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Alexis Ohanian Reddit

"I was always a weird kid. My dad can certainly attest to that," Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, told "Off The Cuff." "He's still waiting for me to outgrow a lot of that, but it's not happening. I'll be thirty in a few months. Nothing's changed."

In addition to Reddit, Ohanian founded a social enterprise website, Breadpig, and helped launchHipmunk, a travel-search website. He founded an investment firm, Das Kapital Capital. He's invested in more than 60 other tech startups. He's a multi-millionaire—and yes, he's only 29 years old. If that makes him weird, we'll have what he's having.

Ohanian had intended to become an immigration lawyer. In his junior year of college, after suffering through an LSAT preparation test, he and a friend went to a Waffle House to commiserate. Those must have been some waffles, because Ohanian had a life-changing epiphany there: He wouldn't be a lawyer, he would be a "startup guy."

In 2005, he founded Reddit with Steve Huffman, his college roommate. Reddit is a social news website where content submitted by users ('redditors') is voted on by the community. The stories that receive the most votes rise to the top and front pages of the site.

Three months after founding Reddit, Ohanian's mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. "Her first words to me were, 'I'm sorry, I know how much this is going to affect you. I know how important it is right now for you to start your company.' I am looking at her unable to comprehend how this woman, who had already given me so much, was now apologizing for having terminal brain cancer," Ohanian recalled.

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"I would obviously trade anything for that not to have happened," he continued. "But it made me want to make sure that this was not going to fail…that this was going to have to succeed, if for no other reason than to justify the sacrifices that they had made in supporting me. I still don't feel like I have lived up to everything she did for me, and the woman that she was."

Reddit has succeeded. Ohanian says the number of users has grown steadily since its launch. In February 2013, the site received more than 55 million unique visitors, which makes it one of the most popular social-networking sites in the world. But Reddit is not without its critics. The site iscontroversial, and most of its content is unregulated.

"This is a communication platform for people to share links and have discussions," Ohanian said, "so long as it is legal, we will let people use it for that. If you create an open communication platform, it means someone now has a platform to say the things that he or she may not have been able to say before. And that can be a great thing. The curse side of it is sometimes those ideas are extremely offensive. I can live with that paradox. But I want to know that we're making sure we're enabling more people to say the stuff that they want to say, behind a keyboard. As well as combating the jerks who use that same platform for their a---holish behavior."

Ohanian doesn't believe that all digital content should be free, but he's been an outspoken proponent of the open Internet. In 2011, one of Ohanian's co-developers at Reddit, Aaron Swartz, an Internet folk hero who had helped create the RSS web feed format, was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to JSTOR, a subscription-only digital archive of academic journals. He faced 13 felony charges, a possible prison sentence of up to 35 years, and up to $1 million in fines. Swartz committed suicide in January 2013.

"The people who owned this content said: 'We're not going to charge him.' That was very telling," Ohanian said, of the case against Swartz. "A significant amount of this research was publicly funded. Our tax dollars paid for it. So it calls into question, do we the people own the research that our tax dollars produce? Should it just be locked up for people who can afford the expensive licenses? It's a weird kind of sponsored monopoly of data. There are certainly instances of national security where one could make a pretty compelling argument that there is a more of a need-to-know basis. But those are few and far between. There's also the question of—do the penalties for this infringement really match up to the crime?"

Ohanian said he hopes Swartz' death will not be in vain. In February 2013, the Obama administration directed federal agencies to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research "freely available to the public."

Ohanian left Reddit in 2009 and now sits on its advisory board. The website's front page has remained stubbornly retro. "It's been like this for years because we didn't have a ton of developers,we didn't have the resources to really change it. We didn't have a good way to on-board new users," he said. "Reddit has now grown into this massive network.  Yet the user experience is set from 2005." He says he believes Reddit will change, however. "A new user's experience should look more like, say, Twitter. That is the kind of user experience that I hope the site can have, moving forward - where every user's front page is different because they are subscribed to the sub-reddits they like."

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Ohanian is writing a book, "Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will be Made, Not Managed," which will be published in October 2013. He describes it as, in part, a blueprint for other aspiring start-up entrepreneurs. The key, he said, is to consider "what is the problem you're trying to solve? What is the simplest version of a solution that you can create and get out to the world and start getting feedback on? The great news is, with developing on the Internet, the cost of creating it is virtually zero. It's pretty much just your time, assuming you've got a roof over your head, Internet connection, and some Ramen, you can be creating."

"Without Their Permission" is also a clarion call for the democratic future of the Internet. "Until we have access for everyone, we still can't see the Internet live up to its full potential," Ohanian said. "Because I want there to be more books going forward that aren't written by people who look like me, who are straight, white guys. If we can get people access and the tools they need, we can get better ideas. And with those better ideas, we're going to get better businesses and better nonprofits, better art. We're going to get better politicians, even."

via Yahoo News "The best advice I got was write, write, write because if you're a writer you have to write every day - as much as you can - and everything else kind of just falls to the side. You have to be obsessive," the author Ben Mezrich told Off The Cuff. Some of Mezrich's best-known works are 'Bringing Down the House:The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions' which was adapted for film and released as '21' and 'The Accidental Billionaires:The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal ' which he helped develop into the movie 'The Social Network'. Mezrich is a self-styled gonzo writer of non-fiction, whose stories focus on "young geniuses" making their fortunes with their wits and questionable ethics. Mezrich's books have made him a fortune. By one estimate, Mezrich has a net worth of $35 million. 'Bringing Down the House' spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, and sold more than two- million copies, in fifteen languages. 'The Accidental Billionaires' was on the list for eighteen weeks. "I think wealth to me is being able to pick up and go when you want, where you want to go, live how you want to live. It's not necessarily a Ferrari parked out front or a massive beach house. But it is the ability to, on a Wednesday, to get up and fly somewhere," he said. Some critics have accused Mezrich of playing fast and loose with the facts of the stories he relates. He says that he "disappears into his stories," which can make balancing work and real life complicated. "It's pretty intense, it's kind of insane kind of a circus act… balancing kids and writing and especially the kind of writing I do which is very get inside the story and live in this kind of wild rides to talk about the kids that I write about. You have to balance that with being a normal person which has always been kind of hard," he said. RELATED: Oliver Stone: I Learned Nothing From the Rich Mezrich told Off The Cuff that he'd wanted to write since he was twelve years old. If he hadn't fulfilled that ambition, "I would probably be homeless," he laughed, "if I weren't a writer I would have probably gone into finance but I would have been horrible at it - because I'm awful at math and numbers, and I'm really bad with authority, so I don't take orders well." Ben Mezrich @benmezrich I'm an author and I love a good story. Boston · http://www.benmezrich.com

the secret of money

Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the damaged dollar bills floating around the economy? How long does paper money actually last before it disintegrates into torn shreds or a pulpy mass that is indistinguishable from regular old paper? And at what point is paper money just too damaged to be used as legal tender? On March 30 9 p.m. ET/PT, the Discovery Channel will give viewers an inside look at "The Secret Life of Money," which seeks to answer these questions along with offering many other insights into the world of money, including the history of how gold became a standard form of currency around the world. David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein from NPR's "Planet Money" contributed to the special and chatted with Yahoo News about some of the stranger things they've learned about cash. "To me, what's most interesting is that there is a bigger idea at work here: Money is this thing that we take for granted," Goldstein said. "When you stop and think about money, it gets really weird, really fast." For example, if your money is damaged, you can legally exchange it with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. But only to a point. The bureau says it receives upwards of 300 envelopes per day, containing "torn, blackened, blood-soaked, shrunken or otherwise maimed money." However, so long as 51 percent of that blood-soaked bill remains intact, you can get a freshly issued replacement bill. "It's not paper the way we normally think of paper. It's 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. It's like a T-shirt," Kestenbaum says, explaining why money is actually more physically durable than some might think. Still, that hasn't stopped thousands of people each year from testing its limits in strange ways. For example, one Florida man attempted to dry his money after it became wet by putting it in the microwave. But instead of returning to its crisp, clean form, the money was crisped and burst into flames. These sort of incidents resulted in the bureau exchanging $28 million worth of paper money in 2011 alone. Of course, Goldstein and Kestenbaum note that similar incidents are on the decline as money moves toward becoming a predominantly electronic transaction between buyer and seller. "There is no truck full of dollar bills going from my employer's bank to my bank," Goldstein says, noting that the very basic idea of money is really more about trust than physical value. "The U.S. dollar is already basically an electronic currency." And with the advent of independent currency providers such as Bitcoin, some people are trying to establish that trust without relying on a government. Still, Kestenbaum says that for all its shortcomings, paper money is likely to stay with us for years to come. "I am more bearish on the future of physical money," he said. "At some point, we won't be using cash at all. Not in the next year, but in 50 years? Probably." Ironically, one of the reasons Goldstein and Kestenbaum say the U.S. dollar has a future in its physical form is its popularity outside of America. They note that there are currently more $100 bills outside the U.S. than within the borders of the country that printed them. If you add up all of the cash, "there's a lot missing because of how much is used overseas," Kestenbaum said.

sex surrogate and merchandising the human body

The question came up after an official near Paris called for allowing sex assistants as part of the publicly funded social services offered to those, he said, who were least able to "discover their sexuality and their bodies." PARIS (AP) — Steven Coppens had already spent most of his lifetime battling illness before his autoimmune disease took yet another toll seven years ago, leaving him in a wheelchair. But, the 31-year-old Belgian says in a gravelly voice, he's still the man he once was, and he has the same desires as anyone in the prime of life. "In the beginning I had to adapt to life in a wheelchair. And over the first years, sex came second. But after a while, it does come back," said Coppens, who lives about 30 kilometers (20 miles) outside Brussels. That was when he went looking for escorts on the Internet. "Those girls show up and you realize they have a problem with this and are scared off. And at this point, I'm not even talking about the prices they ask for," he said. "Just imagine that for some reason you cannot have a girl. You keep on looking. A man in a wheelchair still has the same sexual drive." Coppens now volunteers with Aditi, a Belgian organization dedicated to helping the disabled in their search for sexual fulfillment. And he supports the use of "sex surrogates" — people who are paid specifically to help disabled people explore their sexuality. Belgian law often leaves the sale of sex in a legal gray area, allowing for some sexual services for people with severe disabilities. In neighboring France, however, a tense debate on the topic is just beginning. The question came up after an official near Paris called for allowing sex assistants as part of the publicly funded social services offered to those, he said, who were least able to "discover their sexuality and their bodies." The Socialist politician, Jerome Guedj, pulled the most contentious proposal Monday, just ahead of the vote in the local council, removing the term "sex surrogates" after coming under criticism for opening the door to legalized prostitution. Instead, the council agreed for now to open a "reflection on the sexual life of the disabled." It wasn't what activists for France's disabled community were hoping for. "Sexuality doesn't take disability into consideration. It's in human nature," said Pascale Ribes, vice president of the French Association for the Paralyzed, which has pressed for state approval for sexual assistance. "There are people who are deprived of access to their bodies, of their sexuality. Some can handle abstinence, but to be abstinent without choosing it is terrible." The national ethics council, however, has recommended against sex assistants and says such a move risks "merchandising the human body." Guedj, head of the Essonne department south of Paris, noted that sex surrogates for the disabled are permitted in other European countries as well as in the U.S., as seen in the recent film "The Sessions," which was inspired by an essay by Mark O'Brien, an American writer who contracted polio as a child and used an iron lung and a reclined wheelchair for rest of his life. "Why do rehabilitation hospitals teach disabled people how to sew wallets and cook from a wheelchair but not deal with a person's damaged self-image? Why don't these hospitals teach disabled people how to love and be loved through sex, or how to love our unusual bodies," O'Brian wrote in his 1990 essay, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate." Guedj had hoped to send a working group of associations for the disabled to Belgium and Switzerland to see how the process works in places where sexual assistance is legal. In Belgium, however, people involved say the reality is more complicated than the law indicates, because the provision of sexual services is part of a murky legal netherworld initially created to counter the criminal aspects of prostitution. "This kind of care has no legal framework," said Miek Scheepers, chairwoman of Aditi. "When it comes to legal protection, labor law and finances, we still have a lot to do." The organization hopes to impose requirements like coursework on the needs of the disabled, medical certificates and a system of client feedback. But money is hard to come by. "Every year we get more queries. There is need for a proper debate and especially a need for subsidies so that this operation can continue to exist," Scheepers said. In the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, disabled people are given a certain amount of money per month that can be used for sexual assistance if they choose. But for those who depend on the state funds, even a single visit would wipe out a solid chunk of their spending money. The visits are not considered part of basic health insurance, although some cities provide municipal funds. France's Minister for the Handicapped, Marie-Arlette Carlotti, said Guedj's initiative is premature, but she welcomed a French debate on the issue. "We're lagging a bit in France," Carlotti told Europe 1 radio in an interview last Friday. "Reflecting on the emotional and sexual life should be a legitimate question." In 2011, a conservative French lawmaker released a report recommending sexual assistance for the disabled but it went nowhere. "We want a public debate. We have to ask real questions, about ethics but also about fundamental rights for the handicapped," said Ribes, the French activist. In France, she said, "we consider people who are handicapped not people in and of themselves, but as objects of care." ___ Casert reported from Brussels. Toby Sterling in Amsterdam contributed to this story.