Marc Benioff joins Valley notables backing Gaza's first coding academy - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/09/salesforces-marc-benioff-joins-valley-notables-backing-gazas-first-ever-coding-academy/ <comment><USER2> Having volunteered with Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG) and been on the ground all I can say is that this is a big positive in the region and for the people living in Gaza.

You would not believe how welcoming and hard working Palestinians are. There is a generalization because of the conflict but at the end of the day these are people like you and me trying to achieve their goals in a positive way.

There is a political situation around it and it cannot be ignored from the moment you arrive but I strongly believe that Mercy Corps and GSG and initiatives like the coding academy help a population that lives in harsh conditions without access of what we give for granted in the US.

Here are some of the things that blew me away: \- About 50% of the founders in the GSG were women. \- There are a lot of very young and talented engineers. \- Walking through Gaza as a western looking guy I feared people would not be super happy, it was quite the opposite, endless invitations to have coffee, eat watermelon, say hello and welcome. \- Hardware startups solving issues that could be applied to underdeveloped countries, one of my favorites was a USB charger that you power by slipping into your shoe and walking.

There is no reason to not celebrate and join the people backing these initiatives, they have a direct impact on good people and even if you have concerns about the politics in the region, I think these programs help alleviate the tension and let people focus on living their lives and not be frustrated with the laundry list of day to day hurdles they encounter.

<comment><USER3> Good on you for donating your time like that. How did you get involved with GSG? How long will you be there for? Cheers.

<comment><USER2> Came across a post on social media and applied to help out as a mentor. There was an interview processes and then some paperwork for entry permits.

I spent one week in Gaza and another week between Ramallah and parts of Israel.

After the time there I still have contact with the friends I made there and try to contribute with any initiative they put together.

It also pushed me to look for local initiatives here in the US .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like Israeli companies are also trying to help out -- [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians- mellan...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-mellanox- idUSKCN0Z21ZR)

<comment><USER5> I have second hand experience from friends working there. Lots of good cooperation is happening between Israelis and Palestinians. If only our governments didn't suck :)

The Palestinian workers in Mellanox are well liked and respected from what I saw and the company enjoys having them.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for this — always good to hear from people on the ground, so to speak, away from all the prepolarised babble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From VentureBeat Article... [http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/09/marc-benioff- eric-ries-dav...](http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/09/marc-benioff-eric-ries- dave-mcclure-back-effort-to-fund-coding-academy-in-gaza/)

Here's a list of the supporters matching donations: Skoll Foundation, Salesforce's Marc Benioff, Techstars' Brad Feld, Y Combinator's Paul Graham, author Eric Ries, 500 Startups' Dave McClure, Aramex cofounder Fadi Ghandour, Crescent Enterprises CEO Badr Jafar, Leap Ventures' Hala Fadel, Tech.eu cofounder Jon Bradford, Kapor Capital partner Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor, National Beverage Company — Coca-Cola Palestine Chairman and CEO Zahi Khouri, Jabbar chairman Samih Toukan, Google principal scientist Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Uber's Amsterdam head of engineering Mustafa Sezgin, 500 Startups' Khailee Ng, Techstars COO Jenny Lawton, and Techstars cofounder David Cohen.

</comment><comment><USER8> Having read many of the posts in this thread, I feel compelled to contribute.

The complexity of the politics of the region are beyond my grasp. I am not a political scientist, nor have I spent much time in the region. However, as an entrepreneur who has volunteered with Gaza Sky Geeks and who has traveled to Gaza to mentor at their co-working space, I feel compelled to say that (1) the organization is unquestionably using its resources effectively to foster startups there and (2) the entrepreneurs who are part of the accelerator and the wider community who attends their events are some of the most intelligent, hardest working, and good-hearted people I have ever encountered. That sounds hyperbolic, but it's true.

Most importantly, the entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs are young and have had no part in the decades of political and military conflicts that have created the regrettable tension in the region. They have been implicated in the large mess solely by virtue of where they happened to have been born. Regardless on which side of the issue you fall, it is undeniable that the problems have been created by members of the older generations. It seems reasonable to place the bet that, if a more peaceful future is possible, it will happen by creating productive pathways for the rising generation.

In the most challenging political context on the planet, Gaza Sky Geeks does an excellent job of rendering its work apolitical. I have seen this first hand. The organization is there to help Gazans create for themselves new opportunities and more hopeful futures. And, again, the Gazans who participate in their programs are of the best character and are only seeking to put their energy to create value for consumers, regardless of race or creed, via their startups.

I am not nor have I ever been an employee of Gaza Sky Geeks and have nothing to gain by writing any of this. I have no dog in this fight. But for whatever the words of an internet commenter are worth, I would urge skeptics to consider giving the organization the benefit of the doubt. I cannot say enough positive things about this organization's mission and their effective execution of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a mentor at the very first Startup Weekend Gaza, I was very impressed both at the energy that young Gazans put into their ideas and their optimism that they can build a better, more peaceful world with technology. I mentored one young female entrepreneur who built an Uber-like platform for Gaza using SMS. We spent all of our time discussing the possibilities for market expansion to places where she wouldn't compete directly with Uber, and none of it discussing politics. She was very driven to take her idea to the next level and to travel abroad despite the concerns of her more conservative family.

While many of the entrepreneurs I spoke to were hesitant to voice their political opinions because of the climate in which they live, it was clear that they simply want peace and a chance to be creative with their ideas and lives just like young people everywhere. They did not create the political situation they are in but very much want to change it. They do not engage with the rhetoric of the victim or the aggressor -- which are two sides of one coin-- but simply were focused on the possibilities of expanding their horizons and making something that could advance humanity bit by bit.

I was also impressed by the number of women present, as others have mentioned, as it exceeded the percentages I had seen throughout the rest of the Arab World. That alone is a significant achievement. These women were very motivated to create a better life. And I felt nothing but gratitude and a desire for upward movement and transcendence of conflict from everyone we worked with.

I hope those reading this thread will consider focusing on the future and supporting this initiative to support a positive future in Gaza, with hope for peace.

</comment><comment><USER10> I volunteered for them back in May of 2016 and wrote about it here on HN. Can't say enough good things about the experience and the people.

Please help their cause. I can personally vouch that the money will go to good people who are hungry to learn and eager to make a difference. I ran two workshops when I went and we had great turnout in each session. People were asking great questions and wanted to stay after to continue learning.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the best way to see what's going on there is to watch the videos. Have you all seen the ones about Gaza's startup founders and developers? Here are a few:

Women founders + developers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nAkx4n0yUU&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nAkx4n0yUU&feature=youtu.be)

The crowdfunding campaign video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEJtZekhROE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEJtZekhROE)

There are some personal interviews too on that channel, but my favorite is this bloopers video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_w1aoJgO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_w1aoJgO8)

Another video that shows Gaza on the ground (no relation to the geeks there) is Gangam Style Gaza. Love this! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYMh09vPwdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYMh09vPwdM)

</comment><comment><USER12> I applied to mentor and got accepted last Summer. I visited Gaza last December and it was unforgettable.

The Gaza Sky Geeks (mostly geekettes!) are the most resilient and inspired group I've met in my life.

Proud to support this effort. Would love to go back.

</comment><comment><USER11> The energy crisis that sparked this crowdfunding campaign (to get a generator + fuel for Gaza's startups and developers) is now front page news...

For those of you who have been conflating all Gazans with Hamas, read this:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle- east-38604904](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38604904)

Gaza electricity crisis: Hamas breaks up protest

Meanwhile, comedian Adel al-Mashwakhi was arrested hours after posting a video criticising Hamas, the Associated Press news agency reports. "There is no work, no crossings, no food, no water to drink and also there is no electricity," he said in the one-minute video, which has been watched more than 250,000 times. "Enough Hamas. Enough, enough, enough. We want electricity, we want electricity, we want electricity." Hamas has not commented.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been to Israel many times including during the time of the first Gaza conflict (Cast Lead).

There were elections in 2006 and Hamas was elected over Fatah. Hamas does not recognize Israel and is declared a terrorist state by the US, EU as well as Israel.

There were supposed to be elections in 2010 but Hamas will not allow them.

Hamas has spent large sums of money shooting missiles into Israel and using concrete meant for building homes and schools for and hiring labor for building tunnels into Israel. So serious was the missile problem that Israel created the Iron Dome missile system (see youtube or CBS 60 minutes) to protect its population. That technology is now being co-produced with a US arms manufacturer for sale to other countries. The Israelis have also had to develop tunnel locating technology.

While Israel has a program of encouraging venture capital and startups, it is truly a pity that the Palestinians did not elect Fatah over Hamas.

<comment><USER14> > There were elections in 2006 and Hamas was elected over Fatah.

If the people of the land don't elect the party we prefer (by cross-checking with our terrorist list) we have no choice but to support their seige, occupation and Apartheid.

<comment><USER13> The Palestinians elected a terrorist organization that shot missiles into Israel killing civilians that also refuses to recognize Israel.

Egypt has closed off their border and flooded illegal tunnels to Gaza as well.

I was a few miles away from the World Trade Center in Upper West Side Manhattan on 9/11\. I don't feel kindly toward people that elect terrorist organizations to be their government. Sorry if that bothers you.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html](http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html)

See also the UN OCHA report that records the 2,220 victims (67% of them civilians) of Israel's summer 2014 massacre in Gaza. 71 Israelis were killed during the same period (9% of them civilians).

So is the IDF a terrorist organization in your personal opinion?

> I was a few miles away from the World Trade Center in Upper West Side > Manhattan on 9/11\. I don't feel kindly toward people that elect terrorist > organizations to be their government. Sorry if that bothers you.

Classic - equating Hamas with Al Qaeda and hence justifying prejudice against millions of Palestenians, victims of Apartheid, seige and civilian massacres by IDF in one smooth sentence.

So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed killing civilians is a justification for IDF killing the same number or more civilians.

Once again, is the IDF a terrorist organization in your personal opinion?

<comment><USER15> There is no reason to whitewash Hamas. They are point blank fascists. If you claim they are "elected", then you claim that majority there supports fascist regime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Weird how some supporter of the palestinian cause here almost regret that some people in Gaza choose to find a way to live "normaly" and create themselves some kind of future, rather than go and try to kill other people.

And here am i, naively thinking that everything that helps people turn away from violence was a step toward peace...

</comment><comment><USER17> is doing something like this considered a political statement against israel?

<comment><USER18> Not in the slightest. This kind of activity (economic activity) is probably the best way possible to deescalate the conflict.

Israel has no interest in Gaza, they just want them to stop trying to attack, so if anything this program is _for_ Israel, not against it.

If you need evidence for that, then note that even during the worst conflicts Israel kept full communication (Cell and Internet) active in Gaza, which is opposite of what is normally done (cutting communication of the opponent). And it's not for wiretapping since easy encryption makes that infeasible in bulk, plus the people you would want to tap are not the ordinary everyday Internet users.

As additional evidence, increasing economic activity in the West Bank has been the backbone of Israel's attempt to keep things calm.

The more countries depend on each other for trade the less conflict there is - this is a pattern worldwide.

<comment><USER19> _> Israel has no interest in Gaza, they just want them to stop trying to attack_

This is false and one-sided. Likud, the ruling party in Israel, has in its platform an explicit denial of the right for a Palestinian state to exist west of the Jordan river.[1] Everything you've heard about Palestinians/Hamas denying Israel the right to exist is actually true about Israel as well towards Palestine. (In fact Hamas has stated they would respect a two-state solution; not the case for Likud.)

There are atrocities back and forth, for example "A month before [the murders of Israeli boys that set off the attack], two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah."[2] However the scale of Israel's atrocities in military operations is massively larger, and the conditions they maintain in Gaza through sanctions and violence are unconscionable. One could argue the conditions are calculated to foment discontent and keep the conflict on the military field, because politically the settlements and occupation have no standing, as regularly condemned by the _whole world_ in U.N. resolutions.[3]

[1] [http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/charter-destruction- palestin...](http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/charter-destruction- palestinian.html)

[2] [http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25343-noam- chomsky-%7C-ni...](http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25343-noam- chomsky-%7C-nightmare-in-gaza)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_concerning_Israel_and_Palestine)

<comment><USER20> This comment fails to distinguish clearly the differing situations and attitudes in re West Bank vs Gaza. Israel (including Likud) is far along a path of disengagement from Gaza

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza)

<comment><USER19> The International Criminal Court still recognizes Israel as the occupying power in Gaza "based on the scope and degree of control that it has retained over the territory of Gaza following the 2005 disengagement."[1]

[1] [https://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/otp/OTP-COM- Article_53(1)-Re...](https://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/otp/OTP-COM- Article_53\(1\)-Report-06Nov2014Eng.pdf)

<comment><USER21> No it doesn't.

The linked article which is not a court ruling, it's a report from the "Office of the Prosecutor", says:

"While Israel maintains that it is no longer occupying Gaza, the prevalent view within the international community is that Israel remains an occupying power under international law, based on the scope and degree of control that it has retained over the territory of Gaza following the 2005 disengagement. In accordance with the reasoning underlying this perspective, the Office has proceeded on the basis that the situation in Gaza can be considered within the framework of an international armed conflict in view of the continuing military occupation by Israel. The analysis conducted and the conclusions reached would generally not be affected and still be applicable, if the Office was of the view, alternatively, that the law applicable in the present context and in light of the Israel-Hamas conflict is the law of non-international armed conflict. Given the crimes of possible relevance to the present situation, which are substantially similar in the context of both international and non-international armed conflicts, it is not necessary at this stage to reach a conclusive view on the classification of the conflict. Additionally, as the protection accorded by the rules on international armed conflicts is broader than those relating to internal conflicts, it seems appropriate, for the limited purpose of a preliminary examination, in cases of doubt, to apply those governing international armed conflicts."

So they're basically just discussing the context for this (whether the situation meets some legal criteria to get to the next stage, by the way it didn't). They say it's not really necessary to reach a conclusive view (i.e. at least the prosecutor has no conclusive view, not to mention the court) because it doesn't affect the outcome of this legal analysis.

<comment><USER22> (from Wikipedia, Gaza Strip, military occupation)

In his statement on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur wrote that international humanitarian law applied to Israel "in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war."[41] Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, Oxfam, the International Committee of the Red Cross, The United Nations, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, international human rights organizations, US government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and a significant number of legal commentators (Geoffrey Aronson, Meron Benvenisti, Claude Bruderlein, Sari Bashi and Kenneth Mann, Shane Darcy and John Reynolds, Yoram Dinstein, John Dugard, Marc S. Kaliser, Mustafa Mari, Iain Scobbie, and Yuval Shany maintain that Israel's extensive direct external control over Gaza, and indirect control over the lives of its internal population mean that Gaza remained occupied.

<comment><USER21> My point was not to debate the legal status of Gaza in international law. I'm sure there are various opinions and various agendas. My point was the statement made in the comment was false and the ICC has not ruled on this topic and I didn't want that false statement to stand and then possibly be repeated.

The situation on the ground is clear. The Palestinians (Hamas) control the internal area of Gaza. Israel is imposing a naval blockade. Israel controls the Israeli side of the Gaza-Israeli border and restricts traffic of people and goods. Egypt controls (for the most part) the Egyptian side of the Gaza/Egypt border and restricts traffic of people and goods.

For humanitarian and I guess legal reasons Israel provides some services and goods to Gaza, unlike what we've seen in Syria where a total siege is routinely used in warfare. This article itself is evidence that Israel does not maintain absolute control over the lives of the internal population of Gaza.

I think that anyone looking at the facts of the matter should be able to see that once Israel withdrew from Gaza the Palestinians had enough control over their own destiny. They certainly had enough control to build thousands of rockets and shell Israel. Or is the claim that Israel shelled itself?

I can also see why the exact legal situation is complex. Gaza used to be under Egyptian control before 1967. It's not recognized as a state by any country. Israel withdrew unilaterally without any agreement covering the transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good job, tech will makes us free. Besides, I'm pretty sure that if geeks were in charge of both Israel and Palestine, they would just solve their differences on a PvP server, end of story :)

<comment><USER24> Many terrorists have engineering backgrounds: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=engineers+terrorism](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=engineers+terrorism)</comment></comment>


Mobaganda: A Dead-Simple Invite Site Built On Google's App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/27/mobaganda-a-dead-simple-invite-site-built-on-googles-app-engine/

<comment><USER2> Actually it's pretty good. If they just add ability to post a message into feed (other than coming/not coming) that woudl be even better.</comment>


Western Digital completes SanDisk purchase - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/western-digital-completes-sandisk-purchase/ <comment><USER2> So how can a company that has a market cap of around 8 billion buy another company for 16 billion?

Are they mostly doing this by taking on debt?

<comment><USER3> Some stock.. some of Sandisk's cash.. but yes, mostly debt:

 _SanDisk shareholders will receive $67.50 in cash and 0.2387 Western Digital share for each share of SanDisk stock._

[http://www.investors.com/news/technology/western-digital- now...](http://www.investors.com/news/technology/western-digital-now-a- storage-powerhouse-with-sandisk-acquisition/)

 _What many investors remain concerned about is that Western Digital is planning to offer some $17 billion or so in debt to help pay for the SanDisk buyout. Of that large sum, $3.0 billion will be a bridge loan. The rest is a set of traunches that are secured and unsecured debt. The company also telegraphed that it should be able to tap $4 billion of SanDisk's cash to repay the bridge._

[http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2016/03/09/did-western- dig...](http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2016/03/09/did-western-digital-make- a-good-enough-case-for-the-leveraged-sandisk-acquisition/#ixzz48nQRJ942)

<comment><USER4> > The company also telegraphed

I assume this is business lingo for something, and doesn't mean they sent an actual telegraph?

<comment><USER5> Telegraphing can simply mean the act of displaying something outwardly.

Used extensively in the context of E-Sports when someone does something that the other player can see and prepare for.

<comment><USER6> Or in boxing, "telegraphing" a punch, where you draw your arm back making it obvious what you're about to do so that you're opponent can prepare to block/dodge/counter/etc.

<comment><USER5> Exactly correct. Perhaps your example is a little more relevant than mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I assume this move from WD was to be more aggressive on the SSD market?

<comment><USER8> Seems like it, even though I can't imaging that hard drives will stop selling anytime in the next 20 years.

I have a SanDisk Z400s in my work laptop. It seems a bit slow compared to the other SSDs I have, but this particular line is rather low end. Still much faster than the hard drive that I would have got had I not pressed for an SSD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good that i have shares from wd :)

<comment><USER10> Historically the acquiring firm actually suffers a share price drop in the days following the acquisition: [http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/203.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/203.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Url changed from [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2015/10/21/western-d...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2015/10/21/western- digital-acquires-sandisk/) to a more accessible URL.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Forbes is awful.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: We're building a "HN Office Hours" app. Help us. - <AUTHOR> http://hnofficehours.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't have regular office hours. I start work anywhere from 12-1pm and stop anywhere from midnight-5am. Sometimes I take days off. Sometimes I'm too busy to answer the phone. My schedule for something like this is pretty much unpredictable.

Proposal: rather than specifying hours, just let me specify here / gone like a regular IM client. If it looks like it's going to be a slow day, I'll turn on the tap, and if things pick up I'll turn it off.

<comment><USER3> I can understand your situation, but I like their proposed approach (if I understand it correctly). A lot of people like to make appointments in order to be able to plan their time. During YC, you can schedule a 20 minute block of time with PG where he talks to you one on one. A lot of people find it to be useful, and I think it would be great to have something similar for HNers.

Some people like to be able to say "I have 20 minutes from 11:00-11:20 scheduled to talk to this person on this date about my project". Personally, I've always felt that scheduled appointments feel more "serious" than IM conversations. If I've made a commitment to talk with you for 20 minutes, you're much more likely to get my undivided attention during that time. Plus I can prepare for our conversation. If I can't make it, I'll just reschedule.

<comment><USER2> Maybe I understood wrong then, and I'm not in the target market for this? I'm not really interested in having "serious" conversations except with people who pay me to solve their problems.

I was much more interested in the brainstorming or "fresh pair of eyes" aspect. (My day job is an iOS developer) I'm more than happy to give some advice on somebody's iOS app / idea / Apple / app review / APIs when there's a lull in the day. I do really enjoy helping people out.

But the minute I need to start "reserving" time and "scheduling" for this, it starts sounding billable to me. That's the sort of thing I get paid to do.

Put another way, think of the analogy to open source. I am more than happy to field a few e-mails a day doing support for my OSS projects. But I'm not going to reserve time in my day for it unless I've got a support contract in place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of this is as "networking". You have to allocate time beforehand to do that: meetups, coffee, etc. This is no different. The only difference is that instead of expecting to make small-talk the expectation is technical talk. Further, I think it is good to be able to make yourself available quickly on a whim "mark me as available now" like you described.

Now, your time may be more valuable than "technical networking" with this crowd. Sure. In that case, you're not in the target demographic, like you concluded.

<comment><USER2> It's my observation (there are exceptions, but in general) that the awesome people are busy doing awesome things, not idling somewhere. So I would optimize for the busy person, not the person who can set aside 8 regular hours every week. Set a low commitment barrier, and attract great minds.

For me personally, there's a list of people 3 feet long on HN that I'd love to pick their brains about something. But I feel like a bother. (In a couple of instances, I've even been told I'm a bother. Sorry guys.)

Don't optimize it for me. Optimize it for the people _way_ busier than I am. If pg (or grellas, or patio11, or ...) start using the service, it will both be unimaginably useful and also gain traction.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps you should even focus explicitly on pleasing, say, patio11 (if he agrees to give you feedback).

Stuff that's optimized for on specific person (or a very small group) often also gets better responses from the a much wider audience, then if you went for a `generic' person in the first place. (I can go and find the sources for this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you guys seen Aardvark? Aardvark sends questions to friends and friends- of-friends via IM and/or email. If HN readers all linked together as friends or friends-of-friends, then your questions would be routed to the appropriate people based on interests. And if no HN people are available to answer your questions, they get routed off to the rest of the Aardvark network.

Even if people don't like this idea, it wouldn't hurt to look at how their UI and features are set up, since they're one of the pioneers in doing exactly the same kind of thing the "HN Office Hours" app is trying to do.

You can link to me here: <http://vark.com/s/UR0C> \-- everyone who links to me will be a friend-of-a-friend and will be auto-networked by Aardvark, assuming they all use an IM program compatible with Google Chat or Yahoo IM. Or if someone else wants to volunteer to be the "hub" of HN users, feel free to post your link here.

Just a thought. :)

<comment><USER6> But then you have to deal with the annoyance that is aardvark. I turned that stuff off when I got five questions in a row that literally were first page google results.

IRC room with a site mapping persons profile to their nick would be less bothersome, however then you have the distraction of yet another conversation in the background....

<comment><USER5> Aardvark has an auto-response for questions you can Google:

google

Which sends them a summary of the first Google hit for their question. See: <http://vark.com/commands>

I get an occasional question you could Google, but it's been rare. You can also just pass. And you can tell Aardvark how often you want to be contacted.

IRC or other chat room software would be too noisy for me--I wouldn't ever want it to be trying to get my attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That thread caused a lot of ripples. It's clear that this is a service that many people want.

Here's another thread inspired by kentf's submission; <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198> and there's a collection of google docs here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198>, you might want to build your database around the type of infomation people want to share.

Also, minor proofreading thing on the homepage: "want to build a site to those facilitate interactions"

I'm not a django guy otherwise I'd be offering to dive in.

I can offer space and bandwidth on my dreamhost "unlimited" shared hosting plan.

And I love beta-testing things!

(note to HNers, please save the discussion about what "unlimited" really means for another time.)

edit: another thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516015>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Just fixed the typo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please see if you can combine something with <http://hnhackers.com/> and/or <http://www.hackernewsers.com/> It would be a shame if a third site comes along that does something related (even slightly) without working together!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you run either of those? We'd love to integrate as much as possible.

<comment><USER8> I don't, just throwing it out there. The creators shouldn't be hard to find though.

Anyway, I'll see if I can contribute some html/css/js work over the weekend :) see you all on irc!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am so amazed by how frequently people come up with the same idea. I have been thinking about making an office hour app 7-8 months ago and been talking to everyone I know for feedbacks. Fail on me for not being able to execute it sooner. Good job for taking the initiative, guys.

<comment><USER10> sometimes it just takes someone to get the ball rolling. we'd honestly really rather have this be "everyone's project" instead of "our project". Please contribute. This is ideally going to be a very open process with lots of people committing code and ideas.

It would be a waste to ignore whatever ideas you came up with in 7-8 months of thinking about the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> hey guys, ezl from pybrew here. So we're basically a python shop, but we'd really love input/collaboration from anyone.

The primary reason we're trying to approach this as a group project is we think it'll be fun to collaborate with new people; so even if you're not a Django guy, please feel free to contribute. We definitely need people with design savvy, UI advice, people who just click around the site and look for broken things, etc.

Don't feel like you have to stay the whole weekend or anything. Hop in and say hello. Any advice/suggestions are welcome.

<comment><USER11> Are you guys only looking for local help? I am in India and would love to chip in but this weekend isn't the best time. Can't this be an ongoing, online thing. We can all chip in and host it too - a community developed/run/managed app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. We want to make it as open and community-maintained as possible. We're just kicking it off. Any help is welcome, local and remote. You can fork the repo on github or ping us for anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really get it...

<comment><USER13> If you like someone's comment, you can click on their office hours link and .. AWESOME!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe this is great. I have one comment (really one wish) to make. It would be absolutely fantastic to see some screencasts of HNers in action. In particular, how you get the skeleton of a project up and running. I, for one, would pay for content like this.

By the way, I haven't tried PeepCode. Do you guys recommend it? Again, along the lines of getting things started. I look, for instance, at the App Engine documentation and (even though they offer a launcher) I wonder how professionals give the first brush strokes in less than several hours. How can I avoid constantly going back to the documentation?

Thank you, and sorry for the ramble!

<comment><USER15> I would highly recommend PeepCode... very high quality screencasts and a good range of topics as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just rolled out timezone search to hackernewsers, e.g. [http://www.hackernewsers.com/users.html?User[timezone]=Europ...](http://www.hackernewsers.com/users.html?User\[timezone\]=Europe/London)

This is part of a larger set of community features that I've been working on for a couple of weeks and will be deployed soon. It looks like we've had the same idea

</comment><comment><USER10> the github wiki is where we're storing a lot of ideas: <http://wiki.github.com/ezl/hnofficehours/>

it is editable by anyone with a github account. if you have any ideas, please feel free to contribute (leave your HN username as well with your ideas so we can contact you if there are questions)

</comment><comment><USER17> Neat. I might start up my office hours again. For anyone thinking of starting their own, it's totally worthwhile. I wrote about mine a couple of years ago:

<http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2008/10/30/office-hours>

</comment><comment><USER18> 1) I hope the final product will be OSS 2) To keep spammers out, we could enable a karma threshold parameter. 3) As about UI, I've always been looking for an excuse to look into SproutCore ('course, this is free) or Atlas (which does cost).

<comment><USER10> _1) I hope the final product will be OSS_

It absolutely will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> UI Design / Adobe CS guy here. Email is in my profile if you want specific design help. Got a fairly busy weekend but I've got 3-4 hours to contribute.

I'm into using CSS3 (w/ fallback styles) in production so that would be cool.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was working on a similar idea "Flash Mob: Help a Startup Out", but the specifics were to have a live chat at a given time, and have everyone (available and willing) throw their 2cents in.

</comment><comment><USER21> What OSS licence will you guys be using?

I was planning on spending the weekend holed up coding Django anyway so I will put my hand up to own a feature!

<comment><USER10> MIT

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It might be a good idea to have some restriction on users so that the service is not overwhelmed (a yahoo answers-type situation might not work out well).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you're right. We want this to be HN centric, so I think we're going to start by limiting to HN users.

<comment><USER23> I think it would be good to also limit by karma score too. It's trivial for someone to come here and create an account. I'm not sure what the cutoff should be, but probably low enough so as not to exclude people unnecessarily, but high enough that it weeds out trolls and people who are just not that serious.

<comment><USER22> I'm not so sure about that... If you look at my profile, I almost never comment or link anything. And yet, I have been a dedicated reader since I first found HN. I have also done as much as I can to bring new, intelligent users to HN. But none of this is reflected in my karma score.

Though I could be wrong... Maybe I should just start contributing more.

<comment><USER4> Bringing in intelligent people sounds like a good contribution to me. No matter what the software thinks `contribution' should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like a good use of a wave-like app if you include voice chat.

Are there any existing wave-alikes (FOSS maybe?) to leverage?

</comment><comment><USER25> I dabble in UI design, and if I get the time would like to help out. Hopefully see you either tonight or tomorrow at some point.

</comment><comment><USER26> Python coder here. Sounds like a fun idea. I'll pop into IRC if I get some free time this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER27> i'll be around this weekend, would love to help out. not much of a python guy but pretty well versed in MVC and can prob contribute on the design /js end of things as well

</comment><comment><USER28> You guys didn't specify a time zone.

I'd be happy to contribute a bit of visual design (interaction design, too, if you're interested in listening to an expert)... but I assume you're either east or west coast USA, so I'll be very, very asleep by then.

Now, though, I'll add that the idea of a public office hours would only be enhanced by the back and forth being public. I'd be much more inclined to help Person A during my office hours, if my help would be available later to others.

EDIT: Check out this time zone visualizer I designed: <http://everytimezone.com> \- feel free to borrow the mechanic, because not only will you have to deal with time zones for the hack-time, but you will have to deal with them for office hours.

<comment><USER29> That timezone visualizer is gold.

I live in Europe, and am chronically bad at calculating timezone offsets in my head. Calls to clients on the west coast usually involve at least one moment of panic where I think I've missed it, followed by two hours of waiting because I calculated the time wrong, followed by an apology for calling an hour late.

This is also nice because my clients are even worse than me, and generally have no idea when it might be daytime over here. A nice blue bar would do them some good.

<comment><USER15> Another useful one is <http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/></comment></comment></comment>


Automating Microsoft Office with Python - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/sanand0/ipython-notebooks/master/Office.ipynb

<comment><USER2> Years ago, at my first internship, we were assigned to copy fields of information out of hundreds of PDF files and compile them into a single spreadsheet. While my coworker began dutifully trudging away, I started googling and found out about the COM API and the Python library. I spent the rest of my time writing a script to automate the task.

The silly and wonderful thing about the Office API is that it doesn't work silently, but instead performs the operations on screen as if they were being done by a human being. The article explains this. There's something very satisfying about seeing the reaction of your boss as he watches the computer do the work on its own, as if its being operated by a ghost. Now I know what it must have been like to see a player piano a hundred years ago.

<comment><USER3> In VBA there's a command to toggle screen redrawing, isn't it exposed through COM ? very impactful on performance, although I too like to witness high speed visual feedback of automated processing. The social implications are surprising too.

<comment><USER4> One of the first things i learned about writing VBA macros was to start every one with application.screenupdating = false. It was amazing how much of a performance hit the screen updating was.

<comment><USER3> I remember at least three "mandatory" statement to wrap any heavy script. Actually I don't remember them, just some fuzzy count.

ps: I don't know how Excel is structured these days but up until 2003 there was zero multicore code, and VBA is not the fastest system around, so any way you can trim the workload is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At LiveLoop we've gone insanely deep into COM to build real-time collaboration for PowerPoint, and while the interface is powerful there are mysteries at every level. These presentations (especially the last) are very impressive ion light of that.

<comment><USER6> _At LiveLoop we 've gone insanely deep into COM_

I can say this too and we do stuff not even Microsoft thought was possible.

 _while the interface is powerful there are mysteries at every level._

The interfaces are indeed powerful (not to leave out annoyingly inconsistent). That said, there are only mysteries when you go oh so far. If play by a few safe rules, you should be mostly safe unless you have very long lived processes which starts mixing COM code with other code digging beneath the API for things which isn't otherwise possible.

It can be argued that both the best and the worst part of the .NET Framework is how it makes COM interop seem so utterly seamless. It's bound to land you in a trap sooner or later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be really interested in this if there were a way to get Python to render a ppt into a pdf. Basically, the goal would be to programmatically add a unique watermark to each ppt, render the pdf, and save it. Doing this for 100+ things is not worth the time but if Python can script it up it might be worth investigating. Looks like I need to go read the COM api a bit.

<comment><USER8>
       wordInstance.ActiveDocument.SaveAs(filename + ".pdf", 17)

17 is the magic number for PDF output. There is a constant in VSTO and COM for it but I can't remember what it is. Need Office 2007 with save as pdf addon installed or vanilla 2010/2013.

People always say that APIs are the future and Microsoft are dead etc but Microsoft stuff is usually chock full of extensibility and knee deep in documentation. To give you an idea, it took me merely two days to extend word 2010 via VSTO with a fully GUI and ribbon integrated semantic template engine that allows documents to be bound to our public API and rendered server side or client side online and offline.

Do that in Google Apps? Yeah right...

also my solution will still be supported until 2023!

<comment><USER9> I did a simple application for a client that was a simple JSON-to-Excel dump. It was a breeze. Took me about a day to do it. From zero to finished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just as interesting are some of the visualisations, the author (of this ipnb) has done for some of the media houses in India. Done using powerpoint, but for a print publication, as good as it could be.

(which are linked within this ipynb.)

</comment><comment><USER11> In case anyone is interested, pg wrote the SpamBayes Outlook add-in in Python about 10 years ago: [http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/](http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Tangentially, I'm convinced there's a worthwhile (small) business opportunity in hooking up py.test to Excel to Fix The Spreadsheet Problem(tm). Not something I can iterate on right now, though.

<comment><USER13> What is The Spreadsheet Problem?

<comment><USER12> Big, important, expensive problems being "solved" by non-programmers without a validation safety-net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For PowerPoint 2007, you need to add the below line (like in the example for Excel) for the window to be visible:

      Application.Visible = 1

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was a talk at PyconIndia 2013

<comment><USER15> Do you know where to find the recording? Converting macros to python sounds extremely useful

<comment><AUTHOR> The recording should be available in a few days, check the mailing list, But the author didn't go into the details of how he converted macros to python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a open sourced screen reader called NVDA, which really puts this to good use.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately win32 API is Windows specific.

</comment><comment><USER18> Misread this as "Automating Microsoft with Python"

Knew Ballmer let the company down but didn't think it was that far.</comment>


Show HN: Guess which government programs work - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/articles/can-you-guess/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the creators of the quiz!

Note that the projects were _not_ chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find.

You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: [http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs- wor...](http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-work)

<comment><USER2> Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases.

One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect of the law or else it is immediately revoked at that point.

This way we'd force people to argue not about 2nd order issues ("I think mandatory sentencing is good" vs. "No, I think it's bad") when they could agree on first order issues ("We all want to see a 10% decrease in robberies within 3 years.") This way a bad program would automatically expire if it didn't meet its goals, and the goals would have to be open enough that people could throw out bad laws ("Goal is to incarcerate 20% of the population" wouldn't pass, no matter what your political leaning).

<comment><USER3> > One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any > new legislation

This is what I find great about US and EU (I am from Czech Republic), that in a _federal_ system, you can test the legislation in one state first, and then see the results and this lets the other states to perhaps adopt or avoid that approach.

Unfortunately, strong moneyed interests break that model by lobbying strongly in Washington and Brussels from the start, which I think is a bad trend, but I have no idea how to prevent it. The effect of having more cultural diversity is very hard to quantify economically. (There is also other side of the coin though, which is too much state competition can lead to polarization and war.)

Although sometimes there are things where you have to be careful about this approach - for example, if one state engages in lower taxes or pro-export policies, it may gain, but the same policy enacted by everybody will make everyone lose.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of things which work better as federal programs vs state / local programs. Homeless populations spring to mind, if some city's treat there homeless population poorly they can 'export' the problem to another city / state. Where a state with overly generous benefits may see migration.

Education is another with states that export there most educated population having little incentive to subsidize their higher education system. Which likely has lead to the dismantling of state funded schools as people became more mobile.

<comment><USER3> > Which likely has lead to the dismantling of state funded schools

I disagree this is a necessary outcome. It may as well happen that backward states will take notice and improve their higher education system in various ways.

But I think what you are saying is a fair point and I actually mentioned it. What I would add to my comment is the common solution to this is called "principle of subsidiarity" and it's used EU and Switzerland (which is another example of a federation that often tests different law variations in smaller scale first).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking about why this website triggered my skeptic alarms and came up with a few things.

1\. The web interface makes it hard to go back. The first thing I want to do when I see a surprising answer is reread the question. I understand this is likely just bad engineering, but it makes the whole site _feel_ less trustworthy.

2\. Some questions get summarized poorly. For example, the mindfulness question asks "What effect does mindfulness based stress reduction have on self-reported mental health (rates of anxiety, stress, and depression)?" but then summarizes the choices to "reduction rates of mental health issues." You can't drop a word like self-reported from a question, after all physically disabled people self-report being happier after their disability (e.g. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21870935](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21870935)).

Also in the "Drug Substitution Programs" question the text indicates that the research is based off of cases where "Addicts were given heroin or substitutes such as methadone or buprenorphine, based on their needs," however the choices are formed "Positive effect - Prescribing heroin to addicts reduces crime rates," [note that it dropped the _or substitutes_ ]. This feels like going for shock value.

3\. At the end the website is selling very hard about some newsletter. Apparently the website seems to be focused around a career guide? If you truly have no axe to grind then present high-quality information and I'll naturally explore the site more.

4\. If your objective is really to help raise awareness about how often media publicity for social interventions doesn't reflect efficacy as measured in journals then I would think at the end you would propose a plan of action , such as "When hearing about a social program, you can use google scholar to tap into research findings..."

<comment><USER6> There is also an unnecessary "are you sure?" notification that pops when you leave midway through the quiz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great! One of the interesting things about social sciences (and engineering, although just like computer hacking, social engineering has unfortunately strong negative connotations) is that the real world is often counter-intuitive. In particular, people tend to believe in punishment a lot, while it commonly escalates the problem (I like the quip "emphasis on punishment is the sign of an obedience frame").

I am dismayed that I didn't do better than random chance, even though I like to read about social issues. I think this really shows the importance of empiricism in social sciences and engineering.

<comment><USER7> My cue was to vote against strategies that seemed built on a rewards and punishments foundation.

<comment><USER8> The problem with reward/punishment strategies is that rewards are inevitably deferred; and people who are in problematic situations likely have much lower ability to deal with deferred satisfaction. That's just how it is.

Unfortunately, because bureaucracy is mostly run by people with great skills in the area, this fact is really hard to get across, or is even rejected outright. After all, if I-Court-Judge or I-Politician could keep it together enough to get where I am, why can't anybody else manage just a little bit? And then the morality discourse kicks in and there is no way out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Elderly care question said that there was no effect on 3 year mortality, which is fine and I'm sure that is accurate but it doesn't answer the question of "Did it have a net positive/negative effect on quality of life for those 3 years".

Not been a negative nelly just an observation that something as complex as social interaction problems can't always be summed up with a clear net gain/loss.

Loved the idea and implementation though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Having conclusive evidence that a program doesn't work (or even is harmful) is significant. How effective is it for actually getting such programs stopped? Have any been?

<comment><USER11> Some have, but many persist for years (e.g. Scared Straight).

<comment><USER12> Scared straight is highly effective PR. Hood looking young people getting yelled at by scary men? Possibly crying? It's like schadenfreude for "civilized" society.

I don't understand how policy leaders can look at hard numbers and say, "fuck it, let's keep funding it."

<comment><USER13> _Tucker: My expert would totally disprove that.

Abbott: Who is your expert?

Tucker: I don't know, but I can get one by this afternoon. The thing is, you've been listening to the wrong expert. You need to listen to the right expert. And you need to know what an expert is going to advise you before he advises you._

\- The Thick Of It

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Home visits for older adults is a little disingenuous. The purpose is not really to reduce death risk, but to increase quality of life. I don't think that counts as "no effect" just "no effect on mortality" which is unsurprising.

<comment><USER15> > The purpose is not really to reduce death risk, but to increase quality of > life.

Not necessarily. There are many at home services geared around attempting to improve medication adherence in elderly patients for example, as they frequently are on several medications concurrently and have trouble keeping track of dosing requirements due to cognitive dysfunction. Non-adherence can have a significant effect on longevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I got way fewer of these right than I would have hoped. It's clear that I need to update my understanding of the questions presented. I owe a debt to those who put this together. Thanks very much.

<comment><USER17> If it helps, any time you choose "No effect", you're making a guess about how thorough the experiment was, not about the program itself. Every program will have some effect, but may be too small to have been detected. Similarly if the correct answer is "no effect" that just means the studies weren't accurate enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would be nice to see a summary of the projects and their effects after finishing the quiz. By that time, I had already forgotten about some and wondered what the answers were.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'll see if we can change that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it a bit unintuitive that "no change" errors are valued the same as "opposite" errors (e.g. answering "positive" when the change was actually negative). I find it far less interesting when the discrepancy is whether there is any change or not than when the effect is actually opposite to what one would apparently expect.

Additionally as others have pointed out some of the questions and answers aren't very clear (though maybe it's just my reading comprehension that's failing). I too am unhappy about the way the elderly question is posed -- it's not clear whether all of the programs were actually focussing on reducing mortality. In fact the introduction mentions that it's merely one of several goals and from anecdotal evidence I would expect that the mortality metric is thrown off by patients stabilizing once their health has deteriorated enough to require them to be placed under permanent care -- that you're less (or equally likely) to die doesn't mean you're more (or equally) healthy.

<comment><USER11> We have to just pick one outcome variable for each experiment though, or it's going to get too complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's really hard to tell "negative effect" and "no effect" apart, I got two of them switched.

Besides, I would consider both of those failed programs, not even sure if there's a point in distinguishing.

I got 7/10 right, only one successful program I got wrong.

</comment><comment><USER21> This may be specific to me (though I'm using the latest chrome, latest mac os, so I doubt it), but the "share on facebook" link didn't work at all for me, and the facebook "like" link took me to a page to share the post on my timeline, not just "like" it. Didn't see any easy route to report such things, so here it is!

</comment><comment><USER22> Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science) wrote a paper with the UK Government on A/B tests of policies.

[http://www.badscience.net/2012/06/heres-a-cabinet-office- pap...](http://www.badscience.net/2012/06/heres-a-cabinet-office-paper-i-co- authored-about-randomised-trials-of-government-policies/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that the average user is less than 50%. I got two wrong and still felt like an idiot.

<comment><USER17> Since there are 3 choices for each question, a random user should get 33%. So the average user is slightly better than random (40%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ha! I'm as good as a coin flip! Take that, the average user, who is actually nonrandomly bad!

</comment><comment><USER25> While the content is great, the tech seems bloody awful. Why is it so slow to load? It takes 5-10 seconds to load on both my laptop and my desktop (both < 1 year old) and I have nice fast fibre. Why would you start with a loading screen in this day and age? And worse a loading screen that doesn't tell you what it's loading. Flash is dead.

It severely impacts the usability, it looks like nothing is happening and I can imagine a lot of people just close it before it loads.

And it's (virtually) static content! Why doesn't it load with the opening page at least?

<comment><USER11> Sorry about that - we got a bit overloaded. It's also a beta platform, hence the loading page issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are a couple of those where I suspect that they might have the causality reversed.</comment>


Ways to manage your time better - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00973-6 <comment><USER2> I'll never forget the time shortly after switching into industry from a purely laboratory workplace, that I had my first encounter with a professional project manager.

I got so pissed off that some un-introduced remote person on a conference call was try to tease out what all my "tasks" where, when they would be done and in what order (as well as when everyone else's would be done). Thus began my career-long love/hate relationship with project management (mostly hate).

While I am sure that scientists and academics can do well with general-purpose time-management skills, I think that industry could perhaps have more to gain by picking up some tips from how scientists work (and ease-off on the obsession with project management).

<comment><USER3> Depends on the quality and style of the PM, but a good one is worth their wait in gold. By coordinating the meetings, managing the dates, and keeping everyone accountable, it takes those burdens off other team members, letting them focus on the work.

<comment><USER4> I hate to say it, but the litmus tests seems to be, "Do they have a PMP?"

If the answer is yes, run away fast, you're in danger of being crushed under a mountain of paperwork.

If the answer is no, I guess the answer isn't so clear cut, but I have definitely worked with ones who are worth more than their weight in gold.

<comment><USER5> The good ones, in an organization with any sense at all, keep you from having to answer "when will it be done" and "why isn't it done yet" questions from non-team-members, which is wonderful. Those questions _will_ come up, and if ICs are answering them to anyone outside their own team then your (the general "your") process likely sucks and is slowing everything down and making everyone miserable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The biggest time saver for scientists would be a funding process that does not involved writing voluminous proposals with key metrics and other make work information that keeps bureaucrats happily well-fed and well-paid.

I'm not saying there is no need for some way of making sure the money is spent effectively but the grant proposal process is largely a sham and a charade that needs radical overhaul.

</comment><comment><USER7> Saved you a click

>Make a plan

>Beware of distractions

>Learn to say 'no'

>Give yourself a break

>Don't try to chase every great idea

>A plan can help in a crisis

<comment><USER8> Yes, but there is more helpful detail in the article. Specifically taking five minutes each morning to block out my calendar for specific tasks is something that has greatly improved my working days

<comment><USER9> What I do for myself is I have a hard computer logoff time (11 PM), but I can work with paper / read books, so I work on the paper planner after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Take a long, hard look at your relationship with e-mail and social media. > Although they are vital to everyday communication, they can claim much more > attention than they deserve. Consider shutting them off completely as you > work on a task that requires your full attention.

For me this strikes at the heart of a fundamental problem: on one hand we all want to maximize our attention span. On the other hand, the task of regulating and disciplining our use of social media is placed squarely on our own shoulders, which can be difficult because these platforms are intentionally addicting.

I developed Pony—email that sends and receives once a day—to give people a non-distracting place to communicate. The critical thing is that you don't have to regulate or discipline yourself. There's nothing to "turn off."

I've been using it for several months, and it's pretty funny: I still find myself checking my Inbox for something new even though I know that nothing new will come until tomorrow. The addictive power of social media is that strong and it keeps us from doing what's important.

[0]: [https://www.pony.gg](https://www.pony.gg)

<comment><USER11> I really want a client like that for HN, subreddits and my twitter feed, ideally with a feedback mechanism that can be used to rank the content based on my interests and filter out all of the other crap.

<comment><USER5> RSS-to-email once a week, maybe with some other kind of filter (quality, popularity, keywords) in the middle for sites with too much noise (HN qualifies, lots of stories in a week). I think there are a couple sites that do that for HN, but aggregating everything would probably be a DIY job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I worked in academic research one of the biggest wastes of time was that the Professor in charge of the lab _never_ turned up to meetings on time (30 mins late being typical) - which wouldn't have been too bad except he constantly bragged about his time management skills. I eventually realised he meant he never wasted any of _his_ time but happily made 15 of us sit around a meeting room for ages.... Which is fair enough I guess (he was in charge) but did nothing for morale.

<comment><USER13> If you're his subordinates though, wasting all of your time surely ends up costing him more productivity in the end.

<comment><USER12> Very intelligent people (who this Prof definitely was) can sometimes also be rather stupid at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The way I think of time management now inspired by a book I've never read [0]. I read the review for the Power of Less on the Personal MBA website, "Leo Babauta masterfully teaches the fine art of focusing on the essential and eliminating the superfluous." I thought to myself what I really cared about and what I didn't. My list of things to do everyday was becoming unmanageable.

What I do now is consider my main goal at the moment. What is the thing that if I didn't try my best to accomplish it I would have serious regrets? In my case it's completing my computer science education. Then I consider what would not be worth sacrificing in order to accomplish this goal. In my case it's things like becoming unhealthy and being a slob.

In the end I've settled on a system where I devote my morning to maintaining these things I can't give up and I devote my evenings to my main goal. I spend an hour or so exercising and make sure to tidy up before work. Once I get home I can devote my full energy to the task at hand.

Children are not recommended for this scenario.

[0] [https://personalmba.com/review/power-of- less/](https://personalmba.com/review/power-of-less/)

</comment><comment><USER14> In university I studied engineering/science, but when I transitioned into the working world, I transitioned into project management. To me this article is somewhat click-bait promising to "just do these # of things..."

I guess it provides helpful tips or a more simplistic way to begin to manage your time better if that is something you are struggling with and feel overwhelmed with how to even start to improve it. But I strongly feel the thing that makes me a great project manager is that you know how much rigor is appropriate for a given project so you know just how much to spend time planning and how much you need to focus on execution.

And "Beware of Distractions" is a huge understatement. I think this area deserved a little more because, IMO, you shouldn't just be aware, you need to actively manage this. You need to set specific time aside to look at your email. You need to put your phone down and not surf the web at random times. You need to be deliberate with your time, especially if you have a lot to get done. This is where having a list of "tasks" or things you want to accomplish in a specified amount of time can be helpful, because you can prioritize getting through that before you go to your emails, texts, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> I will recommend Leonard Adleman interview where he gives some answers about how to choose the problem to work with: [http://teacher.scu.edu.cn/ftp_teacher0/chjtang/teach/adleman...](http://teacher.scu.edu.cn/ftp_teacher0/chjtang/teach/adleman.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> step 1: read articles on how to manage your time better on Hacker News

<comment><USER17> step 0.5: research which sites have the best articles on how to manage your time, evaluate the history of Hacker News, search Quora for opposing opinions on its voting model to avoid bias, skip work, write a language-independent pattern analysis framework to determine whether /pol/ is leaking into your site, lose your job, put your framework up on Github and spam HN for advice, get tons of comments on how great your idea is, create a Patreon so you can eat, and by the end of the month determine that the best option for articles on how to manage your time is Hacker News.</comment></comment>


Changing Lives at HackLondon - <AUTHOR> http://news.mlh.io/fares-alaboud-changing-lives-hacklondon-03-04-2015

<comment><USER2> I was at Kairos Hacks last weekend, which was running parallel to HackLondon and I most certainly echo the same sentiment, it was a great outlet for a lot of my pent up energy and I'm really grateful to MLH and all of their volunteers for being awesome and providing us a very positive environment for us to make awesome things!

The event was covered here [http://blog.kairossociety.org/kairos-hacks-kicks- off-in-barc...](http://blog.kairossociety.org/kairos-hacks-kicks-off-in- barcelona/and) here [http://blog.kairossociety.org/kairos-hacks-barcelona-and- the...](http://blog.kairossociety.org/kairos-hacks-barcelona-and-the-winner- is/)

I ended up writing a tool that extracts meaningful information from the Spanish elections : [https://github.com/shadeslayer/dataminer](https://github.com/shadeslayer/dataminer) , which can be further visualized on a website. Its not the most proficient code ever, but it's a start :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome to hear about your experience at KHacks and thanks for sharing the event write ups!

Have you got plans to go to more hackathons? Might see you at the next one! :)

<comment><USER2> Ofcourse! I'd be delighted to! As long as they don't have a age barrier ( the one in Barcelona was organized for under 25's only )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a student for the last three years, the rise in student hackathon and any tech-related activity has been nothing short of immense.

I think a big part of that is thanks to students like those behind HackLondon and similar events who work tirelessly (and sleepless-ly) to get people excited and sharing their work.

It's a good time to be a student in tech!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Life is a series of opportunities, and we either take them, ignore them or waste them. Sometimes, life gives us a handful to give away and I realise now that hackathons are the best way of doing that." \- Fares, organiser of HackLondon 2015</comment>


Startup Quote: Evan Williams, co-founder, Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/1667694616

<comment><AUTHOR> Assume the best but hire paranoid people.

\- Evan Williams (@ev)

<http://startupquote.com/post/1667694616></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Union Sq Ventures only have 6 people? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.usv.com/team/<p>Doing VC research for class right now and can only see 3 partners and 3 staff for such a large/important VC. How/why does this firm do this? <comment><USER2> I think they have associates too, Venture Capitalists websites are famous for being hilariously slow to update.

The USV fund isn't that large either, under $250M per fund and under $1Bn under management in total - for 3 partners that is a lot of work, but manageable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Thanks for the information. A bunch of those partners have a lot of board seats too.. I wonder how they manage.</comment></comment>


In the future you will live in a tiny little house - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5701745/in-the-future-you-will-live-in-a-tiny-little-house

<comment><USER2> "People are starting to get a clue, I think."

Sigh. Moral suasion does not work and has never worked to promote environmental objectives. What works is a rebalanced system of incentives and disincentives in which consumers make decisions.

The median house size went down over the past couple of years because we've been in a sharp, deep recession triggered in part by the collapse of an overheated housing bubble, not because "people are starting to get a clue" that they don't need 4,000 square foot houses.

<comment><USER3> I think that energy costs (heating and cooling) also had a hand in the search for smaller homes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No I won't. In the future I'll live in a normal house but I'll read about these little houses. I might even be inclined to purchase one and put it on a lake somewhere for fishing trips or by a beach for surfing trips but live in it full time? Tell that to a wife and children.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think a more accurate prediction is that people will be living in smaller houses than they have been in the past 20 years. I live and grew up in a quad home townhouse in a pretty rich community, and my mind would always boggle at the size of some of my friends' houses. It seemed insane that some people had second dining/living rooms that they only used for special occasions, but sat collecting dust the rest of the year. This kind of opulence is part of what got us into the whole housing crisis, so I suspect that the next generation will be a little more practical when it comes to these McMansions.

<comment><USER6> No, that's not what got us into the housing crisis. What got us into the housing crisis is wild west like lending practices and a really poor economy. People couldn't afford their houses because of balloons, variable APR's, and losing their job, not because they had an extra room.

<comment><USER7> _People couldn't afford their houses because of balloons, variable APR's, and losing their job, not because they had an extra room._

Um, no. A balloon payment or variable APR would not hurt you if you bought a smaller house that you could afford. Neither would short term (read: 1-2 years) job loss [1].

It's fun to blame the banks, but real estate speculators (aka "homeowners", as the media calls them) are just as culpable.

[1] There are likely to be several recessions over the next 30 years, and you have a reasonable chance of losing your job. If you don't plan for this, it's your fault.

<comment><USER8> I agree with your assesment that banks and speculators are equally to blame, but it is easy to label people who got screwed by this as being irresponsible and or stupid. I don't think that is true (and for alot of people, irresponsible moves might have actually been economically rational)

So lets say I bought a house during part of the bubble well within my means at the time. I put 20% down, and then had a fixed rate mortgage. I had 6 months to a year of living expenses in cash in my bank on top of the cash I had to put down on the house.

I lose my job, 1 year goes by, 18 months goes by. I have no more emergency fund, and the house is now worth less than I bought it. I'm fucked. I have no money left and I owe a huge amount, my mortgage is under water, and up until that moment I made completely responsible decisions except that I bought the house at the top of a bubble that I didn't know existed. I hypothetically had not only 20% down, but an emergency fund equal to 2 years mortgage payments plus food and utilities (which at that point you have close to 40% of the value of the house in cash, who had that?)

Compare that to somebody who had no money in the bank, put no money down, lost their job, but the house had appreciated in value. You sell the house quickly, net about no money gained or lost, and move back into a rental apartment. Really its not that big a deal. I could even move in with a friend for free while I find a job.

The big assumption that screwed so many people was that house prices always rise. You can be perfectly responsible on every move, assume house prices always rise and don't realize there is a bubble, and be completely screwed.

You can also be completely irresonsible, luck out on your timing of when you buy and when you sell, and come out ahead like a bandit.

Actually the conclusion I come to from that is the "safest" option is to put nothing down, take the longest mortgage you can at the lowest rate, and have heaps and heaps of cash in the bank. Take the 20% you could have put down on the house and just keep it safe. You will pay more money over the life of your mortgage but if shit hits the fan you can survive for months or years without going bankrupt, which is counter to the advice of minimizing the cost of your mortgage over the lifetime of it (i.e. lots of cash down, shorter term)

<comment><USER7> Say I bought $400k worth of stock options in $MY_COMPANY in a highly leveraged bet which requires me to make monthly margin payments (which may or may not depend on interest rates). Note that $MY_COMPANY is a highly illiquid stock - unlike GOOG or MS, I'll be hard pressed to sell $400k shares of it quickly except at a huge discount. I had enough liquid cash to make margin calls for 1 year, even if I lost my job. Also, the terms of my contract with my broker impose significant financial penalties on me if I change my address.

(Notice how virtually all my investments are now strongly correlated with each other? My investment, revenue stream, and ability to make margin calls will all tank simultaneously?)

Would you also describe me as making "completely responsible decisions"?

Replace $MY_COMPANY's share price with some variable describing the local economy, and you've just described a mortgage. Buying a house is a _really bad investment strategy_ for most people. The only exception is if your goal is to lock in a fixed rent on a fixed address for 30 years into the future.

<comment><USER9> While I agree with your logic completly there are other factors that play into a home buyer that are not in play with an investor the bigest one being emotion and sociatal norms. I could not begin to fathom how many times in my life I heard growing up, boy when you become a man buy a house, it's the American dream, they are not making any more land. Real estate always goes up. The advice like hey you could get trapped in a life sucking death trap was not dispensed until late in the bubble and now freely flows in the crash. So you have people that have no sophistication in investment purchasing homes because the common mantra was what could possibly go wrong. You have skyrocketing home prices and people panicking that they are going to be forever left out of the greatness of home-ownership that they have heard about their entire life which all culminates in disaster for the home owner.

I find it hard not to blame the bankers, when you have a party that clearly lacks the knowledge to understand the realities of the market and a party that clearly knows that they are inflating the market then you have to place blame on the party that willfully acted while possessing full knowledge. Where the homeowners greedy sure, and I would venture to guess that the number of homeowners that did so out of greed where high but they where also making decisions on information that was reinforced over years of indoctrination information that the bankers willfully exploited with full knowledge that the realities of the market where in sharp contrast to the homeowner perceived reality of what homeownership meant.

So while you logic is correct it omits some very important facts the biggest one being that the product was not sold to an investor but the average person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like what he's got here. One of the things with small spaces is making sure they are well laid out. You can make 96 sq/ft more functional than 400 sq/ft if you have a great layout.

From 2007-2009 I lived in a tiny ~180 square foot apartment on Saint Botolph's Street in Boston. It was fairly well laid out fortunately, and I was able to fit a ton in there, including a desk with 36 rack spaces, several keyboards, a 5-piece drumkit, 8 guitars, two guitar amps, a 700 piece vinyl collection, a few hundred books, a wine rack, a twin bed, filing cabinet, an aeron chair, etc.

When it was clean and together it was very nice and didn't feel crowded or cluttered at all. Fitting more than 4 people in there though was exceedingly tight.

I'm actually always impressed when I go to Ikea. The 'rooms' they have setup on the floor seem highly functional and spacious, but are actually pretty small.

The worst thing that kills most small apartments is poor layouts, too many doors/windows, all the footage being in the wallway, poorly placed radiators, inaccessible electrical outlets (only one in the room or something silly like that), or random pipes right in the middle of the room. One of my friends has a random 4 inch pipe in the middle of her bathroom in her NYC apartment, and another in the hallway. Worst architect ever. You just have to squeeze around it.

<comment><USER11> >One of my friends has a random 4 inch pipe in the middle of her bathroom in her NYC apartment, and another in the hallway. Worst architect ever. You just have to squeeze around it.

I absolutely abhor these. Even with the insulation wrapped around it you would still risk getting burned pretty badly if you were to mistakenly brush your hand across it.

<comment><USER10> I really can't figure out for the life of me what architect/engineer/builder thought these were a good idea. I'm sure it was in some remodel, but that's the type of thing that I couldn't even show to the client and keep a straight face. Its like handing someone a website you did for them, turning on comic sans and misspelling the company's name in the h1. Just sloppy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might buy one for my kids so they can go camping in the yard while I watch from my pool deck.

</comment><comment><USER12> The following quote from the Weekly World News link is suspect. The most environmentally sound way for humans to live is in dense urban cities. Leave the countryside alone.

Quote:

"People's reasons for living small vary a lot, but there seems to be a common thread of sustainability," Shafer said. "A lot of people don't want to use many more resources or put out more emissions than they have to."

</comment><comment><USER13> I already do --- and it was built in 1885. How's that for keeping emissions and resource usage down?

</comment><comment><USER14> Funny, I didn't know the Weekly World News was a legitimate news source.

</comment><comment><USER15> If we could get around the planning issues this would be the PERFECT solution to the housing problem faced by the young, single and poor in the UK.

If we can get these classified as temporary dwellings, it could be both an energy efficient way to house people who are currently being stiffed by society/the economy, as well as a great big fuck-you to the housing market.

</comment><comment><USER16> There is nothing about living in a tiny little house in the future in this video. But I like the approach. Heck, forget houses, many apartment dwellers already live in tiny spaces.

<comment><USER17> > many apartment dwellers already live in tiny spaces.

True that. People in Hongkong or Japan are already living in teeny tiny house/apartments. And some go to extreme lengths to maximise their space. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak> \- Apartment with movable modules in Hongkong )

<comment><USER18> Indeed, this article is very focused on North America with its huge houses. Then again, I do expect houses to become even smaller in the future, in any country. After all, there will be more people in the same space.

Even further into the future, people might spend their entire days in virtual environments so 'real space' will start to matter less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the _Future_? sigh...

</comment><comment><USER20> If you look at the video, you'll see he's wearing a wedding ring and he claims to have lived in the house for ten years. Something's not quite right.

<comment><USER21> If you watch the video, he says that he's lived in small houses for years, but no longer lives in this one. He and his wife live in the 500 sq foot house next to it, as they're expecting a baby.

<comment><USER20> Ooops. That's what I get for cutting out before the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I were ever to get a house that small, I would want one that I could take with me:

<http://www.lazydaze.com/photogal.htm>

<comment><USER23> See I can seriously see the utility of a mobile home with a bed and such small space but when you are planting down some things are nice to have: like running water and a washing machine. The articles tour looks terrible (from youtube) as you would feel constantly squished and adding a second person to the mix would make the house feel even more like a prison cell.</comment></comment>


How to Pretend You Are Smart - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/how-to-pretend-that-you-are-smart <comment><USER2> Criticism of Graham isn't nearly as convincing as criticism of Mead. Wisdom through observation is time-honored and valuable and does not require supporting data.

I am not going to wade into Mead, who certainly sounds like a racist, but may have research to back up his claims not cited.

The best part of the article is the last paragraph encouraging vigorous skepticism, which is true not only for assertions from observation, but also to the supposed data driven experts who have had a terrible track record as of late.

</comment><comment><USER3> About time someone called bullsh*t. Bravo.</comment>


Creators of stu.dicio.us launch New Web App for Budgeting - <AUTHOR> http://sumapp.com I don't know how many of you were around for stu.dicio.us during the summer of 2006, but it closely rivaled MyNoteIt with it's incredible simplicity, and was one of the early startups to partner with FaceBook and allow you to add friends from the social network.<p>Either way, I just received an email from the creators about their new web application, SumApp.  The idea is for simple budgeting and money tracking.  It's a great application so far, makes use of shortcut keys to track expenses.  You can also (if you so choose) tie your credit card to the account and manage money from there as well. <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know how many of you were around for stu.dicio.us during the summer of 2006, but it closely rivaled MyNoteIt with it's incredible simplicity, and was one of the early startups to partner with FaceBook and allow you to add friends from the social network. I made extensive use of it during college, and got about 12 friends to use it, it became quite a resource and before you knew it there were flyers all over the school recruiting kids to use it.

Either way, I just received an email from the creators about their new web application, SumApp. The idea is for simple budgeting and money tracking. It's a great application so far, makes use of shortcut keys to track expenses. You can also (if you so choose) tie your credit card to the account and manage money from there as well.

Accounts are usually $5/mo, but because I was one of the stu.dicio.us beta testers, mine was free. If you used stu.dicio.us, check out your inbox you may be entitled to a free account as well.</comment>


Show HN: Find a whisky similar to your favourite - <AUTHOR> https://whiskylike.com <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but the current dataset seems to be heavily biased towards scotch. It would be neat to seem some bourbon and rye comparisons as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it is completely biased towards scotch. I started with what I knew, but I am currently working on adding bourbon, rye and other whiskies outside of Scotland. Still lots of work to do on it.

<comment><USER2> Makes sense. How do you go about determining if one whiskey is similar to another? Are you going off of experience or attempting to crowd source the data?

There are a couple of reasons I would use something like your service.

1\. I want a cheaper alternative to something I really like. For example, I really enjoy Eagle Rare, but it would be nice to have something at a lower price point for making cocktails.

2\. I want a more readily available alternative to something I really like. Going back to the Eagle Rare example, occasionally it is difficult to find. In this case, I would be willing to pay a little more to have something else that is similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, the algorithm utilizes various tasting notes and other characteristics (price, etc) to determine what is the closest fit. While this has much room to improve, the general idea is there. I would like to get it to a point where users can create their own profiles with their personal ratings and then use that data to make the suggestions more accurate.

This is exactly what I was thinking, I was trying to avoid suggestions that end up being a $10k bottle of whisky, I wanted them to be as similar as possible, without needing to ask the user too many questions.

Once I start getting into the big crowdsourced data sets is when this will get really interesting to see the connections between preferences.

Sounds like I need to try this Eagle Rare! I'm sure you've tried some of these already, but my personal recommendations are Lagavulin, Glengoyne and Edradour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That looks great and the interface is easy enough that I would like to show it to my dad who is a whisky enthusiast (and does not speak a word of English).

<comment><USER3> As a follow up to that if you do end up adding features, try to keep the simplicity of it because it is refreshing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm keen to hear your dad's feedback.

Simplicity will always be the main focus, I want to make this as easy as possible to not overwhelm users.

No hoops to jump through, just whisky!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> God I love whisky. That is an interesting idea. Need to try.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's stopping you? No signup needed, you just need to type in a whisky name. I love getting feedback :)</comment></comment>


Core i9-10900K Intel with 7.7GHz overclock – world record RAM speeds - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/in/news/core-i9-10900k-hits-new-highs-for-intel-with-amazing-77ghz-overclock-and-world-record-ram-speeds <comment><USER2> Ah, finally, one could build a PC that runs Slack, MS Teams, VSCode, ~200 Chrome Tabs and other necessary stuff.

        Der8auer recently conducted an experiment where he pushed an FX-8350 to 8.1GHz (on liquid nitrogen), and dropped it to 7.5GHz, then ran Cinebench R15 – but even at this level, the old processor still couldn't match the single-core performance of modern Ryzen chips, being slightly slower than a Ryzen 5 2600X (not even a current-gen or high-end Ryzen).

        This aptly illustrates that there is a lot more to a CPU than pure clock speed, and underlines the kind of advances we get from progressing through different CPU architectures – with major IPC (Instructions Per Clock) increases – as time goes on.

Wow!</comment>


Ask PG: Could YC admissions be replaced with a very small shell script? - <AUTHOR>

If you train CRM114 (or some other classifier) on all but the most recent batch of YC applications, how does it fare at distinguishing interview vs. no-interview applications in the most recent batch?  How well would it have to do in order to be alarming? :-)<p>There's no particular reason that I'm asking this other than that I just finished retraining CRM to take advantage of the version upgrade and was pretty impressed with the training results. <comment><USER2> We did try this once on startup school applications (after the fact) and it was a pretty bad predictor.

If we ran code like this on YC applications, I suspect the most useful way to use it would be to find groups we hadn't been planning to invite to interviews that deserved a second look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh. For startup school applications that's actually a surprising result. I was under the impression that the admissions process on that was basically just to weed out the hackers from the business people, and with an application that brief I'm surprised that can't be accomplished with a keyword search.

<comment><USER3> You mean I changed my name to Lisp MacErlang for nothing??

But seriously, the Startup School application is basically just a list of keywords, at least the way I understood it. Are there really people writing essays in there?

<comment><USER4> That's not the way I understood it. You can't sell your idea, or your team, with a list of keywords.

(Anybody who actually got accepted want to back me up? :-) )

<comment><AUTHOR> We're talking about startup school, not funding.

<comment><USER4> Oh... sorry, good point. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Hint of Hubris - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2010/a-hint-of-hubris/ Leverage Haskell in Your Ruby code... <comment><USER2> That's a really great idea. We need more embedding of languages other than C.

And I say that as a huge fan of C. I'm even still using it for non-work projects :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> COOL.

Too bad I work in Python at home and work.

Balls. :| Rubyists always get the pretty toys.

<comment><USER4> _Rubyists always get the pretty toys._

You ended up with Zed, though.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I talked to him about librelist and Lamson in an email exchange awhile back. Cool guy.

I don't totally grasp his reasons for moving from rails to python other than culture, but I don't really care.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When does the Summer 2012 YC batch application process start? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> We'll have the application online in a few days probably.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Demo Day for YC W12 is mid-March, so I assume mid April as they need to be focused on the current batch and assist them with fund raising before they can focus on the new applications...Then interviews would be around early January for an early July start...</comment>