DUI rates decline in Uber cities - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/DUIratesdecline <comment><USER2> If this is true, this is a big deal. However study is inherently flawed because it uses only two cities for it's data. There are a number of factors that could have called this result to be observed, for example increase in SF's DUI due to more rigorous police patrols. I also did not see any seasonal controls. DUI rates might be different depending on the time of year.

Here is what would provide for a way stronger claim:

1\. Aggregate DUI levels change since UBER started operating across all cities with no UBER service.

2\. Aggregate same data for cities with UBER.

If UBER causes decline in DUI rates hypothesis is true, we can expect two trends:

1\. On average cities with UBER will observe relative number of DUI's going down when compared to cities without UBER.

2\. Amount of UBER rides given will be positively correlated with decrease of DUI rates.

Personally I think it would make sense that UBER decreased amount of DUIs and I would really like a data released that can prove it.

<comment><USER3> It is probably true. Cheaper taxi services would cause ppl who drove drunk for financial reasons to hire an uber car.

Tbh, I am surprised no city ties liquor licenses to taxi services. (E.g. sell an open container, have a contract with a taxi company to drive people home)

<comment><USER4> >Cheaper taxi services

don't know about cheaper. "Reliable" would do the trick for me. Remember waiting for a taxi for an hour for a 5 mi ride. I'd walk it easy if i knew that it'd take an hour to wait.

<comment><USER5> Reliable, convenient, timely, and available anywhere. Those are all pretty significant since bars are not always in downtown cores, and taxis rarely patrol around house parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honest question: is this not a classic example of the fallacy of claiming causation in an observational study, in the presence of a potentially infinite number of confounding variables? I'm not a statistics expert by any means, but this is one of the first things taught in an intro stats class: observational studies can establish relationships (correlation), but only well designed experiments can establish causation. This is quite obviously an observational study, and a tiny one at that.

Furthermore, wouldn't the fact that marijuana was legalized in Washington violate the parallel trend assumption that has to hold to use difference in differences when comparing with San Francisco?

I understand the powerful incentive for Uber to provide this narrative, and I think anything that encourages people to not drive while intoxicated is a good thing. I just find it disheartening that companies feel the need to start with these powerful marketing narratives (which these types of 'studies' really are, not honest efforts to uncover useful knowledge), and use dubious analysis to give those narratives credibility.

It's not that I'm disputing there is a relationship - they've obviously identified that. I have a problem with statements like these: "We estimate that the entrance of Uber in Seattle caused the number of arrests for DUI to decrease by more than 10%." And, "We can reasonably extrapolate these results and apply them to what we consistently hear from our riders in Chicago and elsewhere." It is quite a stretch to claim that Uber _caused_ anything based on an observational study with a minuscule amount of data, and it is even further of a stretch to claim that you can combine this claim with _anecdotal_ evidence and somehow generalize it into principle.

</comment><comment><USER7> The author probably has no background in experimental design, so I would spare him of statistical scrutiny. This includes the author's furtive attempt to sneak in causation into a simple regression.

Or, if I were to give the author of the benefit of the doubt, Uber realized that this potentially inaccurate statistical claim ("Uber is inducing a drop in DUI") can help them win people's goodwill in areas where their operations have been thwarted/stunted by bureaucracy.

If so, they are really shrewd (for most laypeople don't understand anything about statistical inference), but I am not sure if I would trust a company that resorts to such a disingenuous campaign.

I actually want Uber to be a success. I love their service and envision it to be a real-time bidding platform for all sorts of (offline) services. But at the same time, I would be concerned if a company of such great promise is already acting intellectually dishonestly.

Hence, I really, really hope the author is just an idiot.

<comment><USER8> > Hence, I really, really hope the author is just an idiot.

Not knowing good experimental design doesn't make someone an idiot.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Not knowing anything does not make anyone an idiot. Not realizing that you do not know something, however, kind of does.

<comment><USER8> If "unknown unknowns"[1] make people idiots then everyone is an idiot and the term is neither an insult nor meaningful. Likely there's some other reason you have for wanting to use a mean and angry word that you haven't articulated well. What you describe in your original comment is probably just the Dunning–Kruger[2] effect.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

<comment><USER7> It might be a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Either way, I am willing to concede that I misused the term (perhaps I am the one being an idiot here). I am still surprised that the blog post got published on Uber's blog though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh god, that chart [1] took me a long time to understand. Since when was it a good idea to use floating, negative bars in a bar chart to indicate change over time.

[1] [https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3VC2E1ok_hRV5MPXS3J9s5u9xe...](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3VC2E1ok_hRV5MPXS3J9s5u9xeF_rMXI8frdl- KlLbG_87w_nmlgW0Ary0nBMHcRUwNC6tbqxkb9-5FeeE6W8wNApC28XgP- Oprr3KyZCXLcL2rzbqQVK_SrCQTkQyMsWQ)

<comment><USER10> I think that is a waterfall chart, badly drawn. The gain bars are typically shown in green, and loss in red.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a pretty big deal. As short-sighted and destined to fail as the current backlash against Uber is (see the cease-and-desist order issued in Virginia this week), it becomes a different narrative altogether if you can show that Uber saves lives. Any correlation with a decrease in DUI's is going to be hard momentum to counteract. If Uber can show definitively that highway safety increases in Uber cities, it's very compelling evidence that they should be in every major city regardless of existing taxi laws.

Although lobbying for increased highway safety has gotten us some atrocious national policy in the past (the 21 drinking age) - it would be nice to see it be used for a good cause here and give more cities modern transportation options.

<comment><USER12> > If Uber can show definitively that highway safety increases in Uber cities, > it's very compelling evidence that they should be in every major city > regardless of existing taxi laws.

No, it's evidence that cities should increase the availability of taxis or taxi-like services in general, not Uber specifically. In fact, due to more stable pricing, I'd expect Lyft to do better than Uber, and normal taxis to do even better.

<comment><USER13> Why would normal taxis do better? (Currently in SF) they're more expensive, the cars are less-well-maintained, and the drivers are often... I won't say "rude", but... less than pleasant to deal with. Not to mention the dirty looks you get when you want to use a credit card, and just the hassle of payment and tipping. Their dispatch services suck (they say 20 minutes and most of the time never show up), and hailing a taxi is a pain.

Simply increasing the availability of taxis won't fix those problems.

<comment><USER3> If operating a taxi was $250k cheaper (the price of a medallion in SF) you get Uber's results.

Most of uber's "advantages" stem from the fact taxi medallions get leased for about $1k/month that uber's contracted drivers don't pay.

<comment><USER14> And not exploiting their drivers, and having a gay-friendly employment force, and having rated drivers, and having trip itinerary transparency, and not having to cruise as much, an having visibility over where other drivers are to improve coverage...

<comment><USER15> Some of that is good and true, but trip itinerary transparency and rated drivers don't necessarily make for a good ride...

4 of 5 of my Uber rides in the last two weeks had 4.8-4.9 star drivers that didn't know the intersection I wanted to go to in SF. They all searched directions to/from: Sutter/Stockton, 20th/Valencia, a block from Market/Church, and 4th/Howard - all of those being non-trivial streets in one form or another ( _especially_ Market St, really, you're asking me for directions to Market St, that's like asking me where the Strip is in Vegas). Not to mention I'm not sure why they keep asking for directions too, since it's not like a cab I'll never see again overcharging me through my own fault - if I have a problem I will contact Uber and they will fix it (also a good thing!). One guy even asked for instructions, disregarded them, got stuck in traffic without ending the ride early, and made me and my husband late for an appointment that we would have been 5-10m early for if he didn't space out - helloooo 1 star rating. Oh, and half the time, I will get drivers with so much cologne on that I feel sick.

Say what you will about the terrible state of cabs in SF because it's all true and then some, but I think both cabs and Uber have a lot of _different_ problems to work out. A 5 star driver is not someone who has to enter in "Market and Church" in a GPS, it's not someone that poured half a bottle of cologne on themselves that morning, and it's most definitely not a person that fucks around driving in the direction they were explicitly told not to go in.

Some days I am jealous of NYC and London and other cities where I've had excellent experiences with cabs and Uber just adds a small layer of luxury/convenience on top of that if I choose. SF used to be that way with Uber a few years ago but not so much anymore - the price decrease and choices are nice but I wish I could get quality too - both Uber Black and UberX are just meh now.

<comment><USER14> The rating inflation could be lyft's fault. The lyft system is specifically inflated: 1 & 2 are really bad rides, 3 is "bad enough that you never want to be matched up again", 4 is "needs work" and 5 is "good". If you have an excellent ride, it's 5 + tip. However, deactivation is ALSO inflated, Lyft wants only 4.5 + drivers (after a certain number of rides). Passengers crossing between Lyft and Uber could be skewing the statistics of driver ratings.

As a lyft (and uber, from time to time) driver with 9 years of living experience in San Diego, there are times when I know exactly where the destination is but I am not sure of the "best" way to get there, or I am worried that there are multiple ways to get there and having the GPS decide gives it an "objectivity" that CYA's me for 'dispute resolution' purposes.

And both lyft and uber have been expanding like crazy recently, so having a 4.8 or 4.9 could be the law of averages in small numbers working against your experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is interesting, but it would be more compelling if it mentioned the time scales involved. I really don't know if we're looking at 6 months' worth of data, several years' worth, or what. I'm assuming it's corrected for seasonal fluctuations, but with no longitudinal scale it feels a little handwavey.

<comment><USER17> I would like to see a line graph, not some really weird bar graph (I've never seen a graph like that, so it's unfamiliar and hard to read). Show me the trend, preferably with different lines for marijuana in order to show it's impact separately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't really buy it. What if DUI rates fell across all cities nationwide, regardless of Uber being on the market?

<comment><USER11> Doesn't really matter for winning the narrative.

The US enacted a 21-year old drinking age in 1984. It has been an absolute train wreck. One of the most backwards and out of touch with reality national policies that we have. The only reason it's still around is because of an idea that it somehow "saves lives". The stat most often cited to "prove" this, is the number of alcohol related traffic fatalities that have occured in the US since 1984. They have declined, significantly. Does it matter that this has nothing to do with the drinking age? Does it matter that number of highway deaths have declined across the entire world, and at a much faster rate than the United States? Does it matter that highway deaths declined at the same time as a rapid increase in seat belt usage? No. None of it matters. In terms of the narrative MADD won, and half the country believes the drinking age saves lives, even though it's utter baloney.

If Uber can play up the idea that having Uber around saves lives, it's a trump card. It doesn't matter how sound the statistics are, they'll win the narrative in every city. As a politician do you really want to be against saving lives?

<comment><USER19> It does do some good.

Countries with lower drinking ages have much higher rates of binge drinking.

The WHO Europe region has a 70% higher incidence of teen (15-19) binge drinking than the Americas region: [http://i.imgur.com/oAbeg7x.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/oAbeg7x.png?1)

Canada, with its 18 and 19 year old drinking laws has a far higher rate of teen binge drinking than the US, as do the European countries: [http://i.imgur.com/iaJbDLd.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/iaJbDLd.png?1)

Finally, we find that the US has a overall rate of binge drinking in the middle of Europe, lower than France and the UK but higher than Germany and Spain: [http://i.imgur.com/h0BkKGe.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/h0BkKGe.png?1)

<comment><USER20> You also have to give the value of 20-something binge drinking in both continents for the picture to be complete. Us could have a perfectly good case of postponed binged drinking.

<comment><USER19> This is possible although I don't have that data. It's still preferable as the amount of brain damage would be significantly less than during teen years, and they would hopefully be at least somewhat more responsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm having trouble understanding their statistical work. How is the "differences in differences" framework different from having two experimental groups and no control?

I'm also not sure that extrapolating to Chicago makes sense. I live there. Since anecdotal observations seem to matter, it seems that the people who would order an Uber car would call a cab if Uber wasn't available. It's hard for me to imagine Uber providing such an addition in service that it would change DUI rates.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hello Uber, a better study would be the number of ER visits cuases by suspected drunk driving. Hire me. There are data scientists and there are creative data scientists.

<comment><USER23> Uber can't hire you if they can't email you. So put one in your profile. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bugs me when an analysis doesn't start with a visual inspection of the data. How about a plot of DUIs vs Time? is it linear? Next does it show a discontinuity at some pint in time? what effect does changing the bin size (time) have?

</comment><comment><USER24> Uber has definitely cut down on the drinking and driving of my friends, no question.

</comment><comment> UVB-76 Hypothetical plot twist: The actual number of people driving under the influence has not declined, but as police resources are diverted to Uber- related incidents — e.g. drivers (allegedly) assaulting [1] or kidnapping [2] passengers, or the generic disputes you would expect to arise from a taxi service — their capacity to arrest people for DUI has declined.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-driver- arre...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-driver-arrested-san- francisco-20140604-story.html)

[2] [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/la-uber-driver- arreste...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/la-uber-driver-arrested- kidnapping-709327)

</comment><comment><USER25> Uber should give people 10% discounts if their blood-alcohol level is above the legal limit.

<comment><USER26> You might want to consider _all_ the incentives you'd be creating there....

<comment><USER27> Hey, Uber is buying the last round :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The results don't even looks statistically significant at the 5% alpha level.

<comment><USER29> I'm not really following the analysis too well (I'd like to just see the raw data) but when they did their differences in differences seattleTRUE:uberTRUE had a p-value of over 0.05

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I, too, will comment on this article without reading it!

<comment><USER18> Yes, I read the article and I applied an idea I took from one of the first articles on Nate Silver's 538 'news' site [0] of using Bayesian statistics to decode news as you read it and in my opinion the data presented is very underwhelming and there isn't any firm ground they are standing on here.

Here's my 'Bayesian logic' applied to it. My 'prior believe' in the claim being made is that I don't believe Uber has broad penetration across all demographics. Yes, people who are in the tech world and under 30 know of them, but not much outside of that. I was the first one of all my friends to use Uber (I would know because I have gotten over $60 in credits for signing them up). So outside of SF, my initial personal belief is that Uber doesn't have wide usage. So either the largest demographic of DUI violators are nerds who are younger than 30 or Uber is magically being used by people who would prefer using a more expensive Uber service than driver over a cheap taxi ride.

So let's look at the evidence they provide to see if it changes my prior significantly: one city was explicitly given data about without any hint as to what time-frame they are talking about. The other cities were literally the equivalent of hearsay arguments so because I'm the judge of this court, that evidence doesn't count. When you're talking about month-over-month and even year-over-year trends, a drop of 10% is just as easily explained by a random process modeled as a poisson [1] over the entrance of Uber. I would know having dealt with lots of time series data.

One finally comment, my apologies to the author of the bar chart, but that is just terrible. It's hard to read and doesn't make much sense from looking at it first. How many bar-chart graphs are out there that look like that? It could just be me speaking aesthetically because I'm weirded out by the random floating bars in the middle, but I feel Edward Tufte would have something to say about that.

jusitizin, I know you weren't speaking to me directly, but I read the article. Hope this comment proves it :)

[0]

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-formula-for- decoding-h...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-formula-for-decoding- health-news/)

[1]

[http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-does-randomness-look- like/](http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-does-randomness-look-like/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This has about as much weight as pirates and global warming

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true- fa...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-fact-the- lack-of-pirates-is-causing-global-warming/)

<comment><USER32> No, it has more weight because there is a plausible mechanism for causation. It isn't proof, but it's an interesting potential theory.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Add post date, number of comments and upvotes to Reddit links on Google - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-search-helper/laladmlmbneplheiajfdpcephiehoifh <comment><AUTHOR> author here. I use Google frequently to search Reddit, along with Google's Search Tools to search by time. However, I believe Reddit is updating their pages more frequently so that they get indexed more by Google. This makes searching for posts within a certain timeframe problematic since the dates do not reflect the actual post date.

I made this small Chrome extension to add how along ago a post was made, the number of comments and number of upvotes to Google search results.

I also open sourced it so you can find the repo here: [https://github.com/built-by-as/RedditSearchHelper](https://github.com/built- by-as/RedditSearchHelper)</comment>


PyPy2 v5.3 released – major C-extension support improvements - <AUTHOR> https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2016/06/pypy2-v53-released-major-c-extension.html <comment><AUTHOR> > ... we now pass most (more than 95%) of the upstream numpy test suite. We > can build and run scipy and matplotlib as well. Most of the failures have to > do with (ab) use of the C-API, for instance writing to a read-only pointer > obtained from PyString_AsString().

Wow, that is just a huge accomplishment, congratulations PyPy team!</comment>


Show HN: I just launched Meta Trails a tool for the self taught developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.metatrails.com/student

<comment><USER2> I played around with the site, and I like it. I was able to quickly check off skills that I have, and make an assessment of areas that I could potentially focus on learning. I appreciated the fact that I can choose to learn the additional skills using the recommendations provided, or any other platform I desire and still credit myself for the skill achievement. Pretty straight forward interface.

I happened to like the "gamification" of the UI. But mostly because it does not muddy the value prop. It does not detract from what you can, or cannot do to make a quick assessment and checklist. IMO, I do not need another no frills site in my network. I already have a github, evernote, and many others. Bring on the silly funness!

We talk about this alot in my office and there is always a mix of opinions. We talk more about things like the ability for a user to customize the UI. It is hard for me to understand why people spend so much time personalizing their facebook or twitter page, instead of concentrating on posting good content. But there are enough users that spend time doing it, to validate the format.

Keep the fluff, as long as it does not derail content objectives.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the UI. Is there any chance of making a free world or free level I can try out before I sign up? I'm not sure if requiring an account generates more sign ups or scares people away. Looks like a cool product.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish there was a way to try it out a bit, or at least a video showing how it works without having to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER5> as a self taught developer ive never understood the point of gamifying the process. building a real world application - dropping in user auth, image upload, etc is far more rewarding than leveling up in some imaginary system.

that being said i welcome more tools for helping people learn to program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey - One of the founders here.

I generally agree. We built Meta Trails to track how well our new recruits are progressing. We use Team Tree House and Code Academy to help them progress and they're great resources, however my issue with them is they gamify the amount of time spent watching the content. What we are doing is essentially creating checklists for things like:

\- Can you create a function?

\- Can you invoke a function?

These are really yes / no questions and makes validating knowledge much easier.

The design was really fun hack-day project although I have a feeling we may re-think it as you aren't the first person to bring up the gamification part.

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love this product - join me all space cadets</comment>


Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs - <AUTHOR> I am a Junior in high school and am wondering which college would be the best for an aspiring start up entrepreneur. Also is a computer science or business degree recommended? <comment><USER2> _Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?_

Computer science. Hands down.

 _am wondering which college would be the best for an aspiring start up entrepreneur._

I think that Stanford is obviously the best choice, they push entrepreneurship pretty hard. But at the same time, I don't really think that it's the school, it's the student. And, Stanford is really expensive. If you get in to Stanford and can get funded, great. If you can't get funded, I'd really try and balance the really high costs, how much work it's going to require to get in to Stanford and how much competition you'll have while you're there, with the benefits that Stanford will give you.

You might be better off going to your local University of Foo state school, and working hard on your own to learn the types of technologies that you're going to use in your startup. Nothing can stop you from learning what you need to learn to start a business. The school I'm finishing up at-- University of Maryland--isn't a tech powerhouse. And, most of the CS education tends to have a slant towards Defense contracting, which means Java and Oracle (Ada for the advanced stuff. :) ). But, I've managed to squeeze out a decent education in web development since I've been there, I think.

Another key factor in school selection is to keep expenses low. You're going to have a hard time starting a business after college if you're $125k in debt to school, and $25k in debt to credit cards because you went to a school that you couldn't afford.

Your risk of failure is a lot lower if you have minimal expenses when you're done with college. If you can finish college with zero debt, your can take all the time you want to start a business as long as you have money for rent, ramen and bandwidth. I really think that people underestimate this aspect of being an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, it's in your best interest to run financially lean and mean: low cost, low debt.

<comment><USER3> +10, University of Foo.

Pay as little as possible. State universities, full-tuition scholarships, whatever. The debt is what will imprison you, and colleges aren't worth anything near what they cost.

If you focus on doing well in school, and you later find that you need better credentials than the U of X can provide, there's always the master's degree... the thrifty person's path to Ultimate Credential Power. The top engineering schools are easier to get into (because it's easier to distinguish yourself in college than in high school, where grades and SATs are all hyperinflated and everyone's admissions essays are ghostwritten) and much more affordable (sometimes even marginally profitable!) at the graduate level.

<comment><USER4> "Pay as little as possible. State universities, full-tuition scholarships, whatever. The debt is what will imprison you, and colleges aren't worth anything near what they cost."

Remember that many private colleges give really generous financial aid if your parents are not wealthy. Stanford is free if you make under $100K; Amherst has abolished all loans in financial aid, so it's free for those making under about $40-50K and quite reasonably priced (often less than a state uni) for those making under $100K.

My actual tuition at Amherst was only slightly more than the sticker price at UMass; my sister's at Rice was less. Now, granted it's not really a fair comparison, since I would've gotten a full-ride at UMass Amherst (and UMass Lowell offered to _pay_ me to attend). But I'd look long and hard at the scholarship options available before discounting a top college based on price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stanford has an amazing campus and most everyone there is very positive. It is like a little island for overachievers.

MIT is great but the attitudes and environment are quite different. The campus is in a much more urban environment. Rather than the upbeat attitude at Stanford, MIT is more of a tough-love kind of school. "You might think you are smart, but really you suck and are lazy" is how motivation works at MIT. At Stanford it is more like "yo, we're all super smart. let's be rad and play ultimate frisbee later." I think it has something to do with the wildly different climates.

This is very qualitative, but from my experience MIT is probably a better place to go if you want to do a form of engineering that requires crazy smarts that isn't computer science. Like hardcore electrical engineering, or bioengineering or material science or designing atomic weapons. Stanford is better for straight-up computer stuff.

If you can get into one of those two schools you are a step ahead of the game. They are the only two schools in the USA that are worth their super inflated tuitions. Otherwise I'd just go to the best school you can get into that costs the least amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can learn (or incidentally, not learn) CS at most decent colleges. What I think is a lot more interesting about college is everything else that you'll learn there along the way and learning to get along and have fun with other smart people.

When I was college shopping, I was choosing between a liberal arts school and a top-tier engineering school. I visited the engineering school and realized that while they had an amazing computer science program, the social outlook was rather drab. Only 20% girls, in the middle of nowhere, the people that I talked to didn't really seem to like it, but all assured me "that it was really a great college."

Then I visited the liberal arts school. That was definitely the right choice. As it were, I had some great professors that really took an interest in my research and my life. I learned a lot about literature and philosophy and psychology and history and hung out with folks that weren't just gear heads. My world grew wider, not just deeper.

Now, many years later I realize that after the first two years or so of CS I knew enough to be able to understand and find hard problems. But if I'd not been forced to take that massive block of core classes, I might have never realized that psychology is really interesting, that there are a lot of parallels between the way that architechts and programmers think or that you can meet a lot of cute girls if you hang out in the music department.

So, why is that important?

Well, when I was submitting my proposal for my senior research, I was stressed out because it didn't fit neatly into a specific department. It was on the line between CS, physics and biology. My advisor said something that's stuck with me to this day:

"The interesting problems of the coming decades of computer science lie at the intersection between computer science and other fields."

Getting a solid grasp on computer science in my opinion is critically important, but it's also pretty ubiquitous. (Though, sadly, it's pretty universally mediocre. A lot depends on your personal uptake.) What seems a lot more important to me is finding a place where you can cross-pollinate with other disciplines, meet a lot of different and interesting people and, well, enjoy yourself. The skills required for that seem to escape nerds much more often than the ability to sling code, and are essential in business interactions. A lot of people get caught up in getting into the dozen hardest to get into schools, but most colleges will have more people smarter than you than's names you can remember, and it's not that hard to find them.

<comment><USER7> I would disagree with this, not because it isn't very good advice in general, but because its not good advice for entrepreneurs. The fact is that other people with motivation and drive to start something are quite rare to find in non top-tier schools, and you not only want people who think like an entrepreneur, but you also want them to be able to carry part of the load of the initial work (for web-based applications, code). Don't apply to the top tier schools because its something that everyone else is doing - do it because you'll find the best people there, and anything less is giving yourself a handicap that just isn't worth it. If you're scared about not making it into the top tier, well just remember, wanting to be an entrpreneur already puts you above many, many people.

One thing I do agree on is that starting something requires more than just coding skills - your ability to socialize, to motivate other people, and to get along with others is critically important. However, I would recommend teaching yourself how to socialize and getting academic schooling on code rather than the other way around.

If you're choosing your college based on where you can build a startup, you should look at 3 things:

1) Smart, motivated people. I would say Stanford, Harvard, MIT have taken most of them. Startups are rarely 1 person endeavors, and having a lot of candidates for a partner really helps.

2) Skills. This is why any top-tier university is good, because the skill-sets there are abundant. Plenty of smart people are looking for the next frontier, and you can give it to them.

3) Community. Most people don't get serious about entrepreneurship until they meet an entrepreneur. Make sure you have some sort of VC connection in your school, or a business program in entrepreneurship and a lively entrepreneur community. Also take entrepreneurial classes if you can, and try to connect with the community as fast as possible.

I go to CMU (Carnegie Mellon), and while it has, to some extent, all of the 3 points above, I do sometimes regret not going somewhere better. The difference in the caliber of people and the quantity and quality of the entrepreneurs here is quite apparent. CMU has a lot of old VCs that don't really know the web, and the entrepreneur community here is mostly older people doing older stuff (but still fascinating startups). One thing I'm very satisfied with is the professors here teaching entrepreneurship, as they have their own companies and provide a LOT of advice and motivation (they just are limited in how much help they can give if you're doing a web startup). I would say its a tier or 2 below the top three.

There seems to be a good correlation between the VC money in a certain area and how startup-friendly the colleges nearby are. Its best if you just follow that.

also - business vs CS - do CS.

The business school here at CMU produces the worst slackers-that-look-good-in- suits that I've ever seen. It does wonders to your presentation skills but kills your ability to do any serious work whatsoever.

<comment><USER6> I really do see where you're coming from, partly because I believed the same when I was in college. I kept looking around and thinking, "There has to be a place where everybody's better than this, right?"

I'll go ahead and put out a few things that I still think might be true about the top schools before I jump into my objections.

The alumni network seems to be good. This does seem to be important. I can't really qualify how much better it is than other places since I didn't go to a well known school, but it does seem to be big, and well, often rich. (Though, strength of the alumni network doesn't seem really to be a linear function of prestige. There are a lot of places out there with freakishly strong alumni networks that aren't that hard to get into. Looking at the school's endowment might be a good place to suss this out.) Location, as others have pointed out, can make a big difference too. And while I don't at all believe that going to Harvard or Stanford is a reliable indicator of intelligence, I suspect that it is a pretty good indicator of people who are able to set hard to reach goals and get them done. The last bit is brand recognition. Harvard and Stanford and similar have that and I suspect "BS in Computer Science from Harvard" sounds better on a VC pitch than, "moderately intelligent charismatic insomniac workaholic with delusions of grandeur", even though the latter would probably be closer to The Right Stuff.

There are smart and motivated people at every decent college. And pretty much everywhere they're in the minority. It's enticing to think when you're at College A that if you'd just gone to College B that it'd be better.

One of the funny statistics from where I went to college was that, at the time that I went there, we had the highest percentage of students that went on to receive PhDs of any college in the country. I say funny because, well, I'm sure you've never heard of where I went to college (now, apparently, according to US News, the 116th ranked liberal arts college). So, a few years after college I had friends were TA-ing at Berkeley, Cornell, MIT and they all said pretty much the same thing -- that the students were almost frustratingly similar to us. It's easy to forget that for every Larry Page there are thousands of Stanford grads that are working at boring jobs just like everybody else.

Community and skills seem about the same. I'm not saying that people aren't better at more prestigious schools. I'm pretty sure they are. But my feeling is that the top 1% where I went are probably about on par with the top 10% from Harvard. And that was still several dozen people and I reckon I knew most of them. In the house I was living in senior year, I was the only one of the five of us that wasn't a national merit scholar. But I'm not sure that matters very much.

My next door neighbor and I are both from Southeast Texas. This is quite a coincidence, because, you see, I live in east Berlin. His startup (smartertours.com) has really taken off in the last year. I'm probably smarter than him, but he's a charismatic insomniac workaholic with delusions of grandeur. Dude's a machine.

Ryan went to University of Texas I think. My other ex-pat friend here, Jeff, runs the cafe down the street where Ryan and I often see each other at lunch. He went to some unknown bible college. Jeff's also managed to do pretty well for himself since he managed to pick a trendy street just before it got trendy. He's also worked his ass off.

Now, I'm not an entrepreneur yet. I couldn't legally start a business here until I got my permanent residence a few weeks ago. But I've done pretty well for myself as a hacker. When I look back at my brilliant college roommates, and compare them to me, Ryan or Jeff, my old roommies were definitely a smarter bunch with a more impressive collection of degrees. They've all got normal jobs now. But Ryan and Jeff seem to have what it takes.

I'm not saying that an aspiring student shouldn't go to Harvard or Stanford. I couldn't have gotten in, personally, but I'm sure they're great places to hit the ground running. I'm just saying don't get hung up on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recently my son and I sat through a combo-presentation given by Stanford, Penn, Harvard, Columbia, and Duke. The presentations were all good of course, with the presenters from Harvard, Penn, and Duke being the best.

One point glaringly stuck out in the Duke presentation though. Even in your freshman year at Duke, you as a student can pitch the school with an idea, and they'll consider providing project funding and resources. None of the other schools suggested they would do this.

Duke is obviously taking the entrepeneurial pulse right now, and consider promoting and cultivating entrepeneurship as a selling point for their school.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whichever college allows YOU to grow creatively, socially, and intellectually. This college is not necessarily Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, or Somestate University.

As far as a degree, whichever you enjoy the most. Don't focus on the product; rather, HOW you reach it.

<comment><USER4> I think this needs some context. I felt much the same way when I decided on a college, and made my decision based on that. I won't exactly say I was wrong, but 7 years later I've got a better perspective on the tradeoffs involved.

Understand that your raw intellectual prowess is a depreciating asset. I'd guess that I peaked in programming ability at about 19, and 18-20 seems a pretty common age range based on famous programmers. I'm certainly not as productive a programmer as I was at my first professional job at 19, and my 35 year old coworkers have said that there's no way they can keep up with what I do now at 26.

You continue gaining experience for a while after that, so it's not like you're over the hill at 20. The mid/late 20s seems to be the "sweet spot" where you still have decent technical prowess and yet enough experience to avoid blind alleys. But if you fritter away your early 20s, you lose the benefits of high ability and don't have the experience to show for it. You're starting behind and have to play catch-up to more youthful and more energetic competitors, which is possible but can be kinda discouraging.

OTOH, trying out a variety of things gives you a lot of perspective on what you do or don't want to pursue. I was certain I wanted to be a physics major and then a theoretical physicist when I entered college. I flirted briefly with majoring in philosophy or sociology when it turned out physics was much harder than I bargained for. I tried out fiction writing and found I wasn't any good at it. I made all-state violin in high school, but again realized that I didn't have the passion for it needed to be a professional.

The one downside of having all those options open is that I never finished anything. There was always some other avenue that looked more attractive. It was only in my senior year, when I was practically flunking out of physics and had a bunch of hobbies that weren't all that useful, that I decided I was gonna close off all the other avenues and focus on computers. And it was only then that I started actually producing stuff that was useful.

So, I'll agree with the parent post that it's important to grow creatively, socially, and intellectually in college. But understand that there are doors that going to Stanford/Harvard/MIT opens, and those doors tend to slam shut afterwards. It's possible to prop them back open, but it takes a lot more effort, because you're working against people's expectations. Similarly, there're doors that open from focusing deeply on one field, and it's much harder to achieve mastery in a subject than it seems in high school.

I remember thinking in high school "I've got 70 years left in my life, that's plenty of time to accomplish everything." But you don't - you've got maybe 10-15 years (between the ages of 20 and 35) to really make a mark on the world, and then the rest is for raising kids, writing books, passing on your wisdom, and generally enjoying the fruits of those 10-15 years.

(I do reserve the right to change my mind in 10 years and say "Pish-posh. Life's not over at 35 - keep an open mind and you can keep doing cool stuff until the day you die." But this is how it looks from the mid-20s.)

<comment><USER10> Sadly, the attitude evident in the last two paragraphs of your comment runs deep in young people. Zuckerberg at YC Startup last year, age discrimination suit at Google, etc. _Logan's Run_ in Silicon Valley.

It's also upside down compared to other fields like medicine and writing. In medicine, you make your "mark on the world" after you go through significant training, which ends around 30 or later.

As far as making it entrepreneurially:

1) If it depends purely on intelligence or hacking ability, PlentyOfFish.com and other success stories wouldn't have made it. Even if it's somewhat true, consider that the decrease of your ability with age should be less than the interpersonal variability of ability. (50 yo Einstein > 20 yo Homer Simpson)

2) If it depends on luck, don't worry about age.

3) If it depends on connections, you get more with age.

4) If it depends on others' perception of your youth.... you may be in trouble.

<comment><USER4> Markus Frind is quite a bit more intelligent than many people give him credit for, eg. he discovered the then-longest arithmetic progression of prime numbers in 2004. Same goes for many other entrepreneurs that people assume were just lucky - James Hong, Marc Andreesen, Brad Fitzpatrick, etc. And the variation due to age may be much less than the variation due to person, but remember that there are many more smart people than there are millionaires. Empirically, it seems like you need to be smart, young, _and_ lucky.

Also - I doubt few people would dispute that succeeding _with a tech business_ requires the ability to concentrate intensely for long periods of time. (Something I'm obviously failing at, having been back to news.YC 3 times so far today.) Certainly many young people lack that, but for a given person, it seems likely that they're better able to do that at 20 or 25 before things like family, business connections, or reputation intercedes.

It definitely is upside down compared to medicine or writing, but that's because computer programming is nearly in unique among human fields in being subject to lots of chaotic effects. Almost every other body of knowledge is additive, but in software, small changes to requirements at the base layer can have ripple effects that invalid your whole system's design. That's why the software industry seems to undergo major tectonic shifts every 10 years or so, each of which creates lots of opportunities for young entrepreneurs who haven't learned the now-obsolete ways of "how things are done".

When I was a kid, the hot new field was microcomputers, the programming language was assembly (no wait...Pascal. no wait...C), and the largest platform was Windows. When I was a teenager, the hot new field was the web, the hot programming languages were Perl and PHP and Java, and the largest platform was Netscape. Now that I'm in my twenties, the hot new field is rich Internet applications, the hot programming languages are Flash, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby, and the largest market is Internet Explorer. I can almost guarantee that the hot field, language, and platform will be different in 10 years, and all the technical skills I've learned so far will be obsolete.

Edit: On reflection, it's not really _software_ as a whole that's chaotic so much as the _leading edge_ of software, i.e. the edge where you can still have a viable startup. If you're making a desktop app, the tools and skillsets are only slightly different from making a desktop app in 1995. If you're making a webapp that's just a sequence of forms, the tools from 1998 will work fine. But those are mostly solved problems: either there's an off-the-shelf solution that's already been built, or you can hire one of an army of consultants that knows how to build one. The leading edge, by definition, involves tackling problems that haven't been solved before, and so there's no advantage to experience in solving them.

<comment><USER10> I didn't know about Markus Frind's intelligence (interesting info), but in PlentyOfFish's case (and successes like MySpace), it's no masterpiece of hacking.

Writing prose can be similar in intensity to writing code. John Scalzi, a recent sci-fi award winner, wrote a book for writers called "You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffeeshop." Many writers block out pure concentration time. Nonetheless, I'll concede that long stretches of time are more available to the young, unless they are out partying :)

I wonder how many big successes depend on _bleeding edge_ software? For every Google, there are plenty more like MySpace, Ebay, Amazon, and Facebook.

I usually live off specialized applications, where you build software that focuses on a particular need for a niche population. Knowing the domain (say radiotherapy or creative writing) is really useful because of insights into how you can fashion new tools using advancing technology (e.g., faster 3D graphics or a better web framework). So while I agree that creating totally innovative approaches might be easier for the young, I think experience helps in creating domain-specific software.

My main point, though, is even if you believe you have a limited shelf-life, you might consider it's your shelf-life in only one of many possible avenues to make your mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Babson College for entrepreneurship. Any top 10 engineering school in the country for CS. You learn the same shit, it's the just level of immersion in the coursework and peer pressure that differentiate the school.

A lot of mentions of Stanford here but how many of you actually went to school there? I swear to god somedays I think most of you are just card-carrying cargo-cultists.

<comment><USER12> I go there. I have a good hacker friend who's been approached by other students or ex-students several times to form some sort of startup or to do other little programming projects. So far, they have all been miserable failures. No, not even failures, because they never even really tried. So what if people here are smart? I don't think they are nearly as motivated as most YC.ers think they are--god, just go to any meeting of a student group after the first couple weeks of the quarter, it's a shitload of, "Yeah I would've liked to go but I had a paper and a problem set due..." Same thing with the little projects that just fizzled. Of the wannabe entrepeneurs I've met here, nobody has shown the kind of commitment pg seems to think is necessary. I met them. They're still in school, still trying to balance a startup with getting their degree, still unable to commit themselves and take the plunge.

I think the vast majority of Stanford students, or other elite students anywhere, are admitted because they put their schoolwork first. Sinking lots of time into any extracurricular, including entrepeneurship, is a sacrifice a lot of students aren't used to making and would have trained themselves to not make in high school, and in fact, such a sacrifice could have royally screwed them out of getting in in the first place, and almost certainly would have if they had gone to a very competitive high school.

Seriously, FUCK STANFORD and don't worry about it. Just find a good school that's not too much pressure to get into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a Berkeley grad, it pains me to say this, but Stanford is almost certainly your best bet. It's great academically, _and_ it seems to understand how to encourage students to get involved in startups. In the startup world, it's Stanford and everyone else.

That said, "everyone else" still has some excellent options. MIT, Harvard,... yeah, all good options. But don't rule out the big public research universities. Berkeley and Illinois grads (among many others) have produced a lot of great startups - great by almost any measure (except that damn university to the south ;) )

</comment><comment><USER14> Stanford by far. Then MIT/Harvard. Everywhere else is roughly in the same magnitude.

For undergrad, getting a business degree is pretty irrelevant to start ups. Get a technical degree, such as CS. Learn about start ups by evaluating different opportunities, reading case studies and books like "founders at work."

You can test out ideas in your free time during the semester and winter break. It is important to get relevant internships during the summer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Choose Stanford (MIT, Harvard). The major benefit which you will get there is alumni and networking. If you are low on funds, you will have to be extremely wise on budget. But don't let debt scare you. When you are done, you can take two-three years working on other startups, get the rid of debt and gain priceless practical experience. And you can always bootstrap your own thing during your off-hours outside day job. Startup is not an easy thing, but if you have passion and willingness to win, nothing can stop you now. Don't be afraid and you'll be thankful to yourself for making this choice.

"Being in your own business is working 80 hours a week so that you can avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else." (c) Ramona Arnett

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd highly recommend the University of Maryland's "Hinman CEOs" program. UMD has been pushing entrepreneurship very heavily in the past few years (especially in the engineering disciplines.)

The Hinman program provides mentors, classes, living/learning environments, conference rooms, and other facilities to help potential entrepreneurs. Additionally, they bring in a steady stream of successful entrepreneurs to speak, network, and help you on your way.

Add that to its close proximity to Washington D.C., good tuition, and highly ranked engineering/business departments, and you have a fairly good entrepreneurship package.

</comment><comment><USER17> Stanford.

Computer Science.

Good luck.

<comment><USER18> From what I recall, Stanford accepts roughly 1% of applicants to the Computer Science program, compared with just over 10% for the University as a whole, making it one of the most competitive programs in the nation.

On a side note, my alma mater, the University of Southern California, accepts roughly 25% of students as a whole, and a slightly lower percentage of computer science students (though I can't find specific numbers).

I can't speak to knowing a large volume of entrepreneurs at USC, but I do know a few. The school itself has been making an impressive dedication to increasing entrepreneurship, however, especially in the Viterbi school of engineering. Mark Stevens, of Sequoia, recently funded a center for technology commercialization designed to help students build businesses out of research projects, and there are several student groups devoted to similar pursuits.

Los Angeles is also not the valley, but it turns out that it is a decent alternative, I would say at least as much so as any other major city in the U.S.

I'm not saying you should go to USC necessarily, but I enjoyed myself while I was there. One thing is certain, though, it is very different from Stanford.

<comment><USER19> _From what I recall, Stanford accepts roughly 1% of applicants to the Computer Science program, compared with just over 10% for the University as a whole, making it one of the most competitive programs in the nation._

That may be true for Ph.D. students, but not for undergraduates. Undergraduate applications are reviewed without regards to major. You'll have an equal chance of getting in whether you express interest in CS or English. The Stanford admissions website confirms this. [1]

The Ph.D. program may have acceptance rates approaching 1%, although I don't really think it's that low. Also, the master's program accepts a significantly higher percentage of applicants than the doctoral program.

[1] "All applicants apply to Stanford through the Office of Undergraduate Admission, not to a particular school or department within the University, and Stanford does not give preference to any major." <http://admission.stanford.edu/applying/1_8_faqs.html>

<comment><USER18> You're right, in that I cannot find anyone claiming the significantly lower figure for CS admissions in particular. Even at 10%, it is among the most competitive programs in the country. Both Williams and Amherst, the top two liberal arts colleges in the US, have over 15% admissions, while Yale and Harvard come in usually between 8% and 10%.

On a side note, I have some doubt that the admissions process is truly blind to your stated major of interest. These schools do have a desire to maintain balance between their programs.

<comment><USER4> They're not blind, but you can also put down anything you want, including "undecided". I was certain I wanted to be a physics major when I applied to college. Things change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you live in the midwest, I highly recommend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's a top 5 CS program.

<comment><USER21> If you live in Illinois, it is a great idea. Otherwise, you will pay dearly for the degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For Canada: Waterloo University

</comment><comment><USER23> a) Answers without reasons are more or less alma mater shoutouts, I recommend you ignore them.

b) Stanford and UIUC tend to be more entrepreneurial than other CS colleges (I find Carnegie Mellon/MIT tend to lean towards academia), but I'd say it's more important to go where you'll be happy...visit everywhere and find a place that won't drive you insane, since nothing kills the startup spirit faster than being forced to work day-in and day-out on things you don't enjoy.

That being said, I love Carnegie Mellon :-P

</comment><comment><USER24> The school of hard knocks? Dropping out seems to be a common path for successful entrepreneurs. Witness Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, to name a few in the technology space. Follow subjects that energize you; they are the ones that you will continue to get better at after you graduate. Entrepreneurship has very little to do with programming or college, and a lot to do with a relentless focus on value creation.

</comment><comment><USER25> I went to brown - I loved it, it had a really great CS department, especially for an undergrad, and was overall an amazing social and academic experience. Not a big entrepreneurship culture in the CS department, but I think you can make that happen if that's what you want to do.

College is all about the people. Find the one with the people you like the best and respect the most. You'll figure out the rest while you are there.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you're a junior in high school, I'd take as many college level courses (mostly math and CS) as I could in your senior year and seriously consider skipping college.

I would normally never recommend this to anyone who cared about their future, but if you truly are an "aspiring start up entrepreneur", then you already know this is the right answer. In your case, college is an unnecessary detour.

<comment><USER27> Strictly-speaking, it is unnecessary for an entrepreneur, but I wouldn't be very keen to skip college (what's the rush to start your first business? Your career as an entrepreneur doesn't end at 30). The educational background will be very useful -- you can learn Rails, SQL, and the like on your own, but tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people can truly do. Going to college is also a great experience, from a networking and personal maturity perspective.

<comment><USER26> For "networking" and "personal maturity", agreed.

"but tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people can truly do"

Unless they have jobs.

Please don't kid yourself into thinking that CS in college is anything other than the warm-up act for the real thing. It's strictly optional.

<comment><USER27> Well, I'm just saying that the number of people with the enthusiasm to really, deeply grok, say, the PCP theorem, Bayes nets, or the FFT in their spare time is quite small. Sure, undergrad CS is just a "warm-up act for the real thing", but a solid grounding in all those topics is a really useful thing for someone planning a career doing technology startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Where the weather is warm and the energy is palpable. Where else but SomeSchool, CA? Any school near the valley. Hang on every campus you can't get in and get a good feel of the people you can build with. I envy you. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER29> Go to a place with easy exams, cool course projects, and smart people.

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone has to mention Cornell. The undergrad community is intensely entrepreneurial, the CS department is top notch and you won't find nearly as many a-holes as at Harvard (half serious).

</comment><comment><USER31> >Also is a computer science or business degree recommended?

why not both?

</comment><comment><USER32> I would like to point out that if your aim is purely financial freedom, there are much easier ways to accomplish this.

</comment><comment><USER31> location, location, location: where are all the startup hubs?

anywhere close to the valley, boston/cambridge, austin, seattle, nyc.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Stanford.

</comment><comment><USER33> Harvard. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER34> Sergey Brin went to the University of Maryland. Larry Page went to Michigan. Marc Andreessen and Max Levchin went to the University of Illinois.

This not to say some schools aren't better than others, but when people do great things it's usually because of who they are rather than where they went to college.

<comment><USER27> Well, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a top 10 (arguably top 5) ranked CS department, and Michigan is no slouch, either.

I agree with the gist of your point, though. The school you attend is considerably more important for grad school.</comment></comment></comment>


Epitaph for an Entrepreneur - Balancing Family and Work - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur/ <comment><USER2> My seven year old has watched me slog through many pieces of a startup. What's fun is how much kids listen, even when they don't seem to. I remember when he stopped in the middle of dinner and said "Daddy, what's 'google'?"

And my favorite story is when he stopped me as I was carrying him to bed, looked me straight in the eye and asked, completely seriously:

"Daddy, how does LuckyCal make money?"

If you haven't already done so, I recommend refining your revenue plan to the point where you can explain to a savvy seven year old.

<comment><USER3> That one's straight out of the Evil Overlord List: "One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation."

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having a life/work balance and setting your priorities, these are things we should do, regardless if we are doing entrepreneurship or not. I know people that have exhausted themselves working in big companies.

My wife works at a kindergarten and we talk about her daily activity quite often. As I found out, the kids almost always mirror the behavior of their parents. The kids that are destructive or anti-social are those with divorced, violent or workaholic parents. The normal kids (the ones that play with others, that are happy, that have respect for the teachers and that learn faster) are those that come from a healthy environment, and those kids are few and far between.

My father was also a workaholic, and one day he noticed that I grew up. Let's just say that the time lost is lost forever. I hope I won't do that with my future kids.

So yeah, don't let your kids be raised by other people. Don't just drop them off in front of the TV. They will hate you for it.

<comment><USER2> I agree with most of your statement, but it _is_ possible to raise a healthy, happy, kind child after a divorce. I'm doing it right now, albeit with the help of both his Mom and my wife.

Divorce doesn't have to destroy your ability to raise kids well, and I don't believe it should be used as an excuse. It's a little harder, but it's damn sight easier than raising them in many parts of the world.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a correlation/causation thing. Personality issues that make people bad at marriage could also make them bad at child-rearing, statistically speaking. Does not mean it is impossible to do a good job as a divorced parent, but does add a degree of difficulty and some, at least, should examine whether the underlying issues that caused the marriage to fail can also impact relationships with the children. Workaholism, abusive tendencies, lack of empathy and other traits could cause trouble for both kinds of relationship.

This is all in the abstract, of course, and I am implying nothing at all about your specific situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice one because it has actual, real, practical advice, not just platitudes, as many of these types of posts do.

</comment><comment><USER7> _when you're gone would you rather have your gravestone say, "He never missed a meeting." Or one that said, "He was a great father."_

A lot of good stuff in this article, but what a weak ending! "He never missed a meeting" is a straw man, here. Tougher would be to have to choose between: "He was a great father," or, "He changed the world/discovered something great/made something that millions want."

<comment><USER8> Personally, I'd still pick "He was a great father".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just happened to watch "Pursuit of Happyness" last week, and if you want inspiration for attaining work/life balance, that story provides plenty. According to Wikipedia, most of the events happened in one form or another. And some of the techniques he used to get more work done in fewer hours than his younger, single fellow interns was pretty impressive. All while picking his son up from day care then standing in line to get a spot in a shelter every night.

If you ever think your situation is too tough to continue or that you can't make time for both your kids and your profession, this movie is a pretty good rejoinder.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's some pretty good advice from someone who's been there, done that. I'm in a similar predicament of trying to balance raising twins with my wife, working a fulltime job during the day and starting a company in the free time I have between 8pm and 1am at night. It's not easy and I find it's extremely hard to focus when all you want to do is veg on the recliner, watch some TV.

<comment><USER10> "...all you want to do is veg on the recliner, watch some TV..."

Very common problem. My solution is to have a dedicated room with a door and no TV, internet, recliner, bed, or sofa inside.

"I can resist everything but temptation." - Oscar Wilde

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another aspect often overlooked is how great help grandparents can be. Even though nowadays that is often seen as a big no-no, in some cultures, and if they are willing to help, they can make young parents' life much easier.

<comment><USER12> My parents live in the same town as we do. I can't imagine what it would be like not having them nearby.

Yeah, there are some drawbacks. They are far more permissive than we are, and my 7-year-old takes full advantage of that. But they give support and love and interaction that we sometimes don't have time for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see a lot of the "work smarter, not harder" mantra... All the way to the 37Signals extreme of "a 4-day work week is just as good. Scarcity forces smart time management"... And, of course, to the ppl who take the 4-Hour Workweek literally (it's not about 4 hours-- it's about working smarter with the time that you dedicate!).

They just aren't mutually exclusive. You can work smarter AND harder and (if you can avoid burnout using whatever strategy works for YOU) that will result in more productivity than just one or the other. If we both work equally smart and I work an extra day a week, I'll have a better shot at success. If we both succeed, I'll probably succeed more.

I'm not saying that trading merely moderate success (or having a lower shot at it) isn't worth trading away for a more leisurely lifestyle. I'm just saying it's absolute bullshit to say, "If you work a lot of hours, you are probably working inefficiently."

</comment><comment><USER14> _I would work 10 hours a day in the office, come home and then… Back to work after the kids were in bed_

So, at what time did he spend time with his wife other than the weekends? I know spending time with the kids is very important, but it's also important to spend time with the wife.[1]

I'm actually struggling with this, not because I'm in a startup but because I have very little time outside of my day job to do anything on the side[2], since I have to tend to my wife and baby. But I can imagine that in a startup it would be the same or worse, since it would still be tough to be working so many hours.

[1] I'd dare to say it's even more important to spend time with one's wife. A house where the parents are distanced or not in a healthy relationship is not really good for the kids either.

[2] Although, little by little I'll be able to get something out there.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I have faint hope he simply chose to say almost nothing about tending to the more complicated relationship with his wife. He sure sounds unconcerned about it, like so many parents in the thrall of remorseless evolutionary psychology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Thanks to my wife for being a great partner. It takes two."

We hear this over and over, but it can't be emphasized enough. It's almost binary: great partner and you have a chance, otherwise, don't even bother; you'll be fighting battles on too many fronts. A start-up is tough enough.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a startup employee and father, I've tried to set a very similar set of rules and traditions for myself. It's worked fabulously so far.

</comment><comment><USER16> very timely advice and perspective with fathers day around the corner. two things that really resonate with me (father of two young kids 2 1/2 and 7 months) is the dedicated time between when you get home and when they go to bed. its magical and puts the entire day in perspective when your able to get a few hours to play and read stories to them. The one to one time with wife/spouse is so valuable as well, in all scenarios its becomes very easy to skip that with all the hecticness of raising kids and you running the company.

love the quote about so many SV companies have great bring your pet policies and not bring your kids, so true and weird.

</comment><comment><USER17> Timely article. My wife went with me on a trip to 'Silicon Valley' and as a result - she now has a much deeper understanding of me. I think we're going to be able to arrive at a more reasonable give-and-take now.

</comment><comment><USER18> My wife wants me to have a fixed time for starting and finishing work every day. The trouble is that I don't have a set time for leaving the work desk. Nor is there much distinction between weekdays and weekends.

<comment><USER2> It sounds like you've already made your choice.

From the article: "Regardless of what I was doing I had to be home by 7pm."

<comment><USER16> 7pm is a good time, set a limit on the day and you get more done, then hit the all important hustle hours of 9-1am hard and your overall productivity will soar in relation to simply staying at work till all ours of the night.

<comment><USER19> 9-1am?? When do you _sleep_?

<comment><USER20> This sounds like my schedule. After the kids are asleep, I usually do the same (though it's more like 10pm-1am).

As for sleep. I get about 5-6 hours. I wake up at 7am, at the latest, on weekdays to get the kids to school. On weekends I'll get more sleep (like midnight to 8 am).

It works for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cush. I know plenty of people working even at big companies who can't spend that much time with their kids and spouse. How did he do it as a founder?

<comment><USER16> my guess: he was the boss, made it important and just did it. I think its often the mid level managers / engineers at big companies that are pushed and push themselves to work crazy long, life impacting hours.</comment></comment>


What You'll Need to Know in 2020 That You Don't Know Now (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/what-youll-need-to-know-in-2020-that-you-dont-know-now <comment><USER2> I think it's interesting how one prediction that they made was that 1,000,000,000 would be starving. However, the massive reduction in extreme poverty[1] that the world has made, especially since 2000, is amazing and under-covered. That's one prediction that I am glad they got wrong.

[1][https://ourworldindata.org/extreme- poverty](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty)

<comment><USER3> > _Globally, there are 821.6 million people that are considered undernourished > or starving._

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most- af...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-affected-by- hunger-in-the-world-according-to-world-hunger-index/)

Sorry to be a killjoy.

<comment><USER2> Undernourished != starving, and 821.6 million != 1 billion. While there is plenty of work to do left, theres a lot of progress that has been made so far and its important to recognize that.

<comment><USER4> Feel free to mentally substitute "has access to anything less than enough food" and round up slightly, but I don't see much of a difference.

<comment><USER5> "round up slightly" by >100 _million_ humans?

You don't see a difference?

The point being made is that human civilization is making leaps and bounds globally because that number _isn 't_ a billion, and most importantly it has a strong, predictable trajectory _downwards_ , towards _zero_.

"I don't see a difference" is like saying "we were going 80 mph towards the wall, and we braked, but now we're going 50, and I don't see much difference, it's practically 80 if you just round up." Are you not interested in the fact that we're continuing to brake?

<comment><USER6> thing is, you won't see much of a difference if you hit a wall with 80 or 50 (mph/kmph)

<comment><USER7> Figure 3.3 in [1] suggests that a belted driver has a 40% chance of survival in a full frontal crash at 50 mph. At 80 mph the survival changes are close to zero.

[1] [https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...](https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author of this article wrote this in a Jan 2020 blog [0]:

> Am I a genius prognosticator and futurist? Hardly. I was just a reporter who > interviewed a bunch of really smart people. As I recall, when the editors of > the magazine hired me to write the story, they already had the title in mind > but weren't 100 percent sure that it would bear fruit. My editor and I drew > up a list of scientists the magazine had worked with or had interviewed in > the recent past, and set me free to contact as many as I could and ask them > how they saw the future shaping up.

> At the time I thought some of the predictions were off the wall. The one > about cleaning up our digital reputations, for example, seemed nutty to me. > ...

[0] [https://www.josephdagnese.com/blog/2020/1/20/that-time-i- pre...](https://www.josephdagnese.com/blog/2020/1/20/that-time-i-predicted- the-future-and-cnn-noticed)

</comment><comment><USER9> _Even in 2020 you will always need to know if the facts you 've dredged up are accurate and truthful._

You've always needed to do this. The internet just drives that point home _hard_. Because when I was growing up 50 years ago, I just assumed that all the good things said about Christopher Columbus (to pick an easy example) must have been true because they wouldn't print it in a book if it weren't, right?

Years later, thanks to that same lie-spewing internet Discovery Magazine warns me about, I find out that Columbus guy was a real prick. That, and an idiot who thought he was the first to cook up this "round Earth" theory (only to be beaten by 2000 years by, eh, the Greeks was it?), and got it massively wrong at that.

The article overall, though, is surprisingly even-handed, lacking in ridiculous hyperbole so rife in such articles, and amazingly spot on.

<comment><USER10> Exactly - those 50-book encyclopedia sets your parent owned had a surprising number of factual errors, and still required cross-checking to verify their facts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encycl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia)

<comment><USER11>
      Even today the english wikipedia has articles that are full of lies, like for example the Gamergate article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found all of that remarkably prescient except for this:

>To reach that age you'll need to know enough to make more complicated medical choices: Do I want to jettison a limb and wait five years to regrow another? Shall I allow a phalanx of nanobots to scrape the plaque out of my arteries or opt to replace the vessels altogether?

Why do we always seem to wildly overestimate progress in medicine?

<comment><USER13> > Why do we always seem to wildly overestimate progress in medicine?

Because we dismiss the role the FDA regulations have in greatly retarding innovation.

<comment><USER14> If it was the FDA's fault, you'd see scientists regrowing limbs and testing nano-bots in rats. The FDA actually has a great system of emergency and compassionate use authorizations that allow early testing of experimental drugs and devices. These systems came into place because of a long history of medical disasters: see thalidomide, Elixir sulfanilamide, and so many more.

<comment><USER15> > If it was the FDA's fault, you'd see scientists regrowing limbs and testing > nano-bots in rats.

Can't do that either, the IRB says it's not allowed under research ethics unless the rats have given informed consent.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, now that we have a "smart" printer, we need the printers consent before we can print the informed consent papers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The technical predictions are hit and miss (as such things tend to be), but this bit is prescient:

> On the one hand, your workload will multiply as you bat away each glitch > resulting from the increased number of gadgets in your life. On the other, > you will be forced to take on moral questions no human has ever faced. When > will you find time to do that? How will you contemplate when everything is > speeding up and time for reflection is practically nonexistent?

</comment><comment><USER17> > By 2020 you'll need to know how to clean up that electronic trail day in and > day out. "Say you were searching for information on hats," theorizes Jaron > Lanier, computer scientist, musical composer, and virtual reality pioneer, > "and you saw a link about hats, but when you got to it, it was actually a > weird pornography site about hat fetishes. Then it turns out there's a > record that you visited this site, and now you're getting bombarded with > offers from people with hat fetishes. Furthermore, your friends are being > contacted in case they have hat fetishes. All of a sudden you're the hat > fetish person in your social circle, and you have to go in and undo it."

Well, this happened, but it's simultaneously more pervasive and more silent than we would have suspected. The ad networks know _everything_ about your online behavior, not just hat fetishes.

<comment><USER18> I mean do they? Isn't it just as simple as installing Ghostery? Anyone who cares already doesn't see ads and already isn't being tracked. If you don't spend a minute of your time installing a free extension in order to protect your privacy, than the logical conclusion is that you don't really care (which is fine, you do you).

<comment><USER17> Ad tracking is a lot more pervasive of a problem than can be solved by a browser extension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone want to make predictions for 2040?

Here's a start:

Self-driving cars will be the norm. Humans will not be allowed to drive.

Extreme weather will make many parts of the planet unlivable.

Manufacturing will return to America, where robots will do the manufacturing.

Universal Basic Income will become a thing.

Humans will work fewer hours, fewer humans will work, and fewer workers will work from work.

Wealth and power will be concentrated among fewer people.

There will be no retail industry.

Sports will be the only reason to leave the house.

<comment><USER20> On the world stage:

• America will still be a strong player, but not completely dominant anymore.

• China will successfully assert itself in East Asia, OR force Japan, Taiwan, Phillipines, Vietnam, etc into a strong anti-China alliance.

• India and Europe will act more and more independently of the US.

• Turkey will seek to assert itself in former Ottoman territories, possibly leading to a period of peace in the Middle East if successful.

Technologically:

• Nothing groundbreaking in computer hardware.

• Still no self driving cars or compelling voice interfaces.

• Electric cars gain ground, but other forms of electric transportation become wildly popular.

• Having a driving license will become less common. Driving may become something left to the professionals, with more stringent tests and requirements.

• Meat alternatives become mainstream. People start to look down upon eating real meat.

Socially/economically:

• Continued urbanisation of the population.

• Continued slowing the the birth rate.

• Dwelling places keep getting smaller.

• Long term monogamous relationships become more uncommon.

• Wage stagnation

• Retail shopping almost dies out

• Entertainment is mostly online

Politically:

• Prison abolition movement will become stronger.

• Primitivist movement will get much bigger. They will seek to return to the country and a more independent, primitive way of life. When laws and social circumstances don't allow this they will turn to terrorism.

<comment><USER14> > Prison abolition movement will become stronger.

I really want this to happen. In the past decade, we saw the first mass pardons of people in the U.S. imprisoned for drug charges. This would have been unimaginable during the height of the "War on Drugs." This gives me hope that the imprisonment rate will continue to decline.

<comment><USER21> Unless crimes are actually going down I don't see how lower imprisonment rate is good. Just sounds like criminals getting away with it to me.

<comment><USER22> So basically: imprison more people -> cost goes up -> crime does not go down -> imprison more people -> cost goes up -> crime does not go down -> imprison more people ->....

Does not sound too clever in my book.

Maybe time to try something else?

<comment><USER21> What are the alternatives? For me, punishing criminals is more important than rehabilitating them.

<comment><USER14> Why is punishing people more important than preventing recidivism?

<comment><USER21> I want criminals to be punished for their crimes. That's justice for me. Can't explain why I feel that way but I do.

<comment><USER23> I (and I suspect victims of crime) sympathise with this POV. However, I'd encourage you to also think about it from a larger perspective, like a government: what would be the most advantageous path for a society to take in dealing with crime? If you take such a larger perspective you'll see that individual justice is only one of several important factors. I don't have time to explain further. But one analogy could that nobody likes to pay taxes themselves, but many accept that taxes in general (if well-spent) can be a net positive for a society/country.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. It's hard to feel emotionally that prison abolition is right in the face of an individual case. You want justice! But if you look at the system as a whole you have to conclude that, on average, justice isn't really being served. The tax burden is unjust to the tax payer. Poor conditions and long sentences are unjust to incarcerated people. Strange sentencing rules and prosecutory practices (people can get more time for petty theft than rape) are unjust to people who want justice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Kind of eerie how much of that was spot-on. Except for the medicine bits, all of those things came true.

</comment><comment><USER25> >By the year 2020, for example, you will need to know how to talk to your house. Today your home contains dozens of appliances, each working independently. >The lights will flicker on, the air conditioner will have kicked in, the refrigerator will clamor to enumerate all the meals you can assemble with the groceries cached inside.

It's amusing that this is sort of true, however every voice assistant I've ever used kinda suck. The most they really can do is tell the weather and set reminders. Add in the fact that a smart fridge might not use the same AI platform as a smart speaker and that dream is shattered.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _" Say you were searching for information on hats," theorizes Jaron Lanier, > computer scientist, musical composer, and virtual reality pioneer, "and you > saw a link about hats, but when you got to it, it was actually a weird > pornography site about hat fetishes. Then it turns out there's a record that > you visited this site, and now you're getting bombarded with offers from > people with hat fetishes. Furthermore, your friends are being contacted in > case they have hat fetishes. All of a sudden you're the hat fetish person in > your social circle, and you have to go in and undo it."_

This is charmingly naive. He thought you could undo targeting and social networking snafus!

If only we could replace all the Internet propagandists and seo content shovelers with hat fetish people.

That would be objectively better, right? I don't even really like hats, but I'd be OK with it.

<comment><USER26> That's a bit unfair to Jaron. He didn't make a hole-in-one but he hit the green in one stroke (I'm sure there's a golf name for that, but know nothing about golf metaphors). What he said was pretty astonishing for 2000. Google didn't even introduce ads until...checking...oh! three weeks later, and the privacy concerns that he's depicting have basically become the water in which we all swim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, some of this list was surprisingly prescient, like the stuff about online tracking and home assistants. The points about online misinformation and fact checking were pretty ominous too, though the internet of the early 00s had the exact same problems.

The medical predictions however were way off (it'll probably be a while until nanotechnology as mentioned in the article becomes that ubiquous or limbs can be regrown), and the self driving car ones sounded like something people would write today in their list of future predictions.

And for the moral quandries? Well, it seems the human response to those has been what it always has; ignore everything that's happening outside their tribe/local area/country. That's probably never going to change, since any creature that lives its life constantly thinking about everyone else's moral struggles is going to be living its life on the constant verge of a mental breakdown.

</comment><comment><USER28> Remarkably accurate aside from the healthcare stuff

</comment><comment><USER29> You'll need to know how to build a website that loads its ads before the reader has finished skimming the article.

</comment><comment><USER30> It would have been so hard to predict Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER31> _> Tomorrow's Kaczynskis will be able to concoct harmful viruses and insinuate them into the food supply, or perhaps release pathogens in public places. You'll need to be ready for them. _

TK was heavily in the news back then so it's no surprise they predicted more people like him may be causing mayhem at a far bigger scale. I don't think this kind of terror is likely though since people rather commit suicide before going down TK's path.

They mentioned TK but didn't go into what drove him to criminal insanity: environmental destruction due to systems thinking (TK got heavily influenced by Jacques Ellul's "La Technique" and references him throughout his writings).

Difference from 2000 I see today which I wouldn't have imagined in my worst nightmare is environmental destruction. The places where I went diving in the 90ies: like Great Barrier Reef, Gulf of Thailand, Indonesia's "ring of fire", that were full of life back then, they are now underwater wastelands. The primal forests / jungle I trekked in North Sumatra are nearly burnt down and forests of Borneo under threat from total destruction thanks to the new capitol they want to buid there. Apes such as Orang-Utans (Malaysian for "forest-man") nearly extinct. The beaches where I hung out in my early 20ies are now full of plastic and need to be cleared daily otherwise tourism there wouldn't be possible at all.

I'm not TK but I do wish humanity wouldn't be "making leaps and bounds globally" because we destroy our own home and therefore ourselves for no reason other than pure greed.

When the human race makes leaps and bounds it also leaps further towards its own demise. And I wonder if this is unique to humans or if other species given enough time would also race towards their own destruction in such fashion. And if capable of language would they describe their leaping as progress or would they be smarter and see it for what it is?

We need to think of ways to reduce our population back down to size for the planet to recover and in correct proportion to our surrounding. Because thinking that we can just use smarter-Tech or geo-engineering will destroy us. The only way to get there is less of us. I already had kids so it's too late for me. But I hope I won't be a grandparent, and I hope other people also stop reproducing. I also cheer for this virus to wipe out as many as it can, even it means I or my loved ones die. Not because I'm a lunatic but because it's the only fair way (without a human deciding who is removed from the gene- pool). I also hope people will voluntarily opt not to have children but I think that's just a fantasy and example of dangerous systems thinking (who would enforce such insanity?).

[https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah](https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah)

</comment><comment><USER32> amazingly prescient</comment>


Hands-on Node.js book - <AUTHOR> http://nodetuts.com/handson-nodejs-book.html <comment><USER2> Would benefit from a professional editor/proofreader -- there are quite a few typos as well as english mistakes.

Still, he is smart for moving fast, and it looks like there is good value here.

<comment><USER3> Was about to say the same thing:

"node takes a leap from that that says" "and use it to make a easy way" "the rigth way of doing" "what many people belive is the right direction"

All in the section "Why the sudden and exponential popularity?" (which is not even a very long section).

However, that aside, this looks good. The style is pacey and informed, the content looks useful and sufficiently technical without being a physics paper, I might even stump up some cash after reading the free pages.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback, appreciated! All corrected on the new version. Will get it proofread soon, now that it got more popular :)

<comment><USER3> No problem, I used to be a technical author ;) so kind of hard to lose the habit. I really like the book. I hope you don't think I'm being too critical, and I hope you make some good money from it.

<comment><USER4> I don't mind and I appreciate it, any feedback for improving it is very welcome! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pedro Teixeira's nodetuts[1] have been very helpful, things are explained in a very natural way. If the book is as good, this might get my moneys.

[1] - <http://nodetuts.com/>

<comment><USER6> i purchased a copy of it, and it is similar in quality to nodetuts. and i already got a updated version as well as a .mobi copy by email. imho its great work and worth every cent

<comment><USER4> Thanks! :-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I spotted a few typos in there. Also some lining up issues and spacing issues. Glad more content is being produced about Node though, can't get enough.

<comment><USER4> Some are corrected, and it's being proof-read at the moment. Will update every buyer once the corrected version is out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do they save unit-testing until (nearly) last? It should be in the free sample, and it should be reinforced throughout the book.

<comment><USER9> That was/is one of my favorite parts of The Rails Tutorial. Love that TDD is explained, enforced, and used at every step.

Would be great to see hear as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bought it great work. Hope to get epub version soon. Also thanks for the great screencasts at nodetuts.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can I buy this without creating a PayPal account?

<comment><USER4> No, you can't, tinypay uses only Paypal...

<comment><USER12> PayPal is only required for sellers, it is possible to pay by creditcard without creating a PayPal account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome, great work.</comment>