Why the US Has No High-Speed Rail - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf6baEu0_w <comment><USER3> Personally, I would love to use high speed rail. Between the crappy airlines and the TSA and horrendous traffic on the roads (I live in California) high speed rail seems very attractive. As a taxpayer in California, I am seriously concerned about the costs. Too bad we didn't invest in building this network before when things were maybe cheaper to build with less red tape. All things considered though, high speed rail is one thing that seems like it woood be a huge benefit to California, and I would be happy to have tax dollars go to that rather than to some of the other nonsense we spent insane amounts of money on. At least we get something out of this.

<comment><USER4> Of course you're assuming that TSA won't be involved with rail travel if it became more popular.

<comment><USER5> Why should it be?

The primary impetus for modern TSA was a group that figured out modern jets were useful weapons if diverted off course. While train diversions are still dangerous and catastrophes, they are nowhere near the same level of useful weapon in the hands of terrorists.

<comment><USER6> The primary impetus for the TSA was that people were afraid and it made them feel safer. The TSA actually accomplishes virtually nothing to prevent hijacking compared with the addition of armored cockpit doors and cockpit approach monitoring procedures.

The TSA does _theoretically_ screen for bad actors and explosives, both of which are still relevant to rail travel, even if they're potentially less threatening there.

<comment><USER7> I thought the purpose of the tsa was to make people feel less safe / have more reminders to fear - thus making people less likely to demand we slash the military / police / other security budgets. I suppose they do add to the expense of moving drugs, and make it harder to move large sums of money - <USER2> people who control other routes are able to extract higher prices for them, but I don't think that in of itself actually makes people feel safer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a little surprising that population density isn't mentioned as a major factor in this video. While it doesn't explain the overall cost or cost overruns, it is a major factor in whether rail makes economic sense.

Here's some key statistics:

* US lower 48 states: 40 people per square km (km2)

* California: 92 people/km2

* DC-Boston (this is hand-wavey a bit): 200+ people/km2

* France: 270 people/km2

* Japan: 330 people/km2

* China: 130 people/km2

* Eastern China: 250++ people/km2

Most of the Chinese high speed rail is in the Eastern part of the country where roughly 400M people live. That's more people than the entire US in a space about double the size of California. Likewise Japan's high-speed rail links Osaka and Tokyo which are among the most densely populated areas in the world. A high speed rail trip between SF and LA could be free and you still couldn't have a remotely full train leave every 10 minutes like you do in Japan.

The Amtrak lines that make the most sense are the shorter length ones that connect cities. The video sort of mentions this and that is in line with the Brookings Institution[1] findings. There's no coincidence that most of these lines operate in some of the most densely populated areas in the US[2] (So. California, Northeast). The goal of transit isn't strictly to turn a profit and highways don't turn a profit either. It has other goals like replacing car trips and alleviating congestion but all of these require people to actually ride. To get riders, trains need to operate where people are.

Long story short, there are some areas where high speed rail makes sense in the US but the US simply doesn't need as much high speed rail as China does.

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/passeng...](https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/passenger-rail-puentes-tomer.pdf)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density)

<comment><USER9> Always the same story. When it comes to cell networks or whatever, population density blah blah. Sure, it's a factor, but it's hardly the whole story.

If you count about 140 mph as high speed train, Finland (pop. density 17/km^2) and Sweden (22/km^2) seem to be doing just fine. (Those countries also manage to provide pretty comprehensive and _cheap_ 4G coverage (with unmetered data!) and cheap gigabit class fiber internet, but that's another story.)

The reason U.S. is like it is has only to do with path dependency. How things slowly shaped over time. Politics, generic stereotypes and opinions about things. Culture. That's all. U.S. has more than enough population density and wealth to support all those things.

<comment><USER8> > If you count about 140 mph as high speed train, Finland (pop. density > 17/km^2) and Sweden (22/km^2) seem to be doing just fine.

Citing the population density of Finland and Sweden as a whole is pretty disingenuous. Those two countries have densely populated urban centers in the south with high speed rail yet vast sparsely populated areas in the north with nothing. High speed rail gets built where it makes sense and no amount of hand waving is going to make building a high speed rail line from LA to Chicago or New York viable. With that said, I will agree that politics and culture are certainly factors.

<comment><USER9> > Citing the population density of Finland and Sweden as a whole is pretty > disingenuous.

Yet it's perfectly fine when it comes to US? US has densely populated coasts with some smaller density concentrations on the eastern half. So why the coasts don't sport high-speed rail?

<comment><USER8> I wrote that "there are some areas where high speed rail makes sense in the US" and I think that answers your question of "why the coasts don't sport high-speed rail". Specifically I cited the lower 48 density, not the US as a whole (including Alaska would be irrelevant), and I broke out California and the Northeast to show that they are more favorable to rail. I also mentioned that the Amtrak lines in Southern California and the Northeast make sense. Parts of the coasts do support high speed rail and as the video mentions, the coastal areas (California, Northeast, Florida, and even densely populated areas of Texas if you count the Gulf Coast) are building it albeit slower than many people would like.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Weebly (W07) Gives Users More Variety With New Theme Community - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/10/weebly-theme-community/

<comment><USER2> One of the things that I've always liked about Weebly is that I could recommend it to friends and family and know that they would practically have to end up with a nice looking site. All of the provided themes were well done in my opinion. Adding user developed themes will certainly result in some brilliant offerings, but it will also result in a lot of crap.

<comment><AUTHOR> The important thing to remember is that we approve any themes before they are displayed in the theme gallery, and we are absolutely committed to maintaining the level of quality (or a higher level!) than we currently have.

So, you don't need to worry too much about the quality dropping. Instead, over time, there will be many, many more designs available, which will make each site look better and even more unique!</comment></comment>


Kayak's Most Interesting Mobile A/B Test - <AUTHOR> http://apptimize.com/blog/2014/03/kayaks-most-interesting-ab-test/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I wonder if the "SSL/TLS" part matters, or if you could get the same result with "XRK/QNQ" or other random strings.

</comment><comment><USER3> Makes sense, the interests of your target market are different. Some apps will have users that are tech savvy that will be motivated by that message and other apps will simply not care or will be confused about reading the "SSL/TLS" reminder discouraging them to make the purchase. Anyways this is the beauty of the A/B test, to test things and see what works better in specific cases and not to make generalizations about behaviours.

<comment><USER4> It also hinges heavily on how you're tracking these A/B results. There's less certainty and value in simply saying "Group A ended up booking more" — if metrics indicated a statistically higher percent of users complete the purchase at that particular page with the single change on it.

Now that we know it worked for Kayak and not another company, we can delve into _why_ to further inform everyone's future decisions. IMO a padlock with more pure language would do better, but only another A/B test by Kayak or similar company would validate this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if Vinayak works for Kayak because his name is so similar.

-[http://andrewgelman.com/2005/08/05/dennis_the_denv/](http://andrewgelman.com/2005/08/05/dennis_the_denv/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone give a summary of what the A/B test was and why it was interesting?

<comment><USER7> The second paragraph of the article is paired with screenshots that document the test very clearly. Here's a summary:

1\. Kayak added a small message saying "SSL/TLS encrypted payment" to the bottom of the form.

2\. In Kayak's test, people tended to book less when the message was not included.

3\. According to the interview, this contradicts what other people on the internet say.

4\. Conclusion: "Just because something worked for someone else doesn't mean it will work for all apps. You have to try it out yourself."

<comment><USER8> I think the crux of the question is why this was so interesting, and I would say it's just not. It wasn't surprising or interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the point in running A/B tests if you don't report sample sizes, assumptions, statistical test used and p-values/F/whatever received? For all I know, these results are completely random and useless.

I mean, there's even excel spreadsheets for that so you can't say it's too hard: [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab- test...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing- significance-calculator-spreadsheet-in-excel/)</comment>


Google Trends: Erectile Dysfunction and Vulvodynia - <AUTHOR> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Erectile%20dysfunction,Vulvodynia <comment><AUTHOR> To be transparent. I learned about Vulvodynia fairly recently and was blown away about how few of my male friends who also knew about it.

But yeah, I would say a lack of knowledge and a common view that female discomfort/pain during sex can be seen as just "bad sex".

According to Wikipedia, as many as 15% of all females are affected by this, yet both research and treatment are very lacking.

We really need to start talking about this.

Oh the irony: [https://i.imgur.com/RSz14qH.png](https://i.imgur.com/RSz14qH.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> What is the cause of this trend?

<comment><USER3> Most likely TV advertising for medications that alleviate the condition. Pfizer ran a particularly cheesy campaign for Viagra with all the footage tinted blue (like the pill) and all the visual elements being very thin metaphors for, well, you know.</comment></comment>


China hires over 100 TSMC engineers in push for chip leadership - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-hires-over-100-TSMC-engineers-in-push-for-chip-leadership <comment><USER3> > TSMC is very concerned about the talent outflow

This is one of the key reasons you need to give the right incentives and compensations to your employees. I have seen too many tech companies failing at employee retention.

The loss of talent will have a medium-long term impact on the company. And, many of their future competitors are going to be created by your current unhappy employees.

I have seen an increasing trend in tech-companies to be more employee-friendly beyond eye-candy perks. But, there is still a long path to walk.

<comment><USER4> > This is one of the key reasons you need to give the right incentives and > compensations to your employees. I have seen too many tech companies failing > at employee retention.

(Disclaimer - I speak from a neutral standpoint, I'm not a politics person.)

It's not so black and white. There's also nationality at play. Chinese employees can be very nationalistic in times of war, especially, if they live in and around ASEAN. The moment something bad happens (to China), they will view it as China being the victim and do things others wouldn't normally do.

Case in point: Remember the Huawei ban? A lot of my ex-colleagues and friends (who are Chinese) dumped their iPhones at ridiculously low prices and exchanged it for a Huawei to show support for China (despite being outside of China). I saw this with my own eyes and I was blown away. I mean, convincing an Apple user to switch to Android is a billion dollar problem that Google is trying to solve for years now and just like a snap of a finger, nationality is reason enough for them to make the switch, irrespective of their personal consequences (switching clouds, etc).

Likewise, incentives alone isn't enough, there's not much you can do if the employees view this as a nationalistic issue.

<comment> hakka-nyu-su Dumping Apple isn't the best example, since Apple is a luxury product that is more about signaling status than about a great computing power-vs-cost value proposition.

<comment><USER5> >since Apple is a luxury product that is more about signaling status than about a great computing power-vs-cost value proposition

this isn't a universal phenomenon, funnily enough in China the brand appears to have the opposite effect[1]. It's more seen like a vanity purchase akin to I guess something like a Gucci bag.

 _" Apple iPhone users in China are generally less educated, hard-up and with few valuable assets, compared to users of other mobile phone brands such as Huawei Technologies or Xiaomi, according to a report by research agency MobData. The Shanghai-based firm also found that most iPhone users are unmarried females aged between 18 and 34, who graduated with just a high- school certificate and earn a monthly income of below 3,000 yuan (HK$3,800). They are perceived to be part of a group known as the "invisible poor" – those who do not look as poor as their financial circumstances."_

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2174310/research- highlight...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2174310/research-highlights- class-divide-between-poor-apple-iphone-and-rich-huawei)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "Big Semi" salaries are notoriously low for the amount of effort one needs to put into his education, and early career.

A physics, or engineering PhD. is a minimum to be allowed anywhere near actual work on the process, and those guys only get $50k-$60k a year in Taiwan after 5+ years.

A regular "technician," or a PhD interns can get as little as $2000 a month.

Of course, the few real know how holders are kept loyal at just any cost, and I heard rumours of 7 digit incomes for those few. This is by far the biggest "carrot" that keeps luring people into RnD work in Semi.

<comment><USER7> I take it that's 60K USD per year, but not adjusted for PPP? Adjusting for PPP that's $140,000 per year.

> Of course, the few real know how holders are kept loyal at just any cost, > and I heard rumours of 7 digit incomes for those few.

That's pretty true across any industry. These nominal-to-PPP adjusted salaries are roughly in line re: base compensation for what I would expect a good tech job outside the bay area to pay. If you got a job at the upcoming TSMC fab in the US, $140K would be about right.

Converting using exchange rate isn't the right way of comparing compensation as you're not trying to buy something in the US with your Taiwanese compensation. You're trying to determine a compensation figure in the US that gets you as much in the US as the Taiwanese salary gets you in Taiwan. This is when you use PPP.

<comment><USER8> Based on anecdotal evidence (interactions with people at MOSIS, Qualcomm engineers, etc.), $140k is quite a bit more than you'd get for 5 years experience, even for a high COL area like Southern California. It's an industry that's got the emotional appeal of gaming due to its cutting edge and impactful nature but the monopolistic economics of telecom due to the investments required, so you either work for the salaries they dictate or you go find another career. The same is largely true for electrical engineers and firmware developers in general.

On the other hand, anyone with enough experience in any of those fields can go off as a consultant and make absolute bank - mid to upper six figures relatively easily. The utility of experience grows superlinearly because the risks and capital involved in each project are so large. Someone with 20 years experience who has seen 5+ successful projects is easily worth 5 to 10x someone with only a few years.

<comment><USER9> Wow - yours and baybal's comment above explained this quite well to me. I've always wondered about this salary dynamic! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I strongly doubt anyone will ever catch up with TSMC or Samsung at this point. Intel might still have a chance, but it seems to be waning.

Semiconductor manufacturing is very unique in that it is easily the hardest thing we do right now. Even if China snipes all the talent, tools, and process designs, they still need mountains of precise parameters that are unique to the specific installation of each tool at the specific site. Tuning these parameters relative to the process technology can take years and requires the kind of long term, open collaboration & innovation sessions that the CCP seems fundamentally incompatible with.

There are simply so many reasons this type of thing is virtually impossible to steal. If you were to ever physically tour a fully-automated semiconductor factory & experience the depth of the system engineering required to tie everything together, you would realize there is nothing as complex as that system anywhere else in the discipline of engineering.

<comment><USER11> > you would realize there is nothing as complex as that system anywhere else > in the discipline of engineering.

I've heard people say the same about the ITER reactor being assembled.

<comment><USER10> As far as I am aware, ITER has no aspects of construction or operation which require manufacturing tolerances measured in nanometers.

<comment><USER12> Except for their computers :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't get where the logical disconnect is happening. Or maybe it's just an industry trend that isn't explicitly addressed.

Comments here say that silicon engineering is one of the most difficult things that you need very specific education for. Yet salaries are flat and/or not very impressive for that education level, in this industry.

That says to me that there's a surplus of people interested in such jobs, or the current job market shrank compared to what used to be required to innovate and operate all these fabs.

And if there is a surplus of labor, it's cheap for anyone, not just China, to siphon off willing talent.

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER14> I have this theory, supported by anecdote alone.

In the US there is a "scam premium". The scammier a business, the higher the multiple.

Fabbing is decidedly unscammy. So according to the theory of scam premiums, everything associated with fabbing should trade at a discount.

<comment><USER13> Well, maybe another way to put it is that it's a business where the costs and value are absolutely clear. And it's a pure physics/technology catchup business. So margins get competed very thin.

Versus what you call "scammy" industries, where people attach emotional value, social value, network effects, irrational likes/dislikes -- there's a lot of margin that can be milked out of stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ultimately I think this will be a good thing, so long as TSMC doesn't lose so much talent that it can't remain competitive. We've just seen a wave of consolidation in the fab industry. New players means more competition, and that's good for market competitiveness.

<comment><USER16> Yeah I agree, some more competition for TSMC would be great, it will drive down prices for all of us

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article isn't clear about this, but when they say "China hires" are they getting hired in Taiwan or moving to mainland China? What kind of package makes it appealing to cross the Strait?

<comment><USER18> > What kind of package makes it appealing to cross the Strait?

In software and consumer electronics, it's been a while that salaries in mainland China are a lot more competitive than in Taiwan. My friends from Asus, HTC, BenQ... are now making 3x their previous income at companies like Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus, Microsoft, Apple.

It's probably a bit harder to lure people from the industry's current best, but in my experience there's always plenty enough of mid-level managers and senior engineers who think they could do better if they were given more ownership. And here there's almost no language or cultural barrier.

<comment><USER19> In a free market economy wouldn't this lead to salaries rising in Taiwan as well?

Granted that Taiwan has less domestic consumption potential, but for export its companies have done well and Taiwan is more developed as well. It should be able to compete with salaries across the strait.

If we assume state interference by state funding this out of its pocket, then I guess Taiwan might find hard to compete on its own.

<comment><USER20> Each city has completely different job markets. Even within the same country, salaries aren't even level (as is the case between different US cities).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For context:

Chinese IC talent whitepaper from a couple years ago: [http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1116108.shtml](http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1116108.shtml)

Domestic talent 2018

Need: 720k

Has: 400k

Gap: 320k

IC graduates per year: 30k

Current gap: 260k

A couple weeks ago: integrated circuit major upgrades to first-level discipline in China. Previously IC studies was organized under different disciplines and funding was not streamlined.

There's going to be an oversupply of Chinese IC talent in 5-10 years, Taiwanese talent can see the writing on the wall. 100 TSMC engineers + 3000 chip engineers from Taiwan over last decade (10% of their industry?) is <1% of need, but provides valuable skill. There's still 90% left to poach, I wonder if US new IC fund will compete, whether there's language barriers that prevents Taiwanese engineers from moving to Arizona, and how Taiwan would feel about that.

<comment><USER22> It's likely Chinese IC need will increase even more when they go from playing catch up to actively trying to get an ace up over the rest of the world.

<comment><USER21> SMIC head recently said the roadblock was talent not hardware or sanctions, implying obstacles like ASML EUV is surmountable. I'm not expert enough to judge, but China is graduating an Taiwan's worth of semi specialists every 15 months while poaching whoever they can, stealing whatever they can to catch up. The various anecdotes / sentiment from industry experts do not seem super doom and gloom. There's get tons of frank appraisals from Chinese analysts about how _massive_ the military gap between Chinese and US is in specific domains, but so far Chinese semi success seems to be like forgone conclusion. Kind of like ballpoint pen situation, which ppl misconstrue as lol China only learned to make ball point pen recently, when really it was Premier LiKeqiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, and 2 years later Chinese industry figured out how work with tungsten carbide for advanced munitions. But here's a cute ballpoint pen article to distract laowais.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The two projects are aiming to develop 14-nanometer and 12-nanometer chip > process technologies, which are two to three generations behind TSMC but > still the most cutting-edge in China.

Doesn't seem much of a threat to TSMC.

<comment><USER24> Don't forget 12 nm is still the best Intel can fab, it might not be world class currently but it's certainly very capable. Imo it's very threatening, especially if they also keep grabbing talent like they seem to be capable of doing.

<comment><USER25> Intel has 10nm fabrication, which is equivalent to TSMC's 7nm

<comment><USER26> Intel doesn't yet have 10nm [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-says- first-10nm-desk...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-says-first-10nm- desktop-cpus-land-in-second-half-of-2021"...the) company also revealed that its first 10nm CPUs for the desktop won't come to market until the second half of 2021."

<comment><USER27> 10nm Intel CPUs exist. I have seen them with my own eyes. Reading the tea leaves from public statements and articles like that, the yields seem to be crap right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yeah I can unfortunately see that. Given such a country scale strategic imperative throwing a couple million at people is basically a rounding error. I bet China wouldn't even flinch at an extra zero on top of the 2-2.5x salary offers if that's what it took.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's not just TSMC. There've been stories of Chinese companies hiring retired Japanese engineers for years now. Due to the system in Japan, people are forced into retirement at 60. Some are allowed back on rotating yearly contracts at a hugely reduced salary. Often, these people might still have a remaining mortgage and college fees for their kids.

So what's one to do when they're offered a lucrative salary for a cushy 'consultant' position?

</comment><comment> bloody-crow It's interesting that how Intel lost its leadership and "state of the art" in chipmaking now belongs to TSMC and to a lesser extent Samsung. Given how aggressively China is trying to invest into it, there's a potential for a future situation where China directly or indirectly controls the means of producing world's most advanced chips and US companies are denied access and can only rely on US-based Intel, which is several generations behind.

If I were US government, I'd be very concerned with this development right now.

</comment><comment><USER30> ASML Engineers next then?

<comment><USER31> ARM engineers. Huawei is building a £1bn research centre approximately 2 miles from the ARM headquarters.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- cambridgeshire-5317899...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- cambridgeshire-53178998)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> All this gets solved quite easily, you add all the new hires to a sanctions list. Those people will be unable to bank and use any modern financial institution. Very easily fixed problem, now how moral it is, that's up for debate.

<comment><USER33> If they move to China, they'll have access to more modern finance than the US, all of it well beyond the reach of US sanctions.

<comment><USER19> I think he was commenting on the fact, as to how a lot of rich Chinese have properties, money saved abroad as a backup option. If you cut off that, they will feel more suffocated.

Forget mainland Chinese, even HK officials have put safety options either in terms of their spouse nationalities or properties. An interesting thread: [https://twitter.com/joshuawongcf/status/1292119822382202881?...](https://twitter.com/joshuawongcf/status/1292119822382202881?s=20)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there a nimble approach to making high-performance chips? Something along the lines of 100 times more expensive, requires 1000 time less capital and time?

</comment><comment><USER35> Decoupling is well under way.

No surprise.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is it simply a case of a Chinese private company poaching talent? Or is the chinese govt explicitly providing incentives to the aforementioned pvt company which they're using to poach employees?

If it's the former, there's not much to see here, move on. Just capitalism at work. If it's the latter, I don't see how any pvt company can compete against an actor with such deep pockets.

<comment><USER37> You do realize a "private" company of this magnitude and strategic importance is deeply intertwined with the CCP government, right?

<comment><USER38> Also true in the US. Different in structure and rhetoric, but still basically true.

If Boeing hires a German, it doesn't get framed as "US poaches from Germany", with a subheading of "a US-backed aerospace project" like in this article. They'd just say Boeing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> And so it begins.....

Every technological advantage can be "caught up" given enough time and money.

<comment><USER40> And with a relentless ethno-state dictatorship supporting those advances, it can get there even faster.

<comment><USER41> Somehow much more democratic Taiwan and South Korea (Samsung) got there faster than dictatorship China.

<comment><USER42> Didn't Taiwan and South Korea got most of their growth during their dictatorship years?

<comment><USER20> Yup, and social liberalization has followed economic success for SK and Taiwan. A lot of people thought it would happen to China as well but it's been resistant.

I find OP's assertion a bit comical because trying to tie governance model to economic success in Asia would mean that you should definitely pick military dictatorship over democracy if you want economic success. (and if you do pick democracy, pick an authoritarian flavor with state involvement like Singapore or Japan)

<comment><USER42> I don't know where this "China did not change" narrative comes from. 40 years ago, Chinese people could not choose where to work, what to wear, where to live, what to study, where to travel. During the Cultural Revolution, neighbors could rat you out for "colluding with the enemy", whatever that means. All of that has changed. Hundreds of millions of Chinese travel abroad every year, and nearly everybody returns willingly. What part of this great change looks like "China did not become more free"? It isn't even some footnote fact, it's a huge boulder staring in people's face, and people can't see it.

<comment><USER20> The mainstream view in America has been that political liberalization necessarily means "one person one vote democracy". Most can see China's economic progress, but early on there was hope that economic progress would lead to social reforms too.

Speaking of people not being able to see it...

Lee Kwan Yew gave a pretty fantastic speech to journalists where he basically covered, from first principles, why his country had different laws around freedom of press and how other channels of accountability exist in Singapore to compensate. Then the journalists proceed to ask pretty dumb questions framed as "singapore is a dictatorship because it has no free press".

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?2217-1/world-perspective- press](https://www.c-span.org/video/?2217-1/world-perspective-press)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thousand Talents Program. I hope these engineers don't plan on going back to Taiwan, it probably won't be allowed by the Communists.

</comment><comment><USER44> china will be to the US what intel was to fairchild ?

</comment><comment><USER45> This is yet another way how the CCP will steal IP.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how they stop deliberate sabotage by the new hires

</comment><comment><USER47> Hilariously they will pay a lot of money for trash talent as anyone worth keeping will already be well secured and compensated. No one in their right mind would move to China if they don't have to.

<comment><USER48> With enough party protection and money, you can live an insulated, coddled life in China, and your spouse and children will be well taken care of. The risk is the long-term (3-7+ year range) uncertainty in when you lose political protection, and whether you can expatriate your savings without punitive withholdings if/when you decide to permanently leave. Some echoes to US decamillionaires' (and up) decision matrix to renounce citizenship, but on a much more granular level where the CCP scrutiny is based upon an opaque criteria set, and can hit much smaller incomes if the political profile is high enough with a powerful enough party official.

For top talent with long financial time horizons, you're right, it will be challenging to lure the aware ones to China.

<comment><USER49> Definitely short term horizons are the focus. You can't even own property long term.

<comment><USER22> Chinese property leases are for 99 years, I don't think it's that much of an issue.

<comment><USER49> Psychologically it is, because it says you can't build generational wealth for the children the government authorized you to produce.

<comment><USER22> You can build generational wealth by passing down stocks, investments or money; anything but land. At the contrary, the fact that land cannot be bought assures, for the average engineer, that their children will likely not get priced out of their city.

<comment><USER49> Everything except land is fleeting, that is why the wealthy Chinese all buy land outside of China, they know that the things you listed could disappear in a night.

<comment><USER22> Even land is fleeting. Ever hear of property taxes? Owning land in many states is essentially a 50 year lease. The only thing that isn't fleeting are the skills and experiences you pass down to your kids.

<comment><USER49> Land has been passed down for many generations quite successfully, and property taxes are great, because there should be some societal cost associated with the ownership, i.e. being able to call on the fire department etc.

Maybe that is the mindset of the communists, and it would make sense that they want to manage how many babies exit women in case skills can't be passed down as efficiently.

<comment><USER22> You're misunderstanding. Property taxes mean that in practice even in the USA you don't own the land, you have what is essentially a renewable lease - <USER2> have to pay the equivalent of the land value every 50-70 years. If you're in China, you are in exactly the same situation - you have to pay the value of the lease every 70 years (or less). At the end of the 70 year lease, you are automatically eligible for renewal, as long as the land is being used and is not being speculated upon.

The Chinese land system is literally functionally identical to a 1.3% property tax.

The goal of the system is to reduce land speculation, which worked because in China 90% of households outright own their houses. Essentially, the land is free, you only pay the property tax.

China's 70 year urban land leases are essentially the Chinese version of property taxes. As long as you pay for the lease renewal, you are allowed to automatically renew it. In exchange, you don't pay western-style property taxes. The building itself is excluded from the 70 year lease, you own it in full and in perpetuity, so it isn't subject to the tax.

In fact, many 70 or 20 year leases have been renewed.

In conclusion, it isn't a question of control, it's simply a way to pay into the budget of the local government - if they wanted you expropriated they have eminent domain. Additionally, it limits speculation on the price of land, because when the lease expires there is very strong incentive for the owner of the lease or someone in their family to be using it as a housing. This is part of why in China 90% of people own the house in which they leave. All in all, as a homeowner, a 70 year infinitely renewable lease from the CCP is not different from having to pay for the value of your land every 70 years because of property taxes. In practice, people have passed down land for multiple generations in China, and upon lease expiry have had it automatically renewed so that they may pass it on to their children too.

Therefore, your perception is unfounded.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A city for the rich, built poorly: The construction of Hudson Yards - <AUTHOR> https://www.villagespoke.com/2019/05/03/a-city-for-the-rich-built-poorly-the-construction-of-hudson-yards/ <comment><USER2> I live across the street from the Shed (and Hudson Yards).

1) Since opening, the mall has added a ton of indoor seating. The place is so popular that sometimes people still sit on the floor. This is success not sour grapes.

2) The escalators seem purposefully designed to make you wander around the mall. If you want vertical speed, there are many elevators, which the author neglected to mention.

The place is very popular. I'm certainly happy to have world class dining, shops and arts instead of a rail yard.

The article is basically a hatchet job.

<comment><USER3> The entire article reads as someone specifically searching for something to criticize, and some of these are a real stretch. The sloppy cladding and bricks is surely not ideal, but is it really a big deal at all? It's hardly noticeable unless you are specifically looking for things to nitpick. The "damaged wheel" picture in particular is literally just paint chipping on a piece of machinery that hardly anyone will actually see. Who cares?

As for the design criticisms, it's clear this person doesn't know much about actual design principles, despite criticizing the designers for it.

1) The escalators are almost certainly purposefully designed like this. This is common in many places, and I especially have seen this design used in many malls. Along with the fact that it guides people to product display areas, it also prevents dangerous traffic jams on the landings between escalators (it takes longer to get on an escalator than it does to get off, so in high traffic situations, you can end up with a lot of bunching at the top of an escalator, which can mean dangerous situations like this [1]).

2) Stairs are a common bottleneck since it takes longer to go up/down stairs than it does to walk on a level walkway. To prevent bottlenecking, the stairs _should_ be wider than the walkways they connect to. This is the same principle you see when tollbooth plazas have more lanes than the highways they connect to.

3) The complaint about the gap in the railings again seems like an incredible nitpick. The author claims it is a 6 inch gap, but based on the photo, unless this person has _massive_ hands, it looks more like a 3-4 inch gap, and I think it's a real stretch to call that "dangerous".

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M)

<comment><USER4> If there are problems like this with the finish work, it's likely that there are problems with the stuff you can't see as well. Just like a slow, buggy piece of software is more likely to have security issues than one that runs smoothly and presents a good user experience.

<comment><USER5> People in the construction industry in the /r/nyc subreddit are saying that finish issues are common when a building first opens, and that overall quality should be judged a year out from opening, when everything has been addressed. The logic goes that there are lots of custom-fab components required in any sizable construction, some of which will inevitably be damaged during transit or install. It may take months to replace them, and you don't want to hold up the entire opening for months for some insignificant fit & finish issues because you'd be losing huge amounts of money.

So you get the place to the point where it opens, and then you do a trickle of night work over the coming months as replacement parts come in and you can finally get everything perfect.

Hell, this happened to my parents' house remodel recently. They scratched a custom-order door in a way that wasn't repairable. Rather than leaving my parents without a door for a month, they left it as-is and then came back a month later with a new door (once it was ready) and installed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So basically the skyscraper version of a McMansion [1] or even, given the talk here of money laundering, an example of Narcotecture creeping into America [2].

[1] [https://mcmansionhell.com/](https://mcmansionhell.com/)

[2] [https://stephanierogers.typepad.com/stephanie_rogers/2007/07...](https://stephanierogers.typepad.com/stephanie_rogers/2007/07/narcotecture.html)

Also:

[https://www.google.com/search?hs=MvG&channel=fs&q=Narcotectu...](https://www.google.com/search?hs=MvG&channel=fs&q=Narcotecture&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=ubuntu&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB8PzjppTiAhURRKwKHTfNDgcQsAR6BAgIEAE&biw=1366&bih=611)

<comment><USER7> Been a long time since I visited McMansionHell.com. It seems to have jumped the shark a while back. I used to think it was funny.

It's also possible that the web page design is intentionally ironic.

<comment><USER8> It's a smug and mean-spirited site, even though what it says about McMansions is generally true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an actual architect, this article is pretty hilarious. There are a couple of egregious things, such as the entry portal panel misalignment - that should have been (or will be?) fixed. Too important of an area to let that slide. The other items like small panel gaps, overextended saw cuts in pavers, etc... come on. I challenge anyone to go to any building ever and not find imperfections. Maybe surprisingly, building buildings is complex, and i'd rather goofballs complain about non-walkable rock areas then a building collapsing on itself. or its facade falling off.

also: per code, railings can be gapped by 4" \- its pretty much one of the only things installers need to make sure of so i'd be pretty surprised if that rail gap is > 4" last, one of the images has a piece of blue tape indicating a "fix this" marker. Looks like they (arch? owner? contractor?) said "nah".

<comment><USER10> I don't know if you've been to the UK, but you should look at some Victorian building projects - town halls, libraries, theatres - for comparison.

It's easy to ignore imperfections with a modern sensibility, but those older buildings were _crafted_ in a way that modern buildings don't seem to be.

The driving ethic was typically local pride, and the buildings were designed and built as public statements to showcase that.

Modern mall projects seem to be the opposite. There's no pride among either designers or builders. Everyone is there to do a job, including the building - which is primarily a cash extraction machine optimised for ROI, ineptly dabbed with superficial signifiers of status so it can appear appealing to people with money they can be parted from.

At a guess, that's what this article is really objecting to.

<comment><USER11> Is it a better use of public money to have one grand, expensive, and meticulously crafted library for tourists to gawk at, or 10 cheap and uninspiring ones that regular people can use on a daily basis? Old buildings were fancy because they were built by peacocking aristocrats with no accountability to and zero concern for the unwashed masses.

<comment><USER12> Can we have a little bit of both? I'd like to be able to study in a university-grade library (it doesn't need to be a starchitect tourist trap). I understand that people need local libraries too. I don't know why so many things have to be either or. Could we have 5 neighborhood libraries and 1 university grade library?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _You get the distinct sense that you're walking through a computer rendering rather than a real place. Aesthetic is prioritized over function everywhere you go.

In the Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards, escalators are not positioned to allow a seamless flow up and down the levels of the mall, but rather, to make the complex photogenic; often requiring you to search at each level for the next escalator down in order to exit._

We seem to have generally begun to err in this direction. We are surrounded by visuals 24/7 via TV, magazines, internet, etc in a way that wasn't the case when I was a small child and didn't exist at all when, say, my dad was a child.

I think this is a consequence of that. Our focus is much more on looks than on other aspects of the design experience or life generally.

I don't know what the solution is. I keep toying with the idea that I want to, for example, blog about clothes or home related things without jumping on the bandwagon of filling it with appealing photos. It seems like a non-starter though.

But we have women undergoing cosmetic surgery because we are so focused on these photo shopped images of women who are already statistical outliers in some way and whose look was developed by a combination of a professional makeup artist, professional wardrobe person and professional hair stylist. Then they taped up her breasts and put 30 bobby pins in the jacket so it would fall a certain way. Then a professional photographer took 300 pictures, only one or two of which are going to be used in the publication.

Let me reiterate: After all that, they are photo shopped to boot to achieve some completely unrealistic notion of beauty or perfection or whatever.

We think that's what real people are supposed to look like. The magazines that do this literally try to sell us on the idea that they are in the business of telling us how we are supposed to look, never mind that no one can actually look like that in real life, not even the professional models who were used in the shoot.

We do the same thing with housing, home decor, etc ad nauseum.

And it is going bizarre places in a manner that is negatively impacting how we conceptualize and create real spaces, clothes to wear and so on. Then we wonder why so much stuff out there is dreck.

</comment><comment><USER14> What's unclear is the degree to which these construction problems are unusual for a project of this magnitude, especially given some fairly one-off designs.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Unsafe railing gaps

what is unsafe about a space between railings at a corner that not even a hand can fit through?

</comment><comment><USER16> I am unable to understand how people in Manhattan are so divided by this development. It is just a bunch of buildings.

<comment><USER17> People are mad that $4B was spent building this tacky thing instead of on improving the city for not multimillionaires.

<comment><USER18> Did the government fund it or where's the problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The real problem with Hudson Yards is that it's walled up so it's separate entity from the rest of the city. It completely breaks congruity with the rest of the island. This was likely a purposeful design choice similar to how Lincoln center was walled off before it's redesign. The walls make you feel that what's in side the walls is protected from the rest of the city as if the city and it's people are hostile. At least that's how it makes me feel as it dominates the only view of the city I have from my apartment window 10 blocks from it.

We aren't a hostile people but are upset about how this was funded:

"As I reported back in 2017, records obtained by CityLab under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the gerrymandered map that Empire State used to qualify Hudson Yards for EB-5 financing. This particular TEA snakes up from the West Side and includes Central Park. (Think about that: a map of Manhattan that claims Central Park as an economically troubled area.) Beyond the park, the qualifying zone for Hudson Yards captures several census tracts in Harlem, where public housing projects boost the overall unemployment figure." [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards- financin...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financing- eb5-investor-visa-program-immigration/586897/)

</comment><comment><USER20> What I find is that a lot is so-called "luxury" new residential blocks in London (often high rises) have pretty much no sound insulation between flats, which for a modern construction is shocking, let alone a luxury building. I am not convinced that upmarket constructions give you any guarantee of build quality. In fact many of these luxury flats were sold off-plan in Asia to people to whom it was a financial investment and had no intention to ever live there, I can see why the developers wouldn't bother.

</comment><comment><USER21> Site is down for me but [http://archive.is/tURdz](http://archive.is/tURdz) has the article.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems to me that they need to work harder at building temporary structures.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E)

</comment><comment><USER23> I would imagine on most new construction you could find little things like that if you look hard enough. They should be noted and fixed by the contractors but such items don't constitute the whole complex being "built poorly." That seems a bit of a stretch with an alternative agenda.

</comment><comment><USER24> the things he points out are indeed pretty janky.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's my favorite part of NYC. The more the old complain about it the more affinity I have for it.

They New York is to Europe as San Francisco is to Asia.

Hudson Yards stands in stark and stunning contrast to that analogy.

</comment><comment><USER26> Every empire goes down eventually. The derision of the crown jewel (NYC) of the US empire perfectly resembles the fact that the sun is setting.

<comment><USER27> Hudson Yards has little to do with the rest of NYC, as stated in the article. Many of the residences were sold to foreign owners. It did succeed at extracting a billion dollars from foreign investors.

<comment><USER28> That sounds like a terrible thing for New Yorkers and make just a bad thing for Americans at large. Why do you categorize this as a win?

<comment><USER27> It's not a win.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Facebook Secrets to Better Operations - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/some-facebook-secrets-better-operations <comment><USER2> I like the one about distributing the team across different time zones, definitely one to be xeroxed.</comment>


Atrium Raises $65M - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/09/10/twitch-counder-raises-65-million-atrium/#1652fc7c40cf <comment><USER2> > "One of the things big law partners say when they talk about Atrium is that > we get people who wouldn't make partner," says Kan. "And I say, they're the > people who are doing the work for you anyway, but they transition out > because they hate the lifestyle."

I had some paperwork come back from a fundraise that was riddled with errors. I lost a lot of faith in my lawyers and I had to double check all their work. Not what you expect when you're paying $600/hr.

Underneath every partner is the army of associates who actually do the work. I got on the phone with the associate who had handled the paperwork. He was trying to make partner; he was clearly overworked, underslept, and stressed out.

I switched to another associate with less experience but who wasn't yet feeling the pressure of making partner. The quality of work massively improved.

If Atrium can give work-life balance to lawyers, and give me paperwork that I don't have to double check, then I'm all for it.

<comment><USER3> > I had some paperwork come back from a fundraise that was riddled with > errors. I lost a lot of faith in my lawyers and I had to double check all > their work. Not what you expect when you're paying $600/hr.

To be clear, was this with Atrium or a different law firm?

<comment><USER4> Since the rest of his comment talks about the pressure of people making partner - it sounds like it's a different law firm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm very thrilled to announce this round to the world today. I've always looked up to Marc Andreessen and A16Z, and it very exciting to be able to work with them. Fundraising is not a destination, but just a means to get there, and the team is happy to get back to work building Atrium to help fast growing startups with legal.

Also, super happy to be working with Michael Seibel again, who you all know is an amazing advocate for startups as CEO of YC.

Happy to answer any questions about what we are doing here!

<comment><USER5> why not grow organically? why give away a big chunk of the company early on?

<comment><USER6> In addition to what others have said, raising from quality investors is a positive signal to Atrium's potential customer base. It adds credibility and makes growth easier.

Smart fundraising adds value for everyone.

<comment><USER5> agree, but Justin is already credible enough, no?

<comment><USER7> This is a pretty different venture from the one that gave him his credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats @justin. I'm curious about culture, as the article mentioned that employees with different backgrounds have very different cultural expectations. Have y'all actively managed/shaped culture? Are you shoehorning non-tech employees into a tech culture, or is it more of a middleground?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It hasn't been a linear journey - I have lots to say on creating a culture that joins multiple disciplines (where neither is dominant). I suspect companies like Compass (the real estate brokerage) and One Medical face similar issues.

One of the primary gaps we need to bridge at Atrium is simply educating different disciplines on what everyone else does. EPD (eng, product, design) and operations teams need to learn what it is like being a lawyer; lawyers and paralegals need to learn what product can help with (and what it can't). We've slowly added more and more cross functional education around these things (onboarding, shadowing, etc) -- and probably have a ways to go.

I'd say it's a middle ground between tech culture and legal. Certain things that are ok culturally in tech (for example, moving fast and worrying about IT security later in the game) are not ok for a venture like Atrium. At the same time, we are trying to innovate in an industry that doesn't get a lot of innovation, so we do want to re-think things from first principles as often as we can (in fact, it is one of our company values).

Happy to explain more if people are interested.

<comment><USER9> @justin, as a patent attorney, I've wondered if Atrium has considered exploring providing patent-related services to clients. Is this something that is on the horizon?

You mentioned the need to educate people about different disciplines. Patent attorneys seem like a great fit for a company with that need since most patent attorneys have previous careers as engineers. Also, patent attorneys could greatly benefit from the exposure to the transactional/corporate side of law, which appears to be Atrium's current focus.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that if you knowingly infringe on a patent, it's triple damages. So most companies that are big enough to have any budget aren't going to be allowed to use any product that involves them or anyone else searching through the patent database or using data from the patent database, since any record that they did so could result in massive legal liability.

There are about 15 companies in this space offering various services, but because of this issue the market has remained relatively small even though a lot of these companies have been around for a decade or more and have pretty mature offerings.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the informative reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Should bots and A.I.s that are displacing humans be taxed?

Also what do you think of Bryan's essay - [https://medium.com/future- literacy/a-plan-for-humanity-2bc04...](https://medium.com/future- literacy/a-plan-for-humanity-2bc04088e3d4)

Specifically: "The future of the human race can be forecasted through a single metric: return on investment (ROI) of intelligence. Our current economic incentives (the engine that drives the world) are perfectly designed to put humans out of business and make us irrelevant as fast as possible."

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, while journalists often write hyperbolic headlines about how Atrium is replacing lawyers with AI, what we are really doing is building tools that empower and enable lawyers (by automating the crank turning work and freeing legal professionals up to focus on what they like doing, which is advising clients).

When we were selling Twitch, we didn't want an AI lawyer, Uber for lawyers, a marketplace of lawyers, or workflow software for selling your company. We wanted an M&A attorney with years of experience selling multi-billion dollar deals to tell us that everything we were doing was right. This is the philosophy we're taking to Atrium, which is the best clients will go where the best lawyers go, and the best lawyers will go where they are empowered and life is better :).

More broadly, technology has always displaced humans and whether we should ramp taxes on capital is largely dependent on the distribution of ownership of that technology. We are probably swinging back towards robber-baron levels of value creation accruing to capital, and so I predict taxes to increase in the medium term.

<comment><USER11> Fact is, the majority of jobs are "crank work". Whether sewing shirts, flipping burgers, making coffee or, in this case, reviewing NDAs or other mundane agreements.

I'd argue there isn't simply enough "work that people like doing" to give everybody full-time jobs with all this automation.

Nobody in their right might would do boring/uninteresting work if a better option was available to them -- including lawyers.

<comment><AUTHOR> In 1800, 83% of American jobs were in agriculture. Now it is 2%, not because people eat less per capita but because of increased technology. We have invented a lot of stuff for those people who would have been farmers to do: advertising, lawyering, flipping burgers, programming, etc

Many of the jobs we invented are crank-turning jobs (like most ag jobs were previously). The process of creative destruction is that the most crank- turning of them will be automated and we will invent new and innovative cranks to turn! For example: full time Twitch broadcaster. We are very good at making up new work for people.

<comment><USER12> _In 1800, 83% of American jobs were in agriculture. Now it is 2%_ [...] _We are very good at making up new work for people._

We've been over the past 200 years. Small data set though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious: how do you get around prohibition for non-lawyers to own law firms ?

[https://biglawbusiness.com/the-debate-over-non-lawyer- firm-o...](https://biglawbusiness.com/the-debate-over-non-lawyer-firm- ownership-is-officially-closed-for-now/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a good explanation of Atrium's structure: [https://abovethelaw.com/2017/09/competition-is-for-losers- th...](https://abovethelaw.com/2017/09/competition-is-for-losers-the-rise-of- atrium-part-i/)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. So the law firm is an independent entity that can theoretically sever ties with the tech company any time ? But still, clever structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congratulation @justin, we don't know each other (unfortunately), but damn, you're like a machine: justintv, twitch, and now atrium

How do you do it?

<comment> type-2 is it possible to learn this skill?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely 100% possible to learn company building skills. No one starts off as a natural; like anything there is 10,000 hours of practice involved.

When I started on my journey 14 years ago I was shy, not good at selling, a terrible programmer, had no management experience, had no connections and was not a super strategic thinker. Now I am much better at all those things (except I'm still a fairly mediocre programmer). The last 14 years were mostly about learning how to be better at those skills (not all at once). The important thing about being in a startup was that I was put into positions where I was forced to learn them by doing (which was at times an incredibly painful process -- because most learning involves failure and these failures felt particularly high stakes).

If we could start by strapping a camera to my head and calling it a startup, and then create >1b in value across half a dozen startups in the next decade -- literally anyone who is reading this right now can be successful building a business.

<comment><USER14> Well said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could you give any insight into what problems you're trying to solve with the engineering side of Atrium? When you commonly hear about legal tech, its in the context of e-discovery/case-tracking/forensic tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> When we started Atrium, we thought the main tools would be web software applied to the legal business: CRM, project management, workflow tools, document generation.

What we've learned is that there is a more interesting/difficult technical challenge to what we want to build. I think of Atrium's technology as a platform comprised of several layers: a document storage system (stores legal docs -- think PDFs and Word documents), an ML layer that parses those legal docs and turns them into structured data, an API / web platform layer that exposes that data to applications, and then a bundle of applications that sit on top of that data.

That may be a little complex, so I'll give you one example of this in action, which we currently use in production:

When a startup does a Series A financing, the first step is a VC hands the founder a term sheet. The founder then gives this term sheet to their attorney, who will take it and read all the company's previous SAFEs and convertible notes line by line. They then will create a pro forma cap table (basically, an excel model that shows who gets what at the end of the financing). This process can take a lot of human effort (i.e. the lawyer will spend hours reading the notes and creating the model), and it can often be error prone (because someone is doing it manually).

Of course, any programmer who looks at this process is going to realize it can largely be automated. We ingest those documents into our platform before the founder gets the term sheet. Our models then turn those SAFEs and convertible notes into structured data by mapping them to a schema of what we expect to be in those documents (this is verified after the fact by humans). Then another application just renders the pro forma cap table, taking a process that took hours and reducing it to a matter of minutes. This spits out an XLS, so the attorney can take it and use it to advise the founders (or send to the VC's counsel) just like they would a cap table they built themselves (i.e. we aren't prescriptive on how they advise).

My goal is that eventually we understand every kind of corporate legal document, and make that data accessible to a universe of client / lawyer applications that can streamline workflows and the delivery of service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good luck to Atrium. I've interviewed for them a while back and saw a lot of passion! I personally have a lot of qualms about the legal industry while working at a bunch of startups so I see a lot of innovations possible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dealing with lawyers as a newbie is such a freaking nightmare. Please bring this to Canada :(

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like to nominate myself to be an outside Board Observer.

JKan and Seibel are two of the best dudes in SV. Adding Marc and Anthony to the mix will make for incredibly fun board meetings.

I will take notes if that role isn't already covered.

</comment><comment><USER19> Incredible news. What's the main challenge for you atm that you don't know exactly how to approach yet? How can we help?

<comment><AUTHOR> Main challenges aren't that unique, as anyone who has build a company at scale can probably attest to: need to create alignment around a medium term plan, and we need to execute faster (mostly by better prioritization and hiring the right leaders in the right places).

It's weird how similar startups can be even when they are in wildly different spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great news and congrats, @justin. What's the story behind the moment when you had no plans launching a legal services platform and realizing that this could be a thing? Did you brainstorm ideas with the team or someone told you like, "hey, man, there is this problem in the legal industry" or was it something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a bit of a long story, but maybe can be helpful to someone out there considering what to do with his or her life, so will write it out here:

About 2 years ago I realized that as an investor (partner at YC) I had stopped learning. I felt like what I was doing was helpful to some startups, but personally I didn't feel growth any more; being an investor felt to me like being retired. That's not to say that YC isn't hugely impactful (it is), but rather that the cadence didn't really fit my personality any longer: I wanted a shorter feedback cycle around trying something and seeing results. When you are an investor the feedback cycle between trying something (investing in a startup) and seeing results (M&A, IPO, success) can be many years.

In a chance encounter I met the author of Essentialism, which basically is a book about saying no to things. It made me really try to distill down what I liked doing on a day-to-day basis, and I came up with these 3 things: 1) learning about how tech can affect and interact with new industries, 2) trying things and seeing numbers go up as a result, 3) mentoring people over extended periods of time. I decided I wanted to do something that maximized my ability to do those three things on a daily basis.

At first I thought about raising a VC fund, but then realized that wouldn't be much different from YC. Then I thought about incubating 4 or 5 startups at once and finding someone else to be CEO of each. I realized while that would be interesting and minimize personal stress, it wouldn't maximize my growth opportunity to see even later stages of company development. Ultimately I decided the most personal growth maximizing thing to do (that would enable me to focus on the three above things) would be to just start a single company and swing for the fences (try to make it as big as possible).

At the same time, I had been fascinated by the legal innovator's paradox: the fact that there is an intrinsic disincentive to innovate when you don't capture the gains of increased productivity, which is true in an hourly billing model. I also thought lots of the things we had done at YC around building software could be applied in the legal market, and it seemed like a huge one, which incidentally I had experienced my entire career as a founder. After months of research, it seemed like a meaty enough opportunity that really solved a problem of my own, and I decided this would be my one "swing for the fences" company.

Lots of people have asked before so will repeat here: I'm 100% on Atrium now full time as CEO and not doing any other things.

<comment><USER21> >At the same time, I had been fascinated by the legal innovator's paradox: the fact that there is an intrinsic disincentive to innovate when you don't capture the gains of increased productivity, which is true in an hourly billing model. @justin - I'd love to hear your thoughts here regarding how you are tackling this. From Atrium.co your pricing appears to be a mix of subscription and fixed prices. Presumably the trade-offs for any one lawyer to switch to fix cost is insufficiently lare, but if you create a company with scale than at the aggregate level the value capture across enough clients is large enough. Is that right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just wanted to say that I've been enjoying the events you all have been hosting in SF, please do more!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We have many more events planned with great partners in the upcoming few months. Would love any feedback on types of events, speakers, or topics you'd be interested in. Our goal is to create a community that is helpful for founders at any stage.

<comment><USER22> Maybe it's just where we're at right now, but anything about growth would be interesting. I particularly enjoyed the Q&A at AWS. Hiring, sales, and building a unified team culture are what we're currently struggling with. There are no easy answers but hearing many different perspectives gives me the clues I need to (usually) make the right decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you; have sent along to our events team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.atrium.co/](https://www.atrium.co/)

</comment><comment><USER23> @justin, do you feel the automation you're developing now will be applicable to other fields of law and do you anticipate branching out into other fields of law over time? Entertainment Law seems like a natural fit based on where tech is going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but I think that is in the medium term. In the short term we are laser focused on building things that help fast growth startup companies with corporate transactional work. But I think the general techniques for what we are doing can apply to almost every practice area of law.

<comment><USER24> I would also look into PE corporate transaction work. This is a growing market (PE deal volume is up), I'm assuming most offering memorandum, etc. are very boilerplate, and I'm also assuming the clients would appreciate the differentiated up-front pricing model. Likely to be repeat customers as they could do a few deals per year, and the community is tight-knit so WOM would work. Finally, you already probably know this but I am assuming there is some overlap between the VC investment community and the PE investment community so you probably already have accounts today that could be natural entry points / "customer zero" for the adjacency. Just my 2c. Love thinking about this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Justin, how big do you anticipate Atrium to become? Given how much money flows into legal services, my guess is over $10 billion as a conservative measure. Is there a ballpark figure that A16z or you think of as conservative, ambitious etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this is largely speculative, but I think Atrium can be a multi-tens of billions of dollars in value company, mostly based on the industry / market- need and the potential adjacent expansions. But obviously that depends a lot on actually executing well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> @justin - congrats! How do the fees compare vs a traditional law firm? I love the price-predictability part, but can you shed a bit more light?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything is priced up front. We do this by estimating the amount of work it will take, and then we absorb any variance. Please email firstname.lastname@example.com if you have specific questions! Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Proud of you buddy. Now time to get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER28> I misread this as "Autism Raises $65M."

For a moment, I was proud of my humanity.</comment>


Ask HN: another newb question - <AUTHOR>

I started watching an intro on node with Ryan Dahl, he sarcastically says "windows is important, like php" followed up by laughter in the audience.<p>i'm starting to learn php for what i want developed. even though node is newer, is it a good/safe alternative for beginners? <comment><USER2> My bias: I use PHP all day at work, but I'm also a front end engineer so I do a ton of JS. I do not do any node though.

PHP is a great all around tool, and node is good at one specific thing (basically request routing: node is quick if you are able to route the requests out to asynchronous servers). For most things PHP is going to help you more than node, so I would start there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Short answer: Learn them both. Start with node.js.</comment>


Eventjoy (YC W14) Is Joining Ticketmaster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eventjoy.com/post/97224665476/were-joining-ticketmaster <comment><USER2> Ticketmaster is easily regarded as the most evil thing to happen to concerts. That sucks.

<comment><USER3> Really they just play Bad Cop for the venues. Most of the "fees" that TM collects go right back to the people putting on the concert. It's really a great business model - clubs get to look like their tickets are cheaper than they actually are, and Ticketmaster gets a nice cut of pure profit.

<comment><USER4> Venues are paid a split out of the ticket price with an optional flat fee, aside from maybe the venues TM owns.

<comment><USER3> From this article, it sounds like the (independent) venue in question was getting 20-30% of the fee as well.

[http://www.ticketnews.com/news/Ticketmaster-fee-structure- ex...](http://www.ticketnews.com/news/Ticketmaster-fee-structure-exposed-in- Philadelphia-bankruptcy-case081117396)

<comment><USER5> Money quote: "Rather than ordering Tickets through the TM System, customers purchased Tickets to the Attractions in person at the Facility Box Office to avoid the prohibitive Convenience Charge. The effect on the Debtor of the increase in the Convenience Charge has resulted in a reduction in the Royalties that it receives due to a decrease in the number of Tickets sold through the TM System."

Apparently they were selling tickets at not quite break even, and depending on their cut of ticket master fees to turn a profit.

Aligns with my experience trying to avoid fees by buying in person. Usually there ends up being a "box office window" fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, that's sad. Ticketmaster and "joy" do not go in the same sentence.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lots of criticism in the comments so far. Maybe Ticketmaster is acquiring them in order to resurrect their bad reputation and improve their services. Or maybe that's just what they wrote on the checks to Eventjoy...

</comment><comment><USER8> Really sad. They must have been very desperate.

</comment><comment><USER9> My guess is Ticketmaster was scared and bought them out before they became a big enough target to do big damage and creep into their main territory.

Eventjoy is less than a year old, probably received funding after YC and most startups raise for 18 months of runway which means unless something went terribly wrong they should still have a few months of runway before they raised their Series A. It's a perfect time to buy a company that's growing because after each round you have to pay that much more.

If Ticketmaster thought they were going to die, they would have let them.

P.S. I've also learned that there are usually two types of founder scenarios. 1.) the founders that are really passionate about a subject and have a lot of domain knowledge and they've made it their life goal to solve the problem they're going after. 2.) the founders found a niche or area that they believe they can solve but they aren't considering it their life's work. Yes there are tons of variations and exceptions but that's what I've seen the few years I've been around startups.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, I guess Eventjoy will now be EventPloy, because the only company I think worse than Ticketbastard is Comcast...or maybe Congress.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ideas on what kind of price tag, if any?

<comment><USER12> ... and was there a "venue fee" and "convenience fee"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> RIP

</comment><comment><USER14> That's pretty disgusting. So much for market disruption, eh?

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe they received an offer they couldn't refuse.

</comment><comment><USER16> Acquihire?</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended community/forum software? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for any open source forum software, but something that looks modern, and clean. Not like Invision, or PhpBB. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> vBulletin has run a lot of big forums and finding someone who has experience skinning it should be easy.

also, <http://vanillaforums.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a really good solution: <http://osqa.net>

As a user I prefer an stackoverflow clone instead of a typical forum

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, any forum can be skinned to look nice.

I've always been a fan of vBulletin, but I have no idea what's available now.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been researching this area lately too, I wanted something like MyBB but with better internals.</comment>