The Mind of Marc Andreessen - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/tomorrows-advance-man <comment><USER2> Most of the article reads like a pr piece sugar-coating Marc and a16z, and the part about his wife is unapologetic celebrity gossip :). I also doubt that depictions of the workings of VC firms from this article should be taken at face value.

To be fair, the author tries to ask some adversarial questions towards the end of the article, but for example Alex Payne's criticism (link: [https://al3x.net/2014/06/17/dear-marc- andreessen.html](https://al3x.net/2014/06/17/dear-marc-andreessen.html)) is dismissed with a casual ad-hominem attack.

The vision Marc presents for blue-collar workers (work a lot and be poor or work when you feel like it and be very poor) is hardly enticing. The future he is envisioning is one of extreme inequality, with a handful of people controlling most of the advanced technology that keeps the world running. And a16z clearly want to be among these people.

<comment><USER3> > Most of the article reads like a pr piece sugar-coating Marc and a16z

This really isn't so. The whole article is peppered with jabs at Andreesen's personality, skill-set, track record, self-awareness and skull shape. And when the writer reports Andreesen blowing off Payne as "a self-hating software engineer", he didn't do that to make Andreesen look good or sound persuasive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is incredibly thorough, honest and entertaining. The writer has done an excellent job.

Andreesen's candid comments about Gurley/Benchmark are hilarious. The whole bit about his rural upbringing influencing his full-on embrace of a tech- utopian future is something I could fully understand; whenever I hate our industry, I go spend some time in a beautiful rural environment until I remember why it's so frustrating.

I'm glad the writer explained the influence of Mike Ovitz and the CAA culture on how A16Z operates. One of my closest friends was an agent at CAA in the late 90s, and we used to spend a lot of time talking about their operating strategy. CAA took over the entertainment agent world by being more resourceful, cultured, helpful and -- most importantly -- _way more_ professional than everyone else (I was told a great story of how Donald Trump, while searching for an agent during the time of The Apprentice, took a meeting with CAA; upon entering and finding a conference table of perfectly suited, perfectly punctual agents waiting for him, he exclaimed, "you're all hired!"). I'd be interested to compare an old-school CAA client pitch with a modern A16Z startup meeting. I also think the rest of the Valley and its VCs don't understand the CAA way, and why it is so superior to their golf-club way of doing business.

The behind-the-scenes look at Instacart's latest funding round was really interesting. Understanding the psychology that leads to massive funding rounds -- and how you're either getting bid up by each partner in the after-pitch conversation, or bid down until they don't want to participate -- is something that doesn't get much public visibility. Again, such an honest look at the inner workings of Andreesen and his colleagues.

Andreesen is, quite clearly, at the top of the game in the VC business. His success is well deserved. I am sure everyone in SV will be talking about this article this week. This article is of great service to everyone who isn't deep in the SV game, but who wants to understand how it works (or _should_ work).

<comment><USER5> > Andreesen is, quite clearly, at the top of the game in the VC business.

Shouldn't his returns have some bearing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most people think that creating innovative products relies on 'trend-spotting' and on reacting quickly to demands. But that is reactive. You can have a much bigger impact if you're willing to shape the future. This is why Doug Leone quoted is wrong when he refers to the PC and the iPhone as black swans, because they were not. They were products attempting to shape the future. Marc has an uncanny talent at detecting what startup may shape the future and creating a set of financial tools to ensure that market acceptance can happen.

This talent is what makes A16Z so amazing - they are so different from the average bean-counting VCs, whose sets of tools are focused on financial exits and powerplays inside boards.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but history is littered with products that failed at shaping the future (Apple Newton, Web TV, Early VR headsets). The black swan part is that few could have predicted the iPhone or the PC would succeed.

<comment><USER8> The funny thing about all the products you listed is that later iterations of these concepts have made (or are now about to make, in the case of VR) major impacts. Perhaps part of the reason these products failed to "shape the future" was because they didn't have the business and financial backing that can be offered by firms like Andreessen-Horowitz.

<comment><USER7> Na, they did. It's more about timing. And it takes some luck to get the timing right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was an absolutely wonderful, and really accurate insight into not only Marc, but the business of VC. Getting to go behind the doors, and sit in on the conversations the GPs were having regarding the valuation of instacart alone made the article worth reading.

It clocked in at 13,500 words, and I couldn't tear myself away from it. I don't think I was tempted, for even a second to divert my attention.

Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER10> On the topic of A16Z v. Benchmark, especially from 09 onwards Benchmark has done ridiculously well. Early on Uber(a, b + c), Snapchat (a + b), Instagram (a + b), Dropbox (b), Nextdoor (a, b + c), Hortonworks (a, b), Zendesk (b, c + d), New Relic (a, b + c) and Twitter (c + d). I'm sure I'm missing a few as well.

I'd love for the fund data to be available!

<comment><USER11> Benchmark has been on a tear in VC not seen since KP did it in the mid/late 90s. they are absolutely the best in the business right now

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is a more critical (and much shorter) viewpoint from the New York Times: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/upshot/andreessen- horowitz...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/upshot/andreessen-horowitz- dealmaker-to-the-stars-of-silicon-valley.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> His old blog is no longer online, but someone collected it here. Very much worth reading: [http://pmarchive.com/](http://pmarchive.com/)

edit: Ah, it was published as an ebook as well this January: [http://a16z.com/2015/01/09/pmarca-blog- ebook/](http://a16z.com/2015/01/09/pmarca-blog-ebook/)

His current blog: [http://blog.pmarca.com/archive/](http://blog.pmarca.com/archive/)

</comment><comment><USER14> _One morning, as I sat down to breakfast with Andreessen, a rival V.C. sent me a long e-mail about a16z's holdings. The V.C. estimated that because Andreessen's firm had taken so many growth positions, its average ownership stake was roughly 7.5 per cent (it's eight per cent), which meant that to get 5x to 10x across its four funds "you would need your aggregate portfolio to be worth $240-$480B!" You would, in other words, need to invest in every Facebook and Uber that came along. When I started to check the math with Andreessen, he made a jerking-off motion and said "Blah-blah-blah. We have all the models—we're elephant hunting, going after big game!"_

Uh, is there a more robust/cogent thought that explains this?

<comment><USER15> I think I'll take a stab at this. Suppose you do need the aggregate to be worth around 400 billion to deliver decent returns. If Andreesen Horowitz catches the next 2 Facebooks ( worth 200 billion each ) over the next 10-15 years and loses money on every single other deal ( an extremely pessimistic assumption ), they can deliver it. Is this a guaranteed outcome? No, but it certainly seems reasonable / plausible

<comment><USER16> > Suppose you do need the aggregate to be worth around 400 billion to deliver > decent returns. If Andreesen Horowitz catches the next 2 Facebooks ( worth > 200 billion each ) over the next 10-15 years and loses money on every single > other deal ( an extremely pessimistic assumption ), they can deliver it.

your assumption is that A16Z would own 100% of those 2 next Facebooks... which I don't think I need to point out how wrong that is (sorry, I just did)

let's assume something more realistic, like a16z getting 20% of each 200B company that appears - they would need to invest on the next TEN Facebooks (at an earliesh stage), and that seems a bit harder. and let's not forget that most "unicorns" don't even go past the 10B when IPOing, so in reality, they need a lot more than 10 FBs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > And that Benchmark's best-known V.C., the six-feet-eight Bill Gurley, > another outspoken giant with a large Twitter following, advised Horowitz to > cut Andreessen and his six-million-dollar investment out of the company. > Andreessen said, "I can't stand him. If you've seen 'Seinfeld,' Bill Gurley > is my Newman"—Jerry's bête noire.

Sheds some light on [http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part9.html](http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part9.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Another profile of Marc from August 2000:

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/loudcloud_pr.htm...](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/loudcloud_pr.html)

For those who don't know the outcome of Loudcloud, it would eventually sell the managed services business to EDS and rebrand the software portion of the business as Opsware. Opsware would later be acquired by HP. HP would later acquire EDS.

</comment><comment><USER19> >>One partner suggested that LearnUp was a "ten on thirty"—ten million dollars should buy a third of the company, which would then be valued at forty million. "It's more like ten on fifteen or twenty," Horowitz said, cutting the company's value in half. "Or six on twelve," Andreessen said, whittling it further. Soon after the meeting, Ringwald turned LearnUp into an enterprise company.

Can somebody help explain how these calculations work according specifically to the article? The numbers make no sense to me if I use the article's explanation of this VC verbal shorthand.

"Ten on thirty" gives a $40M valuation? How? And how does "ten on fifteen" halve the valuation - according to the article paragraph above, wouldn't that double the valuation by investing $10M for just 15%, instead of 30%-33% equity stake?

EDIT: Thank you for the replies. I appreciate the responses.

<comment><USER20> Basing it on the statement from the article this is how I read it:

10/30 gives 33%(1/3rd) at a valuation of 40 million

10 + 30 = 40

So $40 million valuation for $10 million investment which gives them 33% of the company.

10/15 would imply 33%(1/3) at a valuation of 10+15 = 25

$25 million dollars is close to $20 million which is half of the original $40 million.

Marc's 6/12 implies 6 million investment at 18 million valuation for 50% of the company.

<comment><USER21> > $25 million dollars is close to $20 million which is half of the original > $40 million.

Better yet, $15 million is precisely half of $30 million. And that number is the pre-money (as in, the actual, now) valuation for the company.

So suggesting that a deal is "10 on 15" rather than "10 on 30" is suggesting that the company is precisely half the valuation of the first suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's kind of ironic that Marc Andreessen dismissed the New Yorker several times in the past as an 'elitist east coast literary magazine' yet this profile is absolutely fantastic, and very generous as well.

I'd be curious to hear what he thinks of it!

I also wish the article touched on Andreessen's thoughts about publicly financed science. Basic scientific research is something that the government puts a lot of money in too, and that should be robustly defended.

</comment><comment><USER23> Has A16Z made a non-Series A investment in the last three years that didn't require perfect execution and everything to break right for them to come out ahead?

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a good parallel to "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz. Covers a lot of the same material but gives more background on Marc.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's interesting that he says that they want to shape the future - like all VC's - and yet many of their portfolio companies [1] do no such thing. Do ShoeDazzle and Fab really "shape the future"? There are lots of companies on that page that, based on the description of his thought process, he shouldn't have written checks to.

[1] [http://a16z.com/portfolio/](http://a16z.com/portfolio/)

<comment><USER26> The article briefly touches on that incongruence (i.e. that despite Andreessen's techno-visionary rhetoric, much of his firm's portfolio looks like fairly typical tech companies):

 _even as you philosophize about ushering in a new age of democracy, you also have to make money for your L.P.s. And, while the ideal startup advances both goals, most, in truth, advance neither. The V.C. Bryce Roberts told me, "It's an ego game, where you want to believe you're changing the world. But how can you write a check to Fab and believe that giving people discounted tchotchkes is changing the world?"_

The article then changes topic and doesn't really discuss that further though.

<comment><USER15> I think the binary thinking here is quite a bit simplistic. Think of "changing the world" not as a zero or 1 proposition but as a continuum. Some companies/products change the world for the better by 0.98 and some other ones only by 0.02. That doesn't mean you shouldn't fund the 0.02s. Because a lot of 0.02 in aggregate change the world by a lot.

<comment><USER26> Eh, I think there's a point where it gets so diluted that the argument boils down to, "any human activity might be changing things by a little". I'm posting quite a bit of top-quality insight here on the HN (top 50 by karma!), so maybe my thought leadership is changing the world (by a very small amount). Should I set up an interview where my visionary themes get celebrated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "The toilet in the powder room is so visionary, and the surrounding dimmer lights so flattering, that I had to study it for some time to figure out how it flushed."

What is this toilet???

<comment><USER28> _What is this toilet???_

I'll take "stupid" and "badly designed" for $1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't like it. This article looks to me like an ad piece. It has very little substance.

There is something bothering me in this article and the "startup culture" in general. Everyone thinks they make the world a better place. Silicon Valley's (the TV series) satire is spot on this. No matter what half brain dead app someone creates, it's supposed to revolutionize and "disrupt" some meaningless aspect of our lives. Of course technology helps the man overcome many problems, be smarter, healthier etc. But it is no panacea. We have the technology of the 21st century with the education of 1500 as to what to do with it. So everyone is making apps for cats or creates a temporary and indivudual-based solution for "problems" that we shouldn't have all along (creating additional problems). This is a huge waste of potential. If you really want to make the world a better place focus on the things that matter. At the very least be honest with what you are doing. Someone wants to make money and that's fine. The probability that the the world will benefit from it is most of the times incidental.

In some weird way am glad this was on HN.

</rant>

<comment><USER30> Fuck that.

There are companies every day trying to genuinely make the world a better place, like the healthcare IT one that I work for, trying to open up a Steam- like platform to do signal processing in hospitals. Or the not one but two charity fundraising startups bootstrapping in my city. Or the test-grading automation startup in Dallas.

And yet, because these companies aren't within walking distance of the Valley VCs, and because they are sometimes tackling industry problems that take more than a year to close a basic deal on (seriously, fuck hospital invoicing and billing), they have enormous trouble getting out of the valley of startup death because no funding available that permits easy growth. And because the local VCs in these cities are looking for easy deals, they just fly over for their day trips to the coast, and ignore what's in their own backyards.

So, for fuck's sake, let's not complain about the developers who are trying to eke out a living--let's instead take a long, hard look at the market and society that rewards them, and understand that _that_ is the root of the problem.

EDIT: Minor clarification in paragraph two.

<comment><USER31> > let's not complain about the developers who are trying to eke out a living

You make it sound like developers are not one of the privileged classes in this world, that they can't make money easier and accumulate more of it with less physical, psychological and emotional degradation than the vast majority of the world. That they might "only" be in the top 10% instead of the top 1% does not make it less true.

No one in the top 10% has any business complaining except about the condition of the bottom 50%, and then they should be doing something about it, as 7_7 suggests.

<comment><USER30> _with less physical, psychological and emotional degradation than the vast majority of the world._

I think you're incorrect about this. I think you aren't counting the mental and emotional toll of working on projects that get arbitrarily shitcanned, or working 120-hour weeks because you think you'll be the king of the roach bucket because your investors said so, or the constant dehumanization of "You are programmer beep boop why can't you just make this business concept work?".

As far as physical hardship, look at all the folks with carpal tunnel syndrome, obesity, diabetes, bad backs from slouching, or any of the other issues endemic to white-collar long-hour development work.

And for all that, we're still probably just going to be me, complaining about the working conditions and things that suck, and you, dismissing those same issues because some Kazak iron worker works in a dangerous foundry. This is stupid.

 _No one in the top 10% has any business complaining except about the condition of the bottom 50%,_

See, this line of thinking expands easily: "Nobody in the top 30% has any valid complaint, except..."

Suffering is suffering. Handcuffs are handcuffs, golden or not. Abuse is abuse, whether it is from a shitty founder or a shitty secret policeman. Being underpaid is being underpaid, whether it's by one dollar or a hundred thousand.

Your line only suits the super-rich, and is a great appeal to guilt to help people ignore how much they're getting shafted.

EDIT:

So, again, not a single act of self-abasement or renouncing of privilege is going to do anything to help those truly in need. Face facts: there's not enough room in the clubhouse for everyone, and we don't help ourselves by voluntarily standing outside, unless it's with torches.

<comment><USER32> > As far as physical hardship, look at all the folks with carpal tunnel > syndrome, obesity, diabetes, bad backs from slouching, or any of the other > issues endemic to white-collar long-hour development work.

These aren't problems inherent in the profession. Not every white-collar worker is fat with diabetes. Plenty of developers find time to work out and take care of themselves, and being part of this 10% affords them the luxury to get a gym membership or buy healthy food.

This is very different than someone who puts in grueling hours of manual labor or makes a wage that puts them below the poverty line, forcing them to eat cheap, unhealthy food every day.

<comment><USER30> So, it sounds like you don't get a lot of face-time with folks that work in enterprise, or SMB development. You know, places with at least an hour-long commute both ways, where the defacto lunch is something from the local wings joint.

Or, you know, where the folks are so buried in loan and student debt that _are_ effectively below the poverty line, but they just get to claim a nicer cell. They're no more free than your blue-collar folks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> tl;dr:

Andreessen makes bets on technology x people. The tech has to be provocative and world-changing, but more importantly, the people behind the tech have to be thoughtful, bold and unique in their worldview.

Interesting points:

\- A16z makes bets on consumer tech in later rounds (more risk earlier, increased cost later worth the more sure bet) - i.e. Oculus

\- Invests in enterprise tech earlier (less risk of a fickle consumer / competition)

\- What's better than telling investors (or at least a16z) what they want to hear is providing them with insight as to why their assumptions might be wrong and you have better answers (phrased here as "It's a delight when they look at you with contempt—You idiot—and then walk you through the idea maze and explain why your idea won't work.")

Read the article, you won't regret it.

Some of my favorite excerpts:

[1] In 1996, when Horowitz was a Netscape product manager, he wrote a note to Andreessen, accusing him of prematurely revealing the company's new strategy to a reporter. Andreessen wrote back to say that it would be Horowitz's fault if the company failed: "Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you." Ordinarily, relationship over. "When he feels disrespected, Marc can cut you out of his life like a cancer," one of Andreessen's close friends said. "But Ben and Marc fight like cats and dogs, then forget about it."

[2] A16z led Airbnb's B round. Soon afterward, the company was battered by headlines about renters who trashed a San Francisco home. It wasn't axe murders, but, Chesky said, "It was a P.R. nightmare. We had just expanded from being ten people living in a three-bedroom apartment and we had no idea how to be a billion-dollar company. Marc came to our office at midnight and read the letter I'd written to our community about the Airbnb Guarantee, and the two changes he made changed the company forever. I'd said we guarantee five thousand dollars for property damage, and he added a zero, which seemed crazy." Andreessen also added the proviso that claimants would have to file a police report, which he correctly believed would discourage scam artists. "And he told me to add my personal e-mail address. He gave us permission to be bold."

[3] A favorite Andreessen response to underlings' confusion was "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people." Jim Barksdale, the company's C.E.O., said, "I'd tell Marc after meetings, 'You don't have to tell a dumb sumbitch he's a dumb sumbitch.' " Andreessen told me, "I needed Netscape to work, it had to work—it was my one-way door—so I was absolutely intolerant of anything that got in the way"—meaning, he clarified, "people." He could never relax: "I am very paranoid. And the down cycle hurt a lot more than the up cycle felt good."

[4] [...] Peter Thiel suggests, is that Andreessen may not be as suited to making early, counterintuitive investments as he is—a point that Andreessen concedes: "Peter is just smarter than I am, and in a lateral way." But, Thiel says, Andreessen is well positioned, because of his broad knowledge and flexible mind-set, to respond to incremental changes in an array of fields. And that, he argues, is what the times reward: "While Twitter is a lesser innovation than flying cars, it's a much more valuable business. We live in a financial age, not a technological age."

[5] One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldn't venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that "future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand Hill Road." Jeff Fagnan, of Atlas Venture, which is the largest investor in AngelList, said, "Software is already squeezing out other intermediaries—travel agents, financial advisers—and, at the end of the day, V.C.s are intermediaries. We're all just selling cash."

Andreessen sometimes wonders if Ravikant is onto something. He's asked Horowitz, "What if we're the most evolved dinosaur, and Naval is a bird?" Already, more than half the tech companies that reached a billion-dollar valuation in the past decade were based outside Silicon Valley. And as Andreessen himself wrote in 2007, before he became a V.C., "Odds are, nothing your V.C. does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure."

[6] He acknowledged, though, that his optimism dims once human beings—with their illogic, hidden agendas, and sheer bugginess—enter the equation. "We're imperfect people pursuing perfect ideas, and there's tremendous frustration in the gap," he said. "Writing code, one or two people, that's the Platonic ideal. But when you want to impact the world you need one hundred people, then one thousand, then ten thousand—and people have all these people issues." He examined the problem in silence. "A world of just computers wouldn't work," he concluded wistfully. "But a world of just people could certainly be improved."

</comment><comment><USER34> The article does seem to have a good description of how Silicon Valley venture capital thinks and works.

Of course, again, on average the venture firms have poor ROI:

[http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional- limit...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limited- partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-longterm-returns-from-venture-capital- says-new-kauffman-report)

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html#disqus_thread)

Yes, apparently the Silicon Valley _information technology_ (IT) venture firms are trying to evaluate everything that comes in the door having to do with IT. There's a problem doing this: By analogy, it's like picking dart throwers. Only a tiny fraction of the dart throwers are actually experts, and the rest are amateurs throwing wildly. But, there are so few experts and so many more amateurs that, on average, nearly all the darts in the center of the target come from lucky amateurs and not real experts. So, net, the Silicon Valley is trying to evaluate the huge fraction of amateurs that mostly need just luck.

Much better would be to concentrate on the few real experts who need much less in luck. "Few"? Right, but so is the number of desired successes, and the number of real experts should be sufficient.

Then, with the article, we come to a significant point: The Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) firms just do not know how to plan, do, and evaluate projects from real experts.

Some people do know: The shortest description of project planning is:

Step 1: Pick a good problem.

Step 2: Use IT to get a good solution.

So, sure, in Step 1 want to solve a suitably important problem, one where the first good or a much better solution will be a _must have_ and not just a _nice to have_ for enough people so that the number of people times the average earnings per person is enough to make a real _unicorn_.

Or, in crude, simple terms, maybe want a _must have_ solution for a _big ass_ problem in a _big ass_ market.

Sure, the ideal situation, although likely not in IT, would be a safe, effective, inexpensive one pill taken once cure for any cancer. Such a project would just "cut right through" (borrowing from the movie _Moneyball_ ) all the nonsense about body language, _vision_ to _change the world_ , how to manage 100, 1000, 10,000 people, hard scrabble backgrounds, tone of voice, assertive manner, clothes selections, etc.

And, sure, in Step 2 want to use IT to get the "first good or much better solution", _defensible_ , with _barriers to entry_ , etc.

So, from the article, apparently Silicon Valley VCs don't know how to evaluate projects that follow the two steps above.

Does anyone know how to do such evaluations? Sure:

For Step 1, that the problem being solved is suitably important should, like the example of the cancer pill, be obvious. Right, here get to rule out considering projects such as Fab, PopSugar, Zulily, SnapChat, AirBnb.

So, what's left is Step 2, and evaluating that is mostly just technical.

While apparently Silicon Valley is next to hopeless at evaluating new, powerful technology, our better research universities, NSF, NIH, DARPA, etc. are quite good, thank you.

So, an example of a project with really good technology? Sure:

[http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...](http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_blackbird_leaking_fuel_cell19.jpg)

Sorry, Marc: On my BoD I want -- it's crucial and I insist -- people who can understand my business, including the crucial core, unique IT, and for that, Marc, I want to know what you did in your STEM field Ph.D. program and have done in research since. E.g., I want people like the dissertation advisors in STEM fields in top research universities and problem sponsors at NSF, NIH, DARPA. How many Silicon Valley VCs do you know who qualify? I want people like those who looked at Kelly Johnson's engineering drawings and approved the SR-71; Marc, their _batting average_ is _much_ better than yours or nearly any VC (Chris Sacca may be on the way to being the only exception), and they fund just off pieces of paper.

Marc, from the article your evaluations look like you would have asked Kelly Johnson if his SR-71 could also fly to Mars and refuse to fund him unless he enthusiastically said "Mars? Yes, and to infinity and beyond!" or some such nonsense. Look, Marc, it was Mach 3+, 80,000+ feet, 2000+ miles without refueling, never shot down -- as needed, as planned, as accomplished.

Marc, in simple terms, in IT, you just do not know very well what you are doing; on my BoD, can't use you; your wildly irrational flights of nonsense could sink my company.

<comment><USER15> While it's true that VC industry as a whole underperforms, the top firms, including a16z perform quite well. VC industry consists of lots of dumb firms. So, your arguments are somewhat misplaced.

<comment><USER34> Solid details on the financial performance of individual VC firms is difficult to get in public.

Maybe A16Z is doing well, at least in _comparison_ , maybe like a WWII piston powered fighter plane instead of a horse but still not an SR-71.

It remains: Nearly all the US high end IT is for US national security with only meager connection with Silicon Valley VC. Telling point: Nearly no Silicon Valley VC has the background to be a problem sponsor or project reviewer for NSF, NIH, or DARPA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Apple and Microsoft got started with venture money;"

Microsoft is bootstrapped

<comment><USER16> [http://www.quora.com/How-much-venture-capital-did- Microsoft-...](http://www.quora.com/How-much-venture-capital-did-Microsoft- raise?share=1)

<comment><USER35> Not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One day we'll all laugh at sentences like: "Disrupt to differentiate by becoming a dream-execution machine."

<comment><USER37> I think a lot people already do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am all for being a techno optimist but Marc comes of as someone who haven't really understood the problems that he is helping create which is sad because he is influential enough for it to matter.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure which problems you are referring to, but one problem made worse by two of the sites he is involved with is freebooting.

Sites like Facebook and Imgur profit off of the value of original content created by third parties in the hopes that most of the value will be squeezed out of it before the creator notices or has a chance to send a DMCA takedown notice.

I increasingly stumble across complaints from artists whose videos will have as few as 150 views on YouTube, while the pirated copies that someone uploaded directly to Facebook (with all of the true creator's information removed) have millions of views.

One person I directly contacted was a woman named Leslie Hall, whose stolen video on Facebook had over 20 million views, which is more than twice as many views as all of her YouTube videos combined. She has been uploading videos to YouTube for nearly a decade in her struggle to make a name for herself, and when she finally got some attention, it was in a corrupted form where no one knew her name or how to find more of her videos (other than the 0.02% of people who bothered to use Google-fu on the lyrics to find the answer). She also lost tens of thousands of dollars in YouTube Partnership ad revenue, de facto stolen from her by Facebook. The comments section was full of people who loved her, but they all had no idea who she was. Since Facebook refuses to do the ethical bare minimum and swap freebooted viral content with a link to the original creator's true source, all she succeeded in doing was to send a DMCA takedown notice and get the Facebook video page deleted, destroying all of the organic momentum that was pushing in her favor.

This problem will naturally become much worse now that Facebook has tweaked their algorithms to heavily favor the spread of videos directly uploaded to Facebook, while punishing external links to YouTube by automatically preventing them from becoming as popular.

Imgur has a similar problem which is especially damaging to webcomic artists. It is such a destructive problem that even /r/funny on reddit has banned the practice of sharing links to rehosted webcomics. Imgur, however, is still perfectly happy to do it. Every day you can find multiple webcomics on Imgur's front page containing an album of half of a webcomic artist's life's work, usually without any link to the creator's actual website. This pirated copy gains millions of views, and the artist is left with nothing to show for it, not even a page hit. All of those millions of views represent potential fans who perhaps would have liked to buy a book from the artist or some other merchandise, and the artist would have been able to pay the rent for another year. Instead, all of that money goes to Imgur ad revenue and T-shirt sales. Imgur also passively gets all the cognitive goodwill from their users who mistakenly associate the pleasure of reading the stolen comics with Imgur, rather than with the artist where it belongs. Most artists I inform of this theft are incredibly sad about it but have already reached the stage where they feel utterly defeated and helpless.

I feel that some sort of reform is needed to compel large sites to implement something similar to the Content ID system on YouTube, or at least require due diligence in finding the true creator and 302 redirecting the link of the stolen copy to the true source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is completely off-topic but I find it so hard to convince myself to read a 14,000 word (or any other long-form) article anymore.

At least the New Yorker doesn't try to maximise ad revenue by splitting this across 25 pages.

<comment><USER41> kondro stood there facing towards us with his john lennon style glasses that looked like he had recently been to a high-end designer shop. the glasses had black thin rims as he surveyed his audience with friendly blah blah blah

Too much detail. The New Yorker should produce a tl;dr version like The Economist does ([http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/11/economist- es...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/11/economist-espresso))

<comment><USER42> Maybe you're not their target audience? I think the New Yorker is geared toward people who like the process of reading and enjoy when the author paints a picture in their mind. If you just want the tl;dr version, then there's other places to go. I think it's nice that they reach a different kind of audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Just a reminder that this is the same guy that calls snowden a traitor

<comment><USER44> Just a reminder that not everyone agrees with you

<comment><USER45> Well it was in writing so I'm not sure what more you want, it isn't really an subjective thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Marc, you grow an excellent beard.

</comment><comment><USER47> Given how prolific he is on Twitter [0] I'm curious if he writes his own tweets.

[0] [https://twitter.com/pmarca](https://twitter.com/pmarca)

</comment><comment><USER48> "She told me that Andreessen satisfied most of the criteria on her checklist: he was a genius, he was a coder, he was funny, and he was bald. ("I find it incredibly sexy to see the encasement of a cerebrum," she explained.) For his part, Andreessen felt that "she was spectacular! My biggest concern was that she wanted to live a jet-set life." In one of the seventeen e-mails he sent her the next day, he asked, "What's your ideal evening?" She responded, "Stay home, do e-mail, make an omelette, watch TV, take a bath, go to bed."

This is a bit much? I do wish the down to earth couple well! That's the one positive about being broke; you never need to second quess their motives?</comment>


The new Uber: Weak coffee, vanishing perks and fast-deflating morale - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/30/inside-new-uber-weak-coffee-vanishing-perks-fast-deflating-morale/ <comment><USER2> Come to find out it's not really new and exciting, it's just driving your own car as if it is a Taxi Cab... :(

</comment><comment><USER3> man they missed the opportunity "death of a startup, uber weak coffee is the first omen"

</comment><comment><USER4> But they wrote their own internal chat application!

<comment><USER5> Sounds good, ill buy some uber stock.

<comment><USER6> When was the last time you took an Uber?

<comment><USER7> When was the first time Uber made a profit on someone taking an Uber? :)

<comment><USER6> In 2022-2023</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon launches Yahoo Mobile phone service - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/other/verizon-launches-yahoo-mobile-phone-service/ar-BB112SiY <comment><USER2> > Verizon is launching a Yahoo-branded mobile phone service called Yahoo > Mobile in an attempt to use consumers' total apathy toward familiarity with > the Yahoo brand

Why? To remind us how much we didn't like Yahoo to begin with or do they figure consumers can't possibly have a worse opinion about the brand so there's no way to go but up?</comment>


How to address a team member that's not pulling their weight? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> How would you approach a situation where a member with seniority has become complacent and is no longer contributing at the level required by the team?

<comment><USER2> That's actually a great way to phrase it. It never occurred to me that this is how it should be done.</comment></comment>


Need a webmaster for a HackerNews clone. - <AUTHOR>

I need a fresh install of https://github.com/nex3/arc/raw/042990a55d8c880a0a88476eb52b169e47f35d32/news.arc plus some modifications done.  Will pay you for your time. I am trying to build a deal site based on this format and need a trustworthy webmaster.  I'll be doing all the rest of the work to get the community going.<p>email at benbakhshi at gmail <comment><USER2> > I'll be doing all the rest of the work to get the community going.

Glad you took the easy bit! Here's some background:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/05/26.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea..I know its hard. That's why I'm going to try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try <http://www.freelancer.com/> lots of people there that can help you for little money.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Instructions on how to setup the site would also be helpful.</comment>


Shill Bidding on Namejet Exposed – $100m in Shill Bids - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e17_FW7iitc <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently people are putting their domain names on NameJet.com and allegedly bidding on their own domain name auctions.

<comment><USER2> It's the new nature of the internet, you can't trust no one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Buy it now prices please!</comment>


What is "Bayesian" Statistical Inference? - <AUTHOR> http://lingpipe-blog.com/2009/09/09/what-is-bayesian-statistical-inference/ <comment><USER2> The fundamental problem is simple. When people do statistics the answer they want is, "How likely is it that X is true?" The difficulty is that the problem is ill posed, you lack sufficient information to answer that question.

Classical statistics replaces the question with one that can be answered. Namely, "How likely would this result be if the null hypothesis were true?" This has several difficulties. The most noticeable one is that, no matter how much the professor tells them not to, people replace the question actually answered with the question that they want to answer. This mistake has been made by anyone who says, "We confirmed the null hypothesis..."

Bayesian statistics confronts the problem head on by pointing out that the conclusion you should draw depends on the prior beliefs you start with. And then they present complicated graphs that show you how your prior affects your conclusion for some reasonable family of priors. This approach avoids misrepresenting the question at the cost of presenting your answer in a complicated way.

My feeling is that as long as the general scientific public remains unconvinced that the classical hypothesis testing approach leads to wrong results, simplicity will win. (And will continue to be misunderstood.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Too dense, man. Only people who already get it will get it. People who don't get it, will still not get it after reading.

Try to explain it to your 5 year old daughter, or your 80 year old grandmother.

<comment><USER4> Seems pretty clear to me, it doesn't claim to be an article for the non mathematically inclined. Not that "pop" articles on this subject wouldn't be pretty cool too.

<comment><USER5> Well, I'm pretty mathematically inclined, but ignorant of Bayesian statistics, and I still didn't really get it. Frinstance the first full-length paragraph:

 _The full Bayesian probability model includes the unobserved parameters. The marginal distribution over parameters is known as the "prior" parameter distribution, as it may be computed without reference to observable data. The conditional distribution over parameters given observed data is known as the "posterior" parameter distribution._

uses too much jargon; I'm sure I'd understand it if he'd defined "marginal distribution" and "conditional distribution" and clarified exactly what the difference between observable and unobservable data and/or parameters is. The hypothetical audience for this seems to be people who are intimately familiar with statistical terminology but know absolutely nothing about Bayesian statistics.

<comment><USER6> I think those concepts are best understood by example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like Eliezer's page on this much better:

<http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes>

It has been discussed on HN before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=376631>

<comment><USER8> Eliezer Yadkowsky's page is a nice intro to Bayes's theorem, the understanding of which is critical for understanding why the posterior is proportional to the prior times the sampling distribution.

But Bayesian stats isn't just about applying Bayes's theorem. Its key feature is using probabilities for model parameters and incorporating posterior uncertainty of their values into inference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's what I actually said in response to all this on the original blog, which showed up as a huge spike in our traffic!

There was a sudden spike in traffic, and it turns out it comes from Y Combinator Hacker News, where there's a discussion of this post with seven comments as of today.

The criticisms were sound -- it's too technical (i.e. jargon filled) for someone to understand who doesn't already get it. Ironically, I've been telling Andrew Gelman that about his Bayesian Data Analysis book for years.

Unix man pages are the usual exemplar of doc that only works if you mostly know the answer. They're great once you already understand something, but terrible for learning.

I think Andrew's BDA is that way -- it's clear, concise and it actually does explain everything from first principles. And there are lots of examples. So why is this so hard to understand?

I usually write with my earlier self in mind as an audience. Sorry for not targeting a far-enough back version of myself this time! The jargon should be familiar to anyone who's taken math stats. I don't think it'd have helped if I'd have defined the sum for the prior defined as a marginal.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow thanks, this is a great, well written intro that makes a great refresher !

Anybody starting machine learning and data mining ?</comment>


No More Pirated Games in Two Years, Cracking Group Warns - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/no-more-pirate-games-in-two-years-group-warns-160106/ <comment><USER2> It would have been nice to read a bit more about the technical challenges involved. I don't care pirated games disappearing (I dislike DRM, but I prefer to buy my DRM-free games legally), but the technical challenges could be interesting.

<comment><USER3> Same here- not too upset about pirated games disappearing, but I also live in the US where it's easy to buy games online for a reasonable price. From what I understand, in other countries marketplaces aren't as available and/or pricing isn't far (i.e. Australia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this really interesting, but I don't have the knowledge around the tech to fully judge whether the statement is hyperbole or not.

Is anyone able to ELI5 how one goes about cracking a game like this?

<comment><USER5> I haven't touched this particular game, but from experience cracking just takes a lot of time but is never impossible, unless the program is using something you have no control over like a DRM chip or something like that. Even then, everything has holes.

You can use the strongest encryption but at some point you need to have the game decrypted in memory. You can have a tonne of obfuscation but not enough that would hinder the game's performance. As long as you have control over the machine that runs it, you can crack it. It's just a matter of time and making the cracker so bored that they just give up. Which is what is happening here.

But they will succeed, or someone else will.

I'm curious if they implement some sort of rootkit or a bootkit. Those are pretty hard to deal with, relatively. But uhm... history repeats itself. [1]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

<comment><USER6> I'm far from an expert, but what I've heard about Denuvo's latest generation of DRM tech is pretty clever. The details that have surfaced from their PR and independent analysts is that they're verifying the integrity of the executable and loaded libraries in memory occasionally at runtime. This short-circuits a lot of simple memory-clobbering or library-substitution tricks that crackers use to route around additional vendor-specific DRM solutions added by Steam or Origin.

Coming from the anti-DRM position, I'm pretty impressed because they found a way to verify that the original game is running as intended without impacting the player experience in any observable way. Not my favorite thing from a "you can't modify this thing you bought" perspective, but in terms of making good on the ideal game DRM, it's pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moving to cloud-based systems with account monitoring would seem to stop piracy in it's tracks, no?</comment>


Bananapocalypse: The race to save the world's most popular fruit - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/bananapocalypse-the-race-to-save-the-worlds-most-popular-fruit/2017/10/06/bf1635ac-7d28-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425918).</comment>


A VC: Facebook Will Sit Tight, As It Should - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/07/facebook-will-s.html

<comment><USER2> Friendster will also sit tight, until the next firesale.

The big advantage of not selling seems to be: If you sell, you have to stop playing the CEO game. Success isn't something you can luck into every time you make a copycat website: Usually they don't take off in a big way.

If you cashed out, you'd have cash, but you would stop being a mighty-famous bigshot.</comment>


Further analysis of the impact of distancing upon the COVID-19 pandemic [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/papers/gigo-20200329.pdf <comment><USER2> From Kissler et al. (2020): "To implement an effective intermittant social distancing strategy, it will be necessary to carry out widepsread surveillance to monitor the prevalence threshholds that trigger the beginning or end of the distancing have been crossed."

[https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42638988/Social%...](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42638988/Social%20distancing%20strategies%20for%20curbing%20the%20COVID-19%20epidemic.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The file name being a understated and appropriate reference to "Garbage in, garbage out"

If you don't have reliable data any attempt at clever maneuvering is likely to plant your face into the ground.</comment>


An Admissions Surprise from the Ivy League - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/an-admissions-surprise-from-the-ivy-league.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 <comment><USER2> At the undergrad level, the ivy leagues are a place where you go to meet people rich, driven, well-connected students and their successful parents. This is their value proposition - not a world class education. Larry Summers is going to give the same econ 101 lecture as every other college professor, but his name combined with the harvard brand is going to carry a lot more weight on a recommendation letter for that Fed summer internship.

Everybody already knows this. 9th graders don't need harvard to tell them how good of a school it is through a new website. 9th graders need parents who are informed about the process, and who have enough money and time to bankroll extracurriculars and support the kid through whatever endeavor is going to make him/her special enough to deserve a spot. This is usually a lifelong process.

So if the end goal is to raise student awareness/ability to get into an elite university, the problem needs to be addressed at a much more fundamental level than "web portal for 9th graders". Petition your network of business and political leaders to improve public education and welfare programs that educate and support low-income families and their children. Donate a portion of your multi-billion dollar endowment to this end.

But one has to wonder...what incentive does an elite institution really have for increasing equality?

<comment><USER3> > At the undergrad level, the ivy leagues are a place where you go to meet > people rich, driven, well-connected students and their successful parents.

I am not going to disagree with that, but it's not the only benefit. You should probably mention that if you want to go into research/grad school (especially for liberal arts), it pays to go to a school where the top professors and academics work.

That said, there's also something I disagree with:

> Larry Summers is going to give the same econ 101 lecture as every other > college professor.

As someone who goes to a subpar Computer Science school, I disagree. Tom Leighton explained Discrete Math better than any professors I've had. Sussman and Ableson, even in the 80s, were better than any lecturer I've had.

Maybe it's because I go to subpar school, instead of a "good enough"/"good but not elite" school, but I can definitely see the benefits of an elite school in academics alone.

Of course, this is all irrelevant to the rest of your comment, which I agree with. I also happen to be a first generation immigrant and almost everyone I met in the same position as me was clueless about the college process.

<comment><USER2> I attended a decently selective private school for 3 years. I studied abroad at an elite university for a year.

The quality of the lecturers was basically the same. At both institutions, some were fantastic and others were terrible. In fact, I had one professor at the elite school that was probably the biggest bullshitter of a teacher that I've ever had. I also enjoyed much greater access to professors at the regular school as they weren't always busy with research/speaking engagements/writing books.

The quality of the average student was leagues ahead at the elite university. The exams at the elite university were much more rigorous.

The end result was that I had to cram for a month for those elite exams, during which time I "learned" (read: memorized) a _ton_ but also promptly forgot most of it after doing well on the exams. The lasting benefit of the elite university was meeting all of the really interesting and intelligent people who have become some of my closest friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ultimate goal is to get more students to apply to these top schools - especially lower-income students. In a vacuum, this is commendable; certainly our top schools should do a better job of educating students regardless of tuition. But while this initiative will likely raise application rates, will it increase acceptance, matriculation, and graduation rates for lower-income students?

Most 'metrics' applicants are measured by correlate highly with income. There are SAT prep classes, schools with more AP/IB classes, personal statement 'helpers', interview coaches, and so on. This initiative needs to be coupled with a better understanding of the challenges that lower-income students face.

There is, of course, no mention of financial aid packages by the coalition. Increasing the amount earmarked to financial aid, particularly to grants instead of loans, would be more effective.

<comment><USER5> > _Increasing the amount earmarked to financial aid, particularly to grants > instead of loans, would be more effective_

Agree. In addition, reducing or eliminating legacy preferences [1] would go a long way.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences)

<comment><USER6> Of course, the legacy preferences are part of the value proposition of such schools. You don't go to Harvard for an education; you go to Harvard for a Rolodex. Having been drinking buddies at Harvard with a guy whose father went to Harvard gives you an entree into society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> or instead of this parade of bullshit, they could decide admission on a truly meritocratic basis as is still done in the UK, EU and most countries around the world. you score high enough in the relevant exam and you gain entry.

anyway, the real scandal of ivy league admissions is the insane discrimination against asian americans. if you're from the preferred ethnic groups, you already get an enormous effective boost to your test scores.

<comment><USER8> You can't really base admissions on merits when all the applicants have essentially maxed out those merits. They're all valedictorians with SAT scores that are nearly perfect.

I agree affirmative action is not ideal. Priority acceptance should be based on family income, not race. But the end result would be nearly the same as it is now.

I grew up in an upper class suburb (though not an upper class family myself) and saw tons of wealthy minority students that performed worse in school but got accepted at places their white friends weren't. They also got to do stuff like apply to scholarships for hispanic Americans when their families were of middle-eastern region ethnicity. No one was going to risk calling them out and being labeled a racist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where will the rich kids go? If the real product they're selling, is hanging out with rich kids, perhaps for the hope of future opportunities, spouses, whatever, then sending them all to state-U or whatever will just make the new "cool brand" the state-U.

It reads like advice to improve bars and restaurants. Now, the best most profitable bars and restaurants are the ones doing (fill in the blank) the best. To really gullible people, if every bar and restaurant on the planet did (fill in the blank) as well as (cool place) then every bar and restaurant would be as busy and successful as (cool place)... all of them at the same time, LOL. Obviously if air conditioning or electric lights or indoor plumbing were ubiquitous then a new selection criteria would spring up and the best places would have a different mythology about why they're the best and the rest will remain inferior.

Its an intentional confusion of macro and micro policy.

On a micro scale yes its very easy to fine tune some random poor kid to get into the cool kids-only club. On a large macro scale all that's going to do is change the selection criteria so the poor kids can't get in, or the cool place to get into is no longer "XYZ". Its kind of like real estate blockbusting.

Before major social shifts, you tend to see a lot of pump priming like this to get the population used to the idea of changing things in that area. Likely there is a lot of upheaval anticipated in higher ed or young adulthood and very soon the ticket to the cool kids club is no longer going to be going to Yale... or Stanford... I donno what its going to be, but if we're subject to endless social engineering blockbusting of the ivies, I guarantee whatever the future is, it won't be the ivies.

Perhaps all rich kids will have their parents fund startups instead of going to business school or whatever. Or seeing as professional tutors and grad students are now cheaper than tuition, personalized instruction will become the norm. You don't need a piece of paper to get a title of nobility or meal ticket if your dad is rich enough...

</comment><comment><USER10> A laudable effort, which of course is immediately beset by paranoid tiger parents 2nd- and 3rd-guessing every detail and how it will affect their wonderkind.

<comment><USER11> To be fair...

Those people are going to attack anything that doesn't better their own child's chances at an acceptance letter. (Believe me, I know. I've had the misfortune of being given the task of dealing with some of these people in the past.) So the objections of those parents should not be given too much credence. Have a low level person hear them out. Determine if there is anything there that is worthwhile. Then, leave it at that. Not much time should be wasted on bandwidth for those people. After all, at least in my experience, those people RARELY have "wunderkind".

<comment><USER10> The OP was an article in the NYTimes. Unfortunately one of those people got quite a bit of bandwidth wasted on them. Now it will take effort to undo that damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An admissions surprise would be getting rid of standardized testing and only admitting within the pool of the top 5% of each graduating class for schools whose requirements meet the university guidelines.

Adding online lockers is a nice attempt, but doesn't solve the problem.

<comment><USER10> Substituting one test for another? Why is that helpful to promoting diversity?

The whole point of standardized testing is to level the playing field, so folks are admitted by demonstrated ability and not what prep school they went to or what neighborhood they grew up in.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the original point of standardized testing was not to "level the playing field", but rather to identify the academically talented. The job of Ivy Admissions Officers is to identify students that will enrich the environment of the universities by which they are employed. These are two separate problems.

Just as an illustration, consider one of the "goals" of Admissions Officers at one of the Ivies. This particular Ivy, some time ago, set itself a goal of admitting one male, and one female, from every state in the union. Simply selecting the top candidates via "demonstrated ability" will not allow them to meet this goal. It would be difficult to find elite students in Arkansas, Alabama and Montana who would compare favorably to elite students from Massachusetts, New Jersey or Minnesota. So it's plain that this goal had to be satisfied via other means. Programs like those the article talks about are a part of achieving these lesser known admissions goals.

<comment><USER10> Not fair! They can simply look harder. How can it be said with a straight face that there are _zero_ qualified candidates in those example states? Preposterous. It just takes time to find them.

<comment><USER13> Wyoming has about 580 thousand total population, and no prep schools comparable to the East Coast ones. Its not simply raw intellectual ability. The most qulualified student in each year from that state will most likely find an Ivy League overwhelming. If each such school wants at least one man, one woman from there, it's not going to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my high school (a well-regarded, mixed-race high school in one of the worst-run districts in the US in the late 90s) the "advanced placement" courses were used as a form of segregation. White kids (drawn from an affluent enclave in the inner city and who made up 1/3 of the school) nearly all requested to be placed in "IB" classes instead of AP classes. It didn't matter if you were smart, because the material wasn't really any harder than the AP classes -- it was just what all the white kids did.

Black students (from a blue collar, middle class area; also 1/3 of the school) weren't excluded from the IB classes, but generally only the nerds/geeks requested placement. The kids who did were labeled "Oreos" by their peers, so there was peer pressure not to take the IB classes if you were from this area. These students generally came from good, supportive families, though their parents probably never went to college and thus had no real clue how to work the system to get your kid into college. Anyway, all the black kids were placed in "AP" classes instead of "IB" classes, just because that's how it worked.

The hispanic students (from a poor immigrant area, the other 1/3 of the school) were largely excluded from this system. They would be placed in "ESL" (English as a Second Language) or "remedial" classes, even though most were perfectly fluent in English (often they spoke Spanish at home) and the entire reason they were behind in a number of subjects was because the middle schools they went to were understaffed and under-resourced.

The racism was only super-obvious to the students because of the way they physically segregated the classes: each set of classes was in a different building. So you had the white building, the black building, and the hispanic building. People rarely had a reason to go to another building.

But the only difference between my high school and the bad schools in the district was that we had IB classes as an option, because we had a bunch of affluent white kids. Our IB classes were taught by great teachers who cared a lot, and I got a decent education. My teachers stressed the importance of going to college. But if you weren't an affluent white kid and you didn't know how to play the college game, you were no better off than if you went to another, worse high school.

And that's the difference, right there: if your parents went to college, they know how the game works. They know that University of Phoenix is not a real college, and they know what an Ivy League school is and why it's important. A kid who grows up with a father who is a welder and a mother who cleans houses doesn't have those resources. They know going to college is important, but they may not know the difference between a community college, a 4 year state university and an Ivy League. They may not know that you have to apply a year ahead of time.

It's not the affluent white kids' fault that they know this and their less affluent peers do not - you got thrown into this system as a confused 14 year old, so your parents were the ones making all the decisions when you started high school. But many white kids (and their parents) see attending a good university as their birthright -- if only they have the willpower to seize it. They see complex application processes as a challenge they have to rise and meet. There aren't even enough spots at these top schools for just a fraction of the affluent white kids, not to mention kids who don't even know that going to Harvard, Yale or Penn is a big deal.

<comment><USER15> This is one part of the problem; that doing good academically and caring about college is a "white" thing. Changing that has to come from within the community, I'm not sure there's much we can do from the outside.

<comment><USER14> That's not even it. Parents can care about college and want their children to do well academically, while at the same time not know how one goes about getting into college or why Yale would be more attractive to someone than University of Iowa.</comment></comment></comment>


Outlook 2016's New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails - <AUTHOR> http://wp.josh.com/2016/02/24/outlook-2016s-new-pop3-bug-deletes-your-emails/ <comment><USER2> From a client standpoint, POP is not actually trivial.

The main problem with POP is that unless you do something clever, determining the changes in the mailbox from time _t0_ to time _t1_ is both conceptually difficult and computationally expensive. This is because generic POP has no concept of a message UID, so there's no principled way to diff between states. In a very real sense, this means that POP is somewhat broken for the most important use case for the client: syncing to server changes.

The UIDL extension adds a "UID" but it's just an MD5 hash of the contents -- meaning that multiple copies of a message appear to be the same message. And you can ask for just the headers -- which means you can get the message-id header -- but this is still very expensive to do repeatedly (say, every 5 minutes) on a 100,000 message POP store. And you can't ask for _just_ the Message-Id header, which would fix the problem.

Even if you have valid UIDs -- which you won't -- you still have to run a diff algorithm. Typical dynamic programming algorithms are O(N^2), which obviously sucks big time for a 100,000 message POP store.

For Inky ([http://inky.com](http://inky.com)) we use a clever linear-time diff algorithm based in part on [Meyers 86]: _An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations._ [Burns & Long 97] _A Linear Time, Constant Space Differencing Algorithm_ is also a good treatment. But I know Outlook and Thunderbird both use non-linear-time algorithms to diff, so "leave messages on server" gets increasingly (non-linearly) expensive as the mailbox size grows on the server.

A few other points on comments made in this thread:

\- POP is still widely used. In the US, for example, Comcast has finally migrated to IMAP, but Verizon is still POP only.

\- POP is, from the server standpoint, a very simple protocol, and it is highly amenable to automated testing, as others here have pointed out. For our own testing we generate both patterned and random mailbox modification sequences, then have the test client cooperate with the test server to ensure that the client has (independently) correctly determined what's happened to the (test) mailbox. This is a perfect example of a situation where investing significant effort into automated testing pays off -- and where a TDD approach to development would also work well.

<comment><USER3> _The UIDL extension adds a "UID" but it's just an MD5 hash of the contents -- meaning that multiple copies of a message appear to be the same message._

That sounds like a server problem; to quote the RFC,

 _The server should never reuse an unique-id in a given maildrop, for as long as the entity using the unique-id exists._

Why would you hash the contents? The arrival time should be unique, assuming no two messages could arrive at exactly the same time. That doesn't require _any_ hashing.

I think POP could've been far better designed, without growing into the complexity of IMAP, with just a few little changes like this.

<comment><USER2> I know you know this, but RFC != what servers actually do. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > UPDATE 02/26/2016: ... TL;DR: Disable automatic updates...

That's just good advice for dealing with modern software, for which fixes, breakage, and feature churn are all mixed in a single awful stream. "Newer" does not mean "better."

<comment><USER5> As someone who recently had Android 6.0 available for their phone and decided to upgrade, exactly this

Some genius at Google decided to make the phone vibrate and beep every time there is an open WiFi spot, or you need to sign up to a known one

Really

This kind of crap (not the only one) almost justifies the extra price for iOS

<comment><USER6> I (Moto X 2014) got a different set of bugs on M. Mostly problems with basic functionality:

\- When I get called, half of the time I don't see the name of the person when they are in my address book.

\- Music controls (which were already very basic) usually stopped working a certain amount of time after the last restart.

\- Music randomly pauses when browsing the web at the same time (as in, I have to open up the music notification card and press 'Play' again).

\- E-Mail notifications have been flaky for some reason.

\- Active display music controls are worthless again. Google decided to add a 'favorite' button. Motorola just picks the first three buttons from the notification card. Now you can't go to the next track anymore.

Security updates were also still at the 1 November 2015 level. After being stuck for half a year on a buggy 5.0 release before getting 5.1, I know this is going to take months to fix, if ever (Lenovo probably doesn't care about the 2014 anymore).

I am now back to an iPhone after a Nexus 4, Moto X 2013, and Moto X 2014.

<comment><USER7> Now that you need to bring your own phone to most carriers, there is no reason not to stick with Nexus/pure Android. The updates work there for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many years ago I worked on the DPOP POP3 server and DList mailing list server, and did a little work on our company's SMTP and IMAP servers too.

My experience was that most clients sucked.

For example, one (Eudora?) would move IMAP messages by copy and delete (which may have been idiomatic, as I say it was a long time ago). But it wouldn't check the success of the copy operation, so a failure to copy would result in a delete, not a move.

Seems they still suck in 2016, for what seem like trivial reasons.

I mean, surely this sort of protocol interaction is very, very amenable to automated testing of some sort. We had a bunch of automated regression tests for our mail servers, written in C, back in the late nineties.

I'm genuinely uncertain whether to blame incompetence or another attempt at the strategies spelled out in the Halloween Documents: [http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/faq.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/faq.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Inbox Zero Assistance Features"

</comment><comment><USER10> I wasted a couple hours trying to help one of my clients who had this problem last week. What a pain it was. He had 5 devices connected to his account, 2 on pop and 3 on imap. It took 20 minutes just so listen to his explanation of emails appearing and disappearing and re-appearing based on which account saw them first. We spent the next hour turning on each device one at a time until we determined that his outlook pop client was the one deleting them, even though it was configured to leave them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was actually more surprised someone still used POP3 for direct client access - not a bad thing really - I just thought the world had migrated to IMAP.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think greater compartmentalization of software is long overdue.

For a program like this, there ought to be a Sacred Core that Does Very Little and has implementations of key protocols that can't be touched without the blessing of about 5 senior engineers and the personal seal of the CEO or some such.

In other words, it should be _unbelievably_ hard to screw with parts of the program that are crucial, while making changes that shouldn't have anything to do with it. (Heck, for all we know, they were adding Windows 10 Tiles™ when this screw-up occurred.)

<comment><USER13> Microsoft keep rewriting their mail protocol implementations and fucking them up in new ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Man, I waited for a feature like this for at least 15 years, how do I get outlook in Linux ?!

</comment><comment><USER15> Why cant they just improve what they have instead of re-writting it every X years and introducing new bugs?

<comment><USER16> Because that method has it's own problems too.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot)

<comment><USER17> Also

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's POP3. Seriously, one of the easiest to understand mailbox protocols ever. HOW could Microsoft stuff up something like this so badly?

Look, I know that mistakes can be made. But in this case, I just can't think of a single excuse that would be satisfactory.

<comment><USER19> Look what Microsoft did with *.odt (OpenOffice/LibreOffice) compatibility. Now they show bogus security and compatibility warning dialogs if you open or save such a file.

Look what they do with IMAP support in Outlook 2016. Pre-loading just the "Subject" (a feature supported since 1990s) got dropped, instead of the whole email incl attachments is downloaded.

And now we learn POP3 got crippled too. The common Microsoft tactics to lock- in end-user and enterprise customers to proprietary ever changing protocols only fully supported by their most recent server software - their Exchange and Outlook.com/Office365 cloud eco-system.

Microsoft wants you to upgrade to Windows 10 on PC, adopt it on smartphones (even it has just 1.1% market share), on servers, SQL-Server 2016, Exchange 2016, Office365 (subscription based Office 2016 client, cloud based SharePoint 2016 = OneDrive for Business on Azure), Skype for Business (=rebranded Lync), etc. Oh, and they ask you to install their telemetry services for Office on your clients, to get a "full picture". The telemetry and other phone home stuff cannot be turned off, except in the expensive LTSB license version. And several IPs and URLs are white lists in the kernel mode network layer, in all versions.

It's up to you, to help Microsoft to create another monopoly. Or you out smart them and say no.

<comment><USER20> _" Look what Microsoft did with _.odt (OpenOffice/LibreOffice) compatibility. Now they show bogus security and compatibility warning dialogs if you open or save such a file."*

To be fair, oOo and LO _always_ warn you when you want to save a file in MS Office format. Mind you, you can turn the notification off.

Food for thought: one of my employers now deploys OpenOffice as well as MS Office after years of resisting that because of fears of user confusion. Guess what? No confusion apparent.

<comment><USER21> OpenOffice is dead, sadly refusing to accept it, so people still continuing to install it - check the commits count for the 2015 year. While LibreOffice does a very good job improving (including Microsoft formats support).

<comment><USER20> I tend to agree and I use LibreOffice myself. Employer is a Microsoft shop (win10/7 clients, SharePoint, outlook/exchange, active directory &c). I imagine someone just went to the oOo Web site and got the current download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Update for those who dreamed about empty inbox.

</comment><comment><USER23> The widespread use of POP (well, _any_ significant use of POP) is what makes me sad the most.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is typical of software development in recent years. The emphasis on newer platforms and technology (in the case iMap) results in new user interface limitations, as well as bugs, for existing users of older technologies (i.e. desktop, keyboard access, and Pop3).

I've found eM Client to be a good alternative to Outlook and WLM.

</comment><comment><USER25> I loath outlook with the power of a 1000 suns. Give me gmail anyday.

</comment><comment><USER26> Eh.. What's life without a little salsa.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does this mean testing software before release at MS is second to none and relies on principle 'if users dont complain, we made it right'?

UPD: I was just about to persuade client to move to Outlook 2016 from 2011. Glad I did not.</comment>


Instagram Has an Animal Abuse Problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mtgentry81/instagram-has-an-animal-abuse-problem-ff59027142 <comment><USER2> I wonder what incentive causes Instagram to remove pornography so aggressively, while ignoring gore/animal cruelty?

<comment><AUTHOR> My fiancé said something interesting - that the results mirror Americans appetite for violence, and shyness about pornography</comment></comment>


The Amazon Transparency Program Is a Counterfeiter's Worst Nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kirimasters/2019/01/03/the-amazon-transparency-program-is-a-counterfeiters-worst-nightmare/#77d3c85776aa <comment><USER2> So create a system that encourages abuse, profit from that abuse at the expense of brands, and then charge those companies to use your proprietary tracking system if they want to eliminate it? This is straight out of a racketeering playbook, "It would be a shame if someone counterfeited your products and ruined your brand..."

This is Amazon's problem and they should be responsible and accountable for this.

This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I fully understand your perspective. Aside from simply offering a marketplace on which people may sell various products, what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?

<comment><USER4> > what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?

Co-mingling of products at the warehouse. When you buy from Amazon, you don't actually know which "seller" is supplying the goods. They all were comingled at the Warehouse.

Even "Sold by Amazon" and "Fufilled by Amazon" products are comingled. Leading to: [https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225](https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225)

Amazon, instead of fixing the comingling problem, has decided to charge the legitimate companies (ex: No Starch Press) for anti-counterfeiting defenses. Amazon is destroying No Starch Press's reputation by shipping shoddy low- quality counterfeit books, but its No Starch Press who has to pay the price to fix the problem.

<comment><USER5> Yes, as a heavy user of Amazon and (I think) a pretty savvy consumer of their site, commingling of different seller's offerings under one ASIN number causes big issues for me.

Almost as bad is Amazon allowing resellers to combine "similar" products into the same listing. While this makes sense for functionally equivalent products such as color differences, it's now used all the time for products that are substantially different. For example, mixing the ratings of a Micro-USB wall charger with a USB-C Power Delivery-capable wall charger is not only useless but misleading. They look different, work differently and use completely different parts internally.

I really wish Amazon would stop this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope they rush this. They are already a retailer I systematically avoid, dispite being a prime member, when authenticity matters. When I have time I ocassionally gamble, but have been less and less successful getting authentic items as time passes. Even if you dislike amazon (i am personally, torn), getting this right benefits everyone selling things online if it proves practical to implement.

<comment><USER7> This is the reason why I cancelled my Prime account. I could not trust the electronics I buy on Amazon. Too many fake items sourced directly from shenzhen. Now I go directly to the manufacturer's website and pay full price (which is usually about $10 more), and at least I know I'm getting the real thing.

<comment><USER8> What are you buying that you have had issues with?

<comment><USER9> I've had fake DSLR camera batteries, Headphones, USB cables, and the list goes on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like any e-commerce aggregator (e.g. eBay, craigslist, etc) has the same counterfeiting problem - at least Amazon is offering a solution.

<comment> kube-system I don't have the same magnitude of issues on eBay as I have had on Amazon. Much of the problem is exacerbated their commingled inventory and consolidated product pages.

On eBay it is two clicks to see the negative feedback for the seller who is shipping me the item, and I have the confidence that I am going to get the item from that seller.

On Amazon, users post much of the negative feedback on the consolidated product page which doesn't give any indication about the seller, and might not even be for the right product. And in the end, fungible FBA inventory is a roll of the dice. This is a problem that never existed on eBay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I struggle to see why a brand would be willing to share sensitive sales data with Amazon as this program requires. How many units produced, and production times.

Amazon already uses every scrap if data they get too compete, including via their expanding house brands

<comment><USER10> Sorry for the dumb question, why wouldn't amazon already have this? how does this share a brand's non-Amazon channel volumes? e.g. sales volume on their own website, retail, etc.

<comment><USER11> transparency requires a per-unit sticker with a unique code. Brands do not generally share exact volumes _per product_ or their production rates.

<comment><USER12> Couldn't they be per-unit shipped/sold on Amazon? Does the brand need to use the same unique code system in, for example, their own brick & mortar location?

<comment><USER13> From the article: "Brands are required to put Transparency codes on every unit for every SKU that's enrolled, whether it's sold on Amazon or through another channel."

Amazon doesn't want companies to use this to prevent third parties from selling their products obtained via other channels through Amazon by claiming they are counterfeit, and so requires all products to contain the code, not just those sold through Amazon.

edit: spelling

<comment><USER14> What Amazon wants and what the brands will actually do are two separate things...

Many brands will just print the transparency codes for units destined for Amazon through proper channels...which will be designated by having their own SKU, like brands already do for Costco and Walmart sales.

Product sold through other channels will not have the transparency codes and will be presumed counterfeit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This sounds like a good idea if major product producers could join together to create a standard for labeling all consumer goods. This could be used to identify food packages for recalls.

</comment><comment><USER16> So not only does Amazon co-mingle inventory to cause this problem in the first place, but then they turn around and charge brands if they want to enter this anti-counterfeit program. Incredible.

<comment><USER17> That is quite the inversion of burden of proof there. Amazon is a marketplace in the first place as opposed to a portal of stores. They sell by product. They have no obligation to do otherwise or to bar all secondary sellers. It is a privledge in the first place and they are entitled to demand that it not be used to shut out secondary markets.

<comment><USER16> >They have no obligation to do otherwise or to bar all secondary sellers.

Even secondary sellers of counterfeit goods? Of course they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Or, why don't a 3rd party provide this, and provide a website isthislegit.com/THERANDOMID (typing or API or QR) that returns red or green? Hey, startup idea!

<comment><USER19> The code has to be logged at Amazon warehouse though so it can linked to your amazon account number. Manufacturer -> Distributor -> Customer. Otherwise I could buy one real product off Amazon, copy the code onto my fake product and sell on Amazon marketplace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How long until the first substantial successful subversion of this? (Success defined as >USD 100K of sales, or destruction of >10K of a competitor's goods)

How long until it's made public?</comment>


Ask HN: Best Markdown App for iOS? (Also Android) - <AUTHOR> What are you all using to view and edit Markdown docs on mobile devices?
The App Store search results aren't particularly inspiring.
I currently use OneNote as my information repository but am moving away to plain text and Markdown. This works great on desktop but leaves me with a conundrum on mobile.
Features I'd like to see:
- Minimal/simple editing experience - Some kind of support for folders/notebooks - HTML preview - Git support wins many bonus points (??? not sure if there is anything)
Paid apps welcome to be included. <comment><USER2> [https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/)</comment>


Facebook is not worth $33B (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33000000000 <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion from 2010 (including spolsky and dhh):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975)</comment>