means that they will probably start using their debt facility next month or so.
- The wsj article (and separately this one ) reported that they had about $110M of cash losses in 2013. So the question is how are their losses so far in 2014. So according the the wsj article in 2013 they report 20B of volume, $550M of Revenue and they had 21% gross margin (after paying networks+ and fraud). So they had about $110M of Gross Profit to pay for their normal expenses in that year - which means that their expenses were about 200M. Now according to what square employees said in Quora they had 250 ems in 03-2012,  650 in 11-2013 and according to linkedin they have 980 now (980 linkedin members say that Square is their current employer). The above would argue that their salary related expenses increased at least by 50% this year compared to 2013 and it seems that salaries is the majority of their expenses. The company did $8B of payments in 2012 and $20B of payments in 2013, so I would guess that at best in 2014 they would double their volume. If they do that would mean (assuming that their margin don't erode further) that instad of 110M gross they would bring 220M gross. This extra 110M would allow their net losses to stay flat even if they increase their expenses by 50% from 200-> $300M. So this means that all things normal the company would eat up another 100M of cash in 2014 - or equivalently they have exactly 12 months runway before they use completely their new credit line.
- Enter amazon and the company will be forced now to change - even somewhat its pricing at least through the next 3 months - while the amazon steal-of-a-deal lasts. Recalling the impact of Starbucks deal (2% instead if normal pricing caused 20M of losses according to the articles above) we should expect that the new runway can easily disappear - if the company's cuts further into its margin.

What does the above means. Its not about whether in the end Square succeeds. I think that has been decided sometime ago (ie no future). What this means is that the end is much much closer than what everyone else thinks. Square has really just through the end of the year to
a) find a down-round ~1B-2B buyer in the next 3-4 months.
b) make major layoffs to counter the declining margins and extends its runway beyond this year - postpones the inevitable
c) bet that customers wont move to amzn due to the smb's fear of amazon is a competitor and don't do anything => fire-sale next year when declining yoy payment volume shows.

I bet that we will see a) and maybe b)

On Lyft and Uberx

Just read the long comment threads behind the recent article on Uber that got HNed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8165857

The true reasons behind the anger and animosity exhibited against Uber and Lyft was not clear.
People said that the ceos are a-holes that the companies abuse laws etc that all they are looking is exit strategies etc. All that is in my view irrelevant. People could make the same comments for many successful startups that have comparably arrogant characters a founders/ceos and that break all kinds of laws and rules during their assent. For one Airbnb is an obvious such example.. Still articles _on HN_ about airbnb typically bring positive reviews. (the case about calling them "slamlords" in the thread's comments is an exception... than the rule).
So whats diff between airbnb and uber.
Uber will result in the death of the taxicab profession which will involve in a significant negative effects for 100Ks (239K in US?) taxi drivers. Hotel owners (the corresponding group that is feeling the pinch from airbnb's ascent) is not a large-population profession - most hotels are large chains contrary to taxicabs that are owned and operated by individuals or SMBs.
In my view even after Uber and Lyft provided all the necessary elements (commercial insurance coverage, background checks, vehicle checks and qualification criteria) it will still be a much less costly option than taxis. The primary reason is simple
Because by today, the computer-aided driver can perform perfectly the job of a taxi-driver without any special training - so there is no reason what soever that they should be paid more than other professions that pay for in-experienced workers. If in some place in the world it costs $10/hr to hire a McDonald cashier there is no reason why a taxi driver would be getting more.  (I am excluding here any costs related to car owning/maintaining - I am assuming these can be the same for both taxi cabs as well as uber/lyft drivers (except look at secondary reason). The taxi driver is expected to be polite, reliable, and courteous. They are given the opportunity to drive in an environment they control (contrary to McDonalds). They can decide the last moment whether they want to clock in or not. They can dress up as they see fit. They are sitting in a chair (possibly listening to their own music) while the McDonalds person is standing up accepting new orders every minute. They have a less stressfull environment (having worked at a cantene as well as driven in a big city for years - I can attest that busy times at a cantene are much more stressfull. Probably the only stress for a taxi-driver is fighting or stopping in the middle of the street to grab a customer - sth that gets eliminated with the app-booking uber and lyft.
In summary in every way I see Uber and Lyft are better deals compared to other minimum hourly professions - and given that Lyft drivers are independent contractors... not Lyft employees... I would expect their hourly rate to drop below the minimum hourly rate...

The secondary reason (I am slightly less confident about this logic by the way) is that taxi-cab demand has sufficient flunctuations around peak times which imply that dedicating the resources of a person and a car full time is counter productive. This is quite known already - and the reason for the many part-timers among taxi-cab drivers. However, reusing a car that serves a different purpose the rest of the time
makes even more sense : based on any total cost of ownership - you should expect to pay 100s of dollars for a car per month (as little as $200 most probably closer to $500). If you intend to drive for a lyft just 4hrs/day - the peak times... and your time cost $10/hr + gas at $4/hr (assuming sth like a prius) (based on the primary reason above) the cost of a fully dedicated car would canother $6/hr. ($500 / 80 hrs = $6/hr) and bring it to $20. Lyft and UberX can bring the cost down by almost 30% compared to std Uber/taxi dedicated cars even after the driver's rates are brought down to minimum hourlies...


All that doesn't mean that we wont have people that drive other people for money. Most probably we will have many more than before (til the self driving vehicle comes). It means that the profession of a taxi-driver will cease to exist - just like we don't think any longer working at McDonalds as the FastFoodClerk as a profession.

Professions of the past and future

This summer, I think most people people I vacationed with must have thought I was in a generally negative zone... A common theme in arguments and discussions I had with people was that I found myself trying to prove to them that their professions - essentially their life choices, were meaningless, and were soon to become obsolete. We would get there either by starting a discussion about  our kids and their career choices or the all too common in my home country complaining about everything that is wrong around goverment.

When my sister was telling me that her job as psychiatrist is changing  into something that she would not have ever fallen in love with - as a result of a system that in its attempt to optimize is making sure that a computer-aided-nurse  is doing the general assessment a general doctor (still not computer aided) is the air-traffic controller and she is receiving a patient only when he really just needs to be drugged and she just has to put her signature on a prescription unable to attack the complete problem of the patient's well beeing - the problem that she was actually educated for with 12 years of medical studies - that gave her the tools to be a doctor for everything.... I saw that pattern repeated in all developed countries. I saw doctors becoming employees of National Health Systems or  managed health care systems, I saw an increasing part of the service they used to provide being done by people with less than a 5-yr long college education, nurses or medical technicians.  I saw an increasing part of the decision making being the result of decision support systems. I saw the need for 12 yr of medical education being both questioned and not paid for in the end. I saw the end of the time that being a doctor means a sure way to join the upper middle class.

When I was driving with one of the most well-educated best trained most-into-it limo driver I have ever met I tried to warn him that he needs to find a new profession since I see the profession of taxi drivers disapper - and with that I mean the ability for someone to make good living and support their family by being a taxi driver (and relying in the process in a regulatory environment that somehow restricts licenses to avoid over-supply and keep prices for what is potential a minimum skill profession artificially inflated.   (I am sure of the above based on my view that the  lyft uberx model - ie the model of part-timers driving normal private cars - taking on a fare - will replace taxi professionals in most countries - even in regulated markets - during the next 2-3 years)

I stopped and talked with the owner of a tourist shop, one of the hundreds lining up in the small streets of the island. We both agreed that the talent and creativity involved in selecting the collection of items in the store and designing the store is needed and is worthwhile and unique... But sitting in the store waiting as a cachier is not and will go away - first replaced with trained amateurs + cameras in stores + trained remote store managers and later with shared "street-mall-provided" cashier and self-checkout kiosks. As the actual fullfilment of the operation would become facilated by repeatable processes and systems the only part that would not would be the store-design/collection selection/pricing and collection layout, with any annual refresh. If all providers of arts and crafts and local products can be found through marketplaces like etsy etc..the actual research for that would become efficient... so would the actual renting of these stores a rental system that is still so closed that nobody knows what everyone else is paying. With an open transparent rent marketplace for the spaces... all that someone would need is some kickstarted/crowdfunding of their idea for a particular artsy store centered around olive-wood products in a greek island. The result of all that is that the value of the store-owner is reduced.. the competition would increase... the store owner in such a store would not be able to carry 70-80% margins but closer to ecommerce like ones. The artists/producers/land-owners/clients would all get a better deal the store owner/operator would be the loser.

Seeing this above I think the pattern is that the remaining professions of the future are

badly paid - good for part time/fill in doing nothing time
 - doing things that cannot be automated but require minimal knowledge/domain expertise besides 15-18yrs  (12 grades +  3-5yrs of college) of global (non-specialized) education

possibly better paid but will not survive past "singularity-like" times
 - people finding ways to automate things
 - people finding ways to replacing expensive labor for computer assisted inexpensive labor

decently paid can survive til full-singularity - will be the profession of the future
 - people creating unique things - artists of various sorts
 - people sharing their experiences - in ways that can be consumed leveraged re-lived by many others

tiny percent don't do this for the money
 - scientists finding solutions to truly hard open problems

Falling in love with problems and solutions

Just read a post, not worth sharing ... too obvious ... http://hatchery.io/how-to-validate-your-business-idea-by-testing-a-hypothesis.html .
The only thing I thought it was worthwhile keeping is sth that the article doesn't really talk about but it is in on the subtext of the subheading:
> Fall in Love with the problem, not with the solution!
The way I read this is "Unless you think you can fall in love with the problem don't start a company just because you love the solution..."

This is important for me as I am attempting to find what to do next.
I really fell in love with the problem of being able to work from anywhere...

As I am fascinated with startup ideas in the  space of home-contractors/homejoy/handibook I think I should ask myself:

Am I willing to fall in love with the problem of a worry free, time free, mindshare free home-living?
  To the extend that home-living today is forcing people to either
     + devote a good part of their lives, cleaning, pruning, fixing, painting
or  + accept to live in a rather sub-standard environment
or  + spend a ton of money in "servants" and managing servants
or  + accept a zero customization prison-cell like lack of variety (hotel, dorm etc)
  it is a problem that if not I can fall in love, I can definitely sympathize. Do I truly need to fall in love with it?

My perspective is to some extent affected by the fact that I have fallen in love with aspects of the solution:
 - I really am in love with the idea that for EVERYTHING there is a semi-automated marketplace or people or services where I can have everything ordered to be bought or ordered to be done with a search and single click
 - I really do want to prove to people that still today the majority of the professions of today DON'T make sense. They are artifacts of the past - of an era where you need a specialist in each retail store that knows where everything is and how it is called and how to price it. They are artifacts of the past - an era where  the average person couldn't practically fix everything that involves no tools by just searching an finding a youtube video for it. They are artifacts of the past - a past where you couldn't wear your google glasses and become someone else's eyes and hands and do things on their behalf.

Driving, Oil Trends

Just read this blog post
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/04/23/where-is-the-bottom-americans-continue-to-drive-less-and-less/
which includes some very interesting statistics about avg miles driven per capital

This almost 10% decline since 2005 together with an approx 5% increase in the avg mpg 

 based on gov figures would argue that consumer transportation gasoline usage hs dropped by 15%.

The trend will continue to accelerate. From the same gov report MPG of new vehicles has grown since 2005 by 20% !!! (from 30mpg to 36 mpg) and that is 50% higher than the avg 22mpg against used+new vehicles.

So this aggregate 15% plus decline in total gasoline use by consumers was of course burried under the 70% increase of the gasoline prices during that same period.

My projection is that the trends of decreasing oil consumption for transportation (50% of all US oil consumption is consumer (ie gasoline) transportation ) will continue and acceletate. Price increases will not be able to balance this out which will mean that the oil sector, one of the most resilient never-dying dynosaur-dominated ( rockfeller/standard oil era companies ) will be hit hard this decade.

(Note that the stock market still doesn't believe so XOM stock price just surpassed its pre 2008 crisis price reaching an all time record - almost 50% more than its price in 2005. The big sisters amount to about $1.5Trillion market cap. 

(Russia's foreign-relationship activities...etc can be better understood through this lense)

0->10B in less than 3 yrs

Zulily was founded in 2010 and now its worth 15B  (public)
Whatsapp was founded in 2009 and was sold for 16B+ 4 yrs later.
Back in 05-06 we were immensely surprised when we saw youtube, sold 1.5yrs after it was founded for 1.5B or skype that was sold for $8B 2yrs after its founding.

Today the zulily-like companies don't even make the news  (the company was close to 10B already from its IPO... almost a year ago.

We have at least two companies that grew to 100B in less than 10yrs (Google,FB).

We should expect shortly to see 10B Market Caps in less than 2 yrs, 100B in less than 5yrs and 1T (the actual singularity prediction in less than 20yrs - and google will probably be that one hitting that mark (ie 1T before it turns 20 on 9/2018).

One monkey wrench to this could be that the public stockmarket may not be able to be the place where one can find and measure the majority of  big companies..

How open source works

I have been finding surprising how the tiny little, most niche probable things that I have opted to publish, just for the sake of doing it, end up picking up usage by others. In the case of nodejs/npm within a month or two, in the case of python/pypi slower.

Not only that but I experienced for the first time the pull that you get when a bigger crowd starts using your utility. How could it ever happen?

Here is the senario that happened to me:

1. There is some popular service https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres (thousands of github stars)
2. some guy wants some tiny mini feature from that service - to improve the readability of the saved screensnaps
3. the powers to be tell him "you do it". The guy looks around find my little utility (slugifyurl) that does exactly that uses it and submit the patch
4. patch gets rejected. The service being popular - stretches my utility (e.g. windows valid names)  and it fails the tests..
5. the guy comes to me for a fix. I fix it - he submits it and it gets accepted
6. Suddenly my tiny utility is now being used by 1000s. Within an hour I get more more comments. Not only that but I get the less polite, "what the heck are you doing here " attitude of more experienced folks. My first reaction was to tell "ask more politely if you want me to raise my finger..." but I decided to let it go and I just went and fixed whatever they asked.

Of course now all I can do is wait for npm to bring back the download counts.. to see my little app having downloads in the 100s and 1000s!!! Cant wait.

I have no need for music any more

Before starting any argument let me first explain that because of several personal reasons even though I like/appreciate music and songs - I very rarely find myself needing to hear to music. I actually find myself in the opposite position. There are too often the cases where I don't want to be hearing music and need to defend the right to keep the car or home of iphone speakers on mute.

My typical explanation is that I cannot think with music.  Even though I can rarely follow the words of english music songs - music has this ability to grab by brain and take over its foreground process - leaving only background tasks. But when I drive - I want to think. These are precious interrupt free moments that I can really focus on understand what to do next , find a solution, or better understand a problem/ situation. In the rare occasions that I am just tired for that - my alternative is some reading - but almost always reading will result in rekindling of idea generation - problem solving etc etc.

So my kids thing of my as a weirdo - as an "An Enemy of the Music". 

 Its a different topic but seeing young or not so young people with headsets and eyes closed, dozing off to a tune - is in my view similar to people falling victims to a mind-less brain-consuming addictive habit that eats their opportunity to do something real - with the sole exception that it is a society approved and positively perceived drug. Anyone that makes an argument that listening to a song for the 20-th time - spending one hour or more on a daily basis in listening to music _as a foreground task_ has a rather weak standing.

Ok but back to our topic. In spite of all that I do have itunes on my laptop and headsets on my backpack and I use them rather regularly: the reason? I need a background hum that will cover occassionally distracting audio signals to get me into the zone of whatever I am doing.

Given that 99% of the music I hear has the "attention grabbing" effects I mentioned earlier I have trained my brain : I have about 20-40 songs mostly without words that I have by now heard 100s of times that I put in a loop. I do it mostly when there are annoyong people in a coffeeshop - and occassionally when there are people at the office where I just find too hard to ignore listening what they are saying. I would have done it now - given that the sounds of the starbucks I am now at are not what I like... Too much of a mall starbucks.

Until two days ago a friend pointed out to me an app/site called coffitivity!. A site the gives the audio experience of a coffee shop of your choice (standard, lunch time, campus coffee shop).

And it is perfect!.

My brain does not detect any repeating pattern. The audio signal is/can be loud enough to cover anything from annoying people to airplane hum. My brain needs it to focus and still its noise/murmur style leaves it as a 0% CPU requiring background task.

I use it @ home where the deafening silence bothers me. It automatically transports me to a coffee shop state

I use it at work, when working parked in the car etc. (do lots of driving carrying around kids...)

I submitted a feature request - for them to provide a selection of coffeshop webcam/video feed.  The need for that is different... I need the occasional break. When I am at home the breaks, TV, Fridge, family can be black holes. Same when I am at the office. Still in the coffee shop - I am stuck in a chair - forced to be in working mode - but I do have the option whenever I want to raise my head and look around an active different than the last time visual environment - interesting but not too interesting that I cannot pull back my attention into my work 2 minutes later. So I want that same video feed as part of the my coffitivity experience. I can leave it running on an iPad on the side for my focus space for the occasional glimpse.

I am realizing as I am writing this that my need/inability to keep me focused - (all the talk about not being able to focus with music  - or the unmanageable distractions of an home or office may imply that I am a bit more of attention deficit than the inverse... This may very well mean that coffitivity is an ideal thing for ADHD kinds of people... interesting..

It also may mean that people that are on the other side of the spectrum the asperger stereotype don't need such devices. My asperger son - can probably really study well with music while for other "adhd" son of mine, music is just a mind consuming drug... because of the different ways their two brains are wired (I actually do have two sons one - that can easily sit for 20 hrs straight reading a book and fits the adhd us-society stereotype...)

Thoughts about bay area wage inflation

So the recent article about CEOs conspiring to keep (those poor people) wages low made me think ....
(besides the fact that the article is not making a single mention that we are talking about the most highly paid engineers in the world - nobody would dare to write such an rticle about goldman sachs conspiring with other mega-banks to keep the comp. packages of investment bannkers low - and we are soon going to be talking about similar comps for senior engineers (ie 500K - 1M total annual comps..) )

So my simply realization was the following
 - singularity theory of exponential progress is hitting the bay area earlier than other places, more disruptive companies here, bay area's market growing disproportionally
 to the rest of the US/world
 - larger market/cap => requires/buys more brains => physical limits and people inertia cause two things
   - mega real estate bubble from rents to real estate price to commercial real estate price (aided by a restrictive residential market / cornerned commercial real estate market by a few real etsate tycoons)
   - wage comps skyrocketing - at the base of the pyramid due to real etstate/living costs at the top of the pyramid due to the supply demand imbalance
 - the first reaction by the mega employers is to do their own "cornering the marker" is bound to fail - there is no oligopoly - the circle of trust needs to keep on expanded as more and more new employers are breaking through (twitter etc) - we are seeing its unravelling now as the article points
 - with a fully transparent (linkedin driven) talent marketplace there will be an all out war for talent - which will force the typical $1M/eng in acqui-hires to become more common in steal-hires
 - the inbalanace between comps given to new from old employees (new getting 2-4X of what older hires get) will force more talent liquidity as well as startups that will make the last "secret" part of the talent marker visible (what people are actually making)
 - that will feed further the push on salary increases across the pyramid of employees, the total impact to the profitability of the companies will be felt rather strongly
 - the realization that r&d costs by a company are not fixed costs but are (almost like) variable costs, you need to keep on shelling out $1M/eng every 2-3 years to replenish your highly liquid talent - without them your technology advance is immediately reversed.
 - the only escape hatch of this localized inflationary pressure that bay area will be feeling is to escape out of the bay area.
 - it is questionable whether/when the friction do the problems above will counter-balance the increased advantages that bay area has due increased critical mass of the disruptive innovation key ingredients
 - most probably the first step will be that companies will increase their telecommute programms with people living in surrounding areas (just like od did) with people from southern CA, washington, utah etc..
 - younger companies - being the most unable to compete in this "war for talent" will be the fisrt ones to be forced to change into more/majority global employee teams
 - younger companies are going to be the big fish companies in 2-5 years - bringing these trends to the mainstream tech companies of the bay area.
 - companies will become global ready - people will be more comfortable running meetings remote - having their key contributors being remore as opposed to local
 - startups and technologies will further fill the gaps that cause innefficiencies for remote people, from addressing collaboration issues, temporary housing isses, payrol tax issues

 => the above transformation will happen first - the next step will be to accept the full concept of truly global (as opposed to US only) on-demand online worker as the one pitched by OD

Another thought. In the past using bay area as a test market carried a huge caveat - "the rest of the world isn't like us"...   However, as bay area becomes an increasing portion of the $s of the world certain startups that are not targeting people but $s can safely focus just here in the bay area and expect to get the lion share of the available market. Even for those companies that target consumers... you can make the case that bay area gives you a future-time window ab testing of what the rest of the world will be 2-5 yrs later right now (and that time-delay will tend to be come shorter and shorter in the future)

Job benefits laundry list

Random list of all aspects of someone's job that may have a cash-equivalent effect  on their assesment of the job's value:
Maybe worthwile as a tool for someone to assess the value they get from their current job


- salary
- annual bonus
  - what portion is based on company performance vs personal performance
  - what % of the total bonus was given the last 3 yrs to people
- annual salary growth policy (what was the salary growth on avg in the eng team last year?)
- expense policy
- signing bonus
  - does the company pay for moving in expenses
- does the company pay for my bus/train tickets
- does it have a free daily meal? how often does the company pay for free meals
- does the company pay for my daily breakfast?
- does the company pay for mydaily coffee/snacks/junk food
- does the company pay for a new laptop/better than what I have? What is its value? How often do I get to upgrade it?
   (if better than mine - e.g. a $4K Macbook Pro...that I can replace every 2 yrs that is incremental
   value compared to a 2yr old on avg owned 1.5K air  of ~1K/yr. 
   I get 50% of that extra value... the company gets the other 50% 
  (so ... even for something like that I can create a meaningful monetary equivalent…)
- How many big displays do I get on my desk
- do I get a good ergonomic chair? anyother better/worse than avg workstation equipment?
- does the company pay for extra broadband internet connectivity mifi/extra home bw?
- does the company pay portion of my cell bill - since I may on pager duty?
- does the company pay for annual conferences? what is typical budget? trip? ticket? How many days off do I get for that?
- Do I get monthly odesk/elance/mturk budget to allow myself to better scale/outsource my work to others?
- open source - does the company feels comfortable open-sourcing generic tools/libraries that it built?
- how many aws/heroku etc resources/budget do I get for my work projects? toy projects?
- do I get a paid/premium github/dropbox/yyyy account?
- do I get to work from home once in a while? once a week?
- do the people that work in the office know how to work with remote people (hangouts, online docs/prese.. or having meeting means have to be in the office?
- add the commute time benefits to that (once a week => 52 hrs => 2.5% of 2K annual hrs
- when calculating commute costs/benefits generate two pieces => one that acts
  as a salary discount/addition (hourly rate x...) and another that captures the actual commute cost
   (1hr => 1/5th of tank > $20-25 per day
- to how many meetings do I  expect to be. (ask for the calendar of collueges to see coverage....
  Assume 25% avg if more than that you are less efficient => apply discount for lack of job satisfaction
- do I get to work directly with famous people
- how famous/well known is the company I will work for
- how fancy is my title
- do Iget my credits on the film? (my photo/name on the website?) ? 
- do I get to talk to conferences/workshop etc about what I do?
- How many interviews and time do I need to spend to get hired?
- Do I need to change my work attire?
- Can I bring my dog to work?
- Will others bring annoying pets to work?
- Don't I have a private office
- Arent we working in an open-office env
- What is the avg noise of the office?
- Is there free parking place? How hard is it to park?
- Can i bring my bike in the office?
- Are there electric car outlets nearby
- How far away is the train station, frequency of the stop, bullet train stop etc
- How bad is my commute for days that I have to be in the office during the traffic peak time?
- how often do I have to be in the office such times?
- stock options
  - do you stock options (find out strike price, current common share value (409A), cliff
  - how future/follow on grants are structured
  - what is the strike price
  - what is the cliff/vesting
  - what is the usual plan for future add-tional options
  - how often does the 409A get updated
  - does the company have clauses the prohibit share exchange in secondary markets
  - does the company treats its employees as shareholders - and shares with them regular financials, cap table break up - vacation days per year
  typical job will allow you to take 15 days of vaca+sick (15x8 hrs = 120 out of 2K annual hours)
  +/- of that amount add in the comp
- commute time to work
  assume that avg work implies 1hr commute. a 2 hr commute => 1 extra hr per day => 10% more time
    add a 10% discount (to the job's salary?)
 - Do I get to use Uber every now and then?
 - Does the company offer in-office dry-cleaner etc pickup (purple tie)
 - Do I get any taskrabbit monthly allowance to deal more efficiently with personal logistics
 - internationals
 - does the company pay for my H1? green card?
 - does it have experience doing so? When does my application can start? Can I control the timetable?
 - Is the company willing to pay do the "fast track" path?
 - will the company be ok with me spending some time in my home country - working remotely - as a way to provide a longer vaction to my family?
 - does the company fores me to speak English even with my homo-ethnic colleagues?

Normalizing Job Offers

A friend that seemed to be enjoying job interviewing way too much (spent more than 6 months each time courting with companies during his two job hunting phases since I get to know him 3yrs ago) had created a little calculator to allow him to compare often rather dis-similar job offers.

The problem here is that there is an underlying assumption that companies would benefit by not becoming easily comparable on a simple quantitative yardstick to other companies - they somehow benefit from offering a unique product that is its own little monopoly - ie a product that is not easily comparable to other products - the marketing pitch around the job is always trying to drive home that uniqueness. In some way they try to make applicants think that money should be the last thing they should be thinking when they are applying to work for this company.
But thats inefficient and wrong and against the current trends of transparency, quantification, objective measurements and optimization, data science etc.

The silly thing is that companies often do have the best cash-equivalent offer - even if they don't give the highest salary. The vast majority of the job benefits can be quantified so as we can obtain their $-equivalent, whether it is free meals, working from home, giving shares instead of stock options or  a low strike price. Its just a bit  hard and we don't have good tools to do it.

The other side of this problem is that the lack of transparency  makes collecting this info hard -
especially for a new person - and not only that but not transparent/official rules that the company treats in the same way as cash compensation can subtly change - with a new manager, or a not so positive board meeting - altering the unwritten contract between the employees and employer.

So I think this is wrong and there is a way to fix it.
It is hard to fix it for the outsiders - they get exposed to a tiny part of what the company truly - but it can be fixed for the insiders. The insiders have all the above information and they can tryly assess the complete compensation package that the company actually offers. Or putting in the inverse way they can easily determine the price that someone has to beat to make an employee consider their offer.

The question that no-one in the job market dares to ask/answer

Everyone in the job market at some point or another is going to discuss an offer.
An offer is described in the context of a prospective hire.
The discussion around it is trying to pinpoint the right answer to the question:
 "for how much am I willing to join your company"

I think a more interesting question is instead a question that people don't ask (and would probably feel even more uncomfortable to answer)
 "for how much am I willing to leave my current company"

This "pivoting" of the question has the following interesting characteristics
 - It is only valid for people that currently do have a job.
 Thats ok - most prospective employers would rather not deal with people that never had a job or people that are laid off. They would be interested in talking to people that quit their jobs but people quite their jobs typically after having found what job to do next
 - It is also valid for people that are working on something - even though they don't have a job
 For any wannabe enterpreuneir  / not really getting paid startup coder, founder , cofounder or cofounding employee all these people that may be working but they don't really have a job this question still makes sense : it means for how much I am will move from my self-employed state to become (again) a hired employee.
 - It is agnostic about the new job : an offer to a person encapsulates two elements - the cost/benefit/opportunity loss of someone leaving a prior company together with that obtained by joining a new one.. Contrary this questions only capture one side of the equation and that makes a more useful/primitive knowledge piece.
 - It is an always valid to ask question: I can always ask and answer this question I don't have to be in job hunting mood. The answer to this question is the barometer of how much I like/I value/I benefit to staying to my company.
 - It is not a secret: the offers, how much you are being paid etc are all secrets protected with legal clauses in the employement contracts of employees. However, answering this question doesn't seem to betray any confidential information - even though in reality it does expose the true total $-ized benefit of the employee by their employer
 - People wouldn't dare to say it. In spite if the confidentiality clauses - people do talk about their salaries/offers etc.. Do they really open up to answer this question - hardly ever... It requires a significant sense of personal honesty to answer this accurately (and braveness to answer it openly)

It would really be cool if we could get people to think and answer this question....

Charging for free services that have computational needs

I love the way wolphram alpha does it....

Note that I have already done the search once - and got the right result ($17T approximately).
It seems that the service recalculates as opposed to serving cached results.
The service gave answers to several questions that seemed to require quite some time
(google+apple) gave me lots of outputs  - when I added every single mega sw tech company since the PC era that I could think of....

it then gave much fewer data points - still taking some time to answer.

So 

- point 1: the idea of allowing free usage but when your computation requires more than X - instead of , kicking the user out, penalizing everyone, making the user wait for ever, you provide the option to pay and use more resources...  

It reminds me the chess AI idea of greg to allow chess players to use an chess-player-assist program to play against their opponent (who also uses the same program...)  - and either people can pay to get more resources - run the alg at diff depth or both be limited by the # of funds that are being bet on the game - they can use the funds to get help - essentially reducing their potential earnout

 - point 2 : I really want to see the Market Cap of companies created the last 20-30 years as a % of the total over time since 1900 - do the same using the HQ address location etc... (e.g. bay area generating 2+Trillion dollars of market cap growth in 10-20yrs). 

The hardest challenge : finding jobs for people to do

An odd friend of mine told me several years as we were discussing about labor marketplaces - and whether the future holds a work-supply or work-demand challenge - that the problem is actually quite different.

He gave me a challenge :

I can give you as much money as you want (he meant it) to create jobs for them in the OD marketplace - but with one simple condition. The workers that get hired should get the impression that these are real jobs. You will soon realize that solving that problem in a scalable way is at least as hard as finding money in a scalable way.
The discussion continued with me saying things like

 - I will create jobs to translate every single wikipedia page in every other language
 - I will hire people to write ficticious jobs and then hire people to do them
 - I would post all generated issues in github as projects
etc..

He had a (possibly questionable) way to dismiss all of them based on the following logic :
 - the jobs produce no actual value in which case - people soon or later figure out that their jobs are pointless - at which point he would either say I violate the assumption above or he would say that the effort that would need to be added to confirm that a pointless job is actually well done is impossible or not scalable
 - the jobs produce actual value - in that case he would try to prove that the amount of value would decline over time - after million tasks/million people the value is too small - so he would use the prior argument  (pointless jobs) or that I have no scalable model to expand the solution for the society as a whole.

I think at the background of my odd-friend mind lied the idea that we are moving towards a matrix-like dystopia - where necessary resources (food,shelter,entertainment,health) are available for all - practically for free - as a result of the work of a tiny% of the earth's population (the "smarter" 1-10% of us) - still the only way to keep the planet in balance is to make the vast majority of people maintain the illusion that what they do for living is an important/necessary part of the value generation and attempt to attribute some reward <-> effort model to keep them do whatever they do - otherwise everybody wakes  up and realizes that they are in a sham world build by others and placed in front of their own eyes - and the system/society unfolds.

What brought that chain of thought - reading the title   Why we should give free money to everyone of this HN article... The article is on a different topic - but is still relevant - welfare / workfare are incarnations of the same problem as the one that my friend talks about.

How often do I google

I wanted to find out the distribution over the course of a day of a typical person's google searches.

A friend in the office said that I should look at real data ... I guess the only data I have was mine. I looked at my chrome web history - chrome doesn't have timestamps there...

Ok.. after a bit of digging I found it :

For a Mac user its

ithaca> cp ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Profile 3/History /tmp

ithaca> sqlite3 /tmp/History

sqlite> select avg(cnt) from (

  select ddate,count(*) cnt from (

    select 

      date(last_visit_time/1000000-11644473600,'unixepoch','localtime') as ddate,       time(last_visit_time/1000000-11644473600,'unixepoch','localtime') as dtime 

    from urls 

    where 

      url like '%google.com/sea%' 

    order by 1 desc 

  ) a 

  group by ddate 

) b;

13.0923076923077

Interesting things there:

  There is a history file for each profile of yours as you would expect

  The history file is an sqlite db file! A very nice surprise

  The timestamps aren't unix epoch based - they start somewhere in the 17th century for some reason - so you need to do the adjustment (SO gave the right offset)

  I still can't believe that browsers treat web history as something disposable - no clue why mine is truncated 2-3 months ago. 

  A tool that is syncing the history file daily/weekly with a more persistent DB (from all my profiles) may be worthwhile

  On Average I do 13 searches per day (I was expecting that to be more given how frequently I use the chrome omni-bar..

  Reference to the previous post - Google is making at least $30/mo from me from my search activity..... 

If I knew R better at this point I would just show the histogram of these timestamps but given that I mostly use as a command line calculator ..... this this will take me more than a few minutes...