Why Are Startups Flocking To SF? There's No More Room In Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/23/title-why-are-startups-flocking-to-sf-theres-no-more-room-in-silicon-valleys-inn/

<comment><USER2> Every startup I know of that moved to SF did it because they thought it would be easier to recruit hackers there.

<comment><USER3> And hackers move there for better hiring opportunities.

<comment><USER4> Quality of life has a lot more to do with it.

There are gigs on the Penninsula. Might as well be living in LA though. You drive to everything. Traffic is nuts. Biking puts your life and sanity at constant risk. Few areas have any charm to them, and none of those are remotely affordable. San Jose / Santa Clara proper are, apologies, pits.

San Francisco is walkable, has street life, functioning transit (well, for low values of "functioning"), is _not_ strictly a tech ghetto in the way the Penninsula / South Bay are, and beats the heat in the summer (temps ~15-27C rather than 27 - 41C). You can walk to bars, clubs, museums, talks, art shows, or a gym after work, or reach it quickly on transit. When Muni breaks down, you can reasonably walk home.

Yes, housing cost per square foot is higher than elsewhere. That's what density means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it just a flat out better quality of life choice to live & work in a city? Traffic and a commute etc, and the lack of local food alternatives... that just sounds terrible!

(I like dense urban locals)

<comment><USER6> Totally agree. One of the things I love about Seattle is that I can live _and_ work in the city. No 45-minute commute required.

<comment><USER7> Seattle is definitely quite nice from that point of view. The whole Cap Hill / Lake Union area is dense with activity and places where to have it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there should be more major cities like SF.

The reason is that this will cause infrastructure to be built. While I am (still) living in Europe and have very good infrastructure as someone interested into technology I fear that such developments could cause infrastructure to mainly be built at certain cities making everyone else living in some kind of desert, which could cause places to be underdeveloped, which leads to inequality, which then leads to unused potential, which is generally a problem that people see way too seldom these days. If you have people that are poor and stuff this means you loose potential, which means you waste the chance of someone bringing everyone forward, which maybe causes the next Einstein (just to make a point) to become a criminal instead of solving problems and creating amazing technologies.

One could see it as evolution. If the first humans had have bad luck, because of being at a bad spot, where intelligence wouldn't have helped at all, there was a drought period or just a predator or a virus, maybe even a meteorite they could have just gone extinct and could have exterminated a race that now can be considered dominant.

You could also see this with genes, like the one that causes western people to be able to drink milk. If the first individuals had back luck we probably wouldn't have that option now.

So every time you prevent someone from having the right infrastructure, eduction, society, life and if it's just the money you potentially prevent someone from solving the biggest problems.

Yes, one can argue that someone smart could make his life everywhere, but people need to learn this first. No matter how smart you are, if you just don't know you can do it that way, because you have no examples and no parents that tell you to make something out of yourself and instead society just reinforces you to do something different or bad you won't become a scientist, even if you'd have the potential for a Nobel Prize, unless something causes you to find it out, have self-esteem, etc.

So, it's okay to build nice technology cities and invest money in certain areas and places, but it would not only be bad, but also dumb if this makes you forget about the rest.

</comment><comment><USER9> Housing sucks in the valley too. Too expensive and car driven to appeal to the young hackers.

Singles enjoy the city life and those with families get more value in the East Bay with SF just being a BART ride away.

<comment><USER10> Yes, exactly. My career started in Silicon Valley (Sun's Menlo Park campus -- now Facebook), but when we went to start a startup within Sun (Fishworks), we demanded that Sun lease space in the City for it. This had nothing to do with vacancy rates, and everything to do with the fact that all of us lived in the City and -- despite our love for CalTrain -- we wanted to be done with the Peninsula commute. (That we wanted space in the City was a huge emotional sticking point with Sun's executive management; Scott was exasperated that we refused to work in his million square feet of vacant office space in Santa Clara.)

A couple of kids later, I live in the East Bay and with casual carpool to the City, the commute's a breeze; at this point, I would only consider a job on the Peninsula (or, God forbid, the South Bay) if there were no alternative in the City. And to be honest, if I were looking for space now, I might give Oakland a serious look: with the expansion of Silicon Valley into San Francisco, Oakland is no longer the remote outpost it was -- and rents are cheap cheap cheap...

<comment><USER7> Recommendations for good areas in Oakland and also East Bay in general, with nice access to the city through BART?

<comment><USER4> Rockridge. Downtown / Lake Merritt.

Alameda or Jack London Square, and you can hop on a ferry.

BART gives you 5-15 minute headways from 5am until midnight/1 am, and is very, very reliable except when it isn't. Ferry service is less frequent but generally a nicer ride (more room, less riff-raff, much less scary crap in the upholstery, literally).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's also the lack of soul-crushing suburban sprawl of the south bay, and the fact that you can legitimately live without a car.

Still no late-night coffee (with wifi!) but that has a higher chance of springing up in the city than in Santa Clara.

<comment><USER12> There's some 24-hour food joints in SF, but no all-night cafes?

<comment><USER11> Sparky's is open 24hrs but doesn't have wifi (I believe intentionally).

I'm a little spoiled having lived in NYC directly across the street from a 24/7 Dunkin' Donuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What nonsense. East Menlo Park near Facebook has vacancy, and it's just a ten minute drive away from Palo Alto. Or drive across the bridge an extra 10 minutes from there and there is infinite room in Fremont and Newark.

A minor inconvenience could lead to a lot less burn rate spent on rent.

<comment><USER14> Palo Alto != Silicon Valley. There's a TON of space out here. Millions of unleased square footage north of 101. Bah.

Also, Palo Alto sucks.

<comment><USER15> Silicon Valley is: Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised Palantir wouldn't consolidate somewhere. I know Peter has discussed how communication breaks down even just being on different floors.

I also find the article unconvincing that companies are moving to San Francisco because they can't find real estate elsewhere. There are a lot of desirable ares in the peninsula other than downtown palo alto. And the fact is, San francisco is a very good place to locate right now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two words: Redwood Shores.

<comment><USER18> Please don't tell anyone about Redwood Shores until I get my office space!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My company (not a startup but a software company) is moving from Sunnyvale near Moffett field to Palo Alto on Page Mill road. We are doing this because google is eating up all the real-estate in mountain view and sunnyvale.

We used to be located near google right on Crittenden near LinkedIn but had to move because google came into the market and theres no way we could match their bids. Now we have to move again because again google is coming into the market.

But still, we're looking at probably leasing the old facebook office space (speculation as my company hasnt formally disclosed anything other than that we're moving to palo alto)

</comment><comment><USER20> Are SF and Silicon Valley really that different? Isn't Palo Alto like a 30 minute drive from SF? I know of people who bike the distance as a daily commute. Sure, there are advantages and disadvantages to living in and outside the big city (SF), but "why SF and not Palo Alto" seems to me like a rather unimpressive and, perhaps, not terribly important question. Something like "Why Silicon Valley?" may spur a far more interesting discussion :)

<comment><USER21> By that logic, New Jersey and Manhattan aren't that different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> SV is not full at all... even Palo Alto, out of downtown, has countless vacant office parks. They're not accessible to mass transit though, which makes them not accessible to San Francisco folks which I think is a big part of it and which makes Downtown Palo Alto more attractive.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think Davis is a good place to run a startup. The only downside is that it's too hot in summer.

</comment><comment><USER24> What about Facebook's former office in Palo Alto (near Page Mill)? That should still be open.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm married with a kid, live in Mountain View and work in Downtown Palo Alto. Aside from rents I love it. The only reason I'd want to work anywhere else would be to save money. SF has zero appeal.

</comment><comment><USER26> Every time I hear about Palantir I expect Gandalf to way against looking into it.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the scene like in Santa Cruz?

<comment><USER28> It's pretty quiet. There were several large tech companies that set up here in the 90s but most left after the bubble imploded. There is, however, a surprisingly vibrant indie gaming scene, and a few start-ups here and there.

I've long found this situation surprising, because there are quite a lot of engineers here, many of whom would likely take a pay-cut not to have to commute over 17 every day.

<comment><USER22> Seagate's still in Scott's Valley right?

<comment><USER28> They still have an office there, but the headquarter moved to Cupertino.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Think outside the valley.

<comment><USER30> East bay? Santa Cruz? Marin?

<comment><USER12> Santa Cruz would be amazing, but SR 17 would make a daunting commute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Y'all talk about all these different cities as if the distance is that big a deal. Help me understand. In Texas, everything is 10-20 miles from everything else.

In other words, y'all phrase it as if these cities are very distinct and unique. All of Palo Alto, MV, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara can fit in the northern half of San Antonio.

SF vs. Silicon Valley is one thing.. but Palo Alto vs. Mountain view sounds like complaining about one side of the street vs. another.

<comment><USER32> it's not the distance, it's the time it takes to get from A to B (during rush hour) and the distinct cultures.

The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant culture that locals can differentiate between cities. In another world, these town might just have been different districts in a super city (there is literally no separation between cities; buildings and suburbia go right up to the town borders), but each of the cities used to be separated by miles of orchards and farmlands before the tech boom, so each town had a chance to develop a slightly unique culture (if you think of the finches Darwin discovered in the galapogos islands, it's bout the same).

Because the entire area is suburbia, this leads to interesting transit situations. Ignoring public transit for a minute, estimating time to go from A to B becomes less of a function of distance, and more a function of how close each endpoint is to an arterial route. Sometimes,

let me throw some numbers at you, to help explain the situation.

I work in sunnyvale near highway 101 and maude. I am in the process of moving from Campbell (union and campbell ave, if you want to google map it) to cupertino (homestead and de anza). This reduces my commute from about 14 miles down to about 6 miles.

Geographically, I'm going from driving through 5 separate towns (campbell->san jo->sc->cupertino->sunnyvale), to literally just driving across sunnyvale (ok, and a 1/4 mile into cupertino as my car drives not as the crow flies).

From the campbell apartment to work with no traffic takes about 20 minutes if you tend to drive at the speed of traffic instead of the posted limit. If I were to commute during rush hour, this would be closer to a half hour or 40 minutes (i've only done it like twice because it is so horrid). From my new apartment to work will take about 10 to 20 minutes without traffic (slower roads, more stop lights, &c.). So despite cutting my commute distance by a factor of roughly 3, I only reduced my time spent commuting by about 0-50%.

For reference, going from my campbell apartment to my company's sf hq (soma) will take about 80 minutes when commuting during rush hour on public transit (door to door via the caltrain from tamien to sf).

And we haven't even talked about the differences in weather, yet, which due to microclimates can be 10 to 20 degrees different in the space of a few miles.

<comment><USER31> Interesting. In Texas, location matters in transit (arteries and such) in a similar manner, esp. in San Antonio. That's why I choose to live a mile from work, so my commute is 10 minutes on a really bad day.

But ya, Texan neighborhoods might have their own style and some unique places, but not a totally distinct culture.

BTW, I'm in San Francisco for the first time this week, and it's an amazing city.

<comment><USER32> I'm glad you're enjoying it! have you done any cool tourist-y things?

<comment><USER31> Walked around Japantown and went on a sailing cruise. Might check out the Haight later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 Largest Corporate Fines in U.S. History - <AUTHOR> https://learn.censible.co/risky-business-top-ten-corporate-crackdowns/ <comment><USER2> Rather surprised that VW was only #3 !</comment>


Show HN: Verifact - A decentralised platform for verifying facts - <AUTHOR> https://verifact.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

This is a project I'm working on to get more truth on the internet. If deemed factual by the network, you gain more tokens from those who voted opposite to you. It uses the logarithmic market scoring rule (LMSR), and after one side holds a majority for 7 days, that side is paid out (no real money is involved yet, points are all free).

What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I applaud your effort, but, while there may actually be a single version of truth in the universe, there is _effectively_ no good way to prove it.

I don't think a show of hands is helpful. I regularly encounter Reddit threads with 95% of the comments agreeing on something that elsewhere in the thread is clearly shown to be dis- or mis- information.

Cutting out political bias also fails to solve problems, because there are plenty of gullible, but "unbiased", fools out there, whose fact-checking isn't valuable. In fact, fools on the internet unwittingly do plenty of legwork for clever propagandists.

In my opinion, what would be useful is to allow the user to choose other users whom he or she trusts, and get a truth score based on _their_ opinions. Create _that_ and I'll be the first to join.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback.

Just to be clear, its more than a show of hands because you choose how many tokens you want to stake. So in the Reddit example, if those 5% were willing to stake more, they'd have majority.

I chose to not go with a choose your trust model because I think the truthfulness information is a 'what' question, and checking 'who' only goes so far. But once those trustworthy users earn more tokens, they should have a larger influence on the system. Perhaps that would interest you?

<comment><USER2> Apologies if I sold your work short. I was sincere in my appreciation for your efforts. The world badly needs more people to tackle issues like these.

Okay, that said. I still think the approach will prove not to satisfy your goals...

       > I think the truthfulness information is a
       > 'what' question, and checking 'who' only goes so far.

As a thought experiment, how often would a vote-based system, if our prevailing moral code today were that of the Antebellum South or Nazi Germany, clear up slander and lies against minorities? My guess is pretty much _never_ (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism)).

Under a system where the user instead defers to authorities _of their own choice_ , one could _easily_ choose more forward-thinking judges, and consistently get answers akin to those we have today.

<comment><AUTHOR> > My guess is pretty much never

I'm not able to know how often it could prevent such slander in those times, but we can look at the incentives. In those times, the authorities (church, newspapers) had central control over the main narrative, which is still mostly true today, but is beginning to fall. Back then, it seems you could slander minorities and there was pretty much no way for minorities to defend against it. In contrast, the upper classes had a means (duelling as an example) as an incentive against slander, and that imposes a cost on it. On social media there is no cost to publish lies. Verifact seeks to impose a cost on lies because you need to have something at stake. So I think if it existed at the time, Verifact would make it more costly to slander minorities, and it would be more profitable to disprove all kinds of pseudoscientific beliefs such as racial superiority and Nazi eugenics. Of course though, Verifact requires access to communication channels and tokens and that wouldn't be viable in those times.

> authorities of their own choice, one could easily choose more forward- > thinking judges

Yeah could be interesting. I'd just want to make sure people don't create echo-chambers or follow others based on political opinions rather than facts. Perhaps letting people 'invest' in the judgment decisions of others would help, and you'd get notified when they stake.

<comment><USER2> I want to avoid discussing "echo-chambers" as my views on that topic make me sound like a knee-jerk contrarian. So I'll wish you success here, and thank you for your efforts :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you looked at ideamarkets.org and whatever happenned with trustory? I dont know why people want are building blockchain based fact verifiers.something in the zeitgiest. Best of luck with this project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks. Yes I've seen them. Trustory was pretty cool. They started with fact-based statements I think, but then transitioned to any kind of debate. Ended up closing down though: [https://medium.com/trustory-app/why-trustory- is-shutting-dow...](https://medium.com/trustory-app/why-trustory-is-shutting- down-6d50175628eb)</comment></comment>


Li-Fi Gets Ready to Compete with Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/lifi-gets-ready-to-compete-with-wifi#.VG6wkfFznwI.hackernews <comment><USER3> I know that even cheap LEDs have rise and fall times of easily under 5 ns with the right circuitry[0]. This means that a transmitter of 100 MHz can be easily built with COTS parts, so the speeds they mention make sense to me.

However, when I built a cheap optical communications system with LEDs and $0.10 diodes, the tough part was always getting the photodiode capacitance low enough to receive high frequencies while still sensitive enough to detect the signal accurately[1]. This is why lasers are very popular for communications: a concentrated beam can deliver a very high signal-to-noise ratio. With LEDs, it's tougher because the beam is dispersed and you don't want to blind people with high power output, so the signal is a lot harder to receive. It looks like they went with nice avalanche diodes instead of cheap ones, and I'm sure that have a well-designed integrated circuit helps a lot too. I'm very excited to see how this plays out.

[0]: [http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.1954.pdf](http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.1954.pdf)

[1]: [http://www.thorlabs.us/tutorials.cfm?tabID=31760](http://www.thorlabs.us/tutorials.cfm?tabID=31760)

<comment><USER4> > This is why lasers are very popular for communications: a concentrated beam > can deliver a very high signal-to-noise ratio. With LEDs, it's tougher > because the beam is dispersed and you don't want to blind people with high > power output

I suppose I am missing something obvious... but laser beams are shaped into a beam by way of a lens at the end of a tube, right? The laser diodes I've seen emit light in all directions. You could just as well stick an LED at the bottom of that tube.

<comment><USER5> Classic lasers directly emit coherent beam without the need for additional optics. Output aperture of most lasers might seem to emit light into all directions, but most of the output power is concentrated into the direction of the resonant cavity. Due to manufacturing tolerances low power laser diodes tend to produce somewhat irregular output beam (both diverging and uneven) which is then compensated for using some external optics that also serve to set required width of the final output beam.

It is impractical to convert light from some arbitrary "point-like" source (ie. LED) into beam that has low divergence by lenses or similar optics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the obvious question is... what happens when line-of-sight is lost between the endpoints? With near-visual wavelengths, someone walking past could interrupt the connection. I could see this being useful for _very_ limited applications in settings where radio is completely unusable, but it's a stretch.

> In 25 years, every lightbulb in your house will have the processing power of > your cellphone today

And in 50 years, every hammer and wrench in your toolbox will be able to beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!

<comment><USER7> I have another question, could be seriously stupid: Do you need to have a strong, glowing light on the top of your computer for this to work? Could it use the monitor backlight? Imagine if the Apple logo in a MacBook is actually a Li-Fi "antenna".

<comment><USER8> The article says they are using 5 milliwatt LEDs for this, so it doesn't seem like you need that much brightness at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whatever happened to UWB? Ten years ago, there was so much talk about UWB, and how it would provide so much bandwidth, etc. And now it's nowhere to be found. One _huge_ advantage of radio is that it can work through walls; "Li-Fi" won't.

<comment><USER10> UWB is used in the 803.15 WPAN (wireless personal area network) standards.

<comment><USER11> 802.15 WPAN - It's kinda stalled for some time. And UWB really did get good press with some very promising features / performance back in the day.

If I remember they ended up using it in some system for firefighters that can 'see' through walls, and it might've been used for such a system in the army as well.

But overall UWB didn't deliver on it's promise.

<comment><USER12> UWB is making steady progress in active tracking systems and passive tracking systems. I work for a company that does active tracking: [http://pluslocation.com/](http://pluslocation.com/).

PLUS is an offshoot of Time Domain, [http://www.timedomain.com/](http://www.timedomain.com/). Time Domain does radar; I don't think they do any active tracking (could be wrong though). IIRC Time Domain is the company that did the see-through-walls system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting how things go back and forth in science...

A Brazilian priest studied about using light to transmit data and achieved that around 1 century ago, even before Marconi

Unfortunately his government didn't supported him, because he "was a mad priest" that wanted to send messages to other worlds, he said:

"Give me a vibratory movement as large as the distance that separates us from these other worlds that roll our heads, or below our feet, and I will make the sound of my voice reach there."

[http://www.landelldemoura.com.br/lm04.htm](http://www.landelldemoura.com.br/lm04.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> Look here if you want to build your own optical communication system: [http://ronja.twibright.com/](http://ronja.twibright.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Time for the Timex Datalink Watch to make a comeback?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Optical_sensor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Optical_sensor)

 _Upon closer inspection however a small lens at the position of 12 o ' clock on the watch face indicated the mode of the wireless data transmission through visible light.[4][16] Data was transmitted from the CRT of the computer through a series of pulsating horizontal bars,[17][18] that were then focused by the tiny lens and inputted into the watch EEPROM memory through an optoelectronic transducer operating in the visible light spectrum and employing optical scanning technology.[19][20] The CRT synchronization was possible only for systems operating on Windows 95 and Windows 98. The watch was compatible with Schedule+ and for the Datalink 70 model the time needed to download seventy phone numbers was about twenty seconds.[14][17]_

</comment><comment><USER16> When my brother and I were younger we would sneak up to the door of each other's room and flip the light switch. It was mildly annoying. The kids of the future are going to go ballistic when a younger sibling flicks off their internet.

<comment><USER17> I find that this frustrates me now. When I have to restart my router for some arbitrary reason, I get impatient.

<comment><USER18> Here's my router: [http://shorewall.net/XenMyWay.html](http://shorewall.net/XenMyWay.html) I once went 450 days without restarting it :)

<comment><USER19> And less than half that time was spent configuring it! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article mentions industrial applications being the first to use this. What are some example industrial applications where you need a high-bandwidth, low- latency, link that has to be wireless, that WiFi is not good enough?

<comment><USER21> A lot of industrial processes generate immense interference - <USER2> and arc welding spring to mind. I guess those would be a logical starting point.

<comment><USER22> True, but arc welding will also create enormous interference in the visible spectrum.

<comment><USER23> That's easily shielded against by use of an aperture, where as RF interference is not nearly as easily shielded against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Contrary to the article's title, LiFi doesn't _compete_ with the majority of WiFi use cases due to its limited propagation characteristics.

The article confirms as much: ""We don't want to replace Wi-Fi," he says. "That's not our goal." But Deicke says Li-Fi could complement existing communications technologies including WiFi"

</comment><comment><USER25> Going to repost this talk they held at UoE about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRG9iXZbuAc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRG9iXZbuAc) (2014-04-23)

</comment><comment><USER26> Would this be less susceptible to local surveillance than wifi, e.g. within a few hundred feet? How would it deal with interference from overlapping beams?

<comment><USER3> Line-of-sight communications are definitely less susceptible to surveillance than WiFi that has omnidirectional broadcast. Even if the signal bleeds due to refraction, at such high frequencies, this loss of power is extremely detrimental to making sense of the waveforms.

Multipath interference can be managed with existing communications techniques, as light isn't the only EM wave that bounces off of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd like Li-Fi even for desktops. It's one less wire in that rat's nest behind the computer.

</comment><comment><USER28> Won't this technology be very distracting with the lights constantly flickering/pulsating?

<comment><USER29> At the signaling rates they're talking about, the flicker frequency will be orders of magnitude too fast to be perceptible.

<comment><USER30> Think about the packet rate. Little flickers whenever it has something to send.

<comment><USER29> Hmm, true, but that could be remedied by transmitting the signal with something like Manchester encoding, so that the average intensity is constant whether or not data is being sent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> see also: Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access (RONJA) -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA)

</comment><comment><USER32> Let the headaches begin.</comment>


What's behind the quiet rise of homelessness in the countryside? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/10/rural-idyll-homelessness-hits-the-countryside <comment><USER2> Question:

Is some group is accumulating so much money that the poorest have insufficient money remaining for their basic needs?

Observations:

\- Aggregate total wealth of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1 trillion (in 2014) [1]

\- In the UK there were 27.2 million households in 2017, resulting in an average household size of 2.4. [2]

\- This computes to an average wealth of £408,000 per household in the UK.

\- According to the Office for National Statistics, as of November 2017, the average UK house price reached £226,071 [3]

Conclusion:

With perfect wealth equality, the basic needs for everyone living in the UK can theoretically be met. Therefore, it is possible that wealth accumulation may be a significant contributor to the homeless problem.

However, the gap between the cost of living in the UK and the average wealth in the nation is fairly thin. With a realistic Gini coefficient, a large portion of the population will have their basic cost of living exceed what their wealth can support. Adjusting the wealth distribution will reduce the size of the homeless problem, but not solve it.

The UK should seek to identify why its cost of living exceeds what this portion of the population can support and take appropriate action to resolve these issues.

Sources:

[1] [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/compendium/wealthingreatbritainwave4/2012to2014/chapter2totalwealthwealthingreatbritain2012to2014)

[2] [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2017)

[3] [https://metro.co.uk/2018/02/02/what-is-the-average-house- pri...](https://metro.co.uk/2018/02/02/what-is-the-average-house-price-in- cities-across-the-uk-7281172/)

edit: There was a large flaw in my original logic -- the math was done per person instead of per household.

<comment><USER3> If everybody in the UK moved to where houses had average cost, everybody would be able to afford a place to live. If they could get a job, which they can't, which is (a large part of) why they don't do that.

That's the problem with averages.

The high cost of housing is caused by demand outpacing supply for a very long time. It's expensive to live in London because more people want to live in London than the housing stock will accommodate, and no amount of redistribution will change that, except to the extent such a policy makes it drastically less attractive to live in London.

The _exact_ causes of the supply shortfall is subject to some discussion, but that the shortfall is the proximate cause of the high cost isn't.

<comment><USER4> The article is about countryside homelessness, not big-city homelessness. The problem with that average is that it _overestimates_ the cost of countryside living, which means that people who are homeless in the countryside are seriously screwed, not "living in the wrong place".

The current trend is that more and more people can't afford below-average priced housing. This is a serious problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not just the UK, this happens in the US also.

[http://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/homeless-make- the-...](http://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/homeless-make-the-forest- outside-flagstaff-a-temporary- home/article_f5e186ef-5636-505f-bc64-fef4210a50fb.html)

<comment><USER6> GDPR blocked for people in the EU. Google cache here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KnwGRKo...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KnwGRKooeL4J:tucson.com/news/state- and-regional/homeless-make-the-forest-outside-flagstaff-a-temporary- home/article_f5e186ef-5636-505f-bc64-fef4210a50fb.html+&cd=1&hl=no&ct=clnk&gl=no)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have friends that have lived in the national forest for a significant amount of time. Know people who live in cars and RVs in cities. None of them are mentally ill or drug addicts. I know techies and rednecks who are held back by the cost of real estate.

The world needs a modern homesteading act. Give people small parcels of land with limited restrictions.

Real estate speculation/investing/absenteeism has jacked up prices in a lot of areas. This excessive ownership by some is subsidized and allows rent seeking and perpetual wealth growth. Land is not capital. Land is limited. Bare land should be free.

<comment><USER8> > The world needs a modern homesteading act. Give people small parcels of land > with limited restrictions

Or (more controversially) increased squatter's rights.

<comment><USER9> Here in the UK I would settle for the reintroduction of squatter's rights. Tony Blair abolished them.

(To be completely accurate, you are still entitled to claim land after 12 years unchallenged adverse possession. What changed under Blair is you now also need the permission of the landowner. Which you will never get.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting phenomenon. From the U.S. all I ever hear about the U.K. is urban: Londoners living precariously in houseboats, blighted post-industrial cities in the North. I've seen tent encampments in the woods in the U.S., but it never occurred to me that it would be a thing in the U.K. Until just now, if you'd asked me where the poor lived in the U.K., I would have said "council estates."

<comment><USER11> The UK has the equivalent of the US projects called Blocks (after the shape of the buildings). Featured in UK tv like The Misfits, Escape the Block, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the US, we dont associate homelessness with wealth but rather mental illness.

You can get a place to live for 400/mo dollars in the south, and easily 500$/mo with roommates in 'civilization' where there are high paying jobs.

None of this is particularly difficult to afford, even for minimum wage workers(who dont really exist).

I find this an odd topic. Living isnt hard to do in first world countries where food is plentiful, jobs pay decent, and getting space to live in is cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be very interested in seeing listings for $400/month. If you would be so kind as to give me links to such, I would be grateful and it might even help get a few homeless people off the street.

<comment><USER13> There are houses in my town going for $50k. For that you get 1600sqft, 2 bed, 2 bath, .36 acre lot in the city with city water and sewer. At the worst you would need to drive an hour to get a big city job, but there's plenty within a 30 min drive. Cleveland is about an hour away, Akron is 30 mins.

The locals that are homeless here are not in that situation because of some fixable problem with a city policy. It's unanimously mental illness or drug problems, often both.

This is also the county seat, and where the welfare offices are located. 80% of the properties in the city are rentals, and there are multiple charity organizations that provide discount housing.

Homelessness is not a problem that will be eliminated until we no longer have people that cannot take care of themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have no down payment and lousy credit, etc, you can't get a mortgage for $50k. I'm off the street. I applied for a zero down mortgage. It would still require thousands in closing costs, money I don't have.

The bank never emailed me. I was unable to log in to my application for some reason to check it's status. I emailed a mortgage officer at the bank. They asked for my phone number. They never called me.

I have since decided I don't want a house in the burbs. I want to stay downtown. That's an entirely different process.

But I have earned income and decent credit and 6 years of college etc and I am finding it challenging to arrange to purchase real estate. I have had these conversations on HN before with people and it always seems to be an assertion that comes from privilege and cluelessness about what reality is like if your income is low.

I have done internet searches for dirt cheap housing across multiple states. The truly dirt cheap stuff frequently says stuff like "No foundation. Will not qualify for financing. Cash buyer only."

If I had a few $10k cash laying around, I would handily qualify for a conventional mortgage because that would cover down payment and closing costs. So, no, I can't buy the houses listed at a mere $10k or $20k that theoretically would have super low monthly payments because that just isn't how that works.

People who have challenges to taking care of themselves can sometimes manage it if they can arrange decent housing that is super cheap. I'm medically handicapped and I manage to work part time. I am currently in a super cheap rental and off the street.

I paid my student loan off last July and was in housing in early September. Student loans are a pox on this nation, impoverishing a great many people. You don't need to be mentally ill or addicted for that to be a huge and problematic burden.

I'm not asking you to solve homelessness. I'm just looking to crowdsource a little information. It would be nice if folks refrained from raining on my parade and trying to tell me to not bother to try to do anything about the problem.

Thanks.

<comment><USER13> Then you probably can't afford real estate right now, and need to either move somewhere with cheap rentals or find something cheap in your area.

I lived in a crappy apartment for 4 years while working my first real job to save up enough money for a down payment on a house.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am currently in an extremely cheap rental. That's how I got myself off the street.

I bought a house at age 27 with zero down and no money to cover closing costs. I know something about wheeling and dealing in real estate.

The fact that I was recently homeless is not evidence that I don't know anything about real estate. I had student loans and a lengthy health crisis.

To be as clear as possible, I wasn't describing the issues I have run into in order to indicate that I personally can't pull this off. Just describing what can be involved and trying to indicate that it can be a dead end for a lot of people with a low income. I don't expect it to be a dead end for me, though it has proven to be a speed bump.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Test-Driven Development: I Finally Get It - <AUTHOR> http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/08/test-driven-development-i-finally-get.html

<comment><USER2> "Often if you get a decent suite of unit tests you are only a few requirements changes or change requests away from half of them breaking. Unit tests are software. That may sound trite but it's worth remembering. The larger and more complex your unit tests, the more code you've written to implement a particular feature (the tests count in that metric) and that's more code you have to change."

This is a huge objection I share, on projects I've worked on that have lots of unit tests, a _lot_ of time ends up being spent on debugging the unit tests. That time is valuable and could be spent on making the application better.

The author doesn't really address this concern either, even though it was clearly a problem for him in the past.</comment>


Diversity in the Workplace – is it a problem? - <AUTHOR> https://reports.vessy.com/diversity-in-the-workplace/ <comment><AUTHOR> This report was more interesting than I expected. (...and longer )</comment>


Python and Flask Are Powerful - <AUTHOR> http://jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/01/18/python-and-flask-are-ridiculously-powerful/ <comment><USER3> Python and Flask are great, but the secret ingredient here seems to be Stripe. His goal was payment processing, and Stripe made everything else nearly trivial.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. This is freakin' magic:

        try:
            charge = stripe.Charge.create(
                    amount=int(product.price * 100),
                    currency='usd',
                    card=stripe_token,
                    description=email)
        except stripe.CardError, e:
            return """..err.."""
        print charge

<comment><USER5> I could not agree more. Stripe = insanely awesome payment processor. With all the heavy lifting they do,

I'm now unsure what something like Gumroad's value proposition is, considering I'm basically at feature parity with them (aside from PDF stamping, which I don't do anyway).

<comment><USER6> There are more people who don't know how to code than do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Using UUIDs as the endpoint for an Internet resource is a good idea since they're (by nature) unique. When using them for proof of payment, you have to be a little more careful - ideally you want a very sparce matrix with a flat distribution of "consumed" UUIDs within the 128-bit space. Choosing the wrong UUID version/variant will clump your "consumed" UUIDs together, so for the author's purposes, he'd want to use version 4 which has 122 bits of randomized data as shown in his code:

purchase = Purchase(uuid=str(uuid.uuid4()),

Other than making sure you're careful with the customer's credit card data (not so much of an issue using Stripe), this was probably the portion of the code where a mistake could have decreased the security of the system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier)

<comment><USER8> I'm not familiar with SQLAlchemy but my overall SQL sense is tingling here:

      purchase.downloads_left -= 1

Is this the preferred method to update a field? I'm asking because i'm wondering if sqlalchemy will translate this to an sql query similar to:

      UPDATE purchase SET downloads_left = downloads_left - 1;

Because otherwise this might be dangerous.

<comment><USER9> not in that case. if the code wanted to do this decrement on the SQL side it would have to be:

        purchase.downloads_left = Purchase.downloads_left - <USER2>

which would emit on the next flush. in this code specifically, using that approach it would have to call session.flush() and then re-query for that value since it wants to check what the database came up with. So in that sense it would be better just to emit an explicit UPDATE..RETURNING, which is easy to do with SQLA; this is an example of how "dropping down" a level of abstraction is a critical feature with SQL abstraction tools.

however, this is only one way to do it, which is the so-called pessimistic approach. An optimistic approach would just ensure that the transaction isolation is in repeatable read, so that the flush (occurs within the commit() here) would just fail in the very unlikely case a single user is submitting twice. SQLAlchemy also offers a "version counter" feature that can accomplish the same task if RR isn't an option. Both of these are configuration-level features that would allow the code to remain unchanged.

The "session.add(purchase)" is also unnecessary in that code sample, and the code also has a bug in that it does not commit the transaction when downloads_left reaches zero, so the number can never actually reach zero in the database.

<comment><USER5> Both of these have been fixed. Thanks for pointing out the off by one error and redundant session.add()

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also, _django_ and Flask are extremely powerful. Django gives you an automatic admin interface and ORM, and Flask makes it easy to create a simple API to your data.

      from django.conf import settings as django_settings
      from myapp import settings
      myapp_settings = return dict([(s, getattr(settings, s)) for s in dir(settings) if s==s.upper()])
      django_settings.configure(**myapp_settings)
      from myapp.models import User

      app = Flask(__name__)
      api = restful.Api(app)

      class UserResource(restful.Resource):
          def get(self):
              return {"result": User.objects.all()}, 200
      api.add_resource(UserResource, '/')

      if __name__ == '__main__':
          app.run(debug=myapp_settings['DEBUG'])

There's just a little trick to get your API to convert django models to Json:

        from flask.json import JSONEncoder as FlaskJSONEncoder
        from django.db.models import Model
        from django.db.models.base import ModelBase
        from django.db.models.query import QuerySet, ValuesQuerySet
        from django.db.models.fields.related import ManyToManyField
        from datetime import datetime

        def model_to_dict(instance):
            """Same as django.forms.models.model_to_dict, but returns
            everything, including non-editable fields"""
            opts, data = instance._meta, {}
            for f in opts.concrete_fields + opts.many_to_many:
                if isinstance(f, ManyToManyField):
                    data[f.name] = []
                    if instance.pk is not None:
                        data[f.name] = list(f.value_from_object(instance).values_list('pk', flat=True))
                else: data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance)
            return data

        class ApiJSONEncoder(FlaskJSONEncoder):
            def default(self, obj):
                if isinstance(obj, (Model, ModelBase)):
                    return model_to_dict(obj)
                if isinstance(obj, (QuerySet, ValuesQuerySet)):
                    return [model_to_dict(m) for m in obj]
                elif isinstance(obj, datetime):
                    return obj.isoformat("T")
                return FlaskJSONEncoder.default(self, obj)

<comment><AUTHOR> ha, this is crazy useful, thank you

<comment><USER10> You're welcome ^_^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a great illustration of the power that APIs like Stripe's give a developer. That said, there are a few things that would make this integration more bulletproof. In particular, interactions with external services like Stripe and email should be handled in a background thread. That way you don't have to worry about transient API or SMTP server failures giving your customers a bad experience. The best bet for Python is Celery, iirc.

<shameless plug>

I wrote a book about combining Stripe and Rails.

[https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern- payments](https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)

</plug>

<comment><USER12> Celery has too many moving parts though. For the simple use case of just off- loading Stripe processing to a queue the RQ module can be better.

[http://python-rq.org](http://python-rq.org)

<comment><USER13> Agreed. I got my first job running correctly with Rq in fifteen minutes, and was able to go on to other things. Recommended!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a very similar thing when I wanted to buy an SSL certificate, all the providers were needlessly complex so I built my own wrapper around their reseller API using stripe:

<shameless plug - trying to pay my way through uni ;)>

[https://www.volcanicpixels.com/ssl/buy](https://www.volcanicpixels.com/ssl/buy)

<comment><USER15> That's basically on of the main reasons why I built getssl.me. I was fed up with the over-complicated process of buying a SSL certificate.

Your variation seems even simpler and more straightforward - congrats on launching and all the best for your project!

</comment></comment><comment> workhere-io Considering how easy templating is with Flask, I don't understand who someone would write HTML directly in the controller the way the author did. I agree that Flask is great, though.

<comment><USER10> It was just an example.

<comment> workhere-io An example that beginners would be likely to be inspired by. It wouldn't have been much harder to write a single line of

render_template('something.html')

and then write the HTML for the template in a separate code section.

<comment><USER16> An example should demonstrate what it is meant do demonstrate, nothing more.

Anything else is a distraction.

Using render_template would have left us wondering whether there was anything relevant to the task in render_template, or at best interrupting the reader's flow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not a professional programmer by any means but I use Python daily and Flask is my goto framework. I wrote an automated commit system leveraging the API in Palo Alto Networks platform in a day. Auth, sessions, pagination, templates, CSRF, safe data, scheduling, etc. All easy to use, no bloat.

I just enjoy Python in general as I can get things done so quickly. Especially with a nice environment setup using phone and pip. On top of that PyCharm just works.

I've tried a number of other languages over the years, but could never get to the level of productivity as I've always gotten with Python. And now I'm going to have to buy the OPs book...

</comment><comment><USER18> And now somebody wants to get that book or die trying [https://twitter.com/jeffknupp/status/424925349525200896](https://twitter.com/jeffknupp/status/424925349525200896)

</comment><comment><USER19> I would agree with with the author in gnenral. Django is very powerful, but it can be painful, simply for the mental capacity required to get up and running with it. Sure after you spend a few (at least) hours wrapping your head around everything it becomes pretty easy to use...but still a high barrier to entry.

This is part of the reason I'm becoming more and more of a fan of web.py and peewee ([https://github.com/coleifer/peewee](https://github.com/coleifer/peewee)). They are simple but still powerful enough for the majority of use cases.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just like Ruby and Sinatra. Although Rails is more popular, I found Sinatra's barebones approach a little bit more approachable. Combined with an ORM solution it is very possible to create a lightweight web app. Then again I do not know how it performs under stress.

</comment><comment><USER21> The call to Stripe.charge.create is blocking, in the sense that the server can't start processing a new request while it's busy waiting for a response from stripe in an existing request, right?

I think this kind of use case is exactly what has people so excited about node, since, in a single thread, it can go on processing new requests while it's waiting to hear back from, e.g., stripe (or the database, or the disk, or any other kind of IO).

May your book go on to have so many concurrent sales that this becomes an issue!

<comment> workhere-io _The call to Stripe.charge.create is blocking, in the sense that the server can 't start processing a new request while it's busy waiting for a response from stripe_

Would this even be an issue if you're using e.g. Apache (multiple threads) with mod_wsgi?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good thing he doesn't need to get a PCI audit. I wish we could get away with only a CC number and expiry date and email.

<comment><USER5> I never actually store (or see) any CC information. All of that is handled on Stripe's end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about paypal as a payment option however? Isn't this still a pretty major PITA to support?

<comment><USER14> Not if the target market is devs, we hate paypal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That looks really simple and all, but isn't the concept with Stripe a litte unsecure? I really prefer to to use a third-party solution when I use my credit card online. Using this method I can't know for sure that the developer isn't saving my credit card info.

Wouldn't it be better to use Paypal or some well known third party for something as important as payment?

</comment><comment><USER25> Does really work, 20 s or less. The download seems to be slow though.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm very happy with Stripe. I would almost call their API beautiful. It's simple and well-designed, and has been very easy to integrate using stripe.js and stripe-scala.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cool - pretty elegant solution to a common problem. Interestingly, the solution was "enabled" by recently available technology packages, like stripe (and flask).

</comment><comment><USER28> slightly offtopic but I find charging to have the 'right' to have a file in two different file formats to be slightly insulting. $5 for a binary flag?

<comment><USER29> I think you're paying the $5 for getting the Python 2 & 3 versions of the book more so than the different file formats. After all, you could convert formats fairly easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Point where we can give feedback about your book. A github repo is perfect for that.

I found some issues and didn't reported because it is too dificult.

</comment><comment><USER31> is there a python version of SaaS app using Stripe? [https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-stripe-membership- saas](https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-stripe-membership-saas)

</comment><comment><USER32> Apparently not powerful enough to convince the programmer that mixing Python and HTML is a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't know is this a forum for Python promotion?

<comment><USER34> I'm hoping the HN crew looks into this -- 95% of the comments are selling something, and the post itself is useless garbage. There's no reason that this should be the top post.

<comment><USER33> Exactly. Besides they are downvoting all critical comments, so nobody can disagree with mainstream's publicity.</comment></comment></comment>


Webvan - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan <comment><USER2> Webvan's main problem was they expanded before they had their model figured out. They invested tens of millions in warehouses they didn't need with their current volume as well.

If they had spent time on their model they'd have figured out that it only made sense to target the upper middle class neighborhoods at the time profitably. With that realization they'd never have built all the warehouses and with a lower burn they'd have survived only to eventually own the market.

The founder was a really smart guy who had already created a very successful startup. But he was under an imperative from his investors to ramp up fast.

A lot of the hard learned wisdom from that time would create a different outcome possibly today. I know that I'd have done a lot differently with my own startup back then if only I knew what is common wisdom today ;<).

<comment><USER3> such an important insight, that the investors were the ones pressuring him to structure it in this way.

<comment><USER2> Back in that time everyone placed an over importance on being first and then locking up the market quickly. Sometimes like maybe Uber that's important.

Reid Hoffman is still a proponent of this tactic with what he calls blitzscaling. Course nowadays he's a VC ;<).

But as Google demonstrated you can enter after the market is mature with both a better product as well as a better business model and dominate.

<comment><USER4> > But as Google demonstrated you can enter after the market is mature [] and > dominate.

I don't think Google (founded 20 years ago) is a good example of entering a mature market.

I think a better example is Facebook (founded 15 years ago) which won against MySpace.

I thought Salesforce (founded 20 years ago) should be a good example, but their market cap is still well below SAP's.

<comment><USER5> Search was "mature" and "solved" prior to google. Altavista, webcrawler, infoseek, etc. Obviously it wasn't actually solved ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Webvan brings up old memories and I really thought of it as the future. My neighbors tried it a few times and I can remember it showing up. When I asked my parents to do it they thought I was crazy. Pretty sure cost had something to do with it. I'd still fill up a shopping cart just because.

Webvan failed but if the gig economy was around it could've succeeded for a time. These companies need non-employees to make it viable I believe.

Will Uber eats and the like become the next Webvan? Grocery store delivery? Paying someone to shop for you then picking it up?

IMHO, robots will not be picking people up and delivering our groceries in the near future. Your business can't depend on the weather. Gig economies are not good for the gig seekers long term.

<comment><USER7> Almost every one I know in the UK has their groceries delivered. According to the official stats it's only 7% of grocery spend though.

<comment><USER8> This is definitely the kind of thing heavily influenced by location. I'm from the north and I don't know anyone who gets them delivered.

<comment><USER9> I think it's more of an income thing than a location thing.

Most supermarkets will have a minimum spend and then there is a delivery charge on top. Both are pretty cheap but if money is tight then that is one easy convenience to go without.

<comment><USER10> I know people with not great income who use delivery due to working parents and can't afford a car, so ordering delivery from a large supermarket is cheaper and has better range than the walkable corner store alternative, and frees up a ton of time.

<comment><USER9> Ironically I find I spend less when shopping online too because I'm less likely to impulse buy stuff. Though I do often break the "don't go shopping when you're hungry" rule, which doesn't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In 1999 and 2000, I worked for a startup in the Bay Area. Twice a week our kitchen was stocked with fresh food delivered by WebVan. We had a ton of their crates sitting around that we used to store computer parts and other facilities needs, since they never seemed to collect them.

Right around mid-2000, the deliveries stopped as the market started to tank and we had to "tighten our belt", and the free food disappeared and the vending machines went from free to 10 cents each (and there was a small riot). I suspect we weren't the only startup that did that. It makes me wonder how much of their revenue was from other startups. Kind of reminds me of 2019...

They actually brought good food. I considered signing up for myself at my house, but it was just too expensive for a single guy. Might have been good for a family though.

<comment><USER12> Can you please explain the bit about 2019? Do you feel a downturn is happening/coming?

<comment><USER13> The implication here is that a lot of value associated with 2019-era VC-funded startups is derived from the revenue they receive by selling to _other VC- funded startups_.

<comment><USER12> I see, thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Boy, this brings back memories. I was working at Andersen Consulting (AC, then Accenture) at the time our CEO, George Shaheen, left to join Webvan. The general sentiment at AC (at least amongst the grunts in my circle) was that we were glad to see George Shaheen leave, but were all left wondering if we should be jumping ship too, to join the dot-com boom.

The partners at AC were trying to hang on to talent for dear life because of the dot-com boom. When Webvan went bust many of the the partners/associate partners were quick to point that out, maybe as some kind of misguided retention pep-talk or something.

As a funny aside, there were some who used to call George Shaheen "George Unseen:"

[http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/remember- george-4](http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/remember-george-4)

[http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/ceo-of-the- future-4](http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/ceo-of-the-future-4)

[http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/george-unseens- reward-4](http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/george-unseens-reward-4)

[http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/webminivan-a-look- back-4](http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/webminivan-a-look-back-4)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is now a very successful company with exactly the same business model in the UK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado)

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't say it's exactly the same, it definitely targets the higher end of the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I worked for Redknife, later renamed OpenLatitude, that was WebVan's primary B2B exchange hub. We translated their orders/invoices/catelogs back and forth to their vendors. They were our second best customer behind MicroWarehouse.

When they went down, they took us with them. MicroWarehouse exercised a contract clause to purchase our software and hired me on a three month contract to teach them how to use it. I took it because my option was to be laid off.

Brings back memories, and not all good ones. What a wild ride.

</comment><comment><USER18> The part this thread seems to be missing is that like we didn't have much internet back then.

Sure you didn't have it in your pocket, but also most people didn't have it in their house either. And if you did you had to dial with a phone line (which is a thing attached to a wall) and make it so you couldn't get any calls while you were doing it.

And it would take like 41 seconds for a grainy picture of a banana to roll in from top to bottom. And you'd get disconnected and lose your cart. And so on.

It was different back then.

<comment><USER19> Disconnected, okay. Lose your cart... why? Cookies and sessions existed back then.

<comment><USER20> cookies are sent with every request, you were lucky to have >28k modem back then. Json didn't really exist, xml was king.

There were plenty of reasons. Apache needed a mod to store a session in a cookie instead of a url and HTTPS was really hard to do. Java had its way, PHP had another, ASP had another... everything was different and there were no patterns.

<comment><USER21> 56k modems were pretty routine by 1999 and ISDN (It still does nothing) was a thing. But by 2000, DSL rollouts were starting to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In Seattle we had HomeGrocer and it was _awesome_. Absolutely seemed like the future of groceries, they had great selection and especially great produce. The delivery people drove company vans (with a distinctive peach logo on the side) and wore a uniform (like UPS) and AFAIK were all full-time employees. Sadly they were acquired by Webvan and it all fell apart.

<comment><USER23> i felt that way about the massachusetts-based lighthouse bank[0] founded in 2000 and unaffiliated with the current santa cruz-based lighthouse bank. high- interest checking, no-fee, internet-only bank. it was amazing until it got merged into brookline bank and essentially dissolved.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=821638)

<comment><USER24> >high-interest checking, no-fee, internet-only bank.

SoFi just launched this product, and they are even giving $50 referral bonuses on both ends to sign up (referer and referee). I'm really wondering if it's a sustainable business model.

<comment><USER23> it's quite sustainable i'd bet. banks traditionally make money by lending most of its deposits to other people and earning interest on that lending.

as long as the deposits are large enough, that interest should cover the fixed costs (employees, infrastructure) and the variable costs (paying out interest, referral bonuses) of providing the accounts. internet-only banks also lower their fixed costs by foregoing expensive retail square footage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of another business in the delivery space: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com)

Interesting how some of the business models that were not profitable in the early 2000's are resurrected with the on-demand workforce - cutting out the most expensive part.

<comment><USER26> Cloud computing makes scaling the IT side of things much easier & cheaper than it used to be too. The old model was buy a giant Sun box, buy a bunch of Oracle software, ... take a look at ORCL in the 2000ish time frame

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of all the companies to bite in the the dot-com crash, Webvan really did seem like it was truly viable.

<comment><USER28> I think they were suffering from too much money that needed to be spent too quickly. If they had moved slower they may have become like amazon.

<comment><USER29> What does that even mean? How do you kill yourself with a bucket of money?

<comment><USER30> Hire too many employees, build out too much capacity without a market that can provide the necessary demand, operating costs get too high, and you're done. Of course if the terms of investments and the discipline of the founders are combined able to regulate the growth rate, these things become less of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cuban-frisbee Webvan is an interesting case because it could have succeeded if it was not for some strategic blunders (i.e. the idea was good and to some extend the execution in the beginning).

The main thing they did wrong was buying and the fumbling the Home Grocer acquisition [1]. Web van was investing heavily in their own warehousing system so they scrapped Home Grocers which at that time was actually better. The acquisition was a large financial cost (1,2 billion) but also a large opportunity cost.

[1][https://www.academia.edu/11307477/HomeGrocer.com_Anatomy_of_...](https://www.academia.edu/11307477/HomeGrocer.com_Anatomy_of_a_failure)

</comment><comment><USER31> The CEO of WebVan negotiated a contract to pay him $375,000 per year for life - including his wife's life, if she survives him.

I'm not sure what to say except: well-played.

<comment><USER32> Not really. The company went bankrupt and it's an unsecured debt. It would have been a good play if it was collateralized or the company actually succeeded.

<comment><USER33> Yes, that seems the opposite of the kind of deal you'd want to make with a hotly burning startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.webvan.com/](http://www.webvan.com/)

As resurrected by Amazon in 2009. How the mighty have fallen.

</comment><comment><USER35> The cup holders...

[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Webvan- gh...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Webvan-ghost-at- ball-yard-42-000-cup-holders-3314941.php)

</comment><comment><USER36> There are no bad ideas, just early ones.

(I believe this was first said by my partner Marc)

</comment><comment><USER37> They raised a pile of money from Benchmark, Sequoia, and Softbank. Does anyone know what happened with these investments? Did they get out post-IPO while it was still high flying?

<comment><USER38> Bill Gurley answers on behalf of Benchmark here,saying they lost about $3.5 million but he would do it again (this answer is from 2004, seems he's addressed it in later interviews as well): [https://www.quora.com/How-much- money-did-Benchmark-capital-l...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did- Benchmark-capital-lose-on-Webvan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember how excited people were about webvan. And look, 20 years later we have it! You can order from Whole Foods and get it in 2 hours thanks to Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER39> Textbook example of: GOOD_IDEA < GOOD_EXECUTION

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I) ;-(</comment>


Ask HN: How to fix my nonexistent focus? - <AUTHOR>

For as long as I can remember, I've had awful focus. But I've never done about it.<p>It's really effecting me in school as I put everything off as long as possible then have to really force myself to work. I find it really difficult. I envy my friends who can focus for hours on the most boring work imaginable. How do I get like this? Any tips would be great. <comment><USER2> As someone who was diagnosed with ADD at age 10 and eventually discovered my own ways of beating it, I'll share a few ideas. But note that what works for me, or someone else, may not work for you and you'll have to slough through things to find your own fix.

Band-aids:

      - Caffeine (tea is best since it's like an XR version of coffee)

      - Testing for any vitamin/mineral deficiencies that may be causing tiredness that's displaying as an inability to focus, like low iron or b-vitamins (just examples, go see your doctor)

More longer-term solutions:

      - Read "Getting Things Done" and re-read it until you internalize it

      - Use an app like OmniFocus to organize to-dos and give yourself a sense of achievement/little adrenaline rush when you complete something (especially small things, like make bed, read 25 pages of book, one homework assignment, etc)

      - Change your study habits: turn off your phone and put it in the drawer, disconnect from the Internet if possible, relocate to a different location where there are fewer distractions (coffee shop, library, etc), give yourself small blocks of time to study (after all, work expands to fit the time allocated)

Longest-term solution:

      - Gain enough life experience, self-awareness, and fear of failing out of school that you eventually figure out what works for you.

Hope that helps!

</comment><comment><USER3> __* Eat well. Make sure you 're getting enough calories, good fats, protein, iron, B vitamins, vitamin C, etc

 __* Sleep well. Different people need different amounts. Mine is 7 hours.

 __* Exercise daily. Even if walking for 10 minutes.

 __* Take good care of your teeth and floss daily. For whatever reason, this seems to be a pivot thing for me. If I 'm taking care of my teeth everything falls into place, kind of like the famous Adm. McRaven speech on making your bed every morning.

Most importantly:

 __* Reduce your sensory inputs to increase your mindfulness. Stop checking the web every 20 minutes. Stop checking your phone every 10 minutes. Stop listening to podcasts on your commute. Let your mind sit and calm itself. If you 're like most of the HN demographic, you're probably trying to fill it with information constantly. Stop that. Learn to say "no" to the needless.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you tried meditation? One way of looking at it is as a 2,000+ year old tradition of attention training. I highly recommend Googling "pragmatic Buddhism", "Mindfulness in Plain English", and "Mindsight" by Dan Siegel. But the most important thing is to spend a little time practicing every day.

It's not a fast or easy solution, but I've found meditation actually works.

</comment><comment><USER5> Possibly you have ADHD. I suggest you read Hollowell and Ratey's "Driven to Distraction". If it sounds eerily familiar, consult either a psychiatrist or neurologist.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2008, the day after I came within an hour of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, but chose to admit myself to a psychiatric hospital instead.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make sure you're sleeping well. Go to sleep by a certain time, and wake up naturally every day, for a week. It took me years to learn that, for me, consistent sleep results in consistent productivity. An exhausted brain is an undisciplined brain.

</comment><comment><USER7> YMMV, but meditation, hands down. It will eradicate anxiety and stress, all of which affect your energy levels and concentration.</comment>